(Credit: Wikimedia)

The Associated Press announced that it plans to create guidelines for data journalism, thanks to a new chunk of funding.

“AP will also establish and distribute data journalism best practices as an addendum to the 2017 Associated Press Stylebook, focusing on style, ethics and standards,” the AP said in a Sept. 30 press release. “Additionally, it will create an online portal where customers can download market-specific information.”

(The Data Journalism Handbook offers examples of what data journalism is here.)

The move comes after the AP received a $400,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the AP said. In addition to the standards guidance, the AP is using the money to hire more data journalists, undertake more data journalism projects, and “increase its distribution of data sets that include localized information to thousands of news organizations,” the AP news release said.

The AP added:

“AP will further increase the number of data-driven projects it produces. It will distribute detailed local data sets to AP members and customers, including broadcasters, newspapers and new media, and collaborate with other news organizations on their data-driven projects. The goal is to bring data journalism to more newsrooms and enable them to make greater use of data in their reporting, while better informing the public.”

In 2012, the Global Editors Network started its annual awards contest for the 1st Data Journalism Awards to promote standards and best practices, as iMediaEthics previously wrote.

Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center also has an interesting take from 2013 on best practices and standards in data journalism, “On the Ethics of Data-Driven Journalism: of fact, friction and public records in a more transparent age.”

“Given the increased reach and velocity of digital media, data journalists must be more conscious of ethics than ever. Experienced or rookie journalists need to know how to turn data into journalism in a way that both protects and informs the public the data describes,” the Tow Center report, by Alexander Howard says. The report also points to Poynter’s list of questions about handling data ethically and responsibly.

Hat Tip: Poynter

CORRECTION - October 11, 2015 9:41 AM EST

The Data Journalism Awards were started by the Global Editors Network, not the European Journalism Centre, as iMediaEthics previously stated. We regret the error.