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Data Journalism Tutorials for UK Journalists

Practical, step-by-step tutorials for UK journalists at every skill level — from your first pivot table to Python, SQL, mapping, and statistical analysis. All examples use real UK public datasets.

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Start here

Data journalism is the practice of finding, cleaning, analysing, and communicating stories from structured data. You do not need to be a programmer. The UK’s best data newsrooms — the Guardian Visuals team, BBC Shared Data Unit, Bureau Local, and the FT Visual Journalismteam — employ journalists with a wide range of technical skills, from spreadsheet specialists to full Python developers.

New to data journalism? Start with Getting Started, then work through Spreadsheet Essentials.

Ready to go further? Jump to SQL for Journalists or Python Pandas. For making your work public, see the Publishing Workflow.

Beginner
  • Getting Started
  • Spreadsheet Essentials
  • Statistics for Journalists
  • UK Statistical Bodies
  • Data Storytelling
Intermediate
  • Excel vs Sheets vs Airtable
  • SQL for Journalists
  • Data Cleaning Techniques
  • Survey Data Handling
  • Data Visualisation Tools
  • Mapping UK Data
Advanced
  • Python Pandas for Journalists
  • Web Scraping: UK Ethics
  • Regression & Correlation Basics
  • Data Journalism Publishing Workflow

All 15 Tutorials

Each tutorial includes a plain-English explanation, UK-relevant examples, a practical checklist, common mistakes, primary sources, and FAQs.

Getting Started with Data JournalismStart here

Skills, mindset, ethics, and the full data-journalism workflow — question to publish.

Spreadsheet Essentials

Pivot tables, VLOOKUP, SUMIF, conditional formatting — with NHS and council examples.

Excel vs Google Sheets vs Airtable

Pros, cons, cost, collaboration, data-size limits, and when to graduate to a database.

SQL for Journalists

SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, JOINs — using Land Registry and Companies House data.

Python Pandas for Journalists

DataFrames, CSV import, groupby, merge, and basic plotting — no coding background needed.

Data Cleaning Techniques

Missing values, date parsing, duplicates, mismatched keys, and OpenRefine for messy datasets.

Web Scraping: UK Ethics & Practice

robots.txt, CDPA 1988, GDPR, rate limiting, and BeautifulSoup basics.

Data Visualisation Tools

Datawrapper, Flourish, RAWGraphs, Tableau Public — choosing the right tool for your story.

Mapping UK Data

Choropleth maps, UK postcodes, LSOA/MSOA geographies, and the ONS Open Geography Portal.

Statistics for Journalists

Mean vs median, percentages vs percentage points, margins of error, and correlation vs causation.

Regression & Correlation Basics

Reading a coefficient, r-squared, scatter plots, and when to call a statistician.

Survey Data Handling

Sample size, weighting, confidence intervals, and reporting YouGov / Ipsos results responsibly.

UK Statistical Bodies

ONS, NRS Scotland, NISRA, StatsWales, UKSA — datasets, release calendars, and methodology.

Data Storytelling

Turning numbers into narrative: choosing the angle, charts vs prose, explaining methodology.

Data Journalism Publishing Workflow

Fact-checking numbers, source citation, reproducible analysis, Git, and corrections.

R for JournalistsAdvanced

R and RStudio, the tidyverse, dplyr and ggplot2, and reproducible analysis with Quarto.

PostgreSQL for Journalists

Beyond spreadsheets: loading CSVs, CTEs, window functions, indexing, and a taste of PostGIS.

DuckDB Pipelines for Journalism

A fast in-process database that queries CSV, Parquet and JSON directly — from CLI, Python or R.

OpenRefine for Journalists

Clean messy data: faceting, clustering inconsistent values, GREL transforms, and reproducible steps.

QGIS Basics for Journalists

Free desktop GIS: joining data to boundaries, choropleths, honest classification, and export.

