Category Archives: Handy tools and technology

ScraperWiki blog: Hacks and Hackers hack day report

Hacks and Hackers play with data-driven news

Last Friday’s London-based Hacks and Hacker’s Day, run by ScraperWiki (a new data tool set to launch in beta soon), provided some excellent inspiration for journalists and developers alike.

In groups, the programmers and journalists paired up to combine journalistic and data knowledge, resulting in some innovative projects: a visualisation showing the average profile of Conservative candidates standing in safe seats for the General Election (the winning project); graphics showing the most common words used for each horoscope sign; and an attempt to tackle the various formats used by data.gov.uk.

One of the projects, ‘They Write For You’ was an attempt to illustrate the political mix of articles by MPs for British newspapers and broadcasters. Using byline data combined with MP name data, the journalists and developers created this pretty mashup, which can be viewed at this link.

The team took the 2008-2010 data from Journalisted and used ScraperWiki, Python, Ruby and JavaScript to create the visualisation: each newspaper shows a byline breakdown by party. By hovering over a coloured box, users can see which MPs wrote for which newspaper over the same two year period.

The exact statistics, however, should be treated with some caution, as the information has not yet been cross-checked with other data sets. It would appear, for example, that the Guardian newspaper published more stories by MPs than any other title, but this could be that Journalisted holds more information about the Guardian than its counterparts.

While this analysis is not yet ready to be transformed into a news story, it shows the potential for employing data skills to identify media and political trends.

LaInformacion.com: ‘Semantic news’ and the rise of the robots

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Some have said the future of journalism belongs to robots. Not the tin-made ones though, the ones that collect and organise information. At LaInformacion, that future is now.

LaInformacion looks just like any other news website, it has all the features we would expect of any other news website. And yet most of LaInformacion’s content is not sourced by a team of diligent scribblers but by machines. Mario Tascón, head of LaInformacion’s parent company Diximedia, explains how it’s done:

From 12:00 am until 6:30am the editor in chief is an algorithm that selects and organises the news that we get. It analyzes social network and search engine trends in real time. It’s a less expensive way to maintain a website during certain periods, and if you can’t notice it, it’s because it doesn’t work that bad.

According to Tascón the algorithm produces a huge amount of information: “More than 5,000 stories get into the system every day, including videos, texts and infographics.” That’s five times more than elpais.com, the second most read news website in Spain. A substantial part of that content isn’t generated in their newsroom but sourced from a network of partners: websites specialising in sports, technology, international affairs, etc. And since the source material is monitored in real time, they don’t have to worry about breaking news.

LaInformacion has a great technological frame that lists thousands of news stories in real time, so our approach to ‘breaking news’ uses far fewer resources than the traditional media. Breaking news is analyzed by the machines, using ‘semantic intelligence’. With that part of the job in the hands of the algorithms, journalistic resources are dedicated to researching elaborate stories and providing them with added value, and to experimenting with new narratives and different techniques.

Though it’s only been officially out of the beta phase since September, LaInformacion has already established a solid audience. According to Nielsen’s ratings, the site had 1.6 million users in December. Elmundo.es, which came top of the list, had 6 million. Asked how he felt about the paywall model, something he worked with whilst running elpais.com, Tascón’s answer was quite simple: “[Pay walls] are not going to work for those who want to develop the business. If the main goal is to protect print, let them shut down their websites, but they will kill their brands by doing so.”

If he’s right, the initial investment of 26 million Euros (22.5 million pounds) will be covered by the enterprise’s fourth year. In an environment where the market and the technology are developing faster than any model has time to establish itself, what are the next steps for Lainformacion then?

“To be fast and focus on what we know how to do best. As for the rest, associate with those who do it well.”

LaInformacion's trinity: users, robots and pros

The New York Times and the tablet

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This New York Times piece on print media’s hopes for the Apple Tablet, confirms that the company is developing a version of the paper for the tablet, but adds little detail:

The New York Times Company, for example, is developing a version of its newspaper for the tablet, according to a person briefed on the effort, although executives declined to say what sort of deal had been struck.

The New York Times has, however, announced its new ‘reader applications’ division:

On Monday, The Times also announced that its media group division had created a new segment for “reader applications,” and named Yasmin Namini, the senior vice president for marketing and circulation, to head it. Executives said the timing was coincidental, prompted not by the Apple device specifically, but by the growing importance to The Times of electronic reading devices in general.

The LA Times, meanwhile, reports that the New York Times is developing a large-screen version of the iPhone app – from Apple HQ:

Apple has been slowly amassing digital reading material for the forthcoming device. A team from the New York Times has been working in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters in recent weeks, developing a large-screen version of the newspaper’s iPhone application that incorporates video for the yet-to-be-unveiled device, according to one person with knowledge of the matter. A Times spokeswoman declined to comment.

On MacRumours.com:

The New York Times has long held a close relationship with Apple in regards to the iPhone platform, frequently finding itself featured in demonstrations at media events and keynotes. Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. revealed last week, however, that he will not be attending Apple’s media event, and when pressed for comment on Apple’s involvement with the newspaper’s plans for restructuring online access, said only “Stay tuned.”

And Gawker, which had the internal memo announcing the birth of the NY Times’ ‘reader application’ division:

We’re guessing [NY Times] newsroom staff will be watching Apple’s tablet event as obsessively as any Apple fanboys later this week, if only to get details on the “continued growth in this new and important segment of” Times business.

MediaShift: Environmental impact of newspapers

data.gov.uk launches in public beta

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As widely reported elsewhere, data.gov.uk is now available in public beta:

Data.gov.uk acts as an online point of access for government-held non-personal data. This is to enable people like you to take it, re-use it and make interesting things with.

Full introductory post at this link…

“It’s [government data] such an untapped resource,” Sir Tim Berners Lee told BBC News.

“Government data is something we have already spent the money on… and when it is sitting there on a disk in somebody’s office it is wasted.”

#FollowJourn: @10000words / multimedia reporter

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#FollowJourn: Mark S. Luckie

Who? Multimedia producer for California Watch, part of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

What? Developed the 10,000 Words blog while unemployed, describing and detailing multimedia journalism techniques.

Where? You can read more on his blog, his website and follow his work on California Watch.

Contact? Follow him on @10000words or via info [at] 10000words.net.

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

@Documentally: The ultimate journalistic recording tool?

Top five UK journalism blogs and Tweeters in 2009 (and who to watch in 2010)

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With the proviso that journalism blogs and bloggers come and go, we have selected our own personal favourite journalism bloggers and tweeters. These are our absolute must-reads. We realise this is a somewhat subjective exercise, so please add your own in the comments below, or via Twitter to @journalismnews.