An Experimental Honor

What's so exceptional about the journalism innovation award The Takeaway won yesterday is that it's not for a broadcast, a series or a blog post.

It's for an experiment.

"Sourcing Through Texting" has been a process of immersion, exploration and rapid prototyping. Journalists and community leaders spend time in a neighborhood focusing on a simple question: How might reporters and citizen-sources make better connections through texting?

The answers are still emerging. We're still making prototypes. Yet, yesterday the concept won a Knight-Batten Special Distinction Award for innovation in journalism.

Since the award application went in, we've gone to Miami to run another experiment in Little Haiti, and Detroit's WDET aired a week-long series that evolved from the project.

That the award effectively predates those happenings is a huge jolt of support for experimentation, design thinking in journalism and everyone who contributed to this unique collaboration.

That includes folks from The Takeaway, Public Radio International, WNYC Radio, WDET Detroit, WLRN Miami, The Miami Herald, American Public Media's Public Insight Network, Mobile Commons, the Institute of Design at Stanford and the residents of Southwest Detroit and Miami's Little Haiti.

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Sourcing Through Texting is a project of The Takeaway, which is produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International. It was made possible by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

Disclosure and disclaimer: I helped develop and produce this project. As always, the words here are my own and not those of my employer or any of the entities mentioned.

NYC Taxi Visualizations: The Pulse of the City

Fantastic presentation of GPS data from New York City Taxis in the New York Times today. So many stories embedded here, giving a wonderful sense of the city.

The ability to "play" the data is especially key. And the treatment itself hits all of my buttons. You just get it.

Beautiful.

This Is Not A Bag

So says the bag my new Timbuk2 bag came in.

No, it's actually a durable, waterproof San Francisco bike map!

Reduce, reuse, reuse. Nice.

Excellent Elevator Art

The elevators in this atrium beautifully blend the digital and the physical ... and celebrate books in the process.

They're in downtown Minneapolis at the Hennepin County Central Library.

The Secret Decoder Ring

Today our education reporter had a bunch of data from New York State she was trying to match to schools in New York City. But the school codes used by the two governments look radically different.

For example, PS 15 on the Lower East Side is known to the state as 310100010015; the city calls it 01M015.

I once made a nifty formula to make the conversion(!), but a more straightforward and official approach involves the Excel spreadsheet found here. It lists all of the city schools, along with their addresses, various codes, and more. For a data cruncher, that's a secret decoder ring.

What made me smile was that the only reason I knew this document even existed was because of a little prototype I tried during the first swine flu outbreak. That experiment wasn't robust enough to make it beyond this blog, but it taught me a lot ... including where to find this ring!

Movies & Demographics

What a great visualization of Netflix movie-rental data from the New York Times! Love how you can see how different movies play across the city.

It's even more interesting when you know something about the demographic makeup of the zip codes. Look how the Harlem River between upper Manhattan and the South Bronx is a bright dividing line for almost every movie.

How about a mashup that would reflect this info and demographic data simultaneously?


(tip via Nate Westheimer @innonate)

Connecting Journalists and Technologists

Tuesday night I'll have the fantastic privilege of making a quick presentation at the NY Tech Meetup about our news-technology efforts at WNYC. I'll also invite folks to connect with us in the interest of, well, the public good.

Huge thanks to Nate Westheimer for his interest in our work and the opportunity to say a few words.

Acknowledgment where due: WNYC's public radio news-tech projects, including the Super Simple Mapping tool, are supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Code For Good (and Money)

WNYC is looking for news technologists who want to code with a purpose -- helping public radio stations cover the news and connect with listeners. These projects are funded in part by support from the Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Here's the posting:

WNYC Seeks Programmers with a Passion for News for Contract Project Work

WNYC Radio is working on several news application projects for public radio stations (including ours), and we're looking for more people to join our team to experiment, play and code. We're driven by a culture of prototyping, a bias toward action, a principle of show over tell, and a commitment to journalism.

Requirements:

* A passion for the news
* An understanding of the inner workings of the web
* Attention to detail, fairness and accuracy
* A genuine sense of collaboration, innovation, creativity and quality

And, of course…

* Fantastic programming skills and a love for the craft of making software in the public interest.

