Weaving a Patchwork Map ... in Real Time

We did something a little creative and unique at WNYC this past election night: We mapped the vote by "community type."

This revealed the diversity of the vote across New York State -- from the cities to the suburbs, boom towns and "service worker" centers -- in real time, on the air and on the WNYC home page.

And the diversity is striking. Despite Democratic wins in every statewide race, the Republicans running for state attorney general and comptroller "won" every community type outside "Industrial Metropolis" and "Campus & Careers" counties.

Patchwork Nation's Dante Chinni talked about this on air during WNYC's coverage election night, and has written more about it since.

The live map was a mashup of Patchwork Nation's unique take on the nation and the Associated Press's live vote totals. At the request of WNYC, Patchwork Nation programmers dove into the AP test results and quickly wove them into a new map based on PN's existing county maps -- customizing them for the event and adding real-time percentages by community type.

Bringing the Threads Together

In the months before the election, I had wondered how we might better understand the early returns -- those that come in typically between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. -- which often don't match the final results. I wanted more clarity.

At a Hacks/Hackers Open-Source-a-Thon, I started playing with the election data with help from Al Shaw (then at TalkingPointsMemo, now at ProPublica) and Chrys Wu (of Hacks/Hackers and ONA fame).

That evolved into a little program I wrote in Sinatra that generated vote-total map at the left, shading counties darker as more of their precincts reported. It also helped me better understand how the data were structured, how to retrieve the numbers and what it might take to make a live map.

So when Chinni asked if WNYC had any county-level data sets we'd like to put through the Patchwork Nation treatment, I had the perfect candidate.

Break Glass Now

Consider, for a moment, the location of your nearest fire extinguisher.

And just how well did you use it last time?

Right. Chances are you're not prepared to skillfully put out a fire where you are sitting. At least you're not practiced.

But what if you had a non-emergency reason to use a fire extinguisher every once in a while? Maybe to clean your desk. Or a spill. (Nearest paper towel, anyone?) Using it occasionally would help insure that in case of a fire, you would both a) actually use it and b) use it well.

To better prepare our on-air and online operations for major breaking news, I've been promoting a point of view that says we shouldn't put our emergency tools, systems and skills "behind glass." Instead, we should incorporate those efforts into our everyday work. (I even believe we shouldn't put our energy into efforts that can't be used on a regular basis because in a crisis, we won't use them anyway.)

The best example of this is the daily production of our national morning program, The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji. The show's staff may just be the best breaking-news response team in public radio -- because they make the show in real-time every day, incorporating fresh news as they go. When the news happens to be really big, they're not just prepared ... they're already there.

A few other examples:

Map maker, map maker
In case of a civil emergency in New York, we'd want to quickly map shelters, closed roads, danger zones, escape routes. Even locate our staff. But we weren't prepared to whip together those kinds of maps in mere minutes. Now we're honing those skills by incorporating such work into everyday projects.

Information integration
When news hits the fan, information flies everywhere. Consolidating that data is key ... and also happens to be handy in everyday work. In the course of discussing a Mumbai-like terror attack in NYC, we discovered that our news-editing software can also check a listener email box. That's one less window to watch.

Nobody move
We designed our newsroom so that in a crisis nobody needs to change seats, which would move them away from familiar surroundings. As a byproduct, when something doesn't flow quite right during daily work, I try to make sure we address it now so we don't get caught off guard later.

Expected events as prototypes
In planning for election night, and now for the inauguration, we developed tools and techniques that will serve us again in a major unexpected event. We now know how to quickly rip up our station's home page to focus on a single topic. And in order to provide real-time election-night returns, we found new ways to clear the information path between the editors and the home page.

Share and share again
We share a statehouse reporter with stations across our region. So when former governor Eliot Spitzer imploded in a prostitution scandal, we didn't have to think twice about how to move information and audio between stations. We just used the FTP site and email list we use every day.

I've long been a fan of drills, and there are many more of those in our future. But by incorporating a little drill into our regular routine, we're better prepared for situations that are anything but.

[Photo by IamSAM. Some rights reserved.]

Prototyping Terror: Mumbai in NY

Two hours before our company holiday party, several of us were contemplating mass murder in Manhattan.

Not exactly Christmas cheer. But some good certainly came of it.

Really.

Several top thinkers and decision-makers reviewed the horrible events in Mumbai last month and considered how our news department would respond to a low-tech, coordinated attack on multiple locations in New York.

Here are some of our points of discussion, which could apply to any organization, journalistic or otherwise:

The Visioning Thing. We didn't do a full-scale drill, we simply took time to really visualize how things might happen. It was pretty powerful.

First we tried to think like terrorists and, as a group, picked three targets -- a transportation hub, a hotel and a shopping center. No sense naming them here; suffice it to say, we all knew each of them well and could picture the devastation and chaos.

Then we carefully imagined where each of our key people would be on a weeknight at 9:30, when Mumbai's night of hell began. Who lives where? Who's still at work? Who could get in fastest? What route would they take? Where would the first available reporters go? How would they stay safe? Think.

