Data journalism is a cross-cutting discipline, the creation of data news has challenged traditional journalists, the traditional concept and way of news creation, requiring journalists to have basic professional skills such as writing, editing and evaluation, but currently can not meet the creation of data news in the era of big data. Therefore, for the current journalists should have the following media literacy:

a. Skillful use of computer skills. In today's era of information explosion, the status of the Internet can not be ignored. The Internet era, especially social networking, e-commerce and mobile communications to bring human society into a "petabyte" (1024TB) for the unit of structural and non-structural data and information of the new era. A large amount of data and information in front of journalists, the traditional computer can not deal with large amounts of irregular data, the need for cloud computing for analysis, processing, statistics, therefore, for today's journalists put forward higher requirements, must be skilled in the use of computers, in order to deal with large amounts of data and information.

b. Ability to analyze and process data. Data news is not the same as traditional text and picture news, data news requires a large amount of data, journalists can find problems and raise questions through the data, but also after first having a problem, then go to collect relevant data. And after having a large amount of data, it must be analyzed and processed to filter out unwanted or irrelevant data, leaving valuable data to be analyzed and integrated for news editors to use. Deloitte's R&D innovation team in Washington, D.C., USA, recruits data journalists, and one of the most important requirements is to have the ability to analyze data, which shows that data journalists must have strong data analysis and processing skills to be able to do this job.

c. Visualization graphic design ability. The visual expression of data news has injected a fresh blood into the news industry, making data news full of hope and vitality. The visualization picture of data news links different time and space together, simplifies complicated data, facilitates audience understanding, is more conducive to audience participation, and meets the needs of different audiences in various aspects. The visualization of data news is one of its major features, so for journalists, they should be skilled in visualization technology, learn to read the charts and drawings and the production of various forms.