Welcome to 2025, Benchies!

Boy is it cold out there this week – for those of us on the East Coast, at least. LA, we’re thinking of you.

As we step into the new year, let’s warm up with five stories from Storybench in 2024 that will shape the conversations, innovations, and challenges of data journalism in 2025. From groundbreaking AI tools to shifting public perceptions of those very tools, these standout stories offer a glimpse into what’s ahead for data journalism and digital storytelling in the year to come. So grab a warm bevvy, settle in, and let’s dive into the future, one story at a time.

Without further ado, here are the 5 stories from 2024 that will shape 2025 ⬇️

Here is our featured content this week:

🌎 Visualizing organic carbon in near real time – A step-by-step guide

News of the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles started 2025 off on a somber note. While wildfires are on the rise, they are unfortunately nothing new. In the fall of 2020, smoke from wildfires covered the entire West Coast before spreading west out over the Pacific Ocean and east to New York, Washington D.C., even reaching as far as the shores of Europe. Wildfire smoke is made mostly of dark carbon particles and can have catastrophic consequences for planetary and human health. Marco Hernandez, graphics editor at the New York Times, created an animation for Reuters that visualizes organic carbon released into the atmosphere during the 2020 fires. In this step-by-step guide, he demonstrates exactly how he used forecast models from NASA to visualize the organic carbon released into the atmosphere during wildfires that ravaged the West Coast in years past. Wildfires – as well as their far-reaching downstream impacts – will likely continue to be top of mind this year. Take a look.

Is Apple's new free AI-powered transcription feature a game-changer for journalists? We compared it to paid services

If you’re an iPhone user who delays updates until your phone is on the brink of breakdown (it’s only a call out if you think it’s one) you may not have noticed all the exciting new features Apple launched as part of its recent update. The iOS 18.1 operating system, which hit our pockets this week, included a new feature for phone calls and the Voice Memo and Notes apps that take talk-to-text to a new level — allowing users to record and transcribe entire audio interviews on both mobile and desktop. The new abilities also represent Apple’s foray into a new area: the transcriptions are accompanied by an AI-generated summary on newer phones. And while our inner journalist is jumping for joy at the idea of never having to painstakingly transcribe an interview again, we’d be doing our profession a disservice if we didn’t ask all the questions. Take a look at how this new software stacks up against its competitors! 📱

The war in Gaza one year later: how open source investigations have helped reveal the costs of war

Fifteen months ago, the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel by Hamas fighters killed 1,200 soldiers and civilians and took more than 200 hostages. The Israeli military response that followed has resulted in the deaths of at least 40,000 in Gaza, most of them civilians, and leveled large swaths of homes, schools, businesses and hospitals. With access for journalists to facts on the ground both difficult and dangerous, news organizations have relied on the tools of open source investigation (OSI) — everything from satellite imagery to bodycam footage to social media video posts — to investigate the claims and counterclaims on both sides. In a piece published exactly one year after the Oct. 7 attack, Dan Zedek, Professor of the Practice at Northeastern's School of Journalism, wrote about how OSI efforts have often pierced the fog of war, but also revealed some of the limitations of OSI when presented with conflicting evidence. Despite ongoing open-source investigations, the argument over responsibility for the explosion, like the war itself, continues with no apparent end in sight, Zedek writes. Read the story here. 

Using Al agents and R to create map annotations

Maps are super cool, especially to us journalists. But sometimes maps require some explaining to pack the punch we want them to. And who has time to go in and input all that info on their own? As professor of practice in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (who teaches courses in AI, data analysis and visualization) Matt Waite explains, this is where AI can come in really handy (and save you hundreds of hours). Regardless of your feelings about AI in journalism, this read is a must! 📰

Reuters: how the public in six countries think about generative Al in journalism

For better or worse, no industry is safe from the creeping tentacles of generative AI. Once considered a distant idea from a futuristic space movie, AI is now becoming part of newsroom workflows, with major organizations like the Associated Press and Bloomberg incorporating it into their news production. But how does the public feel about all this change? Storybench’s Namira Haris breaks it down for us, using a recent study from the Reuters Institute which looked at public perceptions of generative AI in journalism across six countries. This is one you won’t want to miss.

PHOTO(S) OF THE WEEK 📷

A shot of our favorite city from the last few newsletters, in case you missed them 😉

[ 📷: @marian_siljeholm_photography ]

That's all we've got for this week! Thanks for reading, and let us know if there's anything you'd like to see in these newsletters or in our coverage at [email protected].

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