Nieman Journalism Lab |
- Brian Boyer: Welcome to Hacker Journalism 101, take your seats
- Jonah Peretti: “It won’t work to try to make some other site like BuzzFeed”
- This Week in Review: When fact-checking hits a wall, and a starkly strategic newspaper bankruptcy
- Come work for Nieman Lab
- Why does Project Thunderdome have to be in New York City?
| Brian Boyer: Welcome to Hacker Journalism 101, take your seats Posted: 07 Sep 2012 08:22 AM PDT
Editor’s Note: It’s the start of the school year, which means students are returning to journalism programs around the country. As the media industry continues to evolve, how well is new talent being trained, and how well are schools preparing them for the real world? We asked an array of people — hiring editors, recent graduates, professors, technologists, deans — to evaluate the job j-schools are doing and to offer ideas for how they might improve. Over the coming days, we’ll be sharing their thoughts with you. Here’s Brian Boyer, the head of NPR’s News Apps team, describing a course he’d like journalists to take — and the reading you can do to keep up. Thanks for signing up for Hacker Journalism 101! In this course, we will explore a range of topics, from the origins of computing to making useful things for people to the awesome power of making your computer work for you. The intent of this course is not to teach you all the skills necessary to program in a newsroom, but to lay a solid foundation for learning those skills. This is a reading-heavy course, covering widely varying material. It will be easy to fall behind. Keep up! There will be little lecturing during class time. Instead, we will discuss the reading, do some show-and-tell, and work on practical exercises. So please, be prepared or don’t attend. Also, there is a bit of summer reading, but it will be fun. And remember the virtues of a programmer:
They will serve you well in this course. PrerequisiteA class in which you’ve learned some basic HTML/CSS. Summer reading: How we got hereThe Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson Mother Earth Mother Board by Neal Stephenson Extra credit: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Week one: Let’s make your computer do thingsCSVKit tutorial by Chris Groskopf Weeks two and three: Learn to program in RubyThe Bastards Book of Ruby by Dan Nguyen Week three and four: Learn to program in PythonLearn Python The Hard Way by Zed Shaw Extra credit: Introduction To Git Week five: Craft on the webWeb Standards Solutions by Dan Cederholm Show and tell: Once you’ve read the book and worked through the exercises, find a web page with good markup (right-click → View Page Source) and be prepared for show-and-tell. Extra credit: Responsive Web Design Week six: Web usabilityDon’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug Show and tell: In class, we will critique websites. Bring to class URLs of (a) A website you think is well-designed based on Krug, and (b) the opposite. Extra credit: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman Week seven: Design principlesDesigning for Emotion by Aarron Walter Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Jill Butler, and Kritina Holden Show and tell: Bring in two examples from the wild of design principles explained in Lidwell. Extra credit: Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb Week eight: ChartjunkThe Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte Show and tell: Bring in three examples of charts Tufte would hate, and one he would like. Be prepared to explain why. Week nine: Getting to doneAgile Manifesto Getting Real by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Matthew Linderman Extra credit: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Weeks ten, eleven and twelve: Final projectYour final project might incorporate the visual display of data, but it will be more than a data visualization. You might use video or audio, but it will not be a multimedia storytelling experience. You will make a useful news application. Recent examples:
Questions to ask yourself
First, you’ll distill your idea to the smallest useful thing, then you’ll build it. It will be fun. Hope to see you in HJ201, Advanced Hacker Journalism. Image by David Grandy used under a Creative Commons license. |
| Jonah Peretti: “It won’t work to try to make some other site like BuzzFeed” Posted: 07 Sep 2012 08:00 AM PDT After Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, C-SPAN Radio shared a stat about how many tweets per minute Obama (52,757), Mitt Romney (14,289) and other political figures generated over the course of the Democratic and Republican conventions. The host attributed the numbers to BuzzFeed, paused a beat, then characterized it as a politics site. BuzzFeed is a politics site, but it’s always funny to hear it so narrowly defined. (And of course, those numbers originated with Twitter itself.) Incidentally, a couple of hours earlier, I had caught up with BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti in New York. We talked about how people who get what BuzzFeed is trying to do really get it. And people who don’t really don’t. (A Washington political reporter who has covered a dozen presidential campaigns actually got angry when I recently described to him the popular website that prominently features both serious political reporting and silly cat photos.) Here’s Peretti: And for all the sites that are suddenly running BuzzFeed-inspired lists or other mimicry, Peretti has this to say: “Sites usually do better when they’re true to their core and their DNA. And it’s hard to be like another site, you know? We don’t try to be like other sites. Some people thought that BuzzFeed would try to be like Huffington Post, because we have some of the same people on our board and people involved. But it wouldn’t have worked to try to make BuzzFeed like Huffington Post, and it won’t work to try to make some other site like BuzzFeed.” |
| This Week in Review: When fact-checking hits a wall, and a starkly strategic newspaper bankruptcy Posted: 07 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT
When fact-checking hits a wall: Judging from the reaction, last week’s Republican National Convention seems to have been a pivotal moment for the “fact-checking” movement within journalism — though we can’t seem to agree on what exactly that moment means. Rem Rieder of the American Journalism Review celebrated fact-checking journalists’ vigorous response to vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s convention speech as a sort of coming-out party for fact-checking, and Ari Melber at PBS MediaShift contended that its emergence marked a new level of integration of the blogging ethos into political journalism. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein said fact-checkers are giving political reporters a stiffer spine when dealing with politicians’ deception. At the same time, though, a distinct problem has begun to emerge regarding the newly emboldened political fact-checkers: What happens when the politicians they’re checking don’t care what they say? That’s the scenario currently unfolding between the fact-checkers and (mostly) Republicans, as The New York Times’ Michael Cooper described. Grist’s David Roberts examined the question of what journalists should do next in that situation, arguing that the norm of objectivity leaves them with weak, limited options. NYU’s Jay Rosen unpacked some of the meaning of this conundrum for journalists and noted that several of them are uncharacteristically pushing back against the politicians, which also means pushing up against the boundaries of their traditional “view from nowhere.” Ezra Klein wrestled publicly with the need to appear fair when fact-checking overwhelmingly deceptive speeches, concluding that “you can look fair, or you can be fair, but you can't be both.” Others wondered whether fact-checking is even all that effective in a cynical political world. Reuters’ Jack Shafer said that fact-checking is a noble pursuit, but one that isn’t going to stop politicians from lying or make voters care much about politicians’ deception. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed cautioned fact-checkers not to get co-opted by campaigns and turned into just another part of their rhetorical tug-of-war. On the other hand, The Guardian’s Emily Bell marveled at the fact that many U.S. organizations are reluctant to give up their “view from nowhere” to buy into fact-checking, and The New York Times’ Margaret Sullivan wondered why we’re even having a debate over whether fact-checking is necessary in the first place. Erik Wemple of The Washington Post pushed back against Sullivan’s statement, arguing that no one in the press is really opposed to fact-checking; they just have differing ideas of how it should be done. A remarkably thoughtful example of those ideas was proposed by Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, who suggested recalibrating fact-checking standards to focus on the broader deception at work, rather than simply fine-grained facts. He proposed three orienting questions: What was the speaker trying to imply? What would it take to state things accurately? How much would accuracy damage the speaker’s point? The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf gave an example of how this approach might work outside the banner of “fact-checking,” and elsewhere, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Justin Peters urged news orgs to continue pushing forward with fact-checking, experimenting with ways to make it fit into all of their political reporting and do it on deadline.
Paton also said the company has signed a stalking horse bid with an investment fund affiliated with its current owner, hedge fund Alden Global Capital, so it doesn’t appear that ownership will be changing hands. Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon put together a few more details using the company’s employee Q&A, and Jim Romenesko published the requisite email from a disgruntled employee. On the other side, Steve Buttry — who runs social media for Digital First Media, which is intertwined with the Journal Register Co. — was much more optimistic that bankruptcy wouldn’t derail the company’s digital progress, and Matt DeRienzo, who edits several papers for the Journal Register, assured us that the company’s focus on local digital journalism would remain intact. CUNY journalism professor and Journal Register adviser Jeff Jarvis was also supportive of the move, calling it a necessary step for newspapers in the transformation into digital sustainability. Paton told The New York Times the bankruptcy is necessary to deal with debt the company took on several years ago, when it was much bigger and much more old-media. A big chunk of that debt comes from an underfunded pension program, and as Poynter’s Rick Edmonds described, that’s a problem that numerous other newspaper companies are grappling with. Paton and the Journal Register Co. may be the first of several, he said, to undergo a strategic bankruptcy to try to shed some of those pension obligations without overhauling the company’s structure or ownership. Mathew Ingram of GigaOM compared newspapers’ situation to that of industries like autos and airlines. At the Lab, Martin Langeveld was a bit more skeptical of the strategic bankruptcy, saying it may be part of a strip-it-and-profit plan by Alden rather than continued investment in the news industry. The Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum also raised questions about the information missing from Paton’s statements, suggesting he’s trying to ditch the company’s former ways and forgo digital subscriptions “in favor of vague pronouncements about reader engagement and the use of social media, which are already widely adopted across the newspaper business.” The Lab’s Josh Benton delivered a thorough analysis of how the Journal Register Co. and other newspaper companies like it got into this debt-and-pension mess and what it might take to get out. The problem, Benton contended, isn’t that old-media companies have forgotten how to make money — “It's that they can no longer make that money at the scale they could 10 years ago — but their cost structures are still tied to that old scale.” This bankruptcy gives the Journal Register Co. a chance at the first full reboot from that old scale we’ve seen in the newspaper industry, Benton said.
