Data journalism in action: hacks and hackers February 5, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSome interesting examples from a 'Hacks and Hackers Hack Day' run by ScraperWiki "to see what happens when you put journalists and developers in the same room and ask them to come up with a data-driven story in one day."??They came up with everything from mapping the shortest journeys and the profiles of candidates in the safest Conservative constituencies, to gifts and freebies received by the Mayor of London, and which MPs (and from which parties) write for which newspapers.
How news organisations are using Google Wave to engage their audience January 19, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentThe Chicago Tribune’s RedEye has a live public Wave on news every weekday morning. Hilary Fosdal writes:
“With each Daily Wave, RedEye connects with their readers and builds a sense of community. The RedEye is also demonstrating that is sees itself as more than a newspaper and more than a blog by embracing innovative technology that encourages a continuous and dynamic discussion about the news.
Robert Quigley, social media editor of the Austin American-Statesman has also held public waves with his readers.
“The challenge right now is keeping public waves on topic. If they get more than 50 blips discussion grinds to a halt […] for Google Wave to work during a news event, there needs to be the ability to moderate and/or easily spin something into another wave and link to it in the first wave to keep it on topic.” ”
How one reporter used Twitter to help with sources January 19, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentDaniel Victor provides a detailed account, ending with three key points for journalists to note:
1) If I were sitting in my cubicle thinking, “Who could help me with this story?”, none of the five people would have immediately popped into my mind, and I certainly wouldn’t have met them outside of Twitter since this story wasn’t on my beat. This is the power of Twitter for reporting: You can find help in unexpected places, from people you wouldn’t normally have access to.
2) But it only paid off because I’ve taken the time to build a useful local network. I’ve counted 415 Twitter users I follow in the Harrisburg area, though I suspect I follow more who I’ve neglected to add to the list. Every one of them could prove valuable in a pinch — we just never know when it’ll be.
3) You’ll notice Twitter didn’t replace fundamental reporting, it just facilitated it. I still needed to persist and call the chairman three separate times before I got the source on the phone.
A reminder of Wolcott Gibbs’ points about good writing (from James Thurber) January 19, 2010
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentJames Thurber noted 31 points about good writing made by New Yorker editor Wolcott Gibbs. They include the following (via Charles Miller on the CoJo blog):
- Writers always use too damn many adverbs. On one page recently I found 11 modifying the verb 'said'. 'He said morosely, violently, eloquently, so on' … It is impossible for a character to go through all these emotional states one after the other.
- Word 'said' is OK. Efforts to avoid repetition by inserting 'grunted', 'snorted' etc are waste motion and offend the pure in heart.
- Our writers are full of clichés, just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliché undoubtedly is one and had better be removed.
- The more 'As a matter of facts', 'howevers', 'for instances' etc, etc you can cut out, the nearer you are to the Kingdom of Heaven.
- On the whole we are hostile to puns.
- Try to preserve an author's style if he is an author and has a style.
How social networks can help save media (Jim Brady, True/Slant) October 25, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSocial networks have created an under-exploited advantage for media companies, suggests Jim Brady:
"…news consumption has now become seamlessly blended into the daily lives of so many consumers. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to read the newspaper, you completely dedicated yourself to it at the breakfast table or dinner table or den for some fixed period of time. When you were done, you went off to work, paid bills or went shopping, and news wasn’t a part of the equation.[…]
Now, think about media consumption in the social media era. Today, content from media companies lives in the same stream as so much other information in a consumer’s life. […] Now, if you’re using e-mail, Facebook or Twitter — three pretty big chunks of time for most Web-savvy consumers — you can, at any moment, be pulled back into news and information. This is a massive opportunity, and one that requires news organizations become fuller participants in those venues."
