When the pandemic hit, the demand for trustworthy, timely data skyrocketed, but the data itself was often inaccessible, inconsistent, and buried deep inside government dashboards. As a graphics journalist at Reuters, I found myself doing more than just making charts – we were scraping, stitching, cleaning, and sometimes manually copying data, just to get to a starting point. I’ll share the behind-the-scenes process of building some of the most-referenced COVID-19 trackers and data stories at Reuters, how we dealt with broken sources, shifting formats, massive datasets, and the surprising power of duct-tape workflows.

Prasanta Kumar Dutta is an Information Experience Designer from India, working at the intersection of design, coding, and journalism at Reuters. With a background in engineering and design, he crafts data-driven pieces that help narrate important stories visually. Several of his works have been recognised with numerous awards. He also teaches and talks about data visualisation, narrative cartography, and design at eminent institutes across India.

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