During the unconference portion of the OphCon conference, I joined a group to discuss a hot topic: How do we get editorial teams excited about data?

It was a lively, wide-ranging conversation that even challenged the premise of the question: Do we need journalists excited about data or is it good enough if they’re simply using it? 

Among the great pieces of advice during the discussion:

• Reporters are competitive, so if you give them the right goals and data points for comparison, they’ll aim to beat their colleagues. Context matters here, and you have to be careful not to incentivise ways to “game the system.”

• Tie data to the day-to-day. Too often data feels disconnected from daily action plans, so if it is better integrated, journalists can best understand how to use the data.

• Use a common language. The right language to discuss data among analysts is probably not the same language you want to use with editors and reporters. 

• Use the data to understand your customers. Make the data feel human instead of like numbers. Editorial teams need to feel like they are serving readers instead of “clicks.”

• Don’t overwhelm journalists with data. This is a mistake many newsrooms made in the past — way too much data that could be confusing and contradictory. Narrow it down to a few KPIs. Don’t display too much data either. Show what matters and is actionable.

• Don’t lean too heavily on automated reporting. Many analytics tools are great for automating data reports, but that starts to feel like background noise. Personalise and customise the data.

• Feedback loops are key. It’s not enough to simply present the data. Analysts told stories of deep dives with smaller teams to discuss data insights, which led to more successful outcomes.

• Find the nuggets in the data. Talented data teams absorb all the analytics and boil them down into specific insights and action items. That’s what will benefit individual journalists and teams the most. Push for impact.

• Work to make data predictive. It’s most useful if you can use it for future-facing insights and not just looking back.

I’ll end it with this great quote from one of the participants: “We need to use the data to tell stories. What story will this data tell? How can we use it? What are the levers our journalists can pull based on the data?”

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