Sarah Hartley

I was recently invited to talk to regional editors at a Society of Editors conference held in the Midlands. It covers a couple of the major projects we’ve been working on at Talk About Local which are all about using mobile technologies to explore useful community information.

The first example is an Augmented Reality prototype we’ve been developing which means publishers of any size – from solo bloggers to news organisations – can easily move geo-tagged content into an AR environment.

The second is the ongoing evolution of the geo-tagged, mobile first suite of publishing tools n0tice and the launch of its whitelabelling service.

It’s a mark of the fast-changing pace of these sort of technologies that this slideshow was already outdated within a day of me presenting it. In terms of publishers using AR, The Independent last week launched its innovative use of the technology. Talk About Local’s William Perrin reviews that here: http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/tag/the-independent and in the video at the end of the page.

When it comes to the n0tice development, the day after the presentation saw a major launch for the technology when Guardian Witness went live. Obviously I couldn’t mention this to the editors at the time for risk of spoiling the announcement from Joanna the GW team, but the full details of how publishers can now use these powerful geo-tagged tools for their own products are here: http://vip.n0tice.org.

You southern scoundrel……..I don’t know how you have the nerve to show your treacherous smarmy two faced southern face up here at all.

While officially bowing out today, the Guardian’s former northern editor Martin Wainwright has made public a letter in which he is roundly abused by an anonymous critic of his work.

Picture 11 in this gallery.

It was sent in 1999. It’s an example of the pre-internet communication with readers which just about every journalist will be familiar with but which sometimes gets forgotten in the rush to denigrate online commenters and cry ‘troll’ at every opportunity.

Being on the receiving end of such vitriol could lead you to reject the views of those who spew them, but Martin’s approach – as can be seen by turning out to meet the author in this occasion – has been to attempt to understand the other person’s viewpoint.

Martin makes the point in his farewell gallery that The Northerner blog which he has steered for the past two years has been a place for “discussions we are able to have as equals.”

It’s a point well made. By taking that approach of equals, rather than experts, to the comments and having the authors regularly joining in the discussions ‘below the line’, the civility present on the blog has been a hallmark since the initial team of four of us started it in 2010.

So, as the one “they call Martin” heads off for a well-earned retirement, here’s hoping The Northerner continues to be the place for healthy, but reasoned, debate he worked so tirelessly to establish.

Update: There’s now a collaborative googledoc which is crowdsourcing other options here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0ApTo6f5Yj1iJdFRfWmhUVjV0WkktTjJhUUE4dGR5WUE&toomany=true#gid=0

I was an avid GoogleReader user – for many years – so I’m one of the people this is going to inconvenience. However, I had already started migrating some feeds to a platform I’ve been working on called n0tice.com – in part to test it, but also because it was easy – plus, for hyperlocals, it’s got the added advantage of geo-tagging.

One of the things I used GoogleReader for was simply to monitor the activity of some sites and blogs I’m interested in keeping an eye on but didn’t want the bother of visiting several times a day. As an alternative I set up feeds into a dedicated Noticeboard and simply let it run, checking in via mobile or desktop every now and then.

It’s not the same as GoogleReader but, if collecting, folling and sharing RSS feeds is what you need, it makes all that possible. See www.northerner.n0tice.com for an example – RSS feeds of the bigger news sites covering the north of England where I’m based. There’s some ‘how to’ here and happy to help anyone getting started too: http://n0tice.org/2013/01/04/using-feedwax-com-to-curate-information/.

I grabbed a quick word with some of the participants at the end of the first data journalism camp we hosted in Istanbul. Here’s how the journalists found the experience.

The next two days will be taken up with DJ Camp 2013 in Istanbul. This event is part of a programme created through Uclan’s Media and Digital Enterprise programme and will see Francois Nel, Megan Knight, Patrick McGee and I working with a group of journalists in Istanbul.

It’s all about data journalism – from sourcing information, work on verification and different outcomes including mapping and other visualisations.

The work comes at an important time for the development of an open data culture for the city. Late last year, Istanbul’s links with representatives from Manchester’s digital community kicked off discussions about the challenges and benefits of opening civic data sets during a visit from Julian Tait and Adrian Slatcher.

Now, in this separate initiative, we will pick up on that conversation again and look forward to hosting a panel event with representatives from Istanbul city council as well as prominent editor and columnist with national newspaper Milliyet, Mehves Evin tomorrow evening.