Ideas for newspapers’ reinvention: A number of other strategies for reinvention have been suggested for the newspaper industry, and a few of those were the subject of some discussion this week. One of the more interesting proposals was media analyst Frederic Filloux’s case for raising the price of newspapers’ print products, based on a study by a German marketing firm that argued for offsetting circulation revenue losses by turning print into a premium product. This wouldn’t be an attempt to save print, Filloux argued, but an effort to squeeze continued revenue out of it in response to an irreversible revenue decline. He contended that it wouldn’t hurt print advertising as much as you’d think, but said it would only work for high-quality products, which doesn’t include many regional papers. Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon rounded up a couple more opinions on the plan of instituting online paywalls and raising print prices. (And regarding paywalls, the Sacramento Bee launched its paywall this week, part of McClatchy’s paywall ramp-up.) At the Columbia Journalism Review, Clay Shirky suggested that legacy news organizations have been shrinking as they’ve needed to, but have not been doing the other half of that process — restructuring and re-inventing themselves as they shrink. In an interview with the Lab, Philadelphia Inquirer editor Bill Marimow responded to one recent reinvention suggestion for his newspaper, saying he couldn’t see the Inquirer going all-digital until almost all of its readers have no need for it in print. Joel Mathis, who made the proposal, countered that the Inquirer should be making platform decisions based on the convenience of the majority of its readers, not just the preferences of a few of them. Reading roundup: A few other stories and interesting pieces bouncing around during this relatively quiet week: — A handful of Twitter notes: Twitter launched embeddable interactive tweet timelines this week, and The New York Times profiled the company’s chief lawyer, Alexander MacGillivray, and his run-ins with free speech limitations. One of Twitter’s former board members cautioned the company about what it might lose in going too hard after revenue, and GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram wrote a pair of posts wrestling with Twitter’s tension between openness and pursuit of revenue. — The hacking group AntiSec, a subset of Anonymous, released a file that it said included more than a million personal ID numbers for Apple mobile devices, and claimed to have millions more numbers after hacking into an FBI agent’s computer. The FBI said there was no evidence the numbers came from its computers, and Apple denied giving the FBI device IDs. Still, security consultant Aldo Cortesi called the leak a privacy debacle, and GigaOM’s Erica Ogg noted that it’s a reminder that Apple still has to come up with an anonymous alternative to their current device IDs. — The New York Times’ David Carr looked at Reddit’s laissez-faire ownership by Advance Publications in light of its meteoric growth as an online community and news source, and GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram drew out some lessons for news orgs from Reddit’s rise. — The Columbia Journalism Review released a fascinating, wide-ranging package on the future of the media this week. I’d especially commend to you Simon Dumenco’s look at the post-banner ad future of advertising, Kira Goldenberg’s thoughts on the future of the news article, and Emily Bell’s piece on the rise of data journalism. |
| Posted: 07 Sep 2012 06:37 AM PDT
If you read us regularly, you know the kind of work we do — we look for and write about innovation in news. That can mean innovation at traditional news organizations; that can mean innovation at online startups; that can mean innovation at technology companies that impact how the news gets reported, distributed, and consumed. We cast a wide net; fundamentally, we’re interested in how useful information gets discovered and shared. A couple years ago, when we had a previous opening, I summed up our ideal candidate this way:
All that still holds true. This is a great job, if I do say so myself. And — while I hesitate to mention it, because I selfishly prefer it when my people aren’t lured away — it puts your work in front of some of the most influential people in journalism today. The last five people who’ve left our little newsroom have all departed for great positions at fine news organizations: outreach/social media editor at The Wall Street Journal, online managing editor at O’Reilly, deputy Congress editor at Politico, staff writer at The Atlantic, and assistant editor on The New York Times’ Digital Platforms team. (This position is to replace Andrew Phelps, that last one who’s Times-bound.) If you have any questions about the position, feel free to email me — but don’t email me your resume, clips, or statements of how awesome you are. To actually apply for the job, you need to go to the actual job