Thomas Kohnstamm’s interview of Alberto Cairo for Microsoft is entitled “Show, don’t tell: Alberto Cairo, Power BI & the rise of data journalism“ (what is Power BI).  This comes on the heels of the first Digital Humanities + Data Journalism Symposium, organized by Dr. Cairo, and held on September 29-October 1, 2016, here at UM. Kohnstamm’s article illuminates the history of Visualization as visualizations themselves help to illuminate the rise of this fascinating approach. “Visualization no longer just complements a written story. It is the story. In our increasingly data-driven world, visualization is becoming an essential tool for journalists from national papers to blogs with a staff of one.”

This in-depth interview takes a look at how big data has infiltrated everyday life, Cairo’s parallel career, and how he “stumbled” into infographics: “His career has tracked alongside the major technological developments in and out of the newsroom that brought us to the current point in data visualization.”

Prof. Cairo came to the University of Miami in January of 2012. In December 2014, he was named the “Knight Chair in Visual Journalism“ for 2015, a five to seven year term that aims to “[maintain] a cutting-edge relationship to the developing professions of visual journalism by fostering projects and experiments that will incubate new techniques of visual and interactive reporting and storytelling.“ From the Microsoft article, Prof. Cairo says “Miami is unrivaled at teaching data visualization.” “Graphics are mandatory for journalism students here and we have deep coursework in infographics, visualization, cartography, 3D modeling and advanced programming—all related to journalism.”

Read more at: news.microsoft.com/stories/data  |  Join us at the next CCS Visualization program event, the “VizUM 3rd Annual Symposium“.

Visit  ccs.miami.edu/focus-area/visualization and visualization.miami.edu