Journalism

Call to master data journalism | PANPA

May 18th, 2012

Steve Doig says 80 percent of data journalism takes place in Microsoft Excel

AUSTRALIA has been slow to take up data journalism, says Pulitzer-prize winning data journalist Steve Doig – but it’s not too late to catch-up and reap the benefits.

“Everyone has been slow to take up data journalism,” Doig told PANPA after speaking at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism on Wednesday.

“The important thing is that it’s easy to catch-up. The tools are all there.”

Journalists have used anecdotes to tell stories for much of the history of journalism.

Data journalism involves analysing large data sets and using the findings to tell stories.

“The power of database journalism is to be able to go beyond anecdote to evidence,” said Mr Doig, who describes himself as a data journalism evangelist.

His analysis of government building records after Hurricane Andrew in 1993 found that newer buildings were more likely to be damaged and the relaxation of building codes was responsible.

The resulting article in The Miami Herald was instrumental to it winning the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Adding database journalism to your skill-set will give a competitive edge in the news room, said Mr Doig.

“Instead of a finger-pointing story, we are able to say here’s why it happened,” he said.

Analysing thousands of pages of data isn’t as difficult as it sounds.

“Eighty percent of whatever can be done in data journalism will be done in Microsoft Excel,” said Mr Doig.

He traces the birth of data journalism to Walter Cronkite analysing the 1952 American election by using a computer to process exit poll data.

In recent years data journalism has been used to analyse MPs’ expenses by The Guardian and radiation levels around the Fukushima reactor by the New York Times.

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ITV2's new journalism show 'The Exclusives': A review | Wannabe …

May 18th, 2012

ITV2′s new journalism show ‘The Exclusives’: A review

Let’s all just breathe a massive sigh of relief. Why? Well, because we know that there’s absolutely no threat to any of us wannabe hacks from any one of the contestants on ITV2′s new journalism talent show.

The six ‘rookies’ were introduced in the first episode last night and to say I was shocked by the quality of them only shows that I had set my expectations way too high.

Hayley Newnes is an ex-glamour model who has a degree in English and works in Pizza Hut. It’s fairly clear she was chosen because she is an ex-glamour model. And can someone please tell her that six-inch stilettos are not the best footwear choice for working as a journalist. Having said that, she was awarded ‘rookie of the week’ and rightfully so – she was the only one who really had half a clue what she was doing.

Posh boy Felix Clarke is studying journalism at a London university. But he doesn’t know how to operate a dictaphone and evidence from last night would suggest he’s never learnt shorthand because he didn’t think of taking notes when interviewing Chloe Green (off Made In Chelsea) in case his dictaphone didn’t work (which, of course, it didn’t).

Stuart Roberts is the oldest of the rookies and the 28-year-old seems to have given every other job a shot (postman, shelf stacker, security guard, chef) and has now decided to give journalism a try. His lack of knowledge about anything related to More! where they were working in last night’s episode was shocking. Do some research Stuart, it’s really not that hard!

Chris Goddard is from Blackpool (yes, that really is just about all I can say about him). He was possibly put on the show for comedic effect, such as going out to interview ‘celebs’ outside Brits’ after show parties without a coat (absolute genius idea) and then coming back from said interviews and announcing that he was ‘broken’ after a night spent doing ‘proper tough journalism’. Go speak to a journalist working in Syria and then come back and say that.

Ellie Henman is a broadcast journalism graduate from the University of Leeds. She says she’s politically minded but celeb-obsessed. It looks like she’s probably got the most experience of any of the rookies – editing e-magazine Bloggers Central, writing for New Political Centre and working as an intern for an MP. She says the reason she’s on The Exclusives is she’s fed up of doing unpaid internships – aren’t we all?!

Sunny (I don’t think she has a last name – a bit like Madonna – oh, and a quick check on the ITV website tells me her name is actually Yasmin – confused? Me too!) is a call centre worker who dropped out of university after two weeks. She has kept diaries, which apparently shows she’s committed to a career in journalism. But she’s never actually had any work experience or done any blogging. Interesting choice.

So they’re our six hopefuls. Over the next six weeks they’ll fight it out for the prize of a twelve month contract at Bauer Media. But like I say, I don’t think we have too much to worry about.

A quick look at your reaction to our tweet ‘So, what did you think of The Exclusives?’ showed most of you were inclined to agree with me.

 

 

 

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Shaky future for online journalism in Ghana : Ghana Business News

May 15th, 2012

You Are Here: Home » Editorials/Opinion, Second Lead » Shaky future for online journalism in Ghana

Online journalism in Ghana does have a future, but that future is shaky. As more and more people surf the Internet for news and information, the opportunities are just unlimited.

Online news sources have become some form of reliable sources of news and information for Ghanaians both at home and abroad. Indeed, the online sources have become a source of news leads to radio and TV stations in the country, and some online news sources have found the radio and TV stations useful as sources of news.