In particular, we're looking for people who have strong skills with the following:

* HTML/CSS
* Python
* Django
* PostgreSQL
* Ubuntu Linux + Amazon EC2

If you know PostGIS and GeoDjango, that's great, too.

Right now we're signing up people on short-term contracts keyed to specific projects we're starting or building. You don't have to be in NYC to take part (though it's great if you are).

If this sounds like you or someone you know, drop us a note and a sense of your work at jobs@wnyc.org with "Contract ProgNews" and your last name in the subject line. We want to hear from you as soon as possible, but no later than January 15, 2010.

WNYC makes decisions to contract services without regard to race, creed, sex, color, religion, gender, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, citizenship status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

(Credit where due: This description was inspired by and built from one posted by the Chicago Tribune news apps team, a group for which I have heaps of respect and admiration!)

Super Simple Mapping Tool

Making collaborative maps is easier than ever. But maybe not quite easy enough.

One of the projects I'm working on at the moment is a super-duper-simple tool to help public radio and television stations (and pretty much anyone else) collect and map local information from their audience.

We're in the design phase right now, and we've mocked it up for feedback. The video is below.

Whaddya think? Let us know!

Got Django?

I'm working on a few fun projects, all of which would fit nicely into the themes of this blog. And I need some help.

If you know if a Django coder who is energetic, collaborative, open-minded, innovative, creative, iterative and is based in NYC good at collaborating from afar, please let me know. This is paid work with possibilities for more if the match is right.

Think more prototype-tinker-try-repeat than requirements-to-results.

UPDATED: Check out our more detailed call for programmers here.

Presenter's Notes

The person crafting the overall sound and content of your local public radio station usually is the program director, and I have the honor of speaking at an annual gathering of PD's from across the nation this week.

Uncommon Indicators

My first talk is about a WNYC community crowdsourcing project called Your Uncommon Economic Indicators, which began just about a year ago when the economy collapsed. It focuses on getting people to contribute insights about the economy from their neighborhoods.

It has grown to include some special side projects. One is Halted Development, a look at unfinished or vacant housing in New York City (link to big map is here). Another is a video contest, in which this video took first place.

The slides I used in my presentation are available as zipped PowerPoint and Keynote files (both about 30MB) and as a pdf (3.5MB).

Collaboration as Dating

The second presentation is with Tom Detzel of ProPublica about the great partnership WNYC has had with ProPublica, including how it came to be and how we've make some great journalism together.

Part of my discussion is stolen from my earlier blog post using dating as a guide to successful collaborations. The handout I'm giving to people in the room is here as a pdf.

I'll update this post if/when audio or video of the talks are made available.

Paint Sticky Data (Please)

I'm into info. I want it accurate, relevant and clear.

On the radio, we try to paint clear, understandable, and journalistically-sound images of the mind -- the vivid mental pictures you see while listening to good storytelling.

Actual images can tell rich stories, too. The best photojournalism certainly does. Some pictures hit you in the chest.

But images drawn from data -- infographics, or visualizations -- rarely tell a story so well.

And they almost never hit me in the chest.

Why not? With all of the technology available, why can't we create really good visualizations that project understanding, timeliness, utility and ... dare I say ... stories?

I'm on the lookout. And I'm defining what I want to see.

For that definition, I've made a checklist based on one of my all-time favorite books, Made to Stick, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (Random House, 2007). The initial words come from their Six Principles of Sticky Ideas; the rest is my application of their concepts.

For me, the best information images are ...

Simple: Non-geeks can absorb it within a few seconds
Unexpected: It fills a gap in our knowledge
Concrete: It takes advantage of our senses and understandings
Credible: It is journalistically sound, from a trusted source, without bias
Emotional: It hits you in the chest, you feel the data
Story: It tells one

And I'll add one more:

Relevant: It is timely, current and useful

Got examples that ring all seven bells? Maybe even four? Share them in the comments here or email me: john (at) designAgitator.com.

