Paul Bradshaw
1 min readSep 25, 2020

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Good use of the concepts Umar - you could be more critical and detailed in thinking about alternative editorial choices. For example, it does start in quite an abstract way - there aren't any characters at the start, only charts/numbers. This is a common problem that data journalists face - will readers turn off because there's no human face to it? Consider how movement is literally introduced in the way charts animate, too.

Likewise, the setting is largely abstract. Europe is mentioned in one chart, but even that is quite a large area with little to grab the reader. When we get to the story 'proper' we start to hear about children, which is perhaps more gripping but could they have focused on a specific child and how they were affected to grab us more? Why don't they? (There are generic and time considerations probably shaping that)

Although organisations can be characters, often it's their representatives that are used (synecdoche!), e.g. Robin Nandy is the first named character

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Paul Bradshaw
Paul Bradshaw

Written by Paul Bradshaw

Data journalist and course leader of the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University. Author of the Online Journalism Handbook.

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