Category Archives: Blog

Amazing Datajournalism Tool: Build Your Own International Human Development Index

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Be sure to check out this amazing new website from the UN that allows you to build your own International Human Development Index by dynamically changing the criteria used. Incredibly the website also allows you to upload your own data sets for inclusion in the index, or download the official ones in spreadsheet format for analysis or custom mashups.

The UN recently released its Human Development Report 2010 (20th Anniversary Edition), entitled The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. Drawing on a phenomenal range of statistics, the index is intended to to stimulate global, regional and national policy discussions on issues that are relevant to human development.

Courtesy of Vox Publica.

OS architects dream of a pure rebirth, enter the iPhone

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Jean-Louis Gassée on Apple’s Next Macintosh OS:

The main cause of OS cancer is backwards compatibility, the need to stay compatible with existing application software. OS designers are caught between yesterday and tomorrow. Customers want the benefit of the future, new features, hardware and software, but without having to jettison their investment in the past, in their applications.

OS architects dream of a pure rebirth, a pristine architecture born of their hard won knowledge without having to accommodate the sins of their fathers. But, in the morning — and in the market — the dream vanishes and backwards compatibility wins.

Enter the iPhone.

Courtesy of John Gruber.

We need more world news, not less

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Martin Moore:

You could say this was just a reflection of cost-cutting across the news industry. Foreign coverage is expensive, even in these days of cheap flights, mobile smartphones and instant publishing. But, if you talk to foreign correspondents, it seems that newspapers have lost confidence in the role it plays. Is foreign news something people expect to see but do not really read?

[...]

The golden age of foreign correspondents may have gone (if it ever existed), but the need for someone to report on, filter and make sense of the world is greater than it has ever been. Mainstream news organisations are still in a strong position to do this.The findings of this report indicate, though, that many are shying away from the challenge. If the decline continues, and news organisations withdraw still further from original foreign reporting, we will all lose out.

For a more international perspective, you could do worse than checking out Al Jazeera English.

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Twitter: breaking news before there is anything to officially break

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Bill Simmons:

Twitter, which exacerbates the demands of immediacy, blurs the line between reporting and postulating, and forces writers to chase too many bum steers. With every media company unabashedly playing the "We Had It First!" game, reporters' salary and credibility hinges directly on how many stories they break. That entices reporters to become enslaved to certain sources (almost always agents or general managers), push transparent agendas (almost always from those same agents or GMs) and "break" news before there's anything to officially break. It also swings the source/reporter dynamic heavily toward the source. Take care of me and I will take care of you.

From great article on the accidental Tweet…

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Edit Flow – newsroom workflow plugin for WordPress

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I have just come across the Edit Flow plugin. Currently at version 0.5.3 it promises to deliver a unified plugin for implementing a newsroom workflow within WordPress. In other words:

  • Custom post statuses (e.g. assigned, draft, pending review, pitch, waiting for feedback).
  • Editorial comments to provide feedback on posts.
  • Email notification of changes to posts.
  • Custom user groups.
  • New post meta-data (e.g. description, due date, location etc).

The authors promises to bring additional features in the future and are currently conducting a survey to gauge priorities from their user base.

Currently the plugin offers similar features to what can be achieved from Peter’s Collaboration and Post Notes plugins, which I have used on other news websites. The idea of unifying these features in a single plugin specifically targeted at newsroom workflows is interesting though… and it will be interesting to see if this effort can provide an even better solution to this challenge. I’ve installed it and testing now.

Update: slides from Andrew Spittle describing the philosophy behind the plugin and functionality future releases.

Student wiki notes – additional guidelines

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The Student Wiki Pages experiment I described previously is going very well so far, with students collaboratively producing notes of (mostly) very high quality and using the comment facility to discuss issues that come up in the lecture and their readings.

However, I have had a few emails over the past days from students concerned about various aspects of the assessment. These do not apply to all the seminar groups, but in order to ensure consistency, I provided some additional guidelines for all students as outlined below.

