Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

Publications | Conferences | Teaching | Projects

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Design is key to good online journalism, not just coding and data

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John Hillman:

Yet in many ways a digital journalist is more likely to struggle with design than coding. Before you can begin coding you have to have this side of things clear, whether you are working on your own independent blog or developing a complex data rich piece for a much larger news website.

[…]

My opinion is that, like coding, you’ll get the best results when you’re working in a team of professionals; that digital trinity of a journalist, a coder and a designer.

As an online editor for a digital media company, I am aware of just how important coding is, although I don’t believe that journalists and coders will ever meld into the same role. I just think that a modern journalist should be able to understand and talk about web architecture fluently. The same applies to basic design principles.

Make that information architecture and I'll agree – should be understood by all modern journalists.

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How Facebook’s (flawed) privacy settings can help your reporting

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    Robert Hernandez on the "good" side of Facebook's flawed privacy settings:

    "Facebook gives you a false sense of private… but by now you should know better.

    The walls around the Facebook garden have crumbled because of the company's seriously flawed privacy settings.

    And while as a user you should be freaked out and proactive about your personal settings (and more conscious of what you are posting!), as a journalist this is presents an incredible, unfiltered opportunity to access your community on a diversity of topics.

    Hold your nose and thank youropenbook.org for making it easier to access your the community on Facebook – for better or worse.

    You can now quickly query what's on the mind of the millions of users that are sharing their raw opinions about any topic… sadly, they usually think it's "private," often sharing their opinions with their social guard down."

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: facebook privacy journalism practice

Do journalists need to learn to be programmers? Yes. And no. – Martin Belam

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    Martin Belam hits the nail on the head:

    "I've yet to see a software developer stand up and say that "citizen coders" will inevitably devalue the work that they do, and lead to job losses and a lack of quality in the sector.

    […]

    The second thing is the whole premise itself – do journalists need to be able to program?

    I think the ability to mark-up some HTML and understand why <span>, <div>, classes and IDs are important for CSS and Javascript is essential for anyone publishing in the web.

    But my answer is that no, journalists don't all need to be able to write program, but the ability to think like a programmer is an invaluable skill."

    Question remains, which is the best way to teach someone to think like a programmer?

    Whilst I was at Teesside University we ditched Dreamweaver for CMS/template based design, and we're about to enter the same discussions at Bournemouth University over the summer. Looking forward to it 😉

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: journalists practice webdesign programming future martinbelam

War journalists have a right to safety – David Schlesinger

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    War journalists have a right to safety – David Schlesinger

    David Schlesinger, editor in chief of Reuters:

    "When Wikileaks published the harrowing video of the deaths in Iraq of my colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, the world finally had the transparency it should have had about this tragedy.

    It was impossible for me to watch and not feel outrage and great sorrow – but this is not about trying to tell anyone else what to feel. This is about trying to find out exactly what happened and how to ensure it doesn't happen again.

    What I want from the Pentagon – and from all militaries – is simple: acknowledgment, transparency, accountability."

    Del.ici.us tags: wikileaks warreporting journalism practice reuters