Annie Gouk

Having worked as a data journalist at Reach for nearly a decade, Annie Gouk is currently the Data Investigations Editor. She leads data-driven investigative journalism across Reach’s regional and national titles, with a particular focus on high impact special projects.

As part of her role, Annie explores innovative storytelling formats, particularly with her use of long-form “scrollytelling”. Her work involves collaboration with other journalists, designers and coders to produce deep-dive visual investigations and campaigns, with Annie acting as project manager to ensure these pieces are delivered to brief and on time.

Typically months in the making, Annie’s data-led investigations involve tracking down and analysing scores of complex datasets, using her advanced skills in Excel and Google Sheets to mine exclusive stories from official sources. This is then combined with her more traditional journalism skills, including her ability to write with flair and accuracy for a non-specialist audience.

Annie’s focus is on regional inequality and social injustice, finding original ideas that particularly resonate with local audiences. As a result, as well as driving pageviews, engagement, and newsletter signups, Annie’s work often also has a more tangible impact.

For example, the Liverpool: Austerity City project was instrumental in helping local voters make an informed decision, as well as amplifying voices within the community.

It garnered hundreds of thousands of views and shares nationwide, with notable figures like James O'Brien and Alistair Campbell, as well as politicians and others, hailing it as a crucial piece of journalism.

Similarly, BirminghamLive’s Child Poverty Emergency campaign achieved significant impact, with the Mayor of the West Midlands committed to providing 30,000 more free school meals in response.

Progress is being made toward establishing a multibank, with support from a major international retailer, and Birmingham City Council is considering a motion addressing all campaign points, including the appointment of a child poverty tsar.

One of the main goals for the campaign was driving change, and it resulted in over 1,200 letters to MPs calling for action using the bespoke widget Annie developed with coders.

Meanwhile, ROUGH: The stories behind London’s homelessness crisis combined stark data with striking photography and unique voices to expose the scandal of rising rough sleeping in the capital to a wider audience, and has received a strong, emotive response from readers.

The project has been effective at holding power to account, with the findings from Annie’s data analysis being put to the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to ask why homelessness has continued to become worse under his watch.

In all of these projects, animated graphs, illustrations and photographs were used as the basis for striking “scrollytelling” stories, folded in with the text so that they would complement and reinforce each other.

This format makes these investigations much more dynamic and engaging, allowing the reader to become immersed in the information, guiding them through the narrative and allowing them to easily navigate complex data.

View the projects in full here: https://austeritycity.liverpoolecho.co.uk/ https://childpoverty.birminghamlive.co.uk/ https://homelessoflondon.mylondon.news/