OpenStreetMap for Regional Reporting

Extract features with Overpass Turbo, Geofabrik regional extracts, the ODbL licence, and verification.

UK Boundary Data

ONS Open Geography Portal, GSS codes, combined authorities, the ONSPD, and the LEP wind-down.

APIs for Journalists: The Basics

Endpoints, JSON, keys and rate limits — with Companies House, TfL, Nomis and police.uk examples.

Useful Tools & Resources

Free tools used daily by UK data journalists.

FOI Request Builder
Generate a well-structured FOI request to unlock data not yet published.
UK Data Sources Guide
ONS, data.gov.uk, Companies House, Land Registry, NHS England, police.uk and more.
Datawrapper ↑
Free chart and map tool used by Guardian, BBC, FT, and hundreds of UK newsrooms.
Flourish ↑
Animated and interactive data visualisation with a generous free tier.
OpenRefine ↑
Free desktop tool for cleaning messy tabular data at scale.
ONS Open Geography Portal ↑
UK statistical geographies, boundary files, and postcode lookups.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to know how to code to do data journalism?
No — spreadsheets take you a long way. Excel and Google Sheets cover the majority of stories most local and regional journalists will ever work on. Python and SQL become useful when datasets are too large for a spreadsheet (roughly over 100,000 rows), when you need to repeat an analysis many times, or when you need to merge data from multiple sources automatically. Start with spreadsheets and add coding skills as you need them.
Where do UK journalists find data for stories?
The main sources are: ONS (Office for National Statistics) for population, economy, and health data; data.gov.uk for central and local government datasets; Companies House for corporate data; Land Registry for property transactions; NHS England for health service data; police.uk for crime statistics; Hansard and TheyWorkForYou for parliamentary data; and FOI requests for data not yet published. Our UK Statistical Bodies guide covers these in detail.
What is the best free tool for data visualisation?
Datawrapper is widely used in UK newsrooms — it is free for journalists, requires no coding, produces clean embeddable charts, and handles maps. Flourish is the other main option, with more template variety. For your first visualisation, start with Datawrapper: connect a spreadsheet, pick a chart type, and export.
How do I check whether my statistics are correct before publication?
Run your numbers twice from scratch using a different method. Check your totals add up. Look for the obvious sense-check — does the percentage you calculated match approximately what you would expect? Cross-reference against published figures from ONS or the relevant authority if possible. For complex statistical analysis, consider asking a university statistics department or a specialist data journalist to review your methodology. The BBC Shared Data Unit publishes methodology notes — read those for examples of how to document your working.
Is it legal to scrape data from websites in the UK?
It depends. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 gives copyright protection to original databases. Scraping data that is personal information is also subject to UK GDPR. However, scraping factual data for journalistic purposes, at a respectful rate, from publicly accessible pages is generally acceptable practice when no terms of service explicitly prohibit it and you check robots.txt. Always scrape responsibly: use a slow request rate, identify yourself in the User-Agent header, and consider whether an API or downloadable dataset would serve the same purpose without scraping.
What is the difference between data-driven and data-led journalism?
Data-led journalism starts with a dataset and finds the story within it — the data suggests the angle. Data-driven journalism starts with a question or hypothesis and uses data to answer it. Both are valid. Data-led can uncover stories you would never have thought to look for; data-driven ensures your evidence actually answers the question your headline implies. Most professional data journalism combines both: a nose for where a dataset might be interesting, followed by disciplined analysis of whether the numbers support the story.

Related hubs

FOI Toolkit
File FOI requests, challenge refusals, and navigate exemptions.
Investigative Journalism
Sources, documents, undercover, and court records.
Journalism Careers
Training, jobs, and building a data journalism portfolio.
Beat Guides
Data sources specific to health, crime, courts, and council beats.

Unlock data with FOI

When the dataset you need is not published, use our free FOI Request Builder to draft a well-structured request in under two minutes.

Open FOI BuilderUK Data Sources