Stacking the blocks in a new way

There is a fabulous quote in Nieman Lab’s piece last week on how ProPublica balances important and popular content. Though in this case, it refers to making short-term hits out of long-term pieces, we can apply the same concept backwards – or, if we want, in a way that has nothing to do with time:

“We’re taking all the little bits and pieces and making them useful to people in a much more immediate way,” says Amanda Michel, ProPublica’s director of distributed reporting and the developer of the outfit’s overall social strategy. They’re deconstructing the news, and reconstructing it into forms designed to help their readers and serve their mission.

This isn’t just “repurposing content,” which is a vague phrase we hear a lot. Instead, ProPublica is looking closely at the building blocks that come together to make a story, and arranging them in way a that creates brand new content. For ProPublica, this means taking small parts of big, long-term stories, and writing articles that have value in the interim. But most news organizations have bits and pieces that need to be made into bigger stories. So we could do the same thing, only in reverse.

If most stories about Congress revolve around a particular piece of legislation, then we can indicate as much when we publish an article. Then, when we’ve got 10 stories over two months on a piece of legislation, we can use each individual, short-term article to dynamically build a larger look at the development, challenges or importance of the bill.

Normally, this might be done by a beat writer who has all the bits and pieces rolling around in his head, and makes them into a longer feature. But by doing a better job of categorizing and organizing our day-to-day efforts, we can create new, big picture stories to tell without publishing a new article. In fact, who needs a big blob of text when we’ve generated the raw data ourselves? Let’s look at the individual instances news from a different angle, and present that timeline or visualization of the the life of a story to the reader as content that’s just as valuable.

More here and here, which you’ve hopefully already read.

— via Megan Garber

08.28.2011 | post | Journalism | , , , , , | Feedback (0)

Does the news article tell us too much? Or not enough?

Neiman Lab says one of this week’s can’t-miss pieces on the future of news is Jonathan Glick’s “The News Article Is Breaking Up.” In it, Glick says news stories are becoming antiquated as readers get more and more used to consuming news as “nuggets” or tidbits like tweets, status updates, photos, and more:

On smartphones, through which the vast majority of the world’s population will get their news, people love succinct and scannable information. We are gravitating to formats that do not require us to click through and consume paragraphs of prose.

There is no question that these more sleek information formats are useful and well-received. But to suggest that these will replace the standard article is far too aggressive, if for no other reason than that these nuggets rarely contain enough context to be useful on their own, and rarely do they answer more questions than they ask.

Consider a late-night tweet from last April telling you that a government shutdown had been averted. Sure, this news nugget has value: I now know that the government will stay open. But I don’t know why it didn’t shut down, what deals were made, who cut them, what the important political actors have to say, or really anything else. That tweet doesn’t satisfy your information craving. It just whets your appetite and sends you in search of a more information.

It’s no mistake that the news article format has evolved the way it has. First we tell people what’s most important. Then we tell them what is secondarily salient and what else is relevant. We also tell them why it matters.

Of course, this is why tweets contain links and why we have bookmarking tools to highlight pieces we want to read later. But others can lay out how Glick’s idea is misguided. Let’s look at something else – like how it might not even be misguided. Instead, it might just off by an order of magnitude.

Here’s how the news nugget idea holds water: For many complicated topics, the full news article is a nugget – a snapshot, really – of an evolving story or process. Glick talks about how long-form writers will be able to capitalize on making sense of the uber-short tidbits he discusses, but it’s really these article-level snapshots that need making sense of. Certainly this context can come from a long analysis of a certain topic – like how actions in the Middle East are shaping American foreign policy. But we need an even simpler way to do this. A way to paint a better picture of how one snapshot fits into the metaphorical photo album that is a news storyline.

Storyline, perhaps, is the keyword here. In the television industry, producers make sure viewers are caught up on the show’s storylines by starting each episode with a “Previously, on [insert show title here]” montage. Each news article should have the same ability to ask and answer: Are you new here? Are you in over your head? Let us show you – step by step, if you like –  how we got to this point.