  • The wiki pages will never be complete, so the argument that people before you have written “everything” does not stand. You can contribute 1) notes from the lecture, 2) notes from the readings, 3) notes or observations on the videos from the lecture, 4) additional examples illustrating points from lecture or readings, 5) post comments discussing or reflecting upon the wiki page contents.
  • However, the wiki pages are NOT designed to be a competition! They are intended to be a collaborative process. To this end, you may want to contribute your notes in batches, so as to allow other people to add their own notes (but this is entirely up to you and there are no formal restrictions concerning this). It is your collective responsibility to ensure that everyone feels able to do so and that you all engage in dialogue with fellow students. If concerns remain about how to best do this, please discuss in your seminar group and agree on how to best tackle it.
  • You are marked on the quality of your content as well as the extent to which you are able to collectively work to produce the notes. That means a page written by a large number of contributors will likely score higher than one written by only one or two contributors, provided the content is of a similar standard. Hint: this is a unit on communication skills, use them!
  • If you are editing the wiki simultaneously, the tool may generate a new page with your modification or text. There is no way around this at the moment, other than to manually move your content across to the main page for that week (I’m trying to find a fix). Please make sure you do so if you are having conflict issues like this, though I will look at all pages submitted for each week when marking. To this end, could you all please ensure the pages have a common naming structure (e.g. Week 11, Week 12 A, Week 12 B, Week 13… or whatever you have decided upon)?
  • I can assist with technical issues of not having the correct permissions, but if you are having technical difficulties beyond this, please contact IT helpdesk who should be able to help.

    • So far it appears this resolved most people’s concerns (judging by comments posted on wiki pages), though I’ll know for certain come Monday’s lecture…

    National demonstration – ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ on 10th November [updated]

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    We Will March – Fund Our FutureNUS and UCU are jointly organising a national demonstration – ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ – to take place on Wednesday 10 November 2010.

    Assemble at Horse Guards Avenue from 12noon. The march will begin from 12.30pm through Westminster and past the Palace of Westminster.

    The rally and speeches will take place on Millbank outside the Tate Britain from around 13.15pm.

    Messages of support on the day- branches and members can either email messages to demo2010@ucu.org.uk or you can tweet by adding #demo2010 to your tweets.

    Write to your MP

    Take photos of you and your family holding one of the following posters. Don’t forget to upload it to the supporter gallery.

    I want to attend uni – but I can’t afford the debt
    I am attending the demo – poster
    I am supporting the demo – poster

    DEMO2010

    Continue reading →

    So just who does get social media?

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    Matthew Eltringham:

    In the last decade or more, the pressure of diminishing resources and increasing output has taken away the opportunity for journalists to do their job properly: to get out of the office and talk to real people about real things.

    But the social web has given us a second chance to reconnect with people – albeit in a virtual way – and we should grab hold of that opportunity with both hands. Collaborative journalism, networked journalism, distributed journalism, mutualised journalism – call it what you will, this is the real prize that social media offers media organisations.

    We should grab it with both hands, because if we don't the audience will grab it for themselves.

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    Journalistic potential of public tax returns

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    Eirik Stavelin on the journalistic potential of public tax returns showing income, tax paid and fortune.

    These tax return lists are made public in Norway, though as Eirik points out, only to news organisations at a fee of around £450. Newspapers currently publish stories related to these figures (e.g. politician's salaries, prominent local public figures etc), but also allow their audiences to search the records for specific names online.

    The article (in Norwegian) discusses how journalists can enhance their use of the data via for instance mashups and other online tools.

    Now if only UK tax returns were made public…

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    Murdoch: Would Serve Powerful If Bloggers, Bloviators Replace Journalists

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    Rupert Murdoch on justifying journalism:

    Now, it would certainly serve the interests of the powerful if professional journalists were muted – or replaced as navigators in our society by bloggers and bloviators. Bloggers can have a social role – but that role is very different to that of the professional seeking to uncover facts, however uncomfortable.

    I guess he does not consider his own journalists to be "professional" then, since they prop up his own political and business interests on a regular basis…

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