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The map detail above is from my favorite example at the moment, which is on Slate. Jump over there, take a look, and then run it through the checklist:

Simple? Once you know that blue is jobs gained and red is jobs lost, you're set. Just press play.
Unexpected? Seriously so. The speed of change is amazing.
Concrete? The familiar map orients me at a glance; I respond quickly to the circle sizes, colors and densities.
Credible? Bureau of Labor Statistics, Slate.
Emotional? Oh yeah. I saw someone actually shiver while watching it.
Story? Definitely.
Relevant? Yup.

Rings my bell.

The Man Behind The Zipper

I've joined an exclusive club of New York City microbloggers.

Twitter? Ha. Facebook? Kidstuff. We're talking bricks and mortar, baby.

Quite literally.

My missives scroll across the facade of WNYC's building in west SoHo, zipping into your field of view as a parade of little red lights. It's the WNYC News Zipper.

As you walk to work or sit in traffic on Varick Street, I've got your eyeballs.

NY terror-plot suspects indicted

None of this 140-character stuff. Better to use just five words; seven max. (I used a nonessential adjective clause once. Lost everyone by the second comma.)

Media banned from covering Iran protests

And I know where you are, no fancy GPS required.

Building collapse on Reade Street, up ahead

Even if it's partly cloudy in the Bronx, I am absolutely certain you're in a downpour.

This rain ends by evening

User customization? Easy. I can sense you're in line for the Holland Tunnel on your evening commute home. So how about a little news about your governor and his chief rival?

Corzine, Christie speak to biz group tonite

It's tempting to simply repurpose our tweets or web headlines, feeding them automatically to the sign. But it's also clear that wouldn't be as special. Or impactful. Or memorable. So I've been recrafting our material specifically for my particular version of a hyperlocal, mobile user.

I've been doing this for a few weeks as a prototype, and soon WNYC's editors, producers and hosts will feed lines to the sign. What I've learned by writing -- and watching -- those little red words will help our staff craft the phrases that catch your eye as you zip by.

Rapid News Visualizations: Prototype 1

In my quest for timely, interesting, understandable info-graphics, I've set up a prototyping challenge for myself: Upon finding news data, turn it into something visual, compelling and useful ... as fast as possible.

I'm prepared to fail quickly and often.

In this case, "as fast as possible" was three days to make, another two to find time to post it. The result is not wholly useful. And you can't absorb it quickly. And it's a little misleading.

But it's a start.

Here is what I made. It's a visual representation of the attendance rates for every public school in New York City on Thursday, May 21, 2009. The New York City Department of Education started posting this data the previous day as the Swine Flu/H1N1 outbreak was causing kids to stay home.

It tells me two things off the bat:

1) Queens and Brooklyn schools had much lower attendance rates than Manhattan and Staten Island schools.

2) Teens skip school on nice May days.

No. 2 is apparent because almost every red square is a high school, which have notoriously low rates this time of year. For a better indication of potentially flu-related absences, I'd chart the difference between these absentee rates and a typical May day at each school ... which is info I don't have. Yet.

Initially I published this in Google Maps, which was interactive and allowed you to click on schools for specific info. But Google Maps only plotted about 100 or so schools, and there are more than 1,000 here. Instead, I did it in Google Earth on my own computer and took a snapshot. Here's another.

Kinda cool. Was fun to do.

Next!

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Anatomy of the process:

Daily absentee data from the school system is here.
An Excel spreadsheet with general data on each school is here.
I crossed these two data sets in Access to match school numbers with addresses.
I got the latitude and longitude for each address, in 500-line batches, here.
I spent a lot of time learning about KML files, writing them, failing, trying again.
I made colored icons in Photoshop, and used Excel to assign each school the correct icon.
I put all of the relevant data into one spreadsheet and fed it to this little helper ...
Which gave me this KML file ...
Which I fed to Google Earth, running on my Mac.

Feeling Information

Information and raw data are piling up faster than our ability to absorb it. And the tools available to access, understand, visualize and feel that information are woefully inadequate.

I believe journalism, design thinking and information technology can be wielded to express these stories in ways never before considered. And I'm part of a small posse poised to do just that.

If this interests you, or if you'd like to join our rag-tag group, write me: john (at) designAgitator.com.

In the meantime, assume some of the gaps in designAgitator postings mean we're hard at work helping to explain the world(!)