During the two days of workshops and coaching, there will be a liveblog running which you can see at the Uclan Made blog here:http://uclanmade.blogspot.com/2013/01/djcamp2013-coming-to-you-live-from.html
and I’ll hope to do more updates here and on the Flickr group for MADE Turkey here.

The hashtag for the event is #djcamp2013.

As announced in the n0tice newsletter earlier this week, there’s a new feature available in the open journalism toolkit to help data journalists – the ability to easily map data contained in a spreadsheet.

Still in beta, it provides an opportunity to play around a bit and see how it might fit into the whole suite of geo-tagging related tools being developed.

Being one of those involved in the team developing this I wanted to get straight onto trying it out so I’ve created a very simple spreadsheet of the locations and opening times of Manchester’s city centre toilets. The data comes from the Data GM store. Creating the spreadsheet took the longest time, the set up and ingestion into the noticeboard probably 10 mins at most. Quick and dirty toilets mapping as it were!

You can see the items and click on items to get a map view here, http://atyourconvenience.n0tice.com but, as n0tice is primarily a mobile experience, the worth of this type of information is more obvious when viewed via the app where users will encounter the information in a serendipitous way due to their proximity to the location. (Alternatively a feed of the info from the api could create something in a different platform or publication.)

If you fancy giving the new spreadsheet feature a go, the instructions on how to get started are here: http://n0tice.org/2013/01/15/how-to-add-spreadsheet-data-to-a-noticeboard the apps to experience the content in your location are free and can be downloaded here.

Launched today, this new website looks to fill the hole left by the closure of How Do. It’s the latest publishing venture from How-Do’s Nick Jaspan and reflects the thriving media scene here in the north.

Prolific North will become the destination for news, informed opinion, features and of course as much gossip and rumour as you can take about the comings and goings of creative and media companies in the North and their key staff.

In the coming months we will be offering a growing range of support services, enhancing our core news operation and jobs board, launching an innovative classified marketplace, partnering institutions on management development and training and creating a broad spectrum of events and industry initiatives to entertain and inform our readership.

Stories today include news about MCFC’s tweeting fans and BBC5 Live appointments. With so much happening in northern media just now it’s sure to be interesting times.

Take a look here: http://www.prolificnorth.co.uk/

I made a thing…..

I’d like to think that when I use those four words in the subject line of emails it provokes a little spark of interest in my colleagues (possibly they just evoke a fearful uhoh!) but this time I’ll try it out on you.

The latest ‘thing’ I’ve messed with is an experiment to distribute news from the north into the mobile space using some of the tools available at the platform I’m working with, n0tice.com.

It means that any mobile phone user who has the n0tice.com app downloaded will discover the news headlines and links from their local newspaper to click straight through to the provider to find out the full story, explore their site etc.

It runs off the news organisation’s public RSS feeds with the addition of geo-tagging to the town or city where it is based so – a person walking around Manchester will be able to serendipitously receive news from the MEN, in Newcastle the Journal, Sheffield The Star and so on.

The content is created via the app Feedwax.com and then fed into an online noticeboard which becomes the way the stories are ultimately accessed via a mobile site, Android app or iPhone app.

All of the content can be seen in one go at this noticeboard although it’s unlikely that anyone (perhaps with the exception of journalists for monitoring purposes) would want to view it in that rather random way. Instead, it really is intended for mobile discovery where the location of the user provides the context.
You can download the apps to test it out here – android, iPhone.
Once logged in you can set your location and see all that’s been geotagged around you (notices) or restrict to everything via the Northerner noticeboard (boards).
A few things I learned from doing it:

• some news sites make it really difficult to hunt down the RSS feeds – why? They’re the building blocks for people to make things which have the potential to find new audiences.
• it wasn’t possible to tag the stories to the locations mentioned in the copy due to a lack of geo-tagging at source. This is an area I’m working with on a few different projects (including augmented reality) and one which I’d be interested to hear from anyone looking to incorporate it in their regular journalism work or content management systems.
• The feeds currently included are: The Guardian’s Northerner blog, MEN, Middlesbrough Gazette, Newcastle Chronicle, Liverpool Echo, Lancashire Evening Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Carlisle News and Star, York Press, Sheffield Star, Northern Echo.
• should it include local blogs? Any newsy-based bloggers out there who’d like to be included, please give me a shout and I’ll add you in. Likewise, anyone currently included who would rather not have their content exposed to a mobile audience – just let me know and I’ll drop it out. It’s an experiment, I don’t want to annoy anyone.

