Coding for Data Storytelling

Student projects from the Northeastern School of Journalism Spring 2025 course

Course Description

Offers students an opportunity to learn essential skills in coding across a wide range of technologies commonly used today in data-driven, multimodal, web-based storytelling. Focuses on building skills in basic web development, as well as exploring additional topics and technologies that fit into the broader land- scape of data storytelling practice (JavaScript visualization library D3.js, basic Python, working with APIs, and working with databases). Course work consists primarily of team-based projects that focus on reverse-engineering real-world examples of data storytelling to demystify the question, “How did they do that?” Reveals the ways fluency in code can transform storytelling.

Topics Covered

  • Norms and design patterns in news interactives
  • Fundamentals of scrollytelling
  • Crafting semantic and accesible HTML
  • Maintainable CSS
  • Creating interactive behaviors with JavaScript
  • DOM manipulation with D3.js
  • Component-based design with Svelte