Nieman Journalism Lab

---

“We’re going to tell people how to interview databases”: The rise of data (big and small) in journalism Posted: 08 Mar 2013 09:03 AM PST Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier published their joint tome on big data this week, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think. Mayer-Schönberger, a professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford, and Cukier, the data editor of The Economist, argue that having access to vast amounts of data will soon overwhelm our natural human tendency to look for correlation and causality where there is none. In the near future, we'll be able to rely on much larger pools of "messy” data rather than small pools of "clean" data to get more accurate answers to our questions. “We are taking things we never thought of as informational and rendering them in data," Mayer-Schönberger said in a talk Wednesday at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. “Once we think of it as data, we can organize it and extract new information.” In their book, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier give a number of examples of industries that will be changed forever by the new messiness of data. Bradford Cross cofounded FlightCaster.com, which predicted U.S. flight delays using data about flight times and weather patterns. The company was sold in 2011, at which point “Cross turned his sights on another aging industry.” He started Prismatic, one of a number of news aggregators that filters content for users by analyzing data about sharing frequency on social networks and user preferences. Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier write: This is a humbling reminder to the high priests of mainstream media that the public is in aggregate more knowledgeable than they are, and that cuff linked journalists must compete against bloggers in their bathrobes. Yet the key point is that it is hard to imagine that Prismatic would have emerged from within the media industry itself, even though it collects lots of information. The regulars around the bar of the national Press Club never thought to reuse online data about media consumption. Nor might the analytics specialists in Armonk, New York or Bangalore, India have harnessed the information in this way. It took Cross, a louche outsider with disheveled hair and a slacker's drawl, to presume that by using data he could tell the world what it ought pay attention to better than the editors of The New York Times. I didn’t ask Cukier on Thursday whether he is a Press Club bar regular, but I did ask him how he sees data affecting his work at The Economist: One interesting thing is, I've taken a lot of the data from the books and arts section related to what's popular online — online-only content — versus what is popular in print, and looking for interesting anomalies. It turns out among our most interesting correlations or findings is that our Q&As with authors are extremely popular on the Internet, and it is one of the formats with which we almost never run in the paper. So, it's suggesting to us that we may want to take this format that's really popular online into the paper. Cukier is aware that, for many editors, the idea that an algorithm might know something about what your readers want can be a hard pill to swallow. In an interview with Wired, Cukier said that when speaking about the book in Britain, humanities professors often reproached him for propagating the idea that the quality of their work could be quantifiable. "I'd think it's actually very reasonable if you're going to produce something like art, that you try to look for ways to improve it and understand it by, if you will, how many people it reaches, how many times it's been shared on the Internet,” he said. On Thursday, Cukier extended that same line of thought to the work of journalist in the digital age: If you are the books and arts editor, to say, you know, “I really sort of believe that I know what is best on a weekly basis for my audience” — to actually second guess yourself and say, “I recognize that in some ways I have good instincts, but in some ways I am blindfolded. I am not going to blindly accept the data, but I'm not going to be blind to it either.” These are techniques I think a lot of media companies are using — something The Economist is walking very light-footedly into, to be careful, but I think it's necessary. He added a note of caution — the talk was called “Big Data — and its Dark Side,” after all — pointing out that the reader who pays for a print subscription to The Economist is quite different than the one who sees a link to an Economist story on Facebook and clicks. But ultimately, "moneyballing" print publications is the new reality, he says, replacing cocktails or Sunday brunch as the best method of understanding your reader. Cukier is a journalist, not just a numbers man, having been The Economist's business correspondent in Japan and global technology correspondent before that. So when he looks at how data is changing how we think, he also thinks about what journalists can do with it: When we teach journalism in the future, we're not just going to teach people the fundamentals of how to do an interview, or what a lede paragraph is. We’re going to tell people how to interview databases. And also, just as we train journalists by telling them that sometimes people that we interview are unfaithful and lie, we're going to have to teach them to be suspicious of the data, because sometimes the data lies, too. You have to bring the same scrutiny as in the analog world — talking to people and observing — to the data as well. Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier shared plenty of dark scenarios of where big data could lead us — to a world where you can be imprisoned not on the basis of crimes you did commit but crimes you might commit, or a world in which the owners of data begin to look and act like the railroad barons of the 19th century. But despite these predictions, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier are ultimately closer to being a pair of cheerleaders than naysayers. Said Mayer-Schönberger: "The culprit here is not big data itself, but how we use it." Photo of Kenneth Cukier by Joi Ito used under a Creative Commons license.

