Data Journalist
Standing between a striking statistic and several million readers, and being the only person in the chain paid to ask whether it is true.
What the job actually is
A data journalist reads studies, surveys and datasets and decides what can honestly be said about them in a headline. The pressure is structural: the more surprising a finding is, the more likely it is to be wrong, and the more certainly it will be published.
The failure modes are a short and repeating list. A sample that selected itself. A correlation reported as a cause. A subgroup found by looking at twenty subgroups. A record 'high' that is within the margin of error of last year. An effect that is real, tiny, and described as if it were large.
None of these require statistical sophistication to catch — they require the discipline to ask who was measured and compared to what, every time, including on the story you badly want to run.
The calls that define it
- Whether a finding survives contact with how the data was collected
- What the headline can claim, versus what the study supports
- Which comparison makes the number honest rather than dramatic
- When to kill a good story
Sits on a news desk between researchers and an editor with a deadline; the only defence against a wrong number is having questioned it before it printed.
What you'd need to know
The concepts this chair runs on — each one links to a plain-English definition.
Sit in the chair
Reading about a job is the trailer. This simulation makes you do it — free, in the browser, nothing to install and nothing locked.
Where you learn it
The course behind this chair — bite-size levels that teach exactly what the job is tested on.
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