We can go even further. If you found a six-month old article via a search engine, we could not only tell you what happened prior to this story’s publication, but also what happened after. We could tell you what started it all – and what the final outcome was, if there is one. We could assign a status and description to a storyline. We could organize them by their major players, and say which storylines fit into or are spin-offs of other ones.

There is a ton more to say on the topic of context, and this idea doesn’t address many, many of the problems we haven’t yet solved. But this kind of easy-to-provide background has the chance to help move us in the right direction, in terms of how well readers consume the information we provide.

By the way, this functionality is basically begging to built a WordPress plugin or other open-source offering. If anyone wants to collaborate, you know where to find me.

06.03.2011 | post | Journalism, Storytelling | , , , , | Feedback (0)

No, you shouldn’t major in journalism

It’s not a new question.

As a senior in high school and excitable sports editor of The Echo, I remember when I was first presented with it. Being someone who had already decided on future in reporting, though, I remember scoffing at the notion that someone who wanted to be a journalist shouldn’t major in the field. Maybe that works for others, I thought, but I was going to be traditional and get my journalism degree.

Technically, I majored in political communications while at GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs, but that was just a way for me to incorporate some politics into my four-year indefinite stay in the nation’s capital. My focus was always on journalism; so much so that I inadvertently completed all the requirements for a journalism major, but didn’t receive the designation because I would have needed prior approval. I settled for a minor.

I enjoyed my classes, but the few months since undergraduate experience have made it very clear that my majoring in journalism was not only unnecessary, but ill-advised. The reasoning is simple: As a journalism major, you’re taught practices and procedures that might help you learn a little bit about a given story topic when it’s needed. As a something-else-major, you become an expert in a particular field and a confident reporter with sufficient background to wholly tackle a subject area.

The possibilities are many. Major in environmental engineering so you can cover energy policy and green job development. Study business and macroeconomics so you can cover national economic trends and confidently dissect complex financial documents. Become an expert in government bureaucracy or legislative procedure and go work on Capitol Hill. Go to law school (yes, I recognize this would be post-undergrad anyway) to become a legal correspondent. Etc., etc.

Obviously, you’ve still got to develop your chops as a reporter, but that’s something gets taken care of by writing for your campus newspaper or interning. Minoring in journalism or media certainly helps too, but as much as I appreciated my professors, nearly everything I know about journalism came from my experiences and role models at The Hatchet.  Jay Rosen‘s recent comment about his experience in college journalism rings true:

“I rarely went to class. I was learning too much to stop and do that.”

UPDATE: Jay notes in the comments that the courses he didn’t go to were not journalism classes, as there was no journalism school at SUNY-Buffalo. Interestingly, he also points out that at NYU, journalism majors must double major in some other field. Seems like a fantastic compromise, albeit extra-demanding for students looking to jump into internships and side projects, too. Not that being challenged is a problem.

In fact, if you’re going to minor in journalism, ditch the boring classes and take cutting edge courses like Mike Shanahan and Jason Osder’s Online Journalism Workshop (or Convergence in Journalism course) or Jeff Jarvis’ entrepreneurial journalism class. It goes without saying that I’d also recommend studying HTML/CSS and or programming languages (though it need not be a requisite for the journalists of tomorrow.)

Naturally, there could be a number of counter-arguments or caveats to this advice. In particular, one might suggest that a student could major in journalism, but focus his or her extra-curricular time on developing the area-specific knowledge and skills mentioned above. A dedicated educational focus on the subject, however, would likely yield a more organic understanding of the field and be more productive.

Still, I’d love to hear why I’m wrong, so please tell me. For the time being, though, I’ll be looking at MBA programs and other non-journalism master’s programs.

By the way, I majored in journalism. Could you spare a few bucks for graduate tuition?

09.29.2010 | post | Journalism | , , , , , , , , , | Feedback (2)

Should journalists learn programming?