Our Civic Duty. We're journalists. It's second nature to pursue the facts and try to present them quickly, accurately in context. But as a broadcaster in a city under siege, our public service mission takes on new qualities, and raises questions. What do we do for people still in or near danger? Can we be better oriented to provide public warnings, safety and health info, comfort, maps, conversation, rumor control ... help? The conversation has started to adjust our operating Point of View, and could make a huge difference in how we serve our city (lowercase c) in those first few hours.

Information Overload. Phone calls, reporters, sources, Tweets, network audio, news wires, emails, web comments, TVs ... we easily came up with more than 20 distinct streams of audio, text, and visual information key to covering the story. In an era when all of this information is available to everyone on our staff, are we ready to monitor them all in a sophisticated, organized way? (Ah, no.)

Online, Under Pressure. Our methods for broadcasting have changed since 9/11 and The Northeast Blackout. We now use web alerts, social media, maps, and other tools to convey information. But when the adrenaline pumps, and minutes matter, we have to be ready to take advantage of all of these channels while maintaining our standards of accuracy and context.

Bias Toward Action. It's been 7 days since this meeting, and we're far better prepared than we were 8 days ago. What we've done, and are doing, is the subject of my next post, Break Glass Now.

[Photo by Andy Eakin]

A Recorder in My Pocket

My iPhone is my new flash recorder.

As a manager, I'm not often out collecting sound for air. But I've been carrying a Nagra flash recorder just in case I need to contribute in a crisis, happen upon breaking news, or want to capture an aural moment we might use.

Today, I gave the Nagra back so someone else can use it.

That's because Adam Hirsch, a producer on The Takeaway and a fellow iPhone geek, showed me an impressive, new (and currently free) iPhone app that records fantastic audio using the phone's built-in microphone. It's far better than any apps I've tried for this purpose, and good enough to impress our engineers.

It's called the iTalk Recorder, from Griffin. The recordings really do sound great. At the top setting, it makes CD-strength AIFF files at 44.1k and 16 bits. If you have a Mac, a nifty download allows you to transfer the audio from phone to computer over wifi.

It certainly won't replace our reporters' professional recording equipment. But in a pinch, or as a backup kit, it's fantastic.

For me, that's perfect. And one less thing carry.

Ambient Information: The Power of a Gaze

In our old building I had an office with a window onto the newsroom. Above the window, on the newsroom side, three TVs fed a steady stream of cable news to the producers and reporters.

Sitting at my desk, I knew instantly when something big was happening because people would stop what they were doing and gaze intently at the spot over my window. I sensed their alarm before even they could articulate, or know, what was going on.

So in our new newsroom, we intentionally positioned the newsroom TVs over the studio windows. The hope was that hosts working inside the studios would get that same early warning from the body language of producers in the newsroom.

Tonight I was routing cool information onto one of those monitors (more on that soon), and was gazing up to evaluate and adjust the display. David Garland, a music host who was on the air at the time, came out of the studio and into the newsroom.

"Is something going on?" he said. "You keep looking up at the TVs."

Election Night Design: Confounding Factors

There's a lot to consider when designing comprehensive, contextual coverage for the biggest news night of the year:

- Pinpointing the key stories
- Getting early warnings on those stories
- Scheduling hosts and producers all night
- Deciding where to send reporters and producers
- Engaging the audience
- Ensuring strong staffing the day after

As we prototype and plan for Election Night 2008, here are some of the issues that have come into play:

A Foregone Conclusion?

One of our crystal balls is FiveThirtyEight.com, a fantastic, transparent analysis of polling data. The most beautiful part? Nate Silver runs 10,000 simulations of the outcome based on the errors and fluctuations possible in every poll. Ten thousand prototypes daily. Wow. Below is today's chart of how many electoral votes Obama gets in each simulation:

... which is to say, in nearly 1400 simulations, Obama gets 375 electoral votes. The total possible is 538 (hence the name of the site); it takes 270 to win the election.

The other crystal ball is the Intrade prediction market, where real money is bet on each state's electoral vote. Intrade has been shockingly accurate, from predicting each state Bush won in 2000 to the super-secret selection of the Pope.

Both site show a solid Obama electoral win, and have for a month now. They could be wrong, and they will certainly adjust as we get closer to the election. But in September, a landslide was not a part of our equation; it is now.

The Voting Story

Voter turnout could break records, at a moment when voting machines are untested in many states -- such as, surprise, Florida. Any case of voting failure, no matter what your political leaning, is a story in a democracy and an echo to 2000.

But FiveThirtyEight's simulations suggest there's only a 2 percent chance a decisive state will have a vote close enough to trigger a recount. And the chance of that winner of the popular vote will be different from the winner of the electoral vote is between one-tenth of a percent and zero.

Live Election Companion

We had a smashing success running our live debate companion during the candidate face-offs. People were able to participate in real time and get insights from our public radio luminaries.

On election night, what's the right way to have people involved? Set aside a key hour for a similar chat? When would that be? Have it open all night? Would that be a valuable experience? Better to have a running blog of updates?

