Ho — MEDIA houses have been reminded to embrace data journalism, to make meaningful impact on their contributions to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Ms Florence Toffa, Director of Mobile Web Ghana, who made the call, explained that data journalism "helps to tell better and more impactful stories backed by facts and data".
She was speaking at the opening of a three-day training programme on Data Related Journalism for about 20 selected media practitioners in the Volta Region, in Ho, on Tuesday.
The event, organised by the German Corporation (GIZ), and facilitated by Mobile Web Ghana, took the participants through topics such as information search, cleansing messy data, statistical analysis, data visualizsation, and information communication, among others.
Ms Toffa pointed out that the tools and skills for doing journalism were constantly changing, and asked media organisations to accept changes accordingly and promptly.
She said that data journalism was now a vital dictate for journalists in the contemporary global society as it brought out hidden stories and deeper insights to issues affecting people.
Ms Toffa said data journalism offered solutions to most of the SDG challenges as it held the government to account on its declaration, and touched on social issues affecting communities, and helped to track social progress with journalistic tools.
Ms Toffa, who facilitated the training, indicated that data related journalism was a vital and unavoidable tool in today's media industry.
She observed that development journalism was declining and that there was the need for media houses to groom SDG ambassadors to ensure ample evidence of data-driven journalism in their stories.
As part of the training, the participants were also taken through revised computer lessons in Excel, Pivot Tables and Data Wrapper.
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