UPDATE, Dec. 1: I should mention that while I still believe in the premise of this post, I’ve spent most days since it was published wishing I could program, develop, or data process — and trying to learn.

DOUBLE UPDATE, Dec. 1: Andy Boyle makes a good point that I hadn’t considered. Much of this post is based on the premise that writers should mainly stick to writing and let the programmers do the bulk of the programming. But what if there aren’t any programmers? Smaller news orgs may have none, and a journalist with a bit of programming experience is king in a world of no programmers.

There’s been considerable debate over the last couple of weeks about whether journalists should learn programming techniques and languages. Poynter hosted a chat on the subject, 10000Words put together a handy flowchart and others have joined the discussion.

On Tuesday, Andrew Nacin dropped my name as someone who falls on the yes-you-should-learn-programming-end-of-the-spectrum. While I appreciate Nacin’s mentioning me as a “living case study,” I do not think it’s necessary for today’s journalist to learn to program.

Before I explain why, let’s look at reasons you should learn to program. First, as MediaShift alludes to, we don’t really know what the media landscape will look like in 10 years. Is it possible that some level of programming will be folded into the standard responsibilities of the average journalist by that point? Maybe, though I doubt it. Second, it may provide you new career opportunities. Plenty of news organizations are starting to experiment with heaps of data and geo-location and the like, and being able to think journalistically while sifting through gigabytes of information may be your ticket to a cool new gig. And of course, the proverbial “why not?” reasoning. If you want to use your time to learn PHP or Ruby (or the WordPress Loop), be my guest. Just recognize it’s not for everyone.

Those points notwithstanding, programming simply is not a necessary (or useful) skill for today’s average journalist. Notice I did not say that programming is not a useful skill on its own; of course it is. The fact is, however, that programming requires too much time and energy to learn, while not providing an outlet for journalists to regularly use the knowledge. Sure, Brian Boyer and Matt Waite are make their living building awesome news applications. It’s just that not everyone can grow up to be them. The cops beat reporter in any city, USA should be cultivating sources, traversing the city, exposing corruption, and producing front page stories (and multimedia packages, maybe!), and that takes time and effort. For the good of the public and the reporter, these goals should trump those of learning to program.

Sure, that cops reporter could have a great idea for web application that automatically maps a location on a landing page when the local police or fire department tweets about an incident. But rather than having to build it all by him or herself, that’s a project to be tackled in conjunction with a dedicated developer. Those guys with the snarky T-shirts and binary jokes? Give them something to do. No need to steal their jobs. In this era of multitasking and convergence, it seems like people (and especially young journalists) are encouraged to learn how to do everything, and while initiative is good, that’s the wrong sentiment. Writers will produce the best written word, photographers will snap the best pictures, and programmers will build the best apps. That’s not going to change, so don’t give up being awesome at something so you can be insufficient at a lot of things.*

In short, if you want to be a programmer and build things, learn to program. If you want your byline on A1 tomorrow morning, focus on getting better at what it is you really want to do.

*Yes, with layoffs and the like, sometimes you will have to be the reporter and the photographer. But, that only works if you’re good enough to tackle both responsibilities, and you might not be if you spread yourself too thin with extraneous forays into too many sectors of the media industry.

07.22.2010 | post | Journalism, Programming | , , , , , , , , | Feedback (3)

The journalist’s diet

We’re about six-ish issues into the year, and unfortunately, one of the biggest things on my mind each production night doesn’t even really relate to the paper. Rather, it relates to me, and what I eat.

I’m finding it very difficult to eat well on the job, and unfortunately for my body, I’m on the job nearly all the time. I really need to find a way to prepare food ahead of time and bring it in to work, so that I don’t have to order in so much.

Clearly, the paper is the biggest part of my life right now. Still, my health is important to me, and so it’s got to be something that I work on. Anyone in the biz have good tips on eating well while on the job?

09.14.2009 | post | Uncategorized | , | Feedback (2)