Some data journalism projects that I particularly enjoy are pieces from The Pudding. The Pudding’s approach is partially influenced by community submissions and is experimental. One piece that I found impactful was, This is how rare it is for a hit song to be credited to an all-women songwriting team. The project skillfully blends dynamic visuals with data on the gender composition of song writers from top Billboard Hot 100 songs in recent years.
The project employs the usual vertical scroll method to move readers through the story. One of my favorite ways they expand on this feature is using background and foreground. They use it to highlight how male dominated commercially successful song writing is.
As the project unfolds, a running tally can be seen at the lower left that demonstrates that the further back, starting in 2021, we go in years, the wider the disparity.
The latter half of the project details the rarity of hit songs where a woman is the sole writer of a song for a man. And specifically calls out barriers that women have faced in getting recognition in the song writing space, and the music industry at large. This quote was shocking to me:
“From a nameless male author in 1860 being disturbed by women having to straddle a cello in order to play it to composer Gustave Kerker expressing his distaste for how certain instruments distorted female faces to critic George Upton writing in his book Woman in Music that women’s emotions made them great song interpreters (i.e., vocalists) but not great songwriters, men have continually tried to define what is appropriate for women to do in music.”
The level of interactivity of this project makes it especially engaging for narrating the story. While it is largely a linear experience, the final sections allow users to search all the data compiled. The creators share a breakdown of methodology and a link to the data sheet containing all the data.
I appreciate that, while the focus of this project is on lack of female representation in songwriting, non-binary identities were also included. It calls to mind themes presented in some of the readings on how one data set can highlight other facts or narratives within the data they you may not have been seeking. The creators of the piece took care to acknowledge that to the best of their abilities and with the data available, they aimed to accurately represent those who identify as non-binary. Pronoun specifications were not always present in the data available for song writer credits; so, they relied on how that writer seemed to identify themself in publications and platforms.
Like La Nacion, The Pudding works less like traditional news organizations. The lack of immediate urgency lends to the ability to create interesting pieces that can touch on data that may not seem as important in a current news cycle.
