Honglei Zhai, Zhe Fu

Honglei Zhai

December 31, 2025

Data journalism, China Data Journalism Competition, Talent cultivation, Optimization pathways.

Data journalism, characterized by its presentation through visualization techniques, has emerged as a novel form of news reporting. Increasingly embraced by media organizations, it has become a burgeoning field within the journalism industry. Since 2015, the scale of the China Data Journalism Competition has continuously expanded. The award-winning works from this competition represent the latest compendium of data journalism practice in China and reflect the cutting-edge developments in this field domestically. Accordingly, this study takes the China Data Journalism Competition as its research subject, conducting empirical research on the content of its entries and their developmental trends. On one hand, it examines the evolving competition mechanisms to understand the shifting focus and dynamic progression of data journalism practices in China. On the other hand, it performs a content analysis of 381 award-winning works from successive competitions to summarize their content characteristics and changing trends. Based on the findings from these two dimensions, the study identifies the essential elements and directions for cultivating data journalism talent. Furthermore, it explores pathways for optimizing the development of data journalism talent cultivation in China. The aim is to provide valuable reference and theoretical guidance for advancing data journalism practice within the Chinese context.

© 2025, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license