Learning What You Need Is a News Peg
Ben Welsh on making data journalism work with that time-honored strategy, the news peg
Roundup Event Roundup, May 20
- By Erika Owens
The final Editors’ Lab before the Global Editors Network Conference in June and data hacking in Spain this weekend.
Event The NYT’s Amanda Cox on Winning the Internet
Our first write-up from OpenVis Conf in Cambridge, MA features the opening keynote from Amanda Cox of the New York Times Graphics desk.
Learning Predicting the Future, Elections Edition
Wherein Jeremy Bowers gets help from experts, builds an election-predicting app, and makes sure readers can see how it works.
Tool Strongbox Reactions, Part II
We asked for your thoughts on Strongbox, the New Yorker’s new implementation of DeadDrop. Our first wave of responses includes the New York Times’ Jacob Harris, the Overview Project’s Jonathan Stray, and Mike Tigas, OpenNews Fellow at ProPublica.
Roundup The New Yorker Launches Strongbox
- By Erika Owens
Strongbox uses Tor, and the coding savvy of Aaron Swartz, to help sources communicate more securely with the New Yorker. Its release today inspired a big reaction from the journalism code community.
Project Mapping the History of Street Names
OpenNews Fellow Noah Veltman breaks down the design and code decisions behind his History of SF Place Names map.
Roundup Event Roundup, May 13
- By Erika Owens
This weekend, Code with me comes to Austin and lo-fi hacking in Chile.
Learning Sane Data Updates Are Harder than You Think: Part 2
Second in a three-part series by Adrian Holovaty about hairy data-parsing problems from a journalist’s perspective
Project Under the Surface of the NYT Mobile Redesign
- By Michael Behr, Ian Gardner, Andrei Kallaur, Erin Kissane
- Michael Behr, Ian Gardner, Andrei Kallaur
We spoke with three members of team behind the new New York Times mobile site to learn what’s going on under the hood and how they made the design decisions underlying the new view.
Roundup Event Roundup, May 6
- By Erika Owens
Learning about Tor in South Africa, hacking in India, and last chance to pitch your ideas for the Online News Association conference.
Learning Finding Stories in the Structure of Data
Matt Waite sees structure in unstructured data, and you should too.
Roundup Event Roundup, Apr 29
- By Erika Owens
Harvesting data in Belgium and talking transparency in DC this weekend. Plus, session suggestions for the Online News Association conference due Tuesday.
Event The GEN Newsgaming Hackathon
Last weekend, ten teams participated in a competition to develop newsgames at Editors’ Lab New York, a hackathon organized by the Global Editors Network and The New York Times.
Combining the fantastical and playful aspects of gaming with hard news is a hard problem and there are few examples of well-conceived and executed newsgames. Thanks to the hack day, there are now a few more.
Learning London Calling: Winning the Data Olympics
Jacqui Maher on wrangling massively complex, really messy data in (almost) realtime.
Roundup Apps + Code + Viz Roundup, April 24
- By Erin Kissane
The last month has brought us a spate of fresh news apps, updated and brand-new tools for journalist-developers, thoughtful analytical write-ups, and coverage of events.
Roundup Visually Explaining a Bombing and Its Aftermath
- By Erin Kissane
After the bombings during last week’s Boston Marathon, newsrooms in the US and UK produced interactive maps and features to help their readers understand the locations and chronologies of the bombings themselves, the ensuing medical treatment of victims, and the hunt for the bombers—and in the days that followed, to collect and communicate the stories of the victims.
Roundup Event Roundup, Apr 22
- By Erika Owens
Journalists gather in Italy this week, while Hacks/Hackers chapters hold meetups on balloon mapping and HTML 5, plus a cryptoparty.
Roundup Event Roundup, Apr 15
- By Erika Owens
Events around the world this week: Spain, UK, and around the U.S.(not just the coasts).
Project The Lobbyist Registration Meter
We spotted Tom Lee’s Lobbyist Registration Meter video on YouTube this morning and it made our day. Lee, director of the Sunlight Foundation’s Sunlight Labs, used an old voltmeter, a Raspberry Pi, and Sunlight Foundation data to create a meter that physically displays the number of new lobbyist registrations in Washington, DC. Lee very kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his setup and the data behind it.