posting and apply from there. I’d strongly suggest doing so in the next week or so (say, by September 15) — we’re looking to move pretty quickly, and the posting will disappear from the Harvard HR site not too long after that. — One final note, because there’s one line in the posting I always have to explain when we have an opening. It’s the one that says “Note: This is a term appointment ending June 30, 2013, with the possibility of renewal based on funding and department priorities.” I don’t want people to be scared off by the idea that this is a temporary position — it’s not. Many Harvard jobs of this type are officially run as a series of one-year term appointments. In the nearly four years since the Lab launched, every full-time position we’ve had has been posted under these terms, and every one of them has been renewed every year. If we're happy with the work being done (and barring any surprise funding issues), our hope/expectation is that this person would stay well beyond that one year. Happy to answer questions about it, but to sum up: Don’t hesitate to apply because you think this is a temp job for just a few months. |
| Why does Project Thunderdome have to be in New York City? Posted: 07 Sep 2012 05:52 AM PDT
A day after the Journal Register Company announced bankruptcy (again), I paid a visit to Thunderdome, the rapidly growing Manhattan hub that Digital First launched to help reinvent the way JRC and MediaNews Group newspapers produce the news. After years of planning, Thunderdome finally exists — it is a physical space occupied by an expanding staff of journalists and salespeople — but it’s just beginning to create an infrastructure to better serve hundreds of local newsrooms across the country. The vision is to alleviate the burden on shrinking newsrooms by streamlining national content, eliminating redundancies, and freeing up local reporters to do the important work they’re uniquely positioned to do. (It’s helpful to think of Thunderdome as an internal wire service.) For its over-the-top name, turns out Thunderdome’s digs are relatively spartan. The ceiling is low but there’s plenty of natural light. There are no cubicles, and practically nothing on the walls other than a row of big-screen TVs tuned into news stations. The space is still new enough to lack the odd clutter that makes so many newsrooms look they’re staffed by hoarders. Thunderdome has the feel of a startup (sans foosball table), only one that happens to be on the top floor of a 25-story building in lower Manhattan. The location of Thunderdome has puzzled some of the people who have been tracking the project since its inception, and it’s a question that was raised again in the wake of JRC’s bankruptcy news. Why pick pricey Manhattan? Why not move into a smaller-but-still-existing newsroom elsewhere in the country? (Check out the comments section of Josh’s story from earlier this week for some of this discussion.) “Part of it is we already had people in New York,” Digital First editor-in-chief Jim Brady told me. “MediaNews Group is already here. We had a sales force up here. We had temporary office space for JRC. So the additional amount of money we’re spending in New York? If it’s any, it’s nominal. Plus, getting everybody in one place — sales and editorial in the same place, which may freak certain newsrooms out — it’s also essential for the future of the company.” Part of helping local newsrooms leverage resources will be to provide original reporting, and “you can cover a lot if you’re in New York because a lot tends to happen in this city,” Brady says. The other part, he says, is proximity to content partners, many of whom are headquartered in Manhattan. There’s also the idea that the city will draw some of the best journalistic talent, which Digital First will need it if Thunderdome has any chance of succeeding. “You want to be in a position to get the best possible people you can,” Brady said. “I’d love to get in an argument with anybody who says there isn’t a lot of journalistic talent in New York City.” As for the bankruptcy, Brady says Thunderdome is “plowing ahead,” and that nothing will change in day-to-day operations there or at JRC papers. “It’s a scary word, and any time you open up a process like this, you don’t know how it’s going to play out,” Brady said. “This is a process we have to go through. It’s necessary for the future survival of the company. Any jobs that were open on Tuesday are open on Thursday, and any projects that were active on Tuesday are active on Thursday. We think this is part of the future of the company — what we’re doing at Thunderdome — and we also think the future is getting our financial structure in place. That’s what this is all about.” |
We’re looking for someone to join us in our cozy little Harvard newsroom. Specifically, we have an opening for a staff writer here at the Nieman Journalism Lab. 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Nieman Journalism Lab To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |