Spreadsheets for Investigative Journalists • Helena Bengtsson
In this masterclass video, Helena Bengtsson, the data journalism editor at Gota Media and Bonnier News Local (two regional publishing companies in Sweden with 55 local titles), shares essential spreadsheet skills every journalist needs to tell impactful stories.
She explains how spreadsheets serve two core purposes in the newsroom: putting individual tips into context to produce better-reported stories and structuring information in a way that reveals the story itself.
Bengtsson walks through the five key techniques journalists should master: sorting to find the biggest numbers, filtering to isolate relevant data, performing simple calculations, building pivot tables to summarize large datasets and surface errors, and connecting multiple spreadsheets to compare data across sources. She also shows how combining two datasets (such as a list of politicians and a list of companies holding government contracts) can be a powerful method for detecting corruption.
Credits:
- Interview: Sarah Ulrich
- Video Editing: Quentin Egloff
- Music: Lionel Marçal
- Filming: Ron Lopez, Reynald Ramirez, Hashim Hakeem
- Supervision and Coordination: Sandrine Rigaud
- Special Thanks: Glenn Chong
- With the support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung