Author Archives: Kevin Anderson

01.09.12
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Newspaper innovation: Not too much but too little

If you’re a newspaper editor, and you want some much needed inspiration, you’ll want to add the blogs of Melanie Sill and John Robinson to RSS feeds or daily reading, and follow both John and Melanie on Twitter. John recently stepped down as the editor of the Greensboro News & Record in North Carolina, and Melanie recently made a similar move, leaving the top job at the Sacramento Bee in California. John wrote an excellent post about rebuilding a newspaper’s relationship with its community last week, and in her most recent post, Melanie looks at newspaper innovation. It comes after the ombudsman at the Washington Post, Patrick Pexton, agreed with some readers who thought the Post was innovating too quickly. (As someone who lived in Washington for seven years and considered the Post my local paper, it was always a schizophrenic place with a lot of digital innovation under Jim Brady while the print offices in Washington tried to change as little as possible.)

Melanie’s thoughts on the pace of innovation?

Most newspapers are stuck in the late 20th century formulas, scarcely varied across the country, for section concepts (even names) and types of coverage. These conventions, moreover, carry over into digital forms, and only in the past couple of years have we begun to see new forms made only for digital channels.Amid legitimate struggle in newsrooms to make this outdated formula work with vastly reduced staffs and greatly increased production demands, there’s not enough attention on creative breakthroughs — the kind of conceptual innovation needed today. What should a print edition do in a 24/7 news world? How is it differentiated from other platforms in content, format and organization?

Yes! Digital is different. It’s something digital folk have been saying since the 1990s. It’s not enough to shovel print content onto the web just because both print and the web are largely text-based. Just as reading a newspaper out on TV would seem silly (although there is some value in the newspaper reviews common on European television), simply copying text to the web was always an approach lacking imagination.

  • How is digital different?
  • What is possible in digital, on the web and via mobile, that isn’t possible in print?
  • How does this change audience expectations about news and information?
  • How do we meet those expectations?
  • How can use those differences to come up with new opportunities for revenue to support the work we do?

This is what I’ve been thinking about since I first became an ‘internet news editor’ in 1996. We’re at a pivotal time, and it’s great to see leadership from veterans like John and Melanie. I look forward to working with leaders like them in the future.

01.09.12
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Unique content part of metered paywall success

Last year, a university journalism classmate of mine and I were talking the various plights of journalism, and he told me some advice that a business-savvy relative had given him. Roughly, it was this:

To be successful, you have to know how to create value but also how to capture value.

Basically, this means, that yes, you have to create value. Many journalists are focused on this part of the equation, the valuable service that we provide and the social value that we create. However, to be a sustainable business, we also have to know how to capture value. From that service or social value that journalists create, how do we get a return on it so that we can continue to provide the service? This is really the pressing business issue for digital content businesses, including journalism. How do we capture the value of the service that we provide? Subscriptions? Advertising? Events? Consulting? Marketing services? Most likely all of the above and more.

It’s worth interrogating the first part of that and being pretty ruthless and honest with ourselves as journalists about what value we are creating. There is a lot of redundant content out there right now, and as I said over and over in 2011, content is abundant; attention is scarce. Metered paywalls such as those at the Financial Times and the New York Times seem to be working. Is it because of the metre or the content (or a bit of both)? Adam Tinworth has a view on that:

I was involved in a significant amount of work in my final year at RBI looking at exactly what kinds of content people will pay for, through what mechanism, and how to create more of it. Uniqueness was certainly one key factor – as was the amount of business value that investment returns to the reader, which is exactly why the FT does so well.

Adam was responding to Frédéric Filloux’s most recent Monday Note looking at how both the Financial Times and the New York Times are increasing the cost of their printed product, which makes their paid digital product seem less expensive by comparison for loyal readers. Filloux also keyed in on unique content:

Of these three factors, the uniqueness of content remains the most potent one. With the inflation of aggregators and of social reading habits, the natural replication of information has turned into an overwhelming flood. Then, the production of specific content — and its protection — becomes a key element in building value.

