futurejournalismproject:

Data Journalism Is the New Punk

Simon Rogers of the Guardian data blog draws comparisons between the emergence of DIY tools for practicing data journalism and the founding ethics of punk.

The underlying question is if you learn a few “chords” (eg., Google Fusion Tools, Gephi) can you start making your data hum.

Says Dan Sinker, head of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership and former Punk Planet editor, in response to Rogers’ hypothesis:

While I agree with the premise - it’s never been easier to do this stuff than it is right now - I think there are a few steps beyond just learning three chords when doing data journalism. For one, Legs [McNeil, who coined the word ‘punk’] didn’t really say a band needed to be *good* but I’d like to think we’d require that for data journalism

Check the article. Rogers provides links to free data tools and curates a great discussion about the reasonable skills needed to getting started.

Image: Now Form a Band, from British punk fanzine Sideburns in 1977. Via the Guardian.

The Potential of Social Networking for News

CNN’s iReport is doing it right.

I first noticed it on Instagram (largely a photo sharing social network): Anyone who “tags” cnnireport on their photos will automatically come up under a search for that tag. Often, CNN prompts users to tag (#) CNN iReport (cnnireport) when we post a photo that relates to something they’ve posted about. Sometimes, they repost those users’ photos. This helps CNN get a broader “story” and the users get a larger audience. To date, CNN iReport’s Instagram has 364 photos, 163,923 followers, and follows 5,975 other users. Most recently, a small collection of users Mother’s Day photos have been posted. The number of photos tagged #cnnireport is 6,932 as of today.

CNN is creating a social network for news by seeking content from users:

“Our hunch is that we could pull in more participation in stories if we create a more personalized experience of iReport,”— Lila King, CNN’s participation director

In addition to becoming present on already existing social media platforms, CNN iReport has created a community of their own where users can create a profile, choose interests and have a personality, follow other users, and earn awards. Depending on their interests, users can even be prompted to participate in a story.

CNN is aware of that notion of degrees of separation and is working to become present in more sister sites — after browsing some, you’ll eventually end up on the main website.

“As journalists and storytellers I think we are heading to a place where storytelling is a much more collaborative enterprise,” King says. “It is much more than a conversation, it is the actual soup-to-nuts of a story. We are all carrying cameras, we all have something to say, and I think we all increasingly have an expectation to hear our own voices and see our work reflected in the media we watch.”

Are you an iReporter?
What do you think about all the people they are laying off as a result?

The Architecture of the Internet

The New York Times has a Facebook. So what?

Facebook, an already familiar structure to many, is a community. Within that community are countless smaller communities and the Times is one of them.

Social media platforms like FB make it easy to share content and communicate.

What’s on the NYT Facebook? Tons.

• There are the obvious posts by the Times, linking to articles and such
• People can comment on/like/share these posts
• Also, if your friends share any NYT links on Facebook, they show up here
• There are subpages (Politics | NYT, Travel | NYT) “liked” by this mother page that can be found here
•  And so on.

They also use the Timeline feature to its fullest.

They can “highlight” (expand) certain events, and go back to fill in stuff from the past. Starting from when it was founded, the Times filled in major events in newspaper history and scanned in issues from those years.

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Example posts: 

Wireless Transmission Begins
October 17, 1907
The Times becomes the first newspaper to send news reports by wireless transmission when messages are delivered to its London bureau from New York.

Moving to Times Square
April 9, 1904
Longacre Square, from 42nd Street to 47th Street where Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet in Manhattan, is renamed Times Square when The New York Times moves from its original Nassau Street headquarters into a new building. The Times’s headquarters now occupies a skyscraper, Times Tower, at 42nd Street and Broadway that in 1907 will become the site of the annual ball drop on New Year’s Eve.

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It’s just cool, especially to a J-nerd like me.