In its current state, data journalism describes neither a beat nor a particular medium (unlike photo journalism or video journalism), but rather an overlapping set of competencies drawn from disparate fields. We have the statistical methods of social scientists, the mapping tools of GIS, the visualization arts of statistics and graphic design, and a host of skills that have their own job descriptions and promotion tracks among computer scientists: Web development, general-purpose programming, database administration, systems engineering, data mining (even, I hear, cryptography). And the ends of these efforts vary as widely as their means: from the more traditional text CAR story to the interactive graphic or app; from newsroom tools built for reporters to multi-faceted websites in which the reporting becomes the data.