Unlike the US and the UK where online media has thrived and often threatened newspapers, in Ghana both newspapers and online news sources are struggling. They are struggling for survival as advertising revenue goes round within a small cycle of news organisations.

While most online news sources in Ghana do not earn advertising revenue, online media in the US and UK generate income enough to sustain them as businesses.

In the US, online advertising revenue reached $12.1 billion for the first half of 2009, an increase of 11.3 per cent compared to the same period in 2008.

According to a report by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC US, a division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, display-related advertising-which includes banner ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorships-totalled more than $4.4 billion in the first six months of 2010, showing a significant increase of close to 16 per cent over the same period in 2009.

Despite this increase in online advertising in the US, however, some popular online news sources are shutting down.

The latest casualty is the Seattle-based political news site PubliCola.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, despite its strong readership, the site has closed down because it was not making advertising revenue.

The Review cited founder Josh Feit saying in a post that the site is quite popular, with “more than 400,000 monthly page views during the election season and currently more than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter followers.” But that doesn’t always equal commensurate returns.

“We haven’t been successful as a business. Advertising revenue has been limited and inconsistent,” he writes.

The challenges that online journalism in Ghana is however  facing is on two fronts: it has an integrity crisis and there is no advertising revenue.

A couple of months ago, the Ghana version of South African football news site, Kickoff.com shut down because it wasn’t making advertising revenue in the country.

While a few websites in Ghana are raking in huge amounts of money in advertising revenue, they are largely lacking in professionalism.

These websites are run mostly by non-professional journalists whose main interest is to use the platform first as a business and therefore do not pursue the basic norms guiding journalism.  And journalists working for some of these online news sources do not have the independence to practice according to the tenets of the profession.

And while most of these websites claim to be aggregators, they continuously engage in plagiarism. They generate very little original content and they don’t always acknowledge the sources from where they copy news and publish on these sites. While they would sometimes credit sources for the news, they often attribute incorrectly.

Additionally, they publish libellous, defamatory and unverified information. They also do not take the sensibilities of their visitors into consideration, by publishing offending graphic images without warning.

These situations, lack of advertising revenue and integrity endanger the future of inline journalism in Ghana, and that is notwithstanding the fact that a number of practicing Ghanaian journalists are beneficiaries of the prestigious International Institute of Journalism (IJJ) in Germany and the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in Holland. These internal institutions select applicants every yearto undergo periods of training in online journalism.

But these journalists do not seem to influence online journalism the way they should, leaving the field to non-professionals. They are not even blogging effectively! Could it be that the selection teams for these programmes select the wrong candidates?

It is however, hard to say at this point what will save the future of Ghana’s online journalism, which in its present form is very distressing.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

Email: edogbevi@gmail.com

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Quality of Saudi-sponsored journalism ~ The Arab Digest

May 15th, 2012

His smile was his passport to the hearts of his countrymen and his visitors. A smile is a key, a thread of affability. A smile is a window, into the cordiality of a man, and his desire for amicability; into his ability for dialogue, for coming together with others and deeply listening to them. For building bridges of trust, spreading hope, and making the present full of promises for the future. It was as though his smile was his weapon. Neither could crises inhibit it, nor could calamities abolish it. It was as though it was his message, and his affirmation that the horizon is open to better days. The bodies of some great men may tire, but they may have smiles that never do. It is as though it has become the property of their admirers. Some great men leave a message of reassurance, even if they themselves have departed:

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The Tough Job of a Journalist

May 12th, 2012

Has it ever crossed your mind that at one point in Kenya, walking around with a camera, was as dangerous as being in possession of an illegal fire arm? Well, in the early 90′s being a journalist in Kenya carried with it grave risks and hazards, but one man stood the test of time. Starting his career in 1991, a year synonymous with the history of multi party democracy in Kenya, veteran photojournalist Govedi Asutsa, had his fair share of harassment due to what was considered then as "controversial" photographs, portraying the government in bad light. And as the world marks the world press freedom day, Govedi Asustsa, who works for the standard newspaper, retraces his steps 21 years back, detailing the price he had to pay sometimes for press freedom in what he calls the other side of the picture. Judy Kosgei has that report

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John Stossel on Journalism, How He Became Libertarian & His New Book "No They Can’t"

May 12th, 2012

"Some guy came up to me said, ‘Are you John Stossel?…I hope you die soon,’" recounts Fox Business Network host and Reason contributor John Stossel. Thankfully Stossel found a more civil audience when he stopped by Reason’s Washington, DC office on April 11, 2012 to promote his new book "No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails But Individuals Succeed." During a lively Q&A session, Stossel took questions from the audience about his book, his time as a consumer reporter, and the power of the internet to communicate libertarian ideas. About 6.30 minutes. Camera by Joshua Swain, Meredith Bragg and Jim Epstein. Edited by Swain. Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

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Teaching journalism? Teaching DATA journalism?

