The Covid-19 pandemic prevented us holding our traditional annual lecture, at least in a physical space. Instead, on November 19th 2020, we hosted a special discussion via Zoom between our chairman Lionel Barber and Alan Smith OBE, Head of Data and Visual Journalism at the Financial Times.
The subject was ‘The Power of Data Journalism’, and it was fascinating to hear Alan talk about leading the development of data reporting and visualisation at the FT. Lionel and Alan also discussed how data journalism has been essential in helping us to understand the pandemic, as well as where the field could go next.
Although we were sad not to be able to hold an in-person lecture, the online format allowed us to reach new audiences. We hope to hold more in the future.