The Data Journalism Handbook at a glance, used under Creative Commons License.

As the Columbia Journalism Review reports, it behooves journalists to become literate in data coding, because that’s where jobs are opening up. It’s still a very small set of people who can combine the speed, ethics, understanding and fairness required of a journalist with the coding skills of a developer, says John Keefe, editor of data news at WNYC.

“[A]nybody who put any effort into being good at that and having those qualities is going to have a job probably before they can graduate,” Keefe told CJR.

Apparently, news sources as small as the Lansing State Journal and Vermont Public Radio are making space for data and design teams on their staffs. Publications can utilize coding-literate teams to produce graphics and surveys of demographics — census maps, for instance, in the case of WNYC’s coverage of Hurricane Irene, which brought them a record-setting amount of traffic.

Free tutorials like ones on Flowing Data and .net magazine teach journalists basic data coding skills that can help them become more employable, as outlets learn that the web offers them even more shots at being inventive and innovative and therefore more interesting to viewers.