Four factors critical to journalism and publishing October 23, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , 1 comment so farAdam Tinworth flags up social, mobile, real-time, and location-aware technology:
"I think it [this graphic] neatly encapsulated the four issues that will effect the web, and which the publishing business needs to get its head around. I talk a lot about social on here, and the whole hyper-local journalism movement is, to some degree, predicated on the idea of geo-centric technology, even if the potential benefits of geocoding information haven't really been discussed.
The whole mobile environment has been changed by the new breed of smart phones, led by the iPhone, which are turning users into voracious data consumers on the move, and the Real Time web is becoming, in a technological sense, a very real proposition (and, if fact, I should write a post about that).
This graphic is the sort of thing every publisher and journalist should be looking at and thinking "what does this mean for what I do?" "
An editor reflects on her use of Twitter October 14, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"Cara Ellen Modisett, editor of Blue Ridge Country, tweets. With two Twitter accounts for business and one for personal use, she tweets with purpose and with creativity.
“The basis of Twitter is conversation,” says Modisett. “Each individual Twitter account has its own voice. When I tweet as an editor, it's more about relationships; when tweeting about the magazine, it's to promote the content of the magazine. I find my instantaneous voice on the web.”
Twitter also serves as her reporter's notebook. “My tweets become my notes. I go back to my Twitter feed to put the story together. Sometimes a tweet becomes a kernel of an idea which can lead to something larger creatively and journalistically.” Recently, Modisett tweeted events and observations live during the Virginia Press Women's conference."
Interesting discussion about professional branding online follows in the comments on the post on Handshake 2.0.
Are non-profits the future for journalism? October 6, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMichael Massing highlights the US trend of non-profits for journalism (in NY Review of Books):
"For all the impressive projects out there, their [commercial sector's] economic base seems tenuous, and my encounters with them left me feeling sobered by the obstacles they face.
My inquiries into the nonprofit world, by contrast, left me heartened. Here I found all kinds of excited activity. Much of it, I discovered, had been set in motion by an Op-Ed piece that appeared in the Times in late January. David Swensen, the chief investment officer for Yale's endowment management team, and Michael Schmidt, a financial analyst there, argued that in light of the struggles of newspapers, they should consider turning themselves into nonprofit endowed institutions, like universities.
[…]
The opening won't last forever. Lurking in the wings is a potential new class of media giants. Google, Yahoo, MSNBC, and AOL, all have vast resources that could finance a new oligopolistic push on the Web."
Most people don’t realize how much harder it is to write a short article than a large article August 17, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentThe Economist’s Andreas Kluth explains: “The folks at the New Yorker can blather on and on (”On an overcast Monday afternoon, I strode across Fifth Avenue to interview John Smith, ….”). We have to get to the point. There should be some nuance, some color, and we should cover the main bases, but all in … 500 words!
It’s friggin’ difficult. Then the readers show up in the mostly infantile comments section below the articles, invariably accusing us of utter ignorance, if not downright malice, because they know (or imagine) one little detail that was not in the 500 words.
Beyond that, of course, the brevity often hurts me, the writer. Invariably, I do research for every piece until I am satisfied that I know the subject well enough. I could easily then fill a few thousand words. So much therefore gets left on the cutting floor.
Which brings me to my second reason for linking to this week’s piece…”
Was this the first blog by a professional journalist? July 27, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , 2commentsDan Gillmor’s intro to the blog on Silicon Valley News, posted on 22 October 1999:
“Welcome to my weblog. What follows is a digested version of my column for Tuesday, October 26, 1999, in which I explain why we’re doing this and how I hope it’ll evolve.
Why? I’ve been thinking about the new ways of journalism, namely the ways the Internet is imposing on all of us. Internet Time has compressed the lives of all kinds of people in all kinds of businesses, and journalism is no exception. In fact, it may be one of the businesses most affected in the long run, both in the opportunities the Net creates and the threat it represents.
So I’m trying one of those new forms. It’s called a “weblog” — and it’s a combination of styles that could exist only on the Web. Text, pictures, hyperlinks and, soon, audio and video are all part of this new form, and I can’t wait to start experimenting with it.”