Scripting News - Latest Comments in Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Stanley_Krute — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:15:28 -0000

Nice to read this on the day the NYT pre-announced their suicide.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:32:46 -0000

Given the quality of the journalism we've settled for -- yes -- I think
having a source who really cares about getting people the information they
need is vastly better than having a journalist doing whatever it is these
days supposed journalists do.

That bit with Anderson Cooper would have been fine if it had been broadcast
live once, but every time it replays it tells me more about the programming
of CNN not their ability to get us the information we need.

Remember the scene in Broadcast News where the William Hurt character fakes
crying on camera?

That's what CNN is today.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Jeff Brown — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:28:17 -0000

I used the term "mob" only because I feel it most accurate describes a disorganized group of people following a breaking news event (Mega-Event in Davespeak). See

But I think we're talking about very different types of Journalism here. One is faster, quicker, as journalists scramble to cover an ever evolving breaking event.

I see the point you are trying to reach for, and in some ways agree with the ideal but the question that I have to pose back is; Can you be both source and journalist? Participant and reporter?

Sources are free to be biased, partisan and opinionated. Journalists, have no such luxury and should disclose conflict and point out the bias in their sources.

I doubt a "source" in the traditional sense could never meet the ten item "Elements of Journalism" test posed by Kovach and Rosenstiel.

You bring 30 years experience to technology news, that is valuable and can help bring context and depth... but how much of what you write can be considered educated or informed opinion based on that experience?

Sometimes information is head-achingly complex and difficult to follow, the journalist may need to summarize and dumb it down to make it understandable to their audiences. Without "dumbing down" that information may never get widespread public attention.. Again the Journalism committed by a trade journal, a peer review publication or more pedestrian MSM is very different. Neither are any more, nor less important or valuable.

I guess that in the end I view Journalism as a process.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:13:32 -0000

There are various approaches to that idea out there.

http://spot.us/ is probably the most famous and it's exactly what you're
asking for.

http://explainthis.org/ is another.

Dave

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

tim — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:56:18 -0000

It'd be nice if there were an outlet to cut out the middle-man. A "hub" that allows a pro to work on topics that are clearly of interest to their readers. You might have a list of topics that readers can "vote" on, the journalists would research/report on those topic. Readers would be hooked up to paypal (or somesuch) and, if they liked the article, they could contribute $0.99 or so to the journalist. Journalists would know in advance how many readers have an interest in a particular topic because of the voting system. Surely, it has its flaws, I'm just thinking aloud here... in any case, I think there's a real need for in-depth research/reporting....

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:12:45 -0000

"If people were willing to spend 15 minutes talking with a professional journalist, they are obviously willing to spend 15 minutes telling their version of a story directly to the web."

I don't think this is true for all people, or even most people, or we would see even more content on the web than we currently do.

However, I'll grant that it may be sufficiently true as an approximation (and that the reality will approach the approximation as barriers continue to fall).

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:00:53 -0000

I don't like the term "mob" and I don't agree with your thesis.

When I cover technology news I do it with the benefit of 30 years of experience, so my point of view is much more informed than what you get from the professional reporters.

Mega-events like the Haiti earthquake are exceptions, but in ordinary events, the people the pros quote, the sources -- will go direct, and the quality of information we get will be higher, because it won't be diluted through the dumb-down filter of the pros.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:57:37 -0000

Misunderstanding -- I was saying that I like to begin every thought process with things I know or believe strongly to be true. No proofs are possible when forecasting the future. I'm just reciting in this piece, one of my basic assumptions. You may disagree, and chart your course accordingly.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Jeff Brown — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:56:26 -0000

To twitter goes down following today.s strong 6.1 Haiti aftershock.. the end result is that now information is having trouble flowing out of Haiti unless you have a satellite phone or feed.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:53:45 -0000

I don't think this was the place to "get things straight." It's part of a different discussion. We already have had plenty of opportunity to hear the tale of woe of the professional journalist, the newspapers are *filled* with that story. It would be refreshing if they carried some other point of view -- for example the pov of a person who depends on getting accurate news. That was my point in the series of tweets, but apparently you took it personally, an all-too-common reaction among pros. My point was this, you have a choice -- start covering our world not just yours, or get routed around. So far, the route-around approach seems to be the choice the pros are making.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

mterenzio — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:14:06 -0000

If people were willing to spend 15 minutes talking with a professional journalist, they are obviously willing to spend 15 minutes telling their version of a story directly to the web.

The problem is curating existing information into some sort of coherence. Which I guess it always has been, but now it can't be done by one person efficiently enough to make it economically feasible. We need a mixture of tools and the role of professionals is quite different. Journalists need to be able to make intelligent data queries as well as deliver the information effectively.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

rickmason — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:46:19 -0000

I think there will be all sorts of experiments and right now all we can do is make educated guesses. I think the new newspaper will be a cooperative, owned by local advertisers and interested citizens. That way it will be more representative of its community, more in touch than a majority of papers today.

I think it needs to be stripped to the bare minimum with reporters in one room and advertisers in another. Long term I think it needs to shift to purely electronic distribution whether it be tablets or something else. There needs to be no more than 2-3 hours between the reporters putting a paper to bed and the readers consuming it..

But for the present there will need to be a contractor printing papers and distributing them to an enlarged number of newsboxes. Home delivery in printed form sadly is done. There's also a possibility that the focus will shift back to mostly afternoon newspapers.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

stevesilberman — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:38:56 -0000

Love Terry's story of "Harry."