To me unique content and a strong, active social media strategy builds audience and engagement. Note that I said an active social media strategy. The only thing that has continued to propel my career forward has been a personal active social media strategy, engaging my peers and also my audiences. This isn’t just about promoting myself or my content via social media but also connecting with people and connecting those people with information that I think they will find useful, whether I reported and wrote it or not.

01.03.12
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Journalism: Here’s to second chances

Two years ago over the Christmas holiday, I finished a series for The Guardian looking at deep job cuts in the British media industry. I wanted to look both at the numbers, but I also wanted to speak to journalists to get a sense of the human toll. It was heart breaking to find the devastating impact on local newspapers and journalists in England, Wales and Scotland.

Personally, I hadn’t yet decided to take voluntary redundancy (a buyout) from The Guardian, but I had turned a corner. In November of 2009, I had decided that not only was change possible, it was preferable. As I often told friends, I saw more opportunities outside of The Guardian than inside. However, it would be the first time that I would leave a job without another waiting, and it was the first time that I would leave a job without something clearly bigger and better waiting.

As I knew from the series that I had just finished, my story was far from unique. I joined thousands of journalists in making the difficult decision and thousands more who had the decision made for them.

Like people that I interviewed for my series, I found the buyout gave me some time to recharge, dare I say heal. It also gave me time to explore options and navigate the initial transition. Two years later, I’m thinking about second (and third and fourth) chances sparked by a piece in Smithsonian magazine by Meghan Daum about her decision to trade her native New York for Lincoln Nebraska, more precisely a tiny farmhouse on the outskirts of Lincoln. More than a decade later she isn’t entirely sure why she made the move. However, she returns there usually once a year. Why?

“Lincoln gave me a faith in second chances. In third and fourth chances, too. I’d had a nervous upbringing in the tense, high-stakes suburbs of New York City, after which I lived hungrily and ecstatically, but no less nervously, in the clutches of the city itself. This was a life that appeared to have no margin for error. One mistake—the wrong college, the wrong job, embarking on marriage and family too soon or too late—seemed to bear the seeds of total ruination. Terrified of making a wrong move, of tying myself down or cutting off my options, I found myself paralyzed in the classic New York City way.”

In November of 2009, I too was paralyzed, which was a new feeling for me. I’ve never been too fussed about making pretty major course corrections in life. My entire journalism career started because of my first, but not last, left at the lights. When I entered university, I was an aeronautical and astronautical engineer. Yes, I was going to study to be a rocket scientist. However, I soon realised that my interests were too broad, and I loved writing too much to throw myself into an engineering career. (I will admit to a slight twinge of regret last year when the Space Shuttle flew for the last time. Yes, I grew up dreaming of becoming an astronaut.)

After graduation, I passed up a prestigious political journalism internship in Washington for a fellowship with an environmental group. It didn’t work out as planned, and I learned a valuable lesson: My journalism values – providing accurate information so that people could make their own decisions in a democratic society – trumped my own personal, political values. However valuable the lesson to me personally, the experience handicapped my effort to land my first journalism job. Like Meghan Daum, I found myself on the Great Plains, in Kansas rather than Nebraska, working for a small newspaper. I’m still grateful for that second chance. Apart from my job for the BBC in Washington, being a regional reporter for the Hays Daily News is still my favourite job.

Fast forward to 2009, with The Great Recession and now a wife, I didn’t want to leave a full-time job without something to go to. Suw and I wanted to stay in the UK at least until I could apply for citizenship, which was still two years away. I felt stuck, and I felt worried about the risk, not only immediate but also in the long-term to my career, of leaving. Suw remembers the day when I woke up cheery again in November of 2009 knowing that I didn’t have to accept the status quo.

I now look back at 2011 with a sense of the importance of second chances and also that life and careers are a bit more forgiving than we might think. I look forward to 2012 with a lot of excitement. We’re actually more financially secure than we were in 2009, and the work is fascinating. After I get that British passport, we’ll have a few more options open to us. Here’s to 2012 and second chances, mine and yours.

11.28.11
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The secret sauce of The Economist (and the BBC): Globalisation

As news publishers look for a remedy to their current ills, many look enviously to The Economist, and I have heard a few newspaper editors ask how they can become more like it. At the risk of sounding a bit brusque and I will admit in engaging in an imperfect analogy, national newspaper editors in the UK envying the success of The Economist is a lot like a local car mechanic coveting the business of Porsche. Both are in completely different businesses, serving completely different clientele. Porsche is the most profitable car company in the world. It enjoys 20.5% profit margins on its vehicles, selling exclusive luxury to well heeled buyers around the world. Newspaper groups used to enjoy profit margins like Porsche, but that’s largely a thing of the past.

However, it’s still worth considering why The Economist has navigated the challenges facing the media as well as it has. In a conversation with my former colleague Roy Greenslade, Andrew Rashbass, the chief executive of The Economist group, puts a lot down to luck, which I think is a bit of false modesty. The Economist’s circulation is up 3% against the backdrop of high single or low double digit circulation annual declines for national newspapers here in the UK (although monthly circulation declines for the quality dailies in the UK can be even worse). Listing a number of fortunate decisions and developments, Rashbass lists one that stands out to me: Globalisation.

Why is The Economist unique? It is one of the few publications that speaks intelligently about globalisation and helps its readers make sense of it. It also explains the appeal of the BBC in its international incarnation. I remember when I joined the BBC in 1998, and as a young reporter I could tell how broad, how global the perspective was of the people I was working with. Yes, The BBC had a British perspective, just as The Economist does, but while the accent was British, the experience and point of view was international. Speaking to a global audience intelligently and helping people make cross-border connections is something that few publications or broadcasters have achieved. Exposing people to international events isn’t enough, which is what most broadcasters and publishers do. What both the BBC and The Economist do is help put those events in an international context. Reading The Economist is like being shown a foreign city by someone who lives there.

Can a national newspaper do this? Maybe. However, it’s quite a pivot for a national newspaper, and I’m not entirely sure any national newspaper has the resources for it. Moreover, most UK national newspapers still don’t feel international to me. They still feel British in the way that CNN International still feels so very American to this American. To be honest, British newspaper coverage of Europe (apart from the FT) is laughably parochial and riddled with continental stereotypes and standard issue British Euro-sceptism. Beyond Europe, there are spots of brightness with the occasional good correspondent, but the coverage is not cohesive or coherent in the way The Economist is as an editorial package. The Economist’s success is definitely something to envy, but I think when it comes to a model for national UK newspapers to emulate, there are lessons and some opportunities. However, there is more that is different than is similar and applicable.

What to take away from Rashbass’ comments? He has a canny view of the differences between digital and print, which he characterises as lean forward and lean back. He also understands business. Greenslade ends his interview with Rashbass with this key business insight:

You always have to equate your model to the value you can extract compared to the cost of creating that value.

It’s not enough to believe you’re creating value, whether social or financial, you also have to have a way to extract value from it. That’s the challenge we’re facing in the news business now. The business model is broken, and the key innovation deficit is finding a way to extract enough value from what we create to support the cost of creating that value.

11.23.11
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A journalist with much to be thankful for

As an American, Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays. In my family, we took the day quite literally as a time to pause and reflect on the things that we were thankful for over the last year. In 2008, I had an especially memorable Thanksgiving, taking Suw back to my home in the US to celebrate our marriage with my family. Early in the year, Suw and I committed to taking this day off to reflect back on all that we have had this year to be thankful for.

When I took voluntary redundancy (a buyout) from The Guardian at the end of March 2010, it was the first time since my first job out of university that I had left a job without another bigger, better job offer. I had a lot of options to explore, and the buyout gave me the chance to explore some of those options. It also gave me some time to recharge, which I needed. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there were times I was anxious and times I was absolutely terrified.

I can’t say that things have gone according to plan, but fortunately, I couldn’t have planned it any better. Colleagues asked me as I left The Guardian what I planned on doing, and I joked that I was taking a global journalism tour. That was a reference to several speaking and training gigs that I had lined up immediately after I left, but I didn’t know how prescient that comment would be. Suw and I have worked with clients on five continents this year: Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. Just a few things that we’ve done this year:

  • We helped launch a new news website in India, Firstpost.com. It was an amazing experience with a great team at Network18, and we continue to work with them. Suw is consulting tech editor, and I’m writer-at-large.
  • Suw helped author a report for Chatham House high-impact, low-probability events. She looked specifically at the media’s response to the travel and transportation chaos caused by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.
  • I’ve conducted training in digital and mobile journalism and social media for more than 400 Al Jazeera journalists across Al Jazeera English, Arabic, Balkans and Turk. It’s been great to work with Al Jazeera, especially during all of their excellent work covering the Arab Spring.
  • I spoke at a number of events including Digital Directions 2011 in Sydney hosted by Fairfax Media and organised by X Media Lab and News Rewired here in London.
  • I’ve done data journalism training with journalists from the BBC, CNN and other organisations through Journalism.co.uk as well as doing data journalism training for RBI in the UK and the US.
  • One of the most satisfying jobs, in a very satisfying year, was when I went to Tunisia and worked with journalists there ahead of their historic elections.

I’ve done training for the Norwegian institute of Journalism and also for Transitions Online, with journalists mostly in the former Soviet Republics. All told, I’ve probably done training with more than 800 journalists around the world this year. Thanks to everyone we worked with this year.

When people ask me what I’m up to now, I often joke that I do things to support my journalism habit. If I had to rely on freelance journalism, Suw and I would be eating pretty thin gruel, but I’ve had increasing opportunities not just to train people what I know but to get back to doing journalism. That has been satisfying as well. I still have that itch to scratch.

As I’ve travelled this year and seen the economic uncertainty build first hand, we feel very fortunate to be able to do such satisfying work. I just got back from Vilnius Lithuania where I worked with Belorussian journalists for Transitions Online. The journalists told me of the increasing repression they are facing, and it was great to work with them to use mobile tools that would allow them to continue to do their job despite threats from the authorities. It was especially satisfying to work with journalists covering the Arab Spring. I did some training for the Al Jazeera Training Centre with journalists from across the Middle East and north Africa. One Egyptian journalist told me of how people there had overcome their fear. It was something that I heard repeatedly from people enjoying their first taste of self-determination. Speaking with Tunisian journalists grappling with how to cover an election with 10,000 candidates, an election where the outcome wasn’t predetermined, was fascinating and inspiring.

It’s been a year of growth for me. It’s felt like getting a practical master’s degree. I’ve had to work hard to keep pace with all of the most recent developments in social media, mobile journalism tools and data journalism. I started doing data journalism in the mid-1990s in the US, but I hadn’t had much call to use it since then. I’ve really enjoyed not only dusting off those skills but building on them. I’ve learned more in the last year than I did in the previous five.

This has been a huge transition for me from stable, full-time work to working with Suw on our own. As I said, it was terrifying at times. It challenged my sense of professional confidence. When I left The Guardian last year, it was the first time since 1998 that I didn’t have a big international news organisation behind me. It was just me. When I started working for the BBC in 1998, it still seemed possible to find a job and keep that job for the rest of one’s life. However, since then, journalism has suffered the same disruption that most 20th Century industries did. There isn’t such a thing as a job for life. Journalism is going through a major disruption, and journalists’ lives are being disrupted by it.  Despite that, for the first time since I came to Britain in 2005, I feel like instead of dealing with disruption, Suw and I have actually been able to work towards our dreams. That indeed is something to be thankful for.

11.15.11
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Journalism innovation for small towns and rural areas

As I sit in Vilnius Lithuania, the next to last stop on my 2011 journalism world tour, I was taken back to where my journalism career started: Hays Kansas I started my career as the regional reporter at a small town, 14,000 circulation newspaper, the Hays Daily News. The standard joke told by the locals was: It’s not the middle of no where but you can see it from here. My job was to cover 1100 square miles on northwest Kansas. I covered my first presidential election from Hays as local hero done good, Bob Dole, ran against Bill Clinton in 1996. Dole’s hometown of Russell Kansas was also the birthplace of another Republican candidate that year, Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter, who also ran the nomination that year. Apart from that, I covered what most cub reporters at local newspapers do: School board meetings, the weather (think storm chasing in Tornado Alley), the odd agriculture story and a beloved Sunday feature called the Nor’wester.

It was a great place to start journalism, working with a curmudgeonly good hearted editor, Mike Corn, and an award winning team of photographers, Steve Hausler and Charlie Riedel. Charlie now travels the world for the Associated Press. It’s still the second greatest job I’ve ever had, second only to working for the BBC in Washington. My job meant something. Western Kansas was a place fighting off decline in the 1990s. It was still reeling from the farm crisis, and as its youth left because they had to find work and their way elsewhere, many of its small towns fought off extinction. When I first moved there, Mike used to quiz me on where these small towns were. Every once in a while with a glimmer in his eye, he would say: “Ha, got ya! Trick question. It’s a ghost town!” For these small towns, I was all they had when it came to news, and they thanked me for it. It was deeply satisfying work.

Hays was also a great place to start because when I worked there, it was very innovative for a small newspaper. I started in December 1994, and we all had Macs on our desks and a cutting edge production system. For a newspaper of that size, I’m pretty sure that was rare then. The paper went online in 1996, and I applied to become their first internet editor. It was definitely ahead of its time.

Hays is why I’ve always been interested in local news, now mostly talked about as hyperlocal. What took me back to Hays? The Colombia Journalism Review has an interesting collection of views about Modesto California and journalism. It’s a world away from Hays and ten times as large, but for Hays and a lot of even smaller communities, the issues of providing journalism to these places is even more challenging than when I was there, especially in my adopted home of England, where the crisis in local journalism is even more acute. Although I cringe a bit when I read the CJR piece and detect a whiff of big city condescension (I’ll always be a country boy), their larger point is right:

If the digital-news revolution is to truly serve a mass audience, beyond educated and reasonably affluent urbanites, we must account for Modesto; we must find ways for innovation to flourish in poor towns where, for so long, it has been allowed to die.

I guess broadly, it’s not just the dying of journalism in not just poor towns, but also small communities, that worries me but the existential threat to rural areas full stop both in the US and the UK. That’s another issue, but if you’re interested in local journalism, it’s well worth a read. I especially love Rusty Coats’ piece. I met Rusty in 2005 at Web+10 at Poynter, and his story and mine share a lot of similarities. I love this line:

Fledgling news websites have cropped up across the country, led by journalists who bleed local, sometimes down to the neighborhood.

Local journalism survives on the dedication of these journalists, like Mike Corn. When I pulled up the Hays Daily News website tonight, there was Mike’s name. He’s still in Hays. He has threatened to leave several times since I left in 1996, but he’s still there. You have to have that kind of dedication because it sure as hell doesn’t pay that well. I made $2000 less than a first year teacher when I started in Hays. I made ends meet by having no student debt and living very frugally. I drove a very used car that had no working air conditioning, something you miss when it’s 45 C (114 F) on a hot, dusty summer day in Kansas.

Sceptical optimism

Local news and information has always been a tough business, and the ongoing economic crises aren’t making that any easier. It is good to see a renewed vigour when it comes to local. John Paton, dubbed newspapers’ digital apostle by the New York Times this week, is pulling the industry forward, and his digital first strategy has been a clarion call to his editors and journalists, many who work at small newspapers. Steve Yelvington has long been a leader in digitally-led local journalism, and as Morris, the group he works for, moves digital close to its core, I’m sure we’ll see great things. I’m sure we’ll see new efforts in how communities cover themselves. For those of you working with such projects, it’s well worth reading the New Voices: What works report.

I continue to be sceptically optimistic about local journalism, more because I choose to be optimistic about small communities. Although I haven’t done truly local journalism for a long time, I remember all too well how hard it is and the dedication required. I remain slightly sceptical because I think a lot of the hype surrounding hyperlocal has needed tempering for a very long time, and I see a lot of hyperlocal projects make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Local journalism needs more of a rethink than national or international when it comes to remaking the business model. Thanks to CJR for trying to move this conversation a bit more front and centre.

