Data journalism: how much — and what — do journalists need to know? May 25, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSome pertinent points on data journalism from Mary Hamilton’s Metamedia blog, reiterating the importance of journalists’ ability to make sense of data:
“We need to know our way around a spreadsheet. We need to be able to spot patterns in data and understand not only what they mean but also how we can use them to reveal stories that are not only relevant but useful.
We need to know where our skills can get us. We need to know our capabilities and our limits – and, crucially, we must be aware of what we don’t know. [...]
Journalism is about asking the right questions. We research stories before we interview subjects so that we can ask pertinent questions whose answers will illuminate the subject. We need to be able to do the same thing with our data – we need to know what questions to ask and how, so that even if we can’t make the tools ourselves we can hand over the task to someone else without asking the impossible or wasting their time.”
Students suffer media withdrawal: clue to future of journalism? May 21, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentRegina McCombs reports: “Students use the language of addiction and withdrawal in talking about their experiences going without technology for 24 hours during a study at the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism.
‘I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening,’ said one student. ‘Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely,’ said another. [...]??Students equated technology with media — the phones, iPods, computers, laptops and televisions were just a means to get to information, whether that information was about the world around them, or about their friends. And much of that technology is mobile. Phones in particular [...] ‘A truer mapping of those pathways could provide direction to journalists in their search for relevance in the century ahead’. ”
Easy solutions to web production’s most common problems May 21, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentA great problem-solving round-up by Mark Luckie of 10,000 Words:
“In my role as multimedia producer for California Watch and in other newsrooms where I’ve worked, I am frequently approached by reporters to help them with web-related issues. Often it’s how to post content on the web, how to edit something, or how to do something I’ve never heard of (which I later google).
Here are some of the most common question I’m asked — and if you are a web producer, you are too — and the answers to those questions.”
Three fallacies of newspaper thinking (and how paywalls cracked…) May 21, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentThree fallacies of newspapers’ assumptions about online content, highlighted by a discussion of paywalls etc, summarised by William Owen of Made by Many:
1) the internet is free because of a mix of habit and a spurious moral right, and that if you can change habits and challenge morality we’ll go back to paying for content.
2) a newspaper’s competition is other newspapers.
3) nothing else changes, content is still just the end product of the publishing process.