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It’s time to rethink visual storytelling on the web from the bottom up

drewvigal:

Amazing stories, fiction and non-fiction, that come alive, not because of flashy interactivity or glossy photography, but because they embrace the true nature of the web.

I’m with you, Adam. Let’s do it!

So much of what we (traditional storytellers and media — I’m looking at you newspapers) doesn’t capture the full power of the web. We’re ineloquently translating one medium onto the other, and we struggle to question form and format. 

Some things I wish my storytelling colleagues would start thinking up experiments for/with:

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12. Remember that experiments are serious business

Sometimes people in news companies can misunderstand what “experimentation” truly means. It’s not about frivolous, pie-in-the sky ideas. It’s about rapidly testing new ideas to start building toward new standards. You are building the future through experiments. Experimentation is just as important as those mission-critical roadmap projects.

14. Keep your users at the heart of everything you do.

At the end of the day, you’re not fighting these fights for yourself. You’re fighting for your readers — your users — who are taking the information you give them to make decisions about their lives. If you’re ever wondering why you’re fighting or whether it’s worth it, go back to your mission to best serve the user and look at the problem through that lens. You will likely find some clarity.

15 Steps for Changing Newsroom Culture

I’ve been meaning to write up pretty much this exact list based on my own experience, but Lauren Rabaino beat me to it. (I guess perfection is the enemy of done.)

These two are probably the most important to get everyone in the newsroom bought in on, IMO.

Quote IconComputer scientists and data people have a process called normalization, where there’s a table of a thing, and that thing gets related to other tables that need to reference that thing. That way, all that’s being stored in the other tables are references to this thing—the relational parts of a relational database system. This is exactly how I set up PolitiFact. There’s a people table, and they say things (the statement table), or promise things (the promises table) or they get mentioned in stories (you guessed it; there’s a stories table). These kinds of relationships don’t exist in most newspaper content systems.

Finding Stories In The Structure Of Data

Matt Waite builds on Adrian Holovaty’s brilliant essay about a change in mindset that journalism needs to take — from reporting to build just stories, to reporting that gathers and presents structured data.

I hammer the point, whenever the opportunity arises, that the websites my peers work on are really just translations of print products. They fail to capture the full potential of the web and, as Waite points out, miss the fact that stories really are structured data.

Now I’m realizing that, to add to my bag of talking points I employ in trying to drive digital culture change in a news organization, it will help turn on the light bulbs for some if they have a conceptual understanding of relational databases, how they work and what we could do with them.

(I don’t have an answer yet for how to sell this to those who just want to be “great writers.” That’s a tough sell.)

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How paywalls give local TV stations a mobile advantage

corybe:

I feel bad for beating up on the Sacramento Bee, but it’s good mobile lesson for all of us.

“Product-wise, both KCRA and the Bee’s apps aren’t that far apart, and that’s part of the problem. If you read the negative reviews, people expect more for content that costs money.”
Value proposition. Utility. I keep trying to drive this home, but old habits and mind sets are powerful forces. This is not a lens that is usually part of a vision for quality journalism and selling advertising.

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The subscribe-by-journalist model

I try not to scare the reporters around me too much with talk about what disruption in journalism means for how they define their work and how it probably forces a new approach.

What I mean is, used to be a reporter could focus on a beat and cover it. The output of their work was stories. I believe that, these days, while a reporter still must produce stories (and video, and data, and all the rest) their real output should be the creation of communities. The size and depth of engagement they’re able to facilitate among people who share a common interest is how I’d evaluate them; the content is about guiding the conversation.

So I’m intrigued by this experimental Dutch model. The flip side, I suppose, is that it might encourage the pursuit of cult of personality, as opposed to quality journalism and community. 

My first editor hired me because I had not, in fact, studied journalism. The second editor to hire me did so because I had not been working in journalism, but in a web-intense marketing startup. The education that’s been the most valuable so far as a digital news director? My training and experience as an educator. (Being able to teach myself javascript hasn’t hurt, either.) Live a full life. Learn everything. 
Zoom

My first editor hired me because I had not, in fact, studied journalism. The second editor to hire me did so because I had not been working in journalism, but in a web-intense marketing startup. The education that’s been the most valuable so far as a digital news director? My training and experience as an educator. (Being able to teach myself javascript hasn’t hurt, either.)

Live a full life. Learn everything. 

O’Reilly Radar’s Alex Howard hosted this great Google+ Hangout on Air with many of the data journalism luminaries I’m following and learning from. 

One topic that wasn’t covered, though: I believe there’s value to be created/captured in the mastery of data, i.e. there’s business potential in addition to the opportunities for journalism. 

Really excited to hear the discussion of “For Journalism,” as I believe data analysis and reporting definitely need to be incorporated into journalism curriculum. Reporters don’t go into journalism for their love of finance and statistics.

Quote IconSo, without conscious effort, the brain always tries to close the distance between observed phenomena and knowledge or wisdom that can help us survive. This is what cognition means. The role of an information architect is to anticipate this process and generate order before people’s brains try to do it on their own.

Every journalist should, perhaps, see themselves as an information architect: this is the valuable service they provide.

I’m excited and pre-reading assignments for Alberto Cairo’s Knight Center-funded MOOC on data visualization:

http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/mooc/FunctionalArt_intro_chapter1.pdf

Quote IconI noted that the latest estimates are that the online advertising market grew by 18% in the third quarter to $9.3 billion, and yet few newspapers — including the NYT — have seen anything like that kind of increase. Why?

If you didn’t catch this debate on Twitter, it’s a great discussion on pay walls in publishing.
Not anything in the way of answers, but the right questions.
http://gigaom.com/2012/12/23/the-pros-and-cons-of-newspaper-paywalls-a-twitter-debate/

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Publishing incumbents have been faced with disruption for years. But a curious, natural thing is happening: another, increasingly difficult to dismiss publishing ecosystem — disconnected from and unbeholden to legacy — is emerging. Bubbling up.5

A few years back, ‘publishing’ startups6 were usually launched by one of two types of individuals:

Technologists disconnected from traditional content ecosystems
Incumbents of traditional content ecosystems disconnected from technologists
What publishing startups really needed during that narrow window of time was both: Technologists who got infrastructure and product, coupled with the stewards of the content of the incumbents. What they needed — and often lacked — was a mutual empathy.

Now, it’s not so clear. The content of the incumbents becomes less important as new content creators emerge. And emerging they are.

A very thoughtful and concise explanation by Craig Mod of why Marco Arment’s The Magazine is a simple-yet-glorious triumph, while weaving in the application of Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation and what this means for legacy publishers.

Suddenly, I want to dive in to the “subcompact publishing” business.