This Week in Review: The ethics of freelancing for free, and Facebook’s filtered News Feed Posted: 08 Mar 2013 07:00 AM PST The ethics of freelancing for free: Freelance journalist Nate Thayer touched off a spirited discussion on the ethics and economics of paying (or not paying) freelancers with a post criticizing The Atlantic for asking him to rewrite for them an article he’d published elsewhere, and to do it for free. He ranted some more to New York’s Daily Intel , and The Atlantic’s James Bennet issued a somewhat apologetic, somewhat explanatory statement. (In a later twist, author Jeremy Duns raised some plagiarism questions about his original piece, which the Columbia Journalism Review followed up on.)For the deepest discussion of the issues at work in paying freelancers online, check out this conversation started by The Awl’s Choire Sicha and joined by dozens of online writers and editors. We’ll look at this from the freelancer’s perspective first: Several writers took issue with Thayer’s implication that freelancers should never write for free. Slate’s Matthew Yglesias said that with a few exceptions, most anybody who’s writing should write for free. Freelancer Stephanie Lucianovic (in a piece originally written before Thayer’s was published) and TechCrunch’s Gregory Ferenstein explained why they’re glad they write (or wrote) for free. Former WSJ.com writer Jason Fry offered some criteria for considering when to write to free, but cautioned: “Be ruthless in asking yourself if the trade-off's really worth it. Is the platform really that prestigious? Is the give and take with readers really that attractive? Is the relationship with the editor really going to be that hands-on?” Kelly McBride of Poynter noted, though, that it can be very difficult to keep hard rules about how little pay to accept. Others looked at pay dilemma from the angle of the editor, or the industry as a whole. Atlantic tech editor Alexis Madrigal (who wasn’t involved in Thayer’s situation) laid out the case from the editor’s perspective, explaining why traffic and low freelance budgets lead some editors to pay freelancers little or nothing, even when they’d rather not. Reuters’ Felix Salmon explained things more dispassionately, reasoning that the lack of division of labor in online publishing makes it much easier to produce content in-house than to incorporate freelancing. Likewise, Om Malik of GigaOM explained why he hasn’t used many freelancers, but believes they should always be paid. At PandoDaily, Paul Carr asserted that sites like The Atlantic need to decide between the cheap, aggregative model of online publishing, and the expensive, journalistic one. Mathew Ingram of paidContent argued that the fact that so many on the web are willing to create content for free will always make it difficult for freelancers, but there are still alternative ways for freelancers to make money. (Patrick Thornton suggested a few creative ideas.) Virginia Quarterly Review web editor Jane Friedman argued that there’s nothing to be gained by ripping sites who are trying to get things right and make money. Likewise, Forbes’ Timothy B. Lee said that people who think bad pay for writers is unacceptable should work to change the system, rather than personalize things. And Pocket’s Mark Armstrong posited that we’re all contributing to the problem whenever we casually give our writing away for free even on social media, or to sites that give it away themselves. Mo’ content, mo’ problems for Facebook: Facebook introduced a redesigned News Feed yesterday, focusing on visual elements as well as music, games, and ads. As Gizmodo’s Sam Biddle detailed, the visual focus is an attempt to increase ad revenue, and Wired’s Ryan Tate noted that the changes look like they’ll emphasize content from news publishers and businesses, though users could still end up prioritizing their family and friends’ stuff. While Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once again referred to his ideal as a “personalized newspaper,” Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman said the site still has a long way to go before it’s really useful for news. Craig Kanalley of The Huffington Post gave a useful timeline of the evolution of Facebook’s News Feed. Many people saw a likeness in this latest iteration to Google+, as BetaNews’ Joe Wilcox described, though CNET’s Casey Newton said it’s also aiming for Twitter. Mathew Ingram of GigaOM contrasted Facebook’s changes to further fine-tune its feed filtering with Twitter’s generally unfiltered presentation. The problem, he said, is that with Facebook, you really don’t know what you’re missing. That’s a potential problem not only for users, but for the people creating the content, too. The New York Times’ Nick Bilton highlighted the concern earlier this week when he noted that likes and comments on his Facebook posts are way down over the past year, but shot back up when he paid to have a post show up more prominently. Facebook responded by noting that overall engagement is up for people using the Twitter-like Subscribe feature (like Bilton) and explained that if users don’t engage with posts from someone they follow for long periods of time, they get shown fewer of those posts. Facebook’s Vadim Lavrusik also clarified the relationship between organic and sponsored posts to Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa. YouTube’s Hunter Walk suggested several other reasons Bilton might be seeing less engagement (less spam, News Feed growth, mobile), and Quartz’s Zach Seward chimed in with another good