In Search of the Perfect Skillset for a Programmer/Journalist. In my first post about programmer/journalists, I wrote about the “how computer-assisted reporting (CAR) evolved into this new role.
Although not all programmer/journalists started with CAR, that skillset is still the basis for any programmer/journalist. CAR skills start with obtaining data and public records. Knowing where to find this information, either online or by request, is the starting point for any project. The next step is organizing and making sense of the data using spreadsheets or databases. Investigative Reporters and Editors, one of the biggest CAR groups, teaches those skills and more: ArcView mapping software, Geographic Information Science, SPSS statistical analysis software and social network analysis software. Web development is probably the biggest distinction between CAR skills and programmer/journalist skills, though there aren’t any hard-and-fast distinctions.
XHTML / CSS / JavaScript / jQuery / Python / Django / xml / regex / Postgres / PostGIS / QGIS ChangeTracker. Reuters Closes Second Life Bureau, but (Virtual) Life Goes On. A view of the hype cycle of virtual worlds by Gary Hayes The sun shines brightly as I stroll along the curving pier above the water, looking out toward a beautiful island with trees swaying in the wind.
There’s a looming ampitheater festooned with signs for Thomson Reuters, and a series of concrete buildings that appear ready to hold important meetings. I stride in confidently through the doorway… You might think I was describing a trip to visit Reuters in the UK, but really, I was strolling through the virtual world of Second Life (SL), visiting the Thomson Reuters island, now largely vacant. The island symbolizes the efforts of media companies not only to cover life in the virtual world of Second Life, but also to live there and set up virtual offices. But last October, Reuters closed its bureau, and let its specialized blog lapse. How did the media go wrong in coverage — and participation — in SSL, and what went right?
Robert Hof Lynx: Did media miss the bigger story of Second Life? Twitter Raising New Cash At $250 Million Valuation. Wikis Still Slow to Catch on Internally, Externally. Our newsroom at Mediafin is transforming into an integrated multimedia operation.
To prepare for this, we recently decided to create two wikis to stimulate talk and facilitate media training programs. At the same time we also created another wiki to encourage discussion amongst our readers. In this very early phase of the experiments, I learned that wikis are still an unusual concept for many people. For people who already know each other well, a wiki can be an efficient way to prepare projects and events, but the tool seems less useful for a group of strangers. Thus, I am not yet convinced that a wiki is a good way to let Mediafin’s reading audience create new content. Wikis for internal discussions We decided to use PBWiki to stimulate the discussion at the Central News Desk (CND), the editorial department where about 18 journalists work primarily for our financial wire service, providing content for our websites but also for the Mediafin print publication. External wiki Trying Out a Ning.