jrstahl
A place to corral my personal thoughts and bookmarked links on new technologies in journalism
In a conversation yesterday about gaming, I was reminded that one of the fundamental challenges the news industry is facing (and one that it doesn’t seem to be addressing) is that the way we present news is pretty poor. The traditional article is a limited way to provide information or tell a story, and the traditional television package is even worse.
We’re getting slightly better at using the digital tools available to present information in the medium that fits it best, but we’re nowhere near fixing the experience of how a user navigates through information or stories (not between stories, within a single story). We should be providing pathways for people to consume information in all its rich context - whether they need historical background, to be grounded in geography, to feel the personal relevance of the news, it should all be there, easy to explore but not intrusive into the experience of any one piece of it.
Plenty of people are thinking about when to use slideshows or infographics, but why aren’t more people thinking about how all the elements of a story live together in a more harmonious and more usable way - one that helps a reader find the path they need to the components they want?
Here are some links I’ve come across recently on this topic, which I want to keep in mind as I think about it more and advance my own ideas (my 2009 thoughts seem a bit quaint now)…
Why We Need to Blow Up the Article in Order to Save it - Matthew Ingram
The future of news = small pieces, loosely joined
NYT Jim Roberts/CNN Peter Bale on why we’re in a “golden age of storytelling” - Journalism.co.uk
Robin Sloan on his “Fish” tap essay - The Verge
News Articles as Assets and Paths - Jeff Jarvis
Side note, they used Infogram to make this infographic (which for some reason wouldn’t post here as an image), and it looks really nice (other than the fact that they forgot to remove one item of dummy text). I’ve been meaning to try it for a while, but am getting really proud of my Illustrator skills so don’t want to move off of there.
Once again I’m going to post the raw links from my English language social media monitoring on the Egyptian election. Why? Because why not.
These are being used towards a live blog, which you can see here: http://voanews.com/content/live_blog_egypt_election_step_forward_in_path_to_reform/940031.html
Timestamps are the time I sent the links out to our newsroom (in DC time).
Because I’m passing this stuff around my newsroom, and it seems silly to keep it to myself…
Timestamps are the time I sent around that batch of links. And yes, of course I recognize that I could stick this stuff in a Storify, but I’m sending links around by email right now, so I’m copying and pasting out of email and into here. Deal. (Or check out a Storify liveblog here: http://www.middleeastvoices.com/2012/05/live-blog-egypt-votes-for-new-president-83412/)
Chartbeat CEO with a good explanation of how analytics should drive reporting
I don’t know what this has to do with digital media, other than that it’s just such a cool and simple idea. I know it’s been around for a while, and been done elsewhere, but I just rediscovered it recently.
Just shows the importance of thinking creatively and not being stuck in ideas of what content is “supposed” to look like. Lovely.
Twitter search result for “Obama” about 15 minutes after news broke that he now supports gay marriage.
Will not be surprised if the Twitter breaks sometime soon.
Really cool data display, IMHO. What I love about this is that all you have to do is look at it to glean some insights, but it also lets you dig in to get more information. In fact, if I have one criticism (“criticism”), I wish there was another layer to dig down into.
Google’s free mobile-izer for websites. DEAD simple.
Really great project. If all this was was a crowdsourced attempt to find out how Guardian readers are being tracked across the internet, it would be cool. But the fact that they also took the time to find out what cookies are tracking users on their own site, and to put together a neat little demonstration of where and why those are used, takes this to the next level. #inspiration!
Now that Google Analytics allows you to share Dashboards, I thought I would share some of the ones I created for the step-by-step guide. Copy the link and paste it in your browser. Then just apply it to any profile(s) you like. The layout and settings will be applied to your own data.
Once you have the dashboard in your profile, you can add, delete, and edit the widgets to suit your needs.
Management Summary Dashboard
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=dashboard&uid=Q3rNWrlERkCNN2v8i3b8GA
Social Media Dashboard
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=dashboard&uid=7Rnm4M6oRZa2YlPF0ukMeA
Site Search Dashboard
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=dashboard&uid=kIgGZZW6SHKQTANSeOqMUA
Video Dashboard
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/permalink?type=dashboard&uid=L9kF7B3TTxKXWY47ML5edw
Examples of who is using social media and other digital platforms to maximum effect in journalism and storytelling. Open for public editing to add your own examples.
Absolutely amazing collection of data viz tutorials
