Alfredo Covaleda,
Bogota, Colombia
Stephen Guerin,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
James A. Trostle,
Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
An impressive list of fine work by journalists in 2004. Note the increasing number of stories that employed digital analytic tools. http://www.ire.org/contest/04winners.html
This seems to be National Library Week at the IAJ. But we are especially in sympathy with the concerns raised by Victoria McCargar, associate technology editor at the Los Angeles Times, concerns she writes about in The Sybold Report addressing the issue “Following the Trail of the Disappearing Data.” The piece lays out the very real issues facing not just institutions of journalism but, we believe, the fabric of democracy. Though McCargar is talking about newspapers, her arguments should be applied to ALL journalism institutions. There's no reason — except short-sightedness — that broadcast operations have any less responsibility to maintaining information patrimony. (Well, maybe they do: they long ago dropped having real news operations because, gee, that would cut into shareholder returns.)
Elliott Parker, and the Journet listserv, tips us to a NewScientist.com report…. “Governments and big business like to indulge in media spin, and that means knowing what is being said about them. But finding out is becoming ever more difficult, with thousands of news outlets, websites and blogs to monitor. “Now a British company is about to launch a software program that can automatically gauge the tone of any electronic document. It can tell whether a newspaper article is reporting a political party’s policy in a positive or negative light, for instance, or whether an online review is praising a product or damning it. Welcome to the automation of PR. ” http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7210&feedId=online-news_rss20)–at Interesting perhaps in its nuance, but hardly new in concept. Here at the IAJ we've long been impressed with the work done at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory around “information visualization.” “Information Visualization is the direct visualization of a representation of selected features or elements of complex multi-dimensional data. Data that can be used to create a visualization includes text, image data, sound, voice, video – and of course, all kinds of numerical data.” See http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/about.html and http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/technologies.html
As believers in the RRAW-P process well know, it all good journalism starts with the first “R” – Research. And good research starts with regular tips and pointers from professional researchers, a class to which journalists are usually adopted cousins. That’s why we look forward to Thursdays, when e-mail newsletters come from some of the best in the business.
While The NYT has been busy revealing the Administration's use of faux news or video news releases to get their messages out, and the concomitant lack of responsibility shown by news stations which broadcast those VNR's, the newspaper pays considerably less attention to its own embedded ads in Time's news stories. See generally the Friday weekly “Escapes” pullout section and more specifically the “My Life, My (fill in the name of a car)”advertisements that The NYT runs about once every two months under the heading of “Driving.” The piece from March 25, “My Life, My Nissan Maxima,” was typical. The proud Nissan owner, who described herself as an “independent type,” was pictured with her Maxima with a subhed of “Liberation on Wheels.” The soap type story goes through predictable turns as the heroine describes her love affair with the car, hits a subsequent bump in the road with a diagnosis of medical problems that prevent her from driving for six months, and an eventual redemption as she is once again reunited with her vehicular liberator. Apart from the sap, The NYT plays a loose game of journalistic ethics. The type face for the articles is indistinguishable from other news stories. The story is not identified as an advertisement and has a reporter's “as told to” byline. Unlike other NYT archival news stories, the “My Life's” always remain free to access on the Web raising questions as to who is paying the freight for that service. A convenient fact sheet, including purchase details, accompanies the pieces. I have raised my concerns with the public editor for The NYT, Daniel Okrent, and I have received automated responses in return. In addition to the archive availability cost questions, it would be enlightening to know whether ad dollars from the auto manufacturers (such as 3 full page ads in today's A section) are buying the adnews.
GISCafe.com, an online magazine for the GIS community, recently established a site for “University GIS.” This includes a number of great tools for analytic journalists, not the least of which are syllabi for self-learning or running a training program in a newsroom, along with links to GIS experts around the nation who might be available as backstops on a GIS project.
One of the folks on Crimemapping made a fine contribution today filled with “heads-up” tips when it comes to crime mapping.
Xcelsius does magical things for your Excel spreadsheets. It turns the numeric data into controlable Flash charts, which can be standalone “movies,” imported into PowerPoint or sent to colleagues as click-and-manipulate e-mail. Check out the Quicktime demos at http://www.infommersion.com/demos.html
This Gallery of Data Visualization displays some examples of the Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics, with the view that the contrast may be useful, inform current practice, and provide some pointers to both historical and current work. We go from what is arguably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, to the current record-holder for the worst. See http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/
There are many things that faster computers have made possible in recent years. For [journalists], scientists, engineers, statisticians, managers, investors, and others, computers have made it possible to create models that simulate reality and aid in making predictions. One of the methods for simulating real systems is the ability to take into account randomness by investigating hundreds of thousands of different scenarios. The results are then compiled and used to make decisions. This is what Monte Carlo simulation is about. Monte Carlo simulation is often used in business for risk and decision analysis, to help make decisions given uncertainties in market trends, fluctuations, and other uncertain factors….. This article will guide you through the process of performing a Monte Carlo simulation using Microsoft Excel. Although Excel will not always be the best place to run a scientific simulation, the basics are easily explained with just a few simple examples.” See http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/mc/index.html