Dave, I just didn't realize the role of the unpaid contributor to news via blogs etc. was under any threat, save poverty. Granted, I don't attend the conferences you do, and I'm sure you have a smart take on what's being emphasized (and overemphasized) there. But as a journalist with a proven track record who has recently taken a nasty income hit, I can tell you that the reason that seasoned writers are unhappy these days is not because you or anyone else has a forum to help make news. Thank goodness journalism is changing and that you're helping to push it forward. But what if the Open Source world proved to major corporations that programming jobs should not pay? What if you spent 25 years getting good at a skill that the world desperately needs more of, then suddenly the best people you knew in the business lost their jobs?

You said to me on Twitter last night, "Your attitude is pretty typical of professionals, you have an entitlement." I waited on tables for 11 years before I could make a moderate living as a writer. During those years, I wrote all the time, studied with older writers I knew I could learn from, and was told by dozens of people that it was almost impossible to make a living as a writer. You and I had columns a few months apart at HotWired, and I've been blessedly working a lot since. But every time I look at a blank screen I have the thought, "Did I ever know how to do this?" Entitlement?

Almost immediately after I took that income hit, I was contacted by a major website that I like very much. The wonderful editor there and I traded email for days nailing down a time to meet. Then I found out that she had been laid off. I finally got in touch with the editor just to say thanks. She told me that she would have asked me to write for free. I might have done it, too. I love being in the mix. I've been writing features online and in print since you and I both worked for HotWired. I'm good at what I do, and I certainly don't expect to be paid for every word I utter. But a story like The Placebo Problem (http://www.wired.com/medtec... takes time and considerable resources to report and get just right. There are no shortcuts. It has nothing to do with paper vs. bits; the value is in the lived experience behind the words.

Please do invent new ways of transmitting that value with geniuses like Jay Rosen. Please do add your own value as a maker and consumer of news. It shocks me that anyone would insist that only professional writers be participating in conceiving the future of news. I don't know anyone like that; most of my friends are hoping for useful insight from any quarter. Thank goodness that this technology makes it possible for more people to be heard, more juice and information to be flowing around for everyone. Now we just have to make sure that people who are highly skilled at reporting and storytelling -- because they've devoted their lives to doing it -- are rewarded like any other skilled practitioner.

RT @davewiner: Can't wait for the professional writers to clear out. They've screwed everything up.

That was your response to @hush6's post here: http://bit.ly/7HrxMh

It made me flinch, even after reading the post. I just told you why. I'm glad we could get things straight.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Batman — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:41:11 -0000

My guess would be, the new journalists will come from those that write well thought out comments everywhere, until such time they get noticed, and picked up by some sort of syndicated network. Print is quite possibly dead or dying, therefore, online is the way to go....

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

theodp — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:10:13 -0000

Valleywag-Hack to Hacker: Rise of the Journalist-Programmer
http://valleywag.gawker.com...

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

pxlated — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:23:51 -0000

This will be an interesting exercise/conversation to follow - Post & comments already point to that (for me anyway).

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Jihem — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:07:26 -0000

According to 'The Battle to Control America's Media' by Eric Klinenberg (Metropolitan Books, NY, 2007), 60% of press dispatches are published 'as is': even with fewer journalists, media broadcast the same sources, increasing the amount of 'news' while decreasing diversity. Of course even with fewer and fewer journalists investigating, you still have more and more people commenting the news. And I prove it.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Jeff Brown — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:07:11 -0000

Perhaps in Journalism 0.0 the "Mob" is the journalist?

This can best be demonstrated by how news organizations responded to Haiti. Early breaking news came out of social networking channels, more specifically Twitter. The early on site reporting was done by hurried email, or frenetic140 character message by the mob of eyewitnesses and participants... the public (mob) were the sources. The paid journalists started editing on and vetting the tweets and filing out the stories.

Early pictures and video didn't come from professional video or photo journalists. They came from camera phones and security cameras.

Likewise I'd also extend my hypothesis by observing that journalism is no longer a voyeuristic profession where detached observation is conveyed to the audience. A position only more proven when the likes of Anderson Cooper "rescues" an injured boy on camera, Sanjay Gupta performs life saving surgery on a critically inured girl or a British journalist smuggles a child out of a ravaged city.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Terry Heaton — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:44:32 -0000

Of postulates and proof.

I did a research project a long time ago on personalities and engineers. The company paying for the study was tops in their field and trying to find more of a guy we'll call "Harry." Harry was different than the other engineers. He sat in a little office off a warehouse far removed from where much of the company's work was done. He was an oddball who happened to smoke, but he was so valuable to the company that they accommodated his wishes and put him where he'd offend no one. When the engineering team ran into a roadblock, managers knew to give the device to Harry and see what he could do. He'd shortcut here, add there, remove a couple of what everybody thought were key steps, and walk out of his office -- sometimes days later -- cigarette dangling, to pronounce he'd solved the problem. The other engineers would be stunned. "That's impossible," they'd say of his manipulations. "You can't do that," but he had. He never stopped to prove postulates; he simply moved where it felt right. It is the way of the creative mind.

I don't think we're going to fix what's happening to traditional journalism through traditional methods, and I'm willing to let you and Jay work away in your back room and see what happens. I appreciate that you've chosen to do some of your thinking in public, because your mind fascinates me, and I enjoy trying to connect the dots. In the end, though, the mind is a pretty lonely place (exceptions noted), so the process can't ever be as clear to the observer as the conclusion. There are a lot of people pulling for you. Have fun with Jay.

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

howardweaver — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:06:04 -0000

I imagine you and I will end up agreeing about a l lot of where I see you headed in future installments, but you should be glad I am not the one grading this particular assignment.

The fact that there are a lot of laid-off reporters does not prove that there will be fewer paid reporters in the future. At best, it may convincingly suggest that there will be fewer reporters paid by the same institutions that paid them in the past. It takes no account of evolution of those institutions.

Your conclusions may urn out to be right, but this postulate is far from proven.