NY Times features (and hires for) Computational Journalism
By BradStenger | June 24, 2008
Google News is the subject of a 1500-word article in the NY Times’ Technology section, At Google, Slow Growth in News Site, by Miguel Helft. Journalism 3G keynote Krishna Bharat gets quoted near the end of the piece.
Last week, for instance, a cluster of articles on gay marriages in California included those from major national and California outlets, like The Los Angeles Times, The San Jose Mercury News and The New York Times. It also included an opinion piece from a radio news service in West Virginia that was critical of gay marriage.
“I don’t think it is a negative that they have this kind of diversity in the news,” said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of the Web site Search Engine Land. “With the diversity can come weird stuff.”
Google said that juxtaposing various viewpoints is part of the appeal of Google News. “If you see opposing points of view battling it out, it makes you wake up and think,” said Krishna Bharat, the research scientist who created Google News. “That’s what makes people news junkies.”
The machinery that runs Google News is, when viewed positively, a solid success. The diversity of stories mentioned in the article equates with the sophistication of the algorithms being deployed. The information density for the word- and number-filled, single-page interface runs very high, no accident when it’s free of real estate-hogging video. And given that the design serves viewers mostly at one-page intervals, news.google.com still ranks Number 8 among all news sites.
The Times, however, presents a less rosy perspective on Google News, pointing out that other, higher-ranking news sites geared towards multi-page views and showcasing multimedia (like Yahoo! News, MSNBC, and nytimes.com) have grown much faster over the past few years.
It’s worth noting that the NY Times is currently hiring a range of journalistically-inclined software developers. Since June 15 the company has posted jobs on Monster.com for:
- Software Engineer-FEEDS
- Associate Technical Writer
- Interface Engineer
- Technical Project Manager
- Online News Designer
- Design Technologist
- Information Architect
- Software Developer-Content Management Systems
Topics: Automation, Content Management, Info Viz, News Interfaces, Productivity | No Comments »
Global Voices Online seeks Public Health Editor
By BradStenger | May 6, 2008
One of the smartest groups working in computational journalism is look for someone health-y.
The Public Health Editor will be responsible for writing weekly articles which cover the latest discussions and topics related to public health and human rights in the developing world …
More.
Topics: Information | No Comments »
Andrew Revkin’s Big Job
By BradStenger | April 29, 2008
Andrew Revkin, climate change beat reporter and blogger for NY Times, has one of the most important and difficult jobs on Earth. He’s watch captain as the planet undergoes epic transformative change, and as the impacts pile up in accelerating fashion. While his writing and reporting are up to the task he’s been handed, it’s his exceptional productivity and willingness to experiment that make me confident he is the right person for the job.
A recent post outlines his upcoming plans and he asks for suggestions. Please give him your help. And somebody give him a raise.
So even as humanity is in the midst of conducting the vast “geophysical experiment” of rapidly altering the global greenhouse, a growing array of people — scientists, communicators and campaigners in their various realms — are also experimenting with new ways to consider and respond to this problem (or issue, in the parlance of the White House).
Dot Earth has greatly lengthened my workday, eating up time that could be spent reporting stories for the printed paper (or being with family and friends). But I believe it’s unavoidable, necessitated by the nature of our times, in which complexity and uncertainty shape events as much as the things we understand well. The days when the media could do their job by summarizing developments of the day — epitomized by the reassuring Walter Cronkite signoff, “And that’s the way it is” — are long gone.
That said, I will be shifting a bit more of my workday back into reporting and writing for print in the coming months, so my post rhythm here may slow a bit. Themes I’ll be exploring, both on the Web and in the paper, include the question of whether the next (and necessary) green revolution can be “green” in the environmental sense. I’d be happy to hear from you on that.
Topics: Content Management, News Gathering, News Interfaces, Productivity | 1 Comment »
Wilson Miner’s Accessible Data Visualization
By BradStenger | April 14, 2008
Wilson Miner recently wrote a nice how-to on displaying data (even large amounts of data and/or small amounts of screen real estate) using just html markup and CSS. … http://www.alistapart.com/articles/accessibledatavisualization
I’d first thought that Joe Gregorio’s Sparkline Generator (http://bitworking.org/projects/sparklines/) would kickstart widespread use of the in-line, word-size info graphs back when he introduced his webservice in 2005 (http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/06/22/sparklines.html). The original idea goes back to a May 2004 Ask E.T. post by Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001OR).
Topics: Info Viz, News Interfaces | No Comments »
Upcoming Conferences related to Computation + Journalism
By BradStenger | March 16, 2008
- Mashup Camp 6, Mar 17-20 at Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. One of the best run, most popular unconferences out there. No cost to attend.
- NewsTools2008, Apr 30-May3 at Yahoo! Conference Center in Sunnyvale, CA. Bill Densmore and his team have put together a great group of news and technology leaders, with plans to discuss, design, and begin to build systems that will sustain “journalism that matters”.
- Google I/O, May 28-29 at Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA. Two days of learning about Google APIs and open web technologies.
- OSCON, July 21-25 at Portland Convention Center in Portland, OR. The Open Source Convention, where attendees (2500 people expected) go deep into all sorts of technology and software howto-s.
Topics: Automation, Mashups, News Interfaces | No Comments »
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