Andrew DeVigal (photo: Gaute Singstad, Nordiske Mediedager).
Before it gets way too old, the rest of my notes from last week’s Bergen media conference (note to self: stop taking paper notes, buy that mini laptop you’ve been thinking about for a long time). About multimedia at the NYT, a journalist using blogging as a tool in a Danish business scandal, and Adrian Holovaty on EveryBlock.
Andrew DeVigal, multimedia editor at the New York Times, described his company’s very ambitious and innovative work with new forms in online journalism (links to some of his slides and material). Also worth noting, DeVigal’s side project Interactive Narratives.
Some of his examples:
One in 8 Million, portraits of New Yorkers.
The Debt Trap, you guessed what that was about!
Virginia Tech, visualizing breaking news.
DeVigal’s note-friendly list of reasons for doing multimedia:
1. Take advantage of power of voice and visuals
2. Make customized narratives
3. Simplify the complex
4. Power of templates (re-use of templates, for example in breaking news situations. The newsroom gets control of templates, can produce smart multimedia quickly)
What always worries me about these impressive projects: I almost never see any advertising around them. Surely, with 50+ people producing them, they must be more than showcase material for the NYT brand? Why aren’t advertisers interested?
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Dorte Toft, Danish journalist, held a charming, excellent presentation about her work with the IT Factory scandal in Denmark. Especially interesting how comments from readers helped drive the story and her coverage forward. Exemplary use of the blog format as a journalist’s tool.
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Adrian Holovaty talked about his work with EveryBlock, a project I’ve known for a while, but never really used — clearly because I don’t live in any of the cities covered so far. This is a community tool, where you can find local news all the way down to block level. I was intrigued by the business license feature — by getting constant updates of licenses to business, you immediately know if a new store, cafe etc is about to open in your area.
EveryBlock’s main data source is public data from police, municipal authorities, etc etc. Another source is data mining in news material.
EveryBlock’s potential as a democracy tool is just so great: People can act on this information. So it was good to hear that there are plans to let users contribute information to the site.
The small (6 persons) operation has created new roles for journalists:
- People person: This tongue in cheek term describes a hybrid journalist-salesperson-business developer, who negotiates with public sector offices to get more data from them.
- Screen scraper as reporter: If authorities do not want to release their data, the sites can be hacked!
- Data describer: Who will “translate” technical terms into understandable categories.
Holovaty mentioned three types of users of EveryBlock:
- People living in the cities/neighbourhoods
- People researching a geographical area (for example before they buy a house there)
- People researching topics – crime trends, for example
EveryBlock’s traffic profile is public.
Privacy concerns are important to take into consideration while developing new journalism such as EveryBlock. Holovaty had clearly given this a lot of thought: Names and home addresses are not published on the site.
