Nikola Simic, 22, Croatia
Nikola is a student of journalism and works as an editor at the newspaper Global where he writes for the European Union and foreign affairs column.

Data and Journalism in Croatia

During one of my first lectures at the journalism department at the University of Zagreb, a Statistics professor asked a student to tell her the solution to a simple math equation. The student stood up and said that the reason he enrolled in the journalism school was so that he would never ever had to do math again. The first thing I thought when I heard him say that was how offensive that actually was since I had been great at Maths my entire life (and I applied for journalism because I wanted to do journalism, not simply because I did not want to do something else). Once I got over myself (and my ego) I thought to myself how any journalism student can say something like that especially when we live in the age of WikiLeaks, Offshore leaks and many other “leaks and gates”.

This situation, as a matter of fact, visualizes best how data driven journalism (DDJ) is perceived in Croatia, or better put – the lack of perception of the importance of data in Croatian journalism. The era of data driven journalism has not yet started in my home country, although there have been certain attempts to enliven it in practice. Attempt that came the closest was the release (or more correctly – the premature leak) of the list of war veterans of the Croatian War of Independence which showed the disproportionate number of war veterans and people enjoying veteran state benefits. Since the list was made available via the Internet illegally, it resulted in “data driven journalism” being viewed as a product of illegal hacking activities even more than before as WikiLeaks was (and still continues to be) the prime example of DDJ. But it was the first time in the history of Croatian journalism that an Internet database was noticed as a significant source of news and public discussion in the country. Even though the veteran list stands almost alone among such data inspired journalism “events”, data (predominantly statistical data) has positioned itself as a relevant source of information for journalists in the “visual media” – newspapers, television and new media (excluding radio). Infographics (often interactive online) have become a staple of Croatian media over the last few years – mainly as a part of political coverage. Almost weekly, viewers and readers are faced with the graphical representation of the popularity of the government and the opposition, which only increases during political campaigns.
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What I see as a fundamental obstacle in the improvement of the position of data driven journalism in Croatia is the lack of comprehension of what it really is. I think that many journalists still see it as journalism based on illegally obtained data – something in which real and legitimate journalists do not engage. The shift in attitude is what is necessary for DDJ to become a relevant path for Croatian journalists. They have to realize that DDJ in reality represents a new model of investigative journalism. Data provides us with unique opportunities to find stories hidden inside it, but just if we look close enough.

We live in the age of journalism when newspapers or online articles are getting shorter and shorter, while our sources keep getting bigger. Journalism used to mean digging for information in different places until you get lucky and come across something, but today information is served to us on a silver platter. The problem is the amount of information is enormous, sometimes going over thousands of documents. And this is how a new role for journalists is being created. Journalists do not have to look for scraps of information anymore; we have to recognize what is important among piles of statistical and bureaucratical data. So, what it all comes down to – never have journalists had a more substantial need to be mathematicians than today and never has a wrong calculation hidden in vast directories of documents had a more colossal potential to become a relevant news story.