If you’d like a similar thing for your own blog or website – basically it’s like having your own mobile app – the tools used are available to all here www.n0tice.org and I’m on hand to offer some help or advice if needed.

Factors behind successful data journalism teams

A new report from Knight has looked at some of the big players in the data journalism sphere worldwide (BBC. NYT, Guardian, Chicago Tribune and more) to look at the secrets of their success.

The four key findings (ironically distributed in the pdf below) are in summary:

1. Locating the data-journalism team close to the news desk: Members of data journalism teams emphasize that being close to the news desk gives them critical access to editors and reporters as they and the data team develop and plan data-driven news coverage.
2. Encouraging reporters and developers to work together to come up with ideas for data-driven stories: Because developers and reporters often have specialized skill sets, it’s important to bring them together to brainstorm story ideas.
3. Recruiting reporters and developers who bridge the skills gap: Find or develop people who can work as journalists and developers on your data journalism team.
4. Producing stories that show what data mean and why the audience should care: Data-driven stories about topics affecting the lives of news consumers produce impact and drive Web traffic.

Integrating data journalism in the newsroom by

(nearly) 500 ways to introduce yourself to the local FOI officer

Data journalist Claire Miller has come up with this cracking list of ideas for story prompts on Freedom of Information – everything from the cost of training days for councillors to the number of forced adoptions.

This list needs bookmarking – on the office wall!

Don’t forget there’s advice about formulating FOI requests and an easy, transparent system which helps cut down on duplication to make the application at WhatDoTheyKnow.com.

 MEN goes ‘more local’

The Manchester Evening News has changed its edition structure to offer readers two editions for the vast Greater Machester region – north and south.

Explaining the changes, a short posting on Monday says the change will give readers ‘a greater focus on the area where you live.’

This includes a front page dedicated to your area and specific pages inside with all the latest local news and information for where you live.

And it helpfully provided these two screen grabs showing the difference.

Readers were, as ever, quick to comment on the changes and raise the issue of localness.

 Ecclescake noting:

 Theoretically, a brilliant idea and one to be commended. It’s great to see the MEN thinking of new ways to survive.

That said, it seems to me that the only way to really get into the heart of communities is to be there. Properly immerse yourself in the communities. I know that’s easier said than done, particularly with the industry in the pickle it is and the lack of resources available to you.

But if this change means anything, then allow your reporters the time and space to work their patches!

The changes announced yesterday also include a revamp of CityLife, a new column on matters of faith and the old favourite – ‘a trip down memory lane every Monday and Tuesday with pages of photos from yesteryear.’

 

Talking of Manchester…..

The Guardian has released a new way of looking at its ‘most interesting’ content – using algorithms to  measure interestingness by “a number of social signals including; incoming links, shares around social media, view count, editorial selection, number of comments and positive deviation from the norm for an article in its particular section.”

You may well expect the Guardianista’s would be most interested in social issues, Leveson or press freedom but it’s interesting to note just how often northern football stories – particularly both Manchester clubs – pop up in the ‘most interesting’.

Football fans’ online promiscuity is well-known but does that entirely explain what’s happening there?

Now the the once Manchester-based national’s staffing has reduced to just one full time northern based journalist (the newly appointed, hard-working editor Helen Pidd) it’s hard to know what conclusion to draw from that. Does the location of those producing the news actually matter much? Would those figures be even higher with a northern based news and sports desk pounding the beat?

Leeds’ Richard Horsman considers this question in a radio context where news ‘hubs’ have become commonplace over boots on the ground.

Writing at The CultureVulture, ‘So what is ‘Local’ news anyway’  he says:

 The flip side is local knowledge, which tends to dilute across a bigger patch. Woe betide anyone talking to Bradford who pronounces Keighley as ‘keely’ or Allerton as anything other than ‘ollerton’. Old time district reporters are also more likely to recognise the names on the New Year honours list and have some clue why they’ve earned a gong beyond ‘services to education’ or ‘the arts’

 

What do you think? Can maths get the job done or is all this talk of hubs and centralisation doing reader a disservice? Love to hear your views.