02.19.09
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BeebCamp: Eric Ulken: Building the data desk at the LATimes

A fun example of structured data from the LATimes, which showed the popularity of dog names in LA County by postcode.

A fun example of structured data from the LATimes, which showed the popularity of dog names in LA County by postcode.

This is from one of the sessions at BeebCamp2, a BarCamp like event for BBC staff with some external folks like Suw, me, Charlie Beckett and others. Charlie has a great post on a discussion he led about user-generated content and what it adds to news, video games and also Twitter and Radio 4.

Eric Ulken, was the editor of interactive technology at the LATimes. He was one of the bridges between technology and the editorial

News organisations:

  • We collect a lot of data but don’t use it (We always thought that was a shame. We had a computer-assisted reporting team at the LATimes, wouldn’t it be nice if we used that.)
  • What online readers want from us is bigger than ‘news’ in the traditional sense
  • We need to be an information soure.

They did a homicide map, which mapped all of the murders in LA in a year on a map and which illustrated a blog that reported all of the murders in LA County in a year.

The project was well received, and they decided to develop a data desk. It brought together the computer-assisted reporting unit, investigative reporters, the interactive technology team and the graphics team to bring together the data desk. They all sat together in the newsroom. A lot of synergies were created. The Times had 10 to 15 investigative reporters on different desks from different disciplines.

Ten bits of advice:

  1. Find the believers.
  2. Get buy-in from above
  3. Set some priorities
  4. Go off the reservation (We had a real problem with our IT department. They had their priorities and we had ours. We invested in a server system using Django.)
  5. Templatize. Never do anything once. Do things you can reuse.
  6. Do breaking news. There is data in breaking news. They did a database of the victims. They added information to the database as it became available. The database was up in 24 hours after the crash. They had built most of the pieces for previous applications. (There was a question about accuracy. Eric said the information was being gathered, but it wasn’t structured. The information was edited by a line manager.)
  7. Develop new skills. They sent people out to workshops. They had hired a Django develop who was also a journalist. He taught Django to others in the office.
  8. Cohabitate (marriage is optional). The investigative reporters and computer-assisted reporters still reported to the pre-existing managers, but by being together, they saw possibilities for collaboration without reworking the organisation.
  9. Integrate.
  10. Give back. They worked to give back to the newspaper.

They used Javascript to add this to other parts of the site. They created these two datasets from the train crash and the homicides, but they also have used publicly available data in their projects. He showed their California schools guide. Apart from the standard data analysis available from state and national educational agencies, they also created a diversity rank that showed the relative diversity of the schools. They did do some reporting on the data. In analysing the schools data, they found discrepancies in reporting about the performance of the schools.

In a slightly more humourous example, he showed dog names and breeds by postcodes.

UPDATE: Eric has added some more details in comments below, and you can follow Eric’s work and follow his thoughts on his site.

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02.18.09
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links for 2009-02-18

  • Spalpeen :: HTC Magic shows that newspapers still don’t get Google
    Kevin: Conrad Quilty-Harper looks at coverage of the HTC Magic, the new Google Android phone, and shows how mainstream media outlets are poorly represented in Google searches for information about the new phone. He says: "It’s really hard to understate how important this is. These are multimillion dollar businesses on their own right, and half of their traffic comes from pages like this. Newspapers will probably never figure this out, so in the meantime, their authority is going to be continually taken from underneath them by awesome sites like Engadget and its rivals."
    (tags: journalism news google search SEO)
02.17.09
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BarCamp NewsInnovation UK

This idea has been rolling around in many heads for a long time. Chris Vallance (where is that new blog mister?), Philip Trippenbach and Suw and I have been talking about this for months. My autumn was occupied with the US elections and recovering from it, but Suw marshalled on. Our basic idea was to get past the talking about the future of journalism and just do it. We all talk about the future of journalism, but we felt like it was (long past) time to move things along. We also wanted to spread the future more evenly by bringing other journalists in on the process. We wanted to spread the future a little more evenly and while not turning every journalist into a programmer, help them understand the art of the possible in terms of digital journalism. But this is about the future of journalism, whether you’re a journalist, a programmer or anyone with ideas and an interest.