11.09.11
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News organisations’ activity on Google+ courtesy of MuckRack and Poynter

Suw wrote about the rollout of business pages for Google+, and I quickly saw a flurry of activity from news organisations. Al Jazeera quickly set up business pages for its channels and also some of its programmes, such as the social media program, the Stream.*

Muckrack has an excellent roundup on posts about Google+ and journalism. The links include articles by Caleb Garling on Wired about how Google+ posed a greater threat to Facebook pages than to Twitter and also from GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram who voiced concerns about linking journalists’ profile and their stories. The Muckrack post also a good list of news organisations that have set up their stalls on Google+. The number grew quite quickly after Google opened up Plus to businesses.

Jeff Sonderman at Poynter also has a good brief piece looking at how Fox News using Google+ Hangouts to interview Republican candidates. Broadcasters in the US and elsewhere are definitely using Hangouts, and I saw the English language channel of France 24 invite viewers to take part in a hangout in late September or early October.

Google+ vs Twitter vs Facebook (and vs LinkedIn)

I’m very curious about how to use Hangouts to engage audiences, and it’s good to see news organisations try to stay with audiences as they try out new social tools. As for Google+, I think it has potential, but as a user, it still hasn’t become an essential part of my day. As I said on Google+, this is why:

  1. Google+ is still a destination, and although I use a lot of Google products, it still doesn’t draw me back here.
  2. I travel a lot, and it’s not integrated into any of the tools that I use when I’m on the move, including apps like Gravity (or Tweetdeck or Seesmic).
  3. Even more importantly, Facebook and Twitter have great tools to use them with nothing more than SMS. No matter where I am, I can use it at very low cost. People can get messages to me. I can respond to comments or Twitter replies.

For that reason, Google+ still comes in fourth in terms of social media and networks behind Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

* Disclosure: I do digital and mobile journalism and social media training with Al Jazeera staff.

10.31.11
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Picking the right tool for the journalism job

If you’re not familiar with the monthly Carnival of Journalism, it’s worth knowing about because it plugs you into a conversation amongst other journalists. The topic for October’s Carnival was about how to choose the digital tools and platforms. (I’m just getting in under the wire, but my travel schedule and moving flat took up more time than we actually had.)

Dave Cohn aka digidave asked:

How do you decide to dedicate time to a new tool/platform/gadget? What is the process you go through mentally? And then later – how do you convince others to go through that process? And, last: How do you ensure that the tools you do adopt are used once the “newness” factor fades?

This really struck a cord with me. My last position at The Guardian was digital research editor. Don’t worry if you need an explanation of what the role was so did most of my colleagues, and I’m not entirely sure that we had the working definition hammered out before I left. Operationally, I moved from desk to desk on a several month basis and helped that desk with their digital projects. For instance, my last desk was politics to help them as they prepared for 2010 UK general election. My job was also to keep abreast of new digital developments and see how we could use them for The Guardian’s award-winning journalism.

Although the job was to be aware of digital tools and platforms, I always approached it in terms of editorial challenges that I needed to meet. The challenge might be to find simple mapping services that journalists could use without having to call on developers, whose time was in great demand, or it might be simple tools to analyse and visualise data. I almost always started out from the point of view of the editorial problem we were trying to solve rather than the tool or platform. Sure, sometimes when a platform got a lot of traction, I would try it out to see how we could engage the audience using that platform, but even then, I looked at things from the point of view of how what they could do for our journalists and our audience. Increasingly, as the cuts took hold at The Guardian, I also thought about the business side of the tools.

Simply put, I asked of tools and platforms:

  • Does it make a journalists job faster and easier?
  • Does it help us make money or save money?
  • Does it help bring audiences to our journalism or our journalism to audiences?
  • Does it allow us to tell stories better, more easily or more engagingly?
  • Does it build audience loyalty and keep people engaged with our journalism longer?

It’s a very similar checklist to Jack Lail’s. As he says, if the tools don’t meet strategic goals, “Learn to say “no” to the rest”. These were my criteria, my personal strategic goals, but it’s more important that the organisation has those goals in mind rather than a particular set of goals. For the next full-time job that I take (and I am starting to look for a more permanent home), I’m more than open to a different set of goals, but I think it’s important for organisations to have a set of criteria.

Moreover, we need metrics. We need to measure against these goals.

