The Art of Insight

Chapter 15The Discerning Outsider

with Harkanwal Singh

Figure 15.1: Graphs from “What's behind the rising migration numbers” by Harkanwal Singh and Lincoln Tan

https://insights.nzherald.co.nz/article/rising-migration-numbers-nz/

Reproduced with permission of NZME, the owner of The New Zealand Herald

The sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing.

To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

—Ocean Vuong

The poet Ocean Vuong once said about immigrants that we feel the estrangement of “being forever arriving, never truly having arrived,” and that our experiences are filled with wonder, but also with a sense of loneliness. In my conversation with Harkanwal Singh, he shared his story of moving from India to New Zealand and becoming the first data journalist in the country, and his thoughts about how his identity as an outsider shaped many of his stories, such as “What's behind the rising migration numbers” (Figure 15.1). Harkanwal's experiences in New Zealand reminded me of Vuong's words. He told me:

I studied mechanical engineering, but I wasn't good at it, so I came to New Zealand in 2009 to study journalism. In my last year [as a student], I made a WordPress website for the journalism school. Thanks to it, in 2012 I got a web editor job at The Waikato Times, a regional newspaper in Hamilton. This was a big ...