We had a lot of enthusiasm, but we never quite got around to doing anything about it. It looks like some of our number back in the US have gone out and done it. Introducing, BarCamp NewsInnovation.The goal:

The idea is to get energetic, tech-savvy, open-minded individuals who embrace the chaos in the media industry because the ability to do really cool things still exist. We also need find those people outside of our industry who love to consume news and information and are great thinkers and innovators.

Ok, let’s try this again. As I’ve shown up to this point, I’m terrible at organising anything. Let’s do this. BarCamp NewsInnovation UK. Let’s think outside the box (London). Let’s just get on with it.

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02.17.09
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links for 2009-02-17

02.14.09
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links for 2009-02-14

02.13.09
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US law and comments on websites

David Ardia, on legal liability for comments online from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard, talks about CDA 230, the section of the Communications Decency Act that provides some protection to people who run web sites.

Joshua Benton from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University says:

I wish every managing editor in the country could see this 20-minute video. I’ve heard so many misconceptions over the years about news organizations’ legal ability to police, manage, or otherwise edit the comments left on their web sites. They say “the lawyers” tell them they can’t edit out an obscenity or remove a rude or abusive post without bringing massive legal liability upon themselves — and that the only solutions are to either have a Wild West, anything-goes comments policy or to not have comments in the first place.

That’s not true, and hasn’t been true since 1996.

02.13.09
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Android, e-ink and live news displays

Android Meets E Ink from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

Motorola Development Group is showing off a proof of concept with Google’s Android running an e-ink display. With Amazon’s Kindle showing some signs of success, it looks like e-readers might finally be reaching a tipping point in terms of adoption. What I find interesting in terms of not only the Kindle but also this proof of concept is the delivery of content wirelessly.We’re starting to see experimentation in terms of form factor for these devices. We’re not just talking about laptops, netbooks and mobile phones.

With the cost of printing the New York Times roughly twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle, there might be a point where wireless delivery to an electronic reading device makes economic sense. This is very speculative and very much out in front of the market and most consumers, but as Nicholas Carlson points out:

What we’re trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn’t just expensive and inefficient; it’s laughably so.

Print is always cast in terms of habit. The argument is that people prefer the tactile experience of the printed page and the easily browsable format, but with the economics of print news delivery becoming financially untenable, it’s worth seeing what options are available and what options are developing.

02.13.09
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links for 2009-02-13

  • Forget Micropayments — Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content
    Kevin: Steve Outing pierces some of the recent (and largely recycled) talk about micropayments and news content. As Online Journalism Blogger Paul Bradshaw says, newspaper content isn't like iTunes. You listen to songs several times, you don't read newspaper content several times. But Steve looks at a new model, Kachingle. Briefly, Kachingle takes the US National Public Radio voluntary supporter model with a model that allows users to reward content providers they like and not just traditional media but also bloggers. Steve goes through the details. It's a new idea. Will it work? Dunno. But it might be worth trying.
    (tags: journalism newspapers internet strategy businessmodel micropayments kachingle)
  • MediaShift Idea Lab . Journalism Will Survive the Death of Its Institutions | PBS
    Kevin: Lisa Williams of Placeblogger writes about how journalists, just as technology workers before them, can survive and thrive as big companies fail. She writes: "You'll discover what thousands upon thousands of tech workers discovered: you can do great work outside of an institutional, big-company context, and you can make a living doing so. High tech companies didn't own innovation; the innovators did. News organizations don't own journalism: journalists do."
    (tags: blogging economics future jobs journalism technology)
  • Dead man blogging |Notes from the Field | Robert X. Cringely® | InfoWorld
    Kevin: Dan Lyons behind the Fake Steve Jobs talks about his time of obsessive blogging, and Robert X. Cringely writes: "We're at the end of one era on the blogosphere and the beginning of another. What the new one will be like nobody can say. Will the amateurs fade away and leave the game to people who actually know how to write and report? Or will the marketers complete their coup, leaving the rest of us old journos to scramble for jobs at Wal-Mart?"
    (tags: journalism blogging businessmodel ecnomics)
02.12.09
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links for 2009-02-12