May 12th, 2012

A definite echo of THIS post by Paul Bradshaw back in 2010, I wonder – who is teaching data journalism in 2012?

I will be at the AOP Data Journalism Forum next week talking about my experiences of teaching the subject at BCU, and I would like to get an idea of how widespread the subject is in UK universities.

If you teach journalism in the UK, please take part in this very quick survey (2 simple yes/no questions)

 

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Journalism passages this week: Deaths, births, job changes | Poynter.

May 12th, 2012

Andrew Beaujonby Andrew Beaujon

Published
May 11, 2012
6:10 pm


Updated
May 11, 2012
6:17 pm

REST IN PEACE
• Five journalists are presumed dead in a jet crash in Indonesia: “Femi Adi, a reporter for Bloomberg Market; Dody Aviantara, a journalist for the monthly Angkasa magazine; Didik Nur Yusuf, who also worked for Angkasa magazine; Ismiyati Sunarto, a reporter for the national station Trans TV; and Aditya Sukardi, who worked for Trans TV.”

• From The Economist:

We are very sorry to announce that Peter David, our Washington bureau chief, Lexington columnist and former foreign editor, died in a car accident on Thursday night. He had worked at The Economist since 1984 and was a much-loved colleague and friend. We will pay fuller tribute to him in next week’s issue.

• Daniel Rapoport died April 11. A former journalist for UPI, National Journal, Congressional Quarterly and Washingtonian, he founded Farragut Publishing.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD

• Viola Nora Folkenflik was born to NPR’s Jesse Baker and David Folkenflik Wednesday.

JOB CHANGES

• Cate Barron will be the new editor of The Patriot-News. She had been executive editor there. Barron replaces David Newhouse, who is moving to an editorial position with Advance Digital.

• Gilbert Bailón will be the new editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He had been editorial page editor there. He replaces Arnie Robbins, who’s stepping down.

• Andrew Julien will be the new editor of the Hartford Courant. He had been integrated media editor there. He replaces Naedine Hazell, who is “stepping down as Editor for personal reasons and will assume a to-be-determined role in the Hartford Courant newsroom.”

• Will Sullivan will be mobile products manager for the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Digital and Design Innovation. He had been director of mobile news for Lee Enterprises.

• Faiz Shakir will be director of new media and senior adviser for Rep. Nancy Pelosi. He had been the editor-in-chief of Think Progress.

• Alan Frank will retire as president-CEO of Post-Newsweek Stations at the end of 2012. Emily Barr, who is president and general manager of WLS, will succeed him.

• Susanne Reber is leaving NPR, where she had been deputy managing editor of investigations.

• Elahe Izadi is going to be a reporter at National Journal. She had been a blogger and correspondent for DCentric.

• Tommy Tomlinson has filed his last column for the Charlotte Observer. He’s taking a job “writing for a sports website being created out of a partnership between USA Today Sports Media Group and MLB Advanced Media.”

• Jason La Canfora will be the new Insider for CBS Sports Network. He is currently with the NFL Network.

• Greg Linch will be special projects and news applications producer for The Washington Post. He had been world/national security producer there.

• Hannah Fairfield will be senior graphics editor at The New York Times. She had been director of graphics at The Washington Post.

JOB CHANGES AT THE ATLANTIC

• James Bennet is the new editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.

• Scott Stossel is the new editor of The Atlantic magazine.

• Bob Cohn is now editor of Atlantic Digital.

• Kimberly Lau is the new vice president and general manager for Atlantic Digital.

FELLOWSHIPS

• University of Michigan’s Knight-Wallace Fellows for 2012-2013

• Nieman Foundation’s 75th class of Nieman fellows

• The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford

An attempt at a regular, in-no-way-comprehensive feature. Keep me in the loop: abeaujon@poynter.org

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Robert Schmuhl on Journalism

May 9th, 2012

Robert Schmuhl, Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Professor of American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame, offers reflections on journalism.

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Are Facebook's Social Reader Apps on the … – Zombie Journalism

May 9th, 2012

The past couple of days have been a whirlwind of conversation between journalism thinkers over a reportedly huge drop in users for many news leaders’ Facebook social sharing apps in the month of April.

Some tech watchers and news app experts blame this drop in users’ fatigue with the “frictionless sharing” these apps encourage on Facebook – thus telling all your friends you read that HuffPost article about Kim Kardashian. On the other hand, many of those sites who are running these apps cite a recent rejiggering of how Facebook displays these social sharing results in the newsfeed for the decline.

As I’m still trying to wrap my head around how real these user numbers really are and exactly what could be behind them, all I can offer here is a look at my own ongoing research on the subject. Here’s the best articles dissecting this subject I’ver found so far (in reverse-chronological order). I hope this might help those of you who, like me, are just trying to keep up with What This All Means.

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