theory — that Facebook has essentially turned off the subsidy that once artificially propped up large Subscribe users. Mathew Ingram said those theories might have merit, but we really have no idea what Facebook’s doing with its News Feed algorithm. TechCrunch’s Josh Constine made a similar point, arguing that while Facebook’s Subscribe feature is a free way to reach devoted followers, it’s also pretty opaque and inconsistent about how it runs that feature. All Facebook co-founder Nick O’Neill argued that Subscribe is deeply flawed as a way for people to reliably reach their followers (and measure that reach): “If most of your emails never reached their destination, you'd probably say that your email is broken. If most of your Facebook posts never reach the people who subscribed to/followed you, does that mean Facebook's broken?” The Washington Post cuts its ombudsman: Two weeks after the departing Patrick Pexton reported that he might be The Washington Post’s last ombudsman, the paper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, confirmed it by announcing that the position will be replaced by a reader representative who will be a Post staffer and will write occasionally, rather than weekly, like the ombudsmen did. The first reader representative will be longtime Post reporter and editor Doug Feaver. The move was quickly met with criticism from elsewhere in the news industry. NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos’ was the most stinging rebuke, as said the new position “sounds like a customer relations person” and stated, “It eliminated a position that builds audience trust precisely at a time that this fundamental and fickle quality — trust — in the Post and all American news media is declining.” In a lengthy post, Schumacher-Matos laid out the case behind that statement, and argued that the ombudsman both keeps news orgs accountable and treats them fairly. The American Journalism Review’s Rem Rieder made a similar point, and noted that The New York Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, is reinventing ombudsmanship for the digital era while the Post is dropping it. Philip Seib, the son of a former Post ombudsman, also criticized the move by describing the ombudsman as a crucial check on the press’s power. Others weren’t nearly so concerned. Reuters’ Jack Shafer noted that readers haven’t made much of a stink and argued that absent real, unvarnished criticism, most ombudsmen “have served primarily as safety shields for newspapers, with the ombudsmen catching, deflecting or containing the flak tossed by readers.” Surprisingly, the executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen praised the Post for its continued commitment to the position. Meanwhile, the Post’s media critic, Erik Wemple, proposed an intriguing reboot of the ombudsman’s job — an “ombizman” that would ask tough questions about the Post’s decisions about its financial strategy and business model, rather than just its editorial content. Elsewhere in ombudsmanship, Eric Deggans at the National Sports Journalism Center called attention to ESPN’s four-month-old vacancy in its ombudsman position. Reading roundup: A few other news items and thought-provoking pieces this week: — News Corp. announced its long-anticipated creation of two 24-hour sports networks to rival ESPN — Fox Sports 1 and 2. The channels (currently Speed and Fuel) will launch later this year. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have good background on the strategy behind the channels, and USA Today’s Michael Hiestand looked at whether it’s too late to challenge ESPN’s dominance. Despite the struggle for supremacy, John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported that Fox and ESPN are actually partnering elsewhere on league broadcasting rights. — The Pew Research Center produced an intriguing study indicating that public opinion often differs sharply from the opinions expressed on Twitter. ReadWrite’s Taylor Hatmaker noted that Twitter is a platform for very intentional expressions by highly invested users, which is far from the nature of the public as a whole. — Time Warner was negotiating with Meredith to sell most of its Time Inc. magazines, but it cut off those talks this week and announced it would spin Time Inc. off into its own publicly traded company. Longtime media exec Charlie Rogers explained why Time wants out of the magazine business, and at The Guardian, Michael Wolff mused on what went wrong and what happens now. — The Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum went deep into the New Orleans news environment and Newhouse’s management of the Times-Picayune in particular. — Wisconsin researchers Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele wrote in The New York Times about a nifty study they’ve just published suggesting that uncivil online comments can polarize readers and negatively affect their opinion of the news topic being discussed. — Reuters blogger Felix Salmon and the Lab’s Ken Doctor both added an important pieces to our ongoing discussion about online paid content — Salmon with the second of his two posts (here’s the first) on content economics, in which he thoughtfully explored the subtle differences between charging for access and asking for donations, and the psychology of enticing users to pay. Doctor examined why paywalls are just now being widely adopted at news orgs Photo of Cleveland’s Free stamp by Bradley Stabler and Washington Post by Yuri Numerov used under a Creative Commons license.

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