How-to Good Code Runs on Good Communication
When I started the interactive team at the Sun Sentinel in 2013, I thought the biggest challenge would be the code. I was wrong. Experimentation, no matter the size, requires creating new processes and collaborating in new ways. For the next two years, I worked closely with reporters and editors to plan, shape and create interactive journalism, retooling the already fantastic journalism coming out of the newsroom to reach audiences in a sophisticated way online. Most of the time we were successful; occasionally it didn’t work out. The biggest thing I learned was that getting things done in a newsroom only works when everyone is on the same team.
How-to Lonely Coders, Here’s How to Get Things Done
Many of us newsroom coders work as one-person bands, whether we’re with big employers or smaller ones. Even with growing interest and investment in digitally native news and the slow fade of the ink-stained wretch archetype, our industry’s reporter-to-coder ratio isn’t in the coder’s favor yet, and informal chat with office colleagues probably doesn’t get too technical outside of New York, D.C., and the Bay Area.
This means we news nerds face challenges different from those of our old-school journalist colleagues and the coder-obsessed startup world. We can’t be content with simply writing code—we have to be simultaneously comfortable with mostly working alone and interfacing with co-workers outside our tribe, and we have to be in charge of our own professional development, without a traditional map.
How-to How to Run Projects on Time—and Keep Your Sanity
Vox’s director of editorial products on how to set up the processes you need to run healthy projects and a jubilant team.
How-to Inside the Globe and Mail’s New Interactive Team
How The Globe and Mail built a top interactive team from scratch, plus the tools and processes they need to keep turning out work that pushes the paper forward.
Learning Security for Journalists, Part Two: Threat Modeling
Jonathan Stray on how to protect yourself, your sources, and your scoop on sensitive stories
Learning Security for Journalists, Part One: The Basics
Jonathan Stray on what every single person in your news org should be doing to secure the newsroom.
Learning True Facts, Maybe
Matt Waite thinks epistemology (and a little fake software) could save journalism—here’s why.
Learning Building Smart Newsroom Tools
Melody Kramer on how a user-centered design process and attention to newsroom culture can make or break your internal tools.
Learning Developing Data Journalists in the Developing World
Eva Constantaras on training data journalists where data journalism isn’t a standard practice.
Learning Making Remote Work Work
Christopher Groskopf’s tricks for going to the office without going to the office.
Learning The Evolution of News Tech Teams
Vox Media’s VP of technology breaks down the hard and frequently messy lessons his organization has learned about clearing the way for successful tech collaboration in newsrooms.
