Visualize your story with Power BI for data journalism

Tell immersive, data-rich stories with visualizations that engage audiences.

Data storytelling made easy

The most effective stories are often interactive, visually compelling, and provide deep insight through data. Power BI helps journalists tell better, data-driven stories, without excessive overhead or time investment—and without any coding. Easy connections to data and built-in and custom visualizations mean you can discover, create, and share your data story quickly.

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Follow this step-by-step guidance on how to clean and model your data, produce quick and easy visualizations, and publish interactive visualizations for your audience to explore.

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“Visualizations no longer just complement a written story. In our increasingly data-driven world, they’re becoming a mainstream story form and an essential tool for journalists.”

Alberto Cairo, data visualization expert

AP data-driven local news KING 5 reporting AP election results Recode interactive visuals Microsoft Girls in STEM research Curbed reports for data exploration

The Associated Press takes its data storytelling to the next level with Power BI

The Associated Press (AP) collaborated with Microsoft to expand the way it shares data with member news organizations and customers. The AP data journalism team is piloting the use of Power BI to enable local and regional news outlets to more easily uncover and report the data-driven local stories most interesting to their audiences.

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KING 5 News creates engaging stories with Power BI

KING 5 News chose Power BI to deliver data and analysis to viewers during elections, integrating Power BI visualizations on air, websites, and through its mobile app. Reporter Natalie Brand used Power BI and Surface Hub to share and analyze data in real-time during her election broadcasts. KING 5 won an Emmy for this reporting.

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The Associated Press and Microsoft deliver up-to-the-minute election results

The world relies on The Associated Press (AP) to deliver up-to-the-minute election results. For the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial primary, AP and Microsoft used Power BI to create visualizations of election data. AP offered member news outlets these visualizations, which included an interactive map showing results by county and party, to provide audiences with near-real-time results.

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Recode uses custom Power BI visuals to show complex relationships

Recode data editor, Rani Molla, chose Power BI to show the complex web of relationships between auto makers, ride-sharing, and self-driving tech companies in Silicon Valley and Detroit. This story uses the growing library of Power BI custom visuals to show the myriad of connections between companies like Lyft, General Motors, and Alphabet.

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Microsoft uses Power BI for Girls in STEM research

When Microsoft used Power BI to highlight survey results from 11,500 girls and young women across 12 European countries, they discovered that most girls become interested in STEM at age 11-and-a-half but their interest wanes by around age 15. This award-winning Girls in STEM research served as a springboard for action across media, schools, and policy makers.

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Curbed takes advantage of Power BI to enhance reader engagement

Curbed data journalist, Jeff Andrews, uses Power BI to demonstrate how the tax reform law will impact the housing market. The interactive reports also allow readers to analyze how the tax rates will directly impact their own households. Curbed continues to use Power BI for a variety of data stories to enable deeper reader engagement and encourage further exploration.

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Take a data visualization course

Albert Cairo shares proven ways to engage your audience with data visualization.

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See data stories

Get inspired by the Power BI gallery of user-generated data stories.

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Join the conversation

Connect with other data storytellers to learn and find resources.

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Browse custom visuals

Find and use custom visuals for your data reporting, created by the Power BI community.

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Publish your data stories to the web

Embed data visualizations in stories on your public blog or website, with Power BI publish to web. Get unlimited views on any device. Edit, update, refresh, and easily control the content you publish.

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Start telling data-rich stories today

Join the Microsoft Data Journalism program

Our work with journalists and media organizations uncovered a growing need for data journalism tools to help discover and share data stories. We created the Microsoft Data Journalism program to help press and influencers create engaging stories that help their audience explore and understand data in new ways. The program provides free access to Power BI, custom engagements, on-demand content, training, and support.

To learn more, email MSFTDataJournalism@Microsoft.com.