How to Turn Everyone in Your Newsroom into a Graphics Editor

By: David Yanofsky | Nieman Journalism Lab

Today Quartz is open-sourcing the code behind Chartbuilder, the application we use to make most of our charts. Along with the underlying charting library — called Gneisschart — the tool has given everyone in our worldwide newsroom 24-hour access to simple charts at graphics-desk quality. It has helped all of our reporters and editors become more responsible for their own content and less dependent on others with specialized graphics skills.

The project started as a tool for myself. Dismayed by some of the ugly, poorly cropped, off-brand, and illegible charts showing up on Quartz and frustrated by the amount of my own time it was taking to produce even the simplest charts in our style, I set out to make a tool that would allow me to support the charting needs of the newsroom without consuming all of my time.