Data journalism and a general Journalism roundup

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Data Journalism: a new gateway at the Guardian

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Federica Cherubini

The Guardian announced yesterday the launch of a new gateway to its data journalism and visualisations.

“DataStore: Fact are sacred” is the subhead on the new data site, and that is the exact statement CP Scott, the Guardian founding editor, said in his first editorial in 1821: “comment is free, but facts are sacred”.

Should journalists accept money for providing their opinions?

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald
A New York-based research firm has been offering cash to reporters who are willing to give their opinions on their area of expertise, the Washington Post reported. PFC Opinion Research is looking for journalists who cover the energy sector and is proposing to pay them $250 to answer questions for about 25 minutes, specified the Post.

Secrecy and journalism: AP’s Kathleen Carroll on the effects of technology on government secrecy

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald

The US government and others will use the latest WikiLeaks release “as reason for secrecy for many years to come,” believes Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the Associated Press. It may take some time for the situation to change, but governments will try to plug what leaks they can and “lock things down,” she said. She was speaking at the Nieman Lab event “From Watergate to Wikileaks: Secrecy and Journalism in the New Media Age.”

Facebook and newsrooms: how to make it a profitable relationship

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Federica Cherubini
How to be sure you get the most out from your newsroom page on Facebook?
Kim Wilson on the blog Journalistics provides eight ways “to make sure your newsroom is getting the most out of each and every fan.”
While newsrooms have a huge advantage from their Facebook pages, Wilson writes, very few stations know what they hope to gain from their followers.

Data journalism and data visualization | News | guardian.co.uk

Data journalism and the 2010 US Census

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald


How can journalists best make use of the US Census Bureau data? asks Poynter’s Al Tompkins. Every ten years, the Census Bureau releases detailed statistics about the US population: this year, the first data to be released was on the populations of the states and the percentage change in the last ten years, which is used to apportion seats in Congress.

Future of newspapers: mistakes and potential solutions

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Federica Cherubini
What could newspapers have done to tackle the economic aspects of digital challenges and what have they done instead?

In an American Journalism Review article entitled “Costly Mistakes”, John Morton discusses what he sees as the weak and ineffective reaction of the newspaper industry to the shift of advertising to the Internet.
“Newspaper advertising revenue fell more – more than two to three times as much in percentage terms – during the 2008-2009 recession than during the two worst previous recessions for newspapers since World War II, in 1991 and 2001”, he says, pointing out that what newspapers did to counter weakening advertising revenue was not sufficient indeed.

ProPublica and NYU to collaborate to provide explanatory journalism

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald
Investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica has just announced that it is to partner with New York University’s Carter Journalism Institute and professor Jay Rosen to explore how to use the web to do better explanatory journalism. The project site, Explainer.Net, will be edited by students of Rosen’s Studio 20 program, which is focused on innovations in journalism.

WEF Study Tour: Jay Rosen on how to face digital challenges

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald
Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, runs a program called Studio 20 that aims to teach students all aspects of a journalism business. News outlets used to want journalism schools to churn out people who could be easily plugged into their system and who “wouldn’t land them in court,” Rosen said. But now, j-schools are increasingly becoming R&D labs.

WEF study tour: Automated journalism at Northwestern University

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald

Can journalism be automated? Sometimes, is the answer that has come out of Northwestern University’s Intelligent Information Lab, which looks to create synergies between journalism and computer science.

One such project is the Authoring Engine (also known as Stats Monkey), Owen Youngman, Knight Chair for Digital Innovation at the Medill School of Journalism told participants of the World Editors Forum study tour. What this software can do, he explained, is take the raw data of a baseball game, for example – line scores, box scores, play by play – and automatically generate a simple news story.

How can journalism schools help steer the future of journalism?

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Federica Cherubini
The role of journalism schools is changing, says Geneva Overholser on MediaShift:
“Perhaps the most striking change for journalism schools is the degree to which we have shifted from being learning labs whose actual journalism (if any) was limited in its distribution and impact, to being significant — even major — media players in our communities”. As Overholser underlines, journalism schools across the United States are focusing on making substantial contributions toward filling the holes left by the hollowing out of local “legacy” media.
While some wonder if journalism schools are still able to form the journalists of the future, the collaboration between universities and journalism schools and news organizations is increasing: much of which as been catalogued by Len Downie and Michael Schudson in their 2009 report “The Reconstruction of American Journalism”.

Emphas.is: can crowd-sourcing work for photojournalism?

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald


As news organisations make cutbacks, photojournalists, many of whom are freelancers, have been struggling to find enough commissions. Co-founded by Tina Ahrens, a photo editor and consultant, Karim Ben Khelifa, a photojournalist and Fanuel Dewever, a business consultant, Emphas.is is seeking a new funding model for photojournalism, an often costly and time-consuming trade.

US news coverage of the Afghan war

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Federica Cherubini

In the New York Times, Brian Stelter tried to take the stock of the US news coverage of the Afghan. “As the Obama administration conducted an Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review this month, the news media did too, and the coverage came peppered with question marks”, he said.

StatSheet: automated journalism for sports

from Editors Weblog – all postings by Emma Heald

Poynter’s Adam Hochberg has studied StatSheet, a small company that turns sports statistics into articles, just using computers. Having launched in November, StatSheet has created a network of 345 websites (so far), each devoted to a different US university’s basketball team. The company’s proprietary software takes the statistics and box scores and creates text about each game.

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