The pitiful cult of ‘data journalism’ Times were that you could pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and be simultaneously educated and entertained by their informative infographics, which were lovingly crafted from authoritative data and accompanied by judicious analysis. The key to success with these graphics was that they explained something about the data you might not have gleaned simply by looking at a column of numbers. The Economist, too, was pretty good at revealing trends and interesting correlations with clear, unfussy graphs. Then something odd happened. More likely is that the hubris of the newsroom – the “Who can do me one of those?” The apotheosis of the trend toward explaining everything as if to children is seen on the BBC, particularly during elections. (As it happens, I have some sympathy with this view of the public as fucking morons. The devastation wreaked upon the fragile minds of amateur bloggers cannot be overstated. Let us cast our eye over a few recent stories in this laughable arena.
Hyperlocal publishing – some statistics | interactivecultures This is a cross-posting from the website for a new project that the research centre is involved with – ‘Media, Community and the Creative Citizen‘. A key research strand within it is about Hyperlocal publishing in the UK. It’s early days for the project but already its outputs are generating interest I was pleased to be asked to talk at the BBC’s Connecting Communities conference on 24th May 2012. Below are the audio and slides (also as PDF) from the event. Sample The research sampled a list of 432 active websites 8th till 18th May 2012. Publishing The average number of posts of those sites that published was 12.2 posts per site.The median number of posts of those sites that published was 7.3819 items were published in total75% of the items are produced by a third of the sites58% of items were produced by 20% of the sites.39 sites produced just one story133 (42.6%) sites produced 5 or less items. Frequency Geographic distribution
Quatre voies du datajournalism Le datajournalism ou journalisme de données, peut difficilement se résumer à un type de contenus ou à un type de démarche. Il requiert des compétences spécifiques, selon l'usage qui en est fait. J’ai eu l’impression, ces derniers jours, de répéter plusieurs fois la même chose à des personnes différentes (ce qui est un vrai plaisir quand il s’agit de datajournalism). D’où l’idée d’articuler ici ces quelques éléments récurrents. Photo CC par Ian-S sur Flickr Finalement, le datajournalism ou journalisme de données, peut difficilement se résumer à un type de contenus ou à un type de démarche. 1-COMPRÉHENSION : le datajournalism permet de mieux comprendre le monde. Pour cette visualisation des succès au box office américain depuis 1986, l’équipe du nytimes.com a particulièrement travaillé sur la forme des courbes, et leur couleur. Le datajournalism, c’est de la visualisation d’information. La datajournalism ne pourra donc pas se passer des compétences d’un interaction designer.
Beyond the crime scene: We need new and better models for crime reporting The classic crime beat, dating from at least the mid 19th century, is evolving. It has to evolve. There are good reasons to believe that the routines of “traditional” crime coverage produce a journalism that just isn’t as good as it needs to be. We need to try something new. These changes start with the spot story: the routine, straightforward “this just happened” report. Fortunately, a number of people and organizations are pioneering new approaches to crime reporting. The crime story under pressure The police have always been the key source for the crime beat, a.k.a the cops beat. The routines of professional journalism evolved long before the Internet, when one could assume that it was hard for people to find out about a crime without the journalist (and there was no way to link to online resources). One of the participants in that discussion was former crime reporter (and current Boston Globe newsroom developer) Andy Boyle. A journalist can discover things that the cops missed.
Sigaria Ltd: Information, Media & Publishing Services - Home¬es= How To Create Infographics In this tutorial you will learn that data doesn't have to be boring, it can be beautiful! Learn how to use various graph tools, illustration techniques and typography to make an accurate and inspiring infographic in Adobe Illustrator. Start by using the Rectangle Tool (M) to draw a shape. Give it a subtle radial gradient too. The entire design is based on a grid of four columns. To make the columns first select the rectangle and drag a guide onto the centre of the shape. Condense the shape so it fits within the left-most guide and centre guide. Move the shape over to the right and add another guide to the centre here. Using the Rectangle Tool (M) draw a thin white box on the centre line that will be the width of the gap between the columns. Repeat the process for the other columns with your final result being below. I like to place the most important graphics first and work-in the ancillary charts and graphs afterwards. Give the circles a variety of gradients. That's it!
Datajournalistik.se | Allt du beh?ver f?r att komma ig?ng. RT @Slate: Nine-year-old's lunch blog shames school into making changes: Martha Payne had some sad-ass lunches at her school in Scotland — unsatisfying food that sometimes had more hair than vegetables. So the 9-year-old decided to start a blog with photos and vital statistics about her meals. Almost immediately, the blog got international attention, including from prominent school lunch busybody Jamie Oliver. Result? Martha’s dad just met with the local council, and it announced that kids could have unlimited salad, fruit, and bread. For each of her lunches, Martha rated taste, healthiness, and pieces of hair (usually zero but not always). Today was very different at lunchtime. You can see vegetables getting more prominent on Martha’s plate over the course of the blog. Health rating 9/10, bitchezzz! In the U.S., people mainly worry that schoolkids eat too much lunch, not too little. I hope Martha enjoys her unlimited salads (and her brownie, which she said was “better than Dad’s”).
templates | GraphicRiver The Story Avengers Visualize! 8 hats Last week I posted a slideshare version of my slides from a recent pair of presentation events in Chicago. The title of this talk was “The 8 hats of data visualisation”. In this article I want to follow up these slides with a written accompaniment to contextualise and explain what I was presenting, as slides alone don’t really manage to achieve this effectively. Ever since I discovered data visualisation I have been intrigued by the many different subject areas and disciplines that contribute to its unique mix of art and science. As the field continues to increase in popularity and exposure, penetrating more into the mainstream, and as data resources and technological capabilities continue to enhance at incredible rates, the opportunities and challenges similarly increase. During my training courses I have met many people who have expressed a similar concern. Furthermore, we should assess more closely the role of technology in data visualisation. June 26th, 2012 in critique
FOI Friday How to dodge a conviction if you assault someone < Brighton Argus Thousands of criminals including sex offenders, arsonists and violent offenders have avoided conviction. Sussex Police introduced community resolution in 2011 to deal with low-level crimes. But The Argus can reveal that the policy has been used more than 11,000 times in the past three years and has even been used in a case of sexual assault against a child. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show it was used 1,200 times to deal with assaults resulting in an injury, and another 1,531 for assaults without injuries. Struggling to get a dentist? CONCERNS have been raised after the number of people visiting hospital for emergency dental treatment tripled in East Lancashire last year. The increase mirrored a national trend which health campaigners said was down to a rise in the number of families struggling to afford regular check-ups on their teeth, with visits to the dentist becoming a ‘luxury’ for many. (more…)
Want to cover local? Then you'd better BE local! Allow me to suggest one more mistake that the newspaper industry made that we shouldn’t allow the slip down the memory hole. It was a practice that I am sure struck many newsroom managers as a smart one… at the time. But it ultimately helped sever ties between publications and their communities, leading to less informed, less engaging coverage that left readers – and advertisers – with fewer reasons to support their local paper. What was this practice? It was conducting national job searches to fill local reporting positions. When I began my journalism career, J-school advisers told us to expect to start out at a smaller paper in a national chain, then try to work our way up to larger newsrooms, bigger cities, and more desirable places to live. The model was that of an assembly line, where you started by proving yourself on low-risk tasks that weren’t particularly critical to the overall operation, before moving up to higher-speed, higher-pressure jobs with national visibility.