I saw an interesting title the other day, Data Journalist. I would have been immediately drawn to that field of work if it had existed in Iowa J-school back in my day.

The rise fo the data journalist started with the infographic. An infographic is defined by most as “a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.” That means that your engineering side and your artist side need to work together. Not everyone is made to create a compelling Chart, graph or infographics.

To me, this new form of communications is a simple way of making information, trends and facts accessible to all. A good graphic should tell a story in a beautiful, yet basic way. The point of a graphic should be obvious.

What’s driving this move to Data journalism? It is the rise of data. There is more data than we know what to do with. And until it is mined, analyzed and communicated, it’s just a bunch of numbers stuck in a hard drive.

Here are my favorite data journalism outlets:

Statista

Pew Research

marketing charts

eMarketer

New York Times

When you combine the data journalists with the new aggregators (such as Morning Consult) you are getting the information your need in a way that provides perspective beyond a typical news story (such as a shooting, car crash or garage fire). You are better able to retain the information, learn from it, make decisions about your stance on that issue and then communicate it to others.

The age of the data journalist is here. Let me show you in a chart.