The data-journalism business w/ Tommaso Guadagni

Q: Let’s start from the beginning. What’s Visualeyed? What are its main features?

A: Visualeyed is a blog run by The Visual Agency and Dalk. It’s a hybrid creature that wants to raise both users and editors’ awareness about accessing information through immersive, multimedia and digital first experiences. The specific set of content, which includes both articles written by Dalk editorial staff and selected from the best newspapers across the world, is its peculiarity.

Q: Why did you choose to create this project? Where did you come up with this idea?

A: Journalism has always been my passion. Visualeyed was born in 2015 as a blog of The Visual Agency, where I worked as marketing manager.

I personally created this blog to collect the best data-journalism articles from the web.

I was highly interested in American journalism because over there journalists had already started using some data visualization modules, that in Italy nobody was able to develop.

In 2015 we were true pioneers in this field and, also for this reason, Visualeyed impressed a lot of people.

Q: Who’s the magazine for? Did you define a specific audience?

A: This blog is addressed to an audience that appreciates the online magazine reading and that is curious to deepen information. I’ve never worked for a specific target.

Moreover, we decided to write this blog completely in english because our audience isn’t just Italian, but definitely global..

Q: Your personal passion for data visualizations, infographics and storytelling has also become your own work. Do you think it’s complex to work in this field, especially in Italy?

A: Yes, I know that I’m really lucky. In italy we’re great communicators and innovators, but we don’t have a market ready to embrace these innovations. In the early years, the data visualization field was just academic. We were able to raise awareness and to intercept a common growing need: turning complexity into meaning.

Today something has changed.

I’ve always thought that journalism plays an important role in our society and I believe that italian editors should have taken data visualization and data-journalism into account much earlier.

For all I know, in the main Italian newsrooms there aren’t data-journalist teams.

Q: What are the main aims and future goals of Visualeyed?

A: This year Visualeyed has been entirely renewed. Until 2020, the main goal was to educate the users to a different digital journalism: guide them to look for not only the aseptic information, but also an immersive experience. I would have liked to call it the “The Netflix of the publishing industry”, but, in Italy, people were not ready yet.

Today the main goal is changed: from January we’ll become a registered magazine, we’ll have a new editorial director and we will offer our readers everyday high-quality information.

We want to become a global benchmark for data driven storytelling.

Q: Would you explain to us what the V-Stories are, and how Dalk and The Visual Agency collaborate in order to realize them?

A: V-Stories are one of our best outputs. They are multimedia longforms that deepen highly complex topics. I was inspired by The New York Times and The Washington Post newsroom teams, so I tried to reproduce similar teams for Visualeyed too.

V-Stories are a clear example of teamwork: different highly-qualified professional figures work together in order to create something unique.

Q: In Italy there aren’t many online “data-driven” magazines such as Visualeyed. Do you think that Visualeyed could be a pioneer in this sector for the italian publishing industry?

A: Actually, In Italy data-journalism exists, but data journalists are scattered across different newsrooms.

For example, OnData, Data-Ninja, Spaghetti Open Data, Datajournalism.it or professional figures such as Elisabetta Tola, Marco Boscolo, Davide Mancino, Filippo Mastroianni, Daniele Grasso, Matteo Moretti, Jacopo Ottaviani and many others have been true pioneers for italian data-journalism.

I want to underline that the main goal of Visualeyed is to become an international cultural benchmark for data and visual journalism, because in Italy the audience interested in this field is still too small and unprepared.

The reasons are many: certainly, the shortage of open data could be one.

Furthermore, the Italian public is used to opinion-makers and commentators, not to information driven through data.