Even impressive, this demo of what Time Inc is working on, apparently for the coming Apple tablet.

People like David McCandless bring a fresh approach to question this now received wisdom. By visualising data instead of just referring to them in text, modern infographics can be more enlightening than acres of text, not less:

I’ve spent the last year exploring the potential of information visualisation for my website and a book. I’ve taken loads of information and made it into simple, colourful and, hopefully, beautiful “visualisations” – bubble charts, concept maps, blueprints and diagrams – all with the minimum of text. I don’t just mean data and statistics. I love doing this with all kinds of information – ideas, issues, stories – and for all subjects from pop to philosophy to politics. Personally, I find visualisations great for helping me understand the world and for sifting the huge amounts of information that deluge me every day.

More of his visualisations can be enjoyed at his Flickr page.

Information and data visualisation has come to seem increasingly important to me as I in the past few months have spent a lot of time on the topic of opening up data in government (project blog in Norwegian). Clearly, it’s possible to do harm with data, as it is with all kinds of information. But the solution in an open society cannot be to lock down government data. That’s why it’s so important to have an ongoing discussion about how data can be used to promote better understanding of society, like McCandless does with his infographics. That he helps to improve journalism at the same time, isn’t actually a drawback these days.

Part of what he calls “real-time social content” is what old media is calling “breaking news”. In other words Google is working hard at becoming the best at collecting and organizing breaking news produced by all of us. While most of us had no idea what Google was about to do first time around (I remember thinking it was a great service but too bad they would never make money), this time around the Newspapers and the rest of the media industry actually have a chance to compete. Why should the best brands in old media not be able to create a great search technology and future business model for breaking news?

Last year, a 20-something, self-taught Internet genius named Amanda Michel mobilized hundreds of politically active citizens to supply info for her “Off the Bus” report on the Huffington Post Web site. When Candidate Obama voiced the notion that some folks who were losing out in the global economy were clinging to such things as religion and guns to compensate, Michel’s network captured it and we soon all heard about it. Without that network, we might never have known, because reporters weren’t invited into the area where Mr. Obama spoke. Michel now works for ProPublica and has put together a team of more than 2,200 volunteers who will do similar reporting for us. This army permits us, for instance, to track progress on 500 representative federal stimulus projects in real time, even though our own news staff numbers just 32.

We will still need journalists’ special skills:

The process of finding and communicating what we used to call news may no longer require newspapers-at least not as we have known them, as seven-day-a-week, ink-on-paper compendiums of new information on a broad range of subjects. But the process will still require journalism and journalists, to smoke out the most difficult-to-report situations, to test glib assertions against the facts, to probe for the carefully contrived hoax. These are reporting activities that take a great deal of time, money, and skill.

Starting with Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh, guardian.co.uk is planning to launch a local news project in a small number of locations. At the moment guardian.co.uk is looking for bloggers – with journalistic qualifications “desirable” – to help cover community news, and report on local developments. The project will emphasise local political decision-making, and is scheduled to go live next year.

The job description for bloggers:

Working from your home, or anywhere with WiFi, as a ‘beatblogger’ you will lead the Guardian’s innovative approach to community news coverage in Leeds. This will include reporting on local meetings and events with an emphasis on local political decision making, identifying issues of importance to local residents and signposting information and news provided via other sources. You will be willing to collaborate with others to create a vital resource for the city.

The photo says almost all, but make sure to read Nieman Journalism Lab’s text about The Ann Arbor Chronicle as well:

There’s no fixed publication schedule for full-length stories, said Morgan, a former business and opinion editor for the defunct News. Rushing to get the story first is outdated and doesn’t really matter to readers, she said. “The assumption is, well, we’re going to get it done as soon as we can given everything else we’ve got going,” she said. (my emph.

(Nieman Lab is published with a CC by-nc license, like this blog).

…it means that we’ll have resources to expand EveryBlock profoundly. MSNBC.com is the most-visited news Web site in the U.S. and is in solid financial shape in a time when news organizations around the world are struggling. We’re excited about the possibilities of pointing a massive audience at EveryBlock and having the resources to beef up our technological infrastructure and staff. Our site is very young — it’s only been live for about a year and a half — and we have a lot of ideas and expansion plans. I often tell friends and industry colleagues that EveryBlock in is current incarnation is only about 5 percent of what we want to do with it. We’re now in a position to make this happen.

Roy Greenslade: Some newspaper people more optimistic based on recent results. But if print revenue is improving, resources must be channeled into (online) innovation, not automatically hiring more reporters again, Greenslade and Earl Wilkinson say.

Guardian Media Group is losing money and reportedly considering to shut down The Observer.

New York Times CEO still thinking about models for charging readers.

Umair Haque follows up on his nichepaper manifesto. I’m still struggling with figuring out the basis for his niche optimism.

Future of Journalism: E-book and interviews published at OurBlook.

See my recent op-ed piece (in Norwegian) about journalism and innovation.

Its aim is to foster independent public interest journalistic inquiry while encouraging a new generation of reporters.

Related posts:

Pro Publica launched

What Google (and others) can do

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.