On this, we're open to input. Comment below if you have any thoughts.

[WNYC's election night coverage begins at 7 p.m. and runs through the following morning -- online at wnyc.org and in New York at 93.9FM and AM820.]

UPDATE ... Our digital election team met today and decided to run the Live Election Companion, with participation from our on-air hosts, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on the WNYC and The Takeaway websites.

Nobody Move!

Our newsroom works. Which is news.

For three years, we tried to design, from scratch, the best radio and online news facility possible. We moved in this summer, and the recent debates and breaking financial news suggest we got pretty darn close.

The key, I believe, was our central point of view:

In a breaking news situation, nobody should need to move.

A simple concept, with several implications:

-- During the most confused, stressful, and destabilizing moments, everyone is grounded in the familiar -- logins, phone lists, audio systems, etc. This allows the staff to sort out the fast-moving story, not rarely-used protocols

-- Routine, hourly news is produced with the benefit of communications and production systems robust enough for breaking news

-- Training people in daily news production automatically prepares them to handle the unexpected

-- On-air producers work amid the reporters and editors, not in a separate control room, so they are closer to the facts

-- On-air hosts can look look left to see the producer (and the rest of the newsroom), and right to see the audio engineer























-- Those sightlines allow for peripheral visual cues, such as concern on a reporter's face, or people intensely watching TV monitors

-- The News Hub is a technical extension of the studio complex, and has the intercom system used to talk directly with hosts and engineers; conversely, the hosts can address the entire newsroom through the News Hub monitor speakers to request facts, pronouncers, even water.

-- A web producer seated at the News Hub is integrated into the editorial system and instantly privy to all plans and decisions

It's not perfect. We produce two news shows on two different frequencies in the morning, and have trouble monitoring both at the News Hub. And our beautiful sightlines become tough brightlines as the sun sets beyond our western windows.

But those panes do provide an unexpected feature for hosts and the entire newsroom: ambient warning of approaching storms.

Crowdsourcing Hillary's Schedules

How do you read 11,000+ pages of a First Lady's schedules? Ask 11,000 friends to help! Today on the Brian Lehrer Show, that's exactly what we're going to do.

Hillary Clinton just released her schedules from her First Lady days, and we're going to ask listeners to pick the week of their birthday in any year of the schedules and look for things that are interesting or surprising ... and post the findings on a Brian Lehrer web page.

As WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein pores through the pages, she'll also keep an eye on the web postings for gems listeners find. Let's see what this "professional-public" collaborative journalism project (or "pro-am" in journo jargon) can discover.

Prototyping Disasters

Last week at a meeting of public radio news directors, I gave a presentation about the importance of prototyping for disaster planning -- getting off our chairs and actually trying out our plans. Here's a quick sketch of the speech, with documents included.

Key Principles

CONSIDER OPERATIONS AND SYSTEMS -- To do good journalism in moments of crisis, your systems and operations have to be ready at three levels: newsroom, station and a backup site in your city/region.

PROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE -- To find out if you're ready, try it, test it, simulate it, do it. And repeat. Don't just write emails. And don't get too complicated. Take a page from design thinking and keep it simple. Then you don't get too invested in the test, and are open to changing your ways.

Prototyping Newsroom Systems

Example 1 -- Crisis Information Flow
At WNYC, we used Post-It notes to simulate how information flows through our newsroom to air during a breaking news situation. "Facts" were represented by shapes, and we watched how they moved (or didn't) through the process. We learned a ton, which you can see in our full case study, including a 15-mininute movie. What we learned improved our coverage of a big news story that broke the very next day.

Example 2 -- Full Scale Drill
We've also done a full-scale crisis drill, simulating a dirty-bomb attack. This involved the entire news and technical staff, who responded to information (wire stories, witness information, etc.) sent to them roughly once a minute for an hour. Due to the sensitive nature of this drill, I have not posted our case study. If you are interested in learning more about it, please contact me.

Prototyping Station Preparedness

Example -- Blackout Plans
To test our backup power, we regularly cut power to our facility (usually late at night) and make sure it still works. During the day, we actually relocate hosts to our backup room, as they'd do in a real outage.l Just three weeks ago, two of us got out of our chairs, walked to a key breaker box, and took a new look at which switches we'd have to throw in a blackout. In the process, we realized there were no backup lights in that room, so we wouldn't have been able to see the switches! We solved this with a $15 power-failure light.

Prototyping Operations Elsewhere in Your City/Region

Example -- Make Other Arrangements
Be ready to move somewhere else; we've had to do it twice (once on 9/11, once during the northeast blackout of 2003). We've arranged with another local studio to be our backup facility, and we have key equipment and supplies in place there now. Our full news and technical staff will be visiting the facility to see, touch and feel what it's like to set up there. We're also installing our own set of phone lines so we can do live call-in programs -- which have been essential components of our crisis coverage.

Tips

Click here for a 2-page PDF of helpful tips and tricks for public radio stations.
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