I came across this intereseting essay from Moritz Stefaner in which he outlines his perspectve on the recent focus on “storytelling” within the data visualization community. I largely agree with his thesis, especially his point about viewing a visualization designer as an author, one who brings to bear editorial decisions about what data to use, where to focus, and what to exclude. There are degrees of editorialship, but even the most quantitative methods include some degree of human decision.