Friday Lunchtime Lecture: Is open data and journalism a match doomed to fail?

Journalists have been slow to approach open data as a source of information, often relying on traditional approaches such as Freedom of Information requests. In 2015, Jonathan Stoneman wrote a working paper “Does Open Data Need Journalism?” to show how things were slowly changing. With projects such as OpenCorporates and OpenPrescribing, access to data for journalists was becoming easier than ever. But is it enough? And have there been too many missed opportunities for open data and journalism to truly live happily ever after? About the speaker Jonathan Stoneman is an ODI Registered Trainer, specialising in data journalism. He was a BBC journalist for 20 years, culminating as Head of World Service Training. Data work is the element of his freelance work which he enjoys most: he has delivered training to more than 600 BBC journalists, and likes nothing more than to curl up on his sofa with a good dataset!