The Guardian announced yesterday the launch of a new gateway to its data journalism and visualisations.

"DataStore: Fact are sacred" is the subhead on the new data site, and that is the exact statement CP Scott, the Guardian founding editor, said in his first editorial in 1821: "comment is free, but facts are sacred".

Facts are even more sacred now where we are overflowed by data and documents, often without filters, accessible and transferable by everybody on the Web. But they could become confused and not understandable. That's why we still need someone who tells us the story, who gives the readers the context: data journalism is thus become an increasingly vital part of today's journalism.

"Publishing data has got easier since," says Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, "but it brings with it confusion and inaccessibility. How do you know where to look, what Is credible or up to date? Journalists have to walk this tightrope everyday, ensuring that the numbers we publish are right."

"We are drowning in information. The web has given us access to data we would never have found before, from specialist datasets to macroeconomic minutiae. But, look for the simplest fact or statistic and Google will present a million contradictory ones. Where's the best place to start?", argued Simon Rogers, editor at the Guardian Datablog and Datastore, in the article announcing, in March 2009, the launch of the Datablog.

"Data journalism has become an increasingly big part of our work here at the Guardian," said Rogers yesterday in his article, "from Wikileaks to government spending, it's our job to make the key data accessible and easy to understand"

"So, we've pulled all our data journalism into one new place: guardian.co.uk/data. Besides our award-winning datablog, the sites includes: the key data of the day, our pick of the data blogosphere, search the world's government data and featured app," says the website.

Part of the datastore is also the Government data search gateway, where readers can find data from UK, USA, Australian, New Zealand and London government sites.

Source: Guardian (1) (2) (3) (4)