The development of the Internet and new technologies has contributed a lot of information, and now many people cannot systematize and generalize this information at all. As a result, news feeds became very popular because they are representing the shortest message without unnecessary details. However, professional journalists do not always publish this news. Of course, now an eyewitness or an event participant can public any data much faster than a reporter who spends time for checking, collecting and processing information. Therefore, it is obvious that the main function of journalism is beginning to change: from informing to analysis and data processing. Major US media do not focus on the speed of publication of materials, but on their quality. Therefore, it has appeared a new trend, data journalism, and a journalistic material became based on the analysis of large data sets. The task of a modern data journalist is not to publish his material based on data, but give the audience opportunity to see the initial data in its original form and then they should arrange this data in a visually attractive and simplified form. This article is devoted to the history of the emergence and development of data journalism as a modern trend in American journalism, which demonstrates a shift in the goals and objectives of a journalist towards analytical work and work with computer software.