My former colleague at the BBC, Alf Hermida, flagged up the Forrester Research’s POST methodology to evaluate new technology. Broadly Alf says, and I agree:

The starting point for this discussion is the public, not the tools. Talking about tools is the last thing we should be doing.

I also think that sometimes it’s about the journalists, helping us cope with all of the demands of the job as staffs shrink. However, very few people in this world use a tool just to use a tool. They use a tool because it’s the best way to solve a problem or achieve a goal. It’s important to know all of the digital tools you can bring to bear on modern journalism problems, but it’s important to keep the goal in mind, lest we become tools of our tools.

10.17.11
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Visualisations aren’t the only end result of data journalism

My friend and former colleague Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian’s Data blog, has posted a defence of the increasing use of data visualisation. I agree to a point, but I also think it’s really important to remember that visualisations are not the only product of data analysis. They can help readers see patterns in complex sets of data, but I also think that sometimes we’re missing other opportunities with data analysis by focusing on data visualisation. Sometimes, the result isn’t a visualisation but a key insight that underpins a story. I often worry about the problem of seeing a world as full of nails when you think all you have is a hammer. Sometimes, visualisations are just not the right end product of data journalism.

I’ve heard statisticians grumble about information being seen as simply beautiful instead of being, well, informational. Good data visualisations hit a middle way being being beautiful and simplifying complex concepts. I’ve heard designers grumble about data visualisations that aren’t beautiful, and they rail away against the lack of aesthetic of some of the publicly available tools. Sometimes people are using the wrong chart or visualisation to visualise their data. When it comes to charts, I often show this simple chart during training, which really breaks down what types of charts or visualisations are appropriate for what kind of data you’re working with.

I am always in favour of the democratisation of tools, but when it comes to digital story-telling, editors need to remember all of the techniques available and have a clear way of deciding which technique is appropriate.

10.06.11
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In memory of the vision of Steve Jobs

I woke up this morning where I wake most mornings these days, in a hotel room, and flipped on CNBC, one of the few English language TV stations I can get on the hotels 1500 channel satellite system. They were playing what I thought was an Apple retrospective, but I had missed the beginning. I was looking at my email and saw a message from the editor of FirstPost.com, a site that Suw and I helped launch. Suw is now the contributing technology editor for the site, and I have the grandiose title of writer-at-large, apt for the roving reporter that I am. The email just said get in touch when you’re up. Before the piece on CNBC was finished and I had read another email, I realised that Steve Jobs had died.

I never met Steve Jobs, although I did get close at MacWorld in 2000, which I covered as Washington correspondent for the BBC News website. It was MacWorld New York when he introduced the ill-fated Cube, one of the few flops of his storied second coming. I wrote this of my brush with Steve Jobs:

I was trying to make my way through the crowd of people swarming around the new sleek offerings from Apple at MacWorld when suddenly the crowd split.

It was as if Moses had parted the sea of people.

There he stood in signature black shirt and jeans, the man who made and later saved Apple: Steve Jobs.

For a man I never really met, I was caught off guard by how much Steve Jobs’ death affected me. Working on the piece for FirstPost, I found myself tearing up on several occasions, especially after watching the Think Different advertisement that he narrated, one that was never shown. It felt as if he was narrating his own eulogy.

In all the tributes and reminiscences rolled by today, a 1985 Playboy interview with Steve Jobs (might not want to click on that link at work – Steve’s clothed but the women in the ads aren’t) was making the rounds, and as I read it, I was struck several times why he deserves to be called a visionary. On the information revolution, he said:

We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy–free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It’s very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt light bulb to run and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution.We’re on the forefront.

What was really interesting in the article, written in 1985 is that it’s quite clear, at least from the point of view of the interviewer, that the case for having a personal computer hadn’t been made yet. Jobs gave him a reason from his insight into the not so distant, and he really hit the nail on the head.

The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people–as remarkable as the telephone.

We still are moving through the early days of this revolution, but Steve Jobs saw it coming more than a quarter of a century ago, when he was only 29-years-old. He didn’t make it to see another 29 years. The world lost a visionary, but his inspiration lives on.