Charts & data for journalists with Quartz' Atlas for Africa & StoryLab Academy

Hacks/Hackers Johannesburg would like to invite you to a special workshop on data-driven storytelling using Quartz' Atlas for Africa tools and the StoryLab Academy online learning programme.

Most journalists know the value of data for finding, researching and illustrating a story, but many struggle with the tools that represent critical information to readers quickly and well.

Current affairs news site Quartz (https://qz.com) was an early pioneer in using graphs to tell stories in an immediate and compelling way, producing dozens of charts daily to liven its storytelling and convey key facts quickly. And it was a huge success, building a massive daily audience with its punchy, fact-filled stories. It has gone on to launch a localised Quartz Africa site, bringing its inimitable style to stories that matter across the continent.

To facilitate its work, Quartz developed a suite of in-house tools for manipulating and visualising numbers in ways that fit into a journalist's workflow and help speed up publication without compromising quality.

And then it opened up those tools to the world. For free. What's more Atlas (https://www.theatlas.com/) not only helps to build stunning and simple graphics for your stories, it also hosts and publishes visualisations helping to bring readers to your site.

Now, Atlas for Africa (https://blog.qz.com/why-we-are-proposing-atlas-for-africa-a-free-data-visualization-platform-for-african-newsrooms-f1b44f75f627) is an initiative to bring Atlas, to newsrooms and organizations across Africa for free, in support of greater access to Africa-focused data sources and visualistion. Atlas for Africa is supported by Code for Africa’s innovateAFRICA (http://innovateafrica.fund/) fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

On Weds 25 Oct, Quartz' Lynsey Chutel will walk you through the basics of Atlas for Africa, and offer tips and advice on the best charts to use in particular stories.

We'll also be announcing a special series of training sessions based on Code for Africa's StoryLab Academy (https://academy.codeforafrica.org) for Hacks/Hackers Joburg members.