"Talking tech to non-techies" (via Shaminder Dulai)

In week three of the #MozNewsLab, our speakers discussed some of the many (many!) challenges they’ve faced in news environments. In particular, having to “do more with less” as newsroom budgets shrink, (cultural) resistance to change and communication barriers — like talking tech to non-techies — were but a few of the obstacles outlined in lectures by Shazna Nessa (Director of Interactive at the Associated Press), Mohamed Nanabhay (Head of Online at Al Jazeera English), and Oliver Reichenstein (designer and CEO of Information Architects).

As such, the question we put to learning lab participants picked up on these challenges:

Keeping in mind the objectives and challenges identified in this week’s presentations …how does your project take into account the need to facilitate collaboration in the newsroom (whether real or virtual), while acknowledging that team members will have varying technological skill sets?

From their responses, it’s clear many have been frustrated by these very same obstacles in trying to introduce new technologies and approaches into the newsroom:

“I keep hearing this common refrain: Cultural change within journalism institutions is the biggest barrier to adopting new technology and adapting to new and changing audiences.  And that stasis really has been the bane of my existence as a wannabe data-journalist,” says Rhiannon Coppin.

Saleem Khan links this “resistance to change” problem to competitive newsroom cultures that are arguably in conflict with the transparent, collaborative ecosystems associated with open source technologies:

“Journalists work in a competitive environment in a way that is at odds with other fields, especially open source technology and software…Deep, meaningful collaboration typically occurs only in small units, if at all.”

The underlying chicken-egg question that these responses inspire is best summed up by Katie Zhu who asks:

“If we’re building tools to change [newsroom] culture, then do we first build the tools or first change the culture?”

Reading through this week’s blog posts suggests that the answer to Katie’s question is “a bit of both.”  In looking at their projects, participants have proposed  a variety of approaches and dreamt up several different tools to overcome barriers in the newsroom.

Here are five excellent tips they share on collaborating in newsrooms:

1.   Patience!

Understand that revolutions don’t happen overnight and it probably won’t be tools that cause the sea- change to loosen rigid newsroom regimes.

Cody Shotwell notes: “Tools won’t cause the newsroom culture shift, but their creation is part of the process.”

2.  Listen and learn.

Cole Gillespie advises listening and understanding to the problem at hand before trying to help. “Really understanding the problem that someone comes to you with makes a huge difference when you are trying to solve things for others,” he says.

3.  Embrace clear communication.

Just because journalists have deadlines to meet, doesn’t mean they don’t want to learn about new tools. To the contrary, Shaminder Dulai stresses it’s important to find new ways to communicate to teach tech: “the question really is, how best to explain your complex new idea to an eager audience that may not speak tech, but speaks storytelling.”

4.  Collaborate with your colleagues.

It’s natural for developers to spend time alone working on ideas — but don’t forget to involve the people who’ll be carrying out and using the final product from start to finish, counsels Amy Zerba in her video “How to pitch an idea inside the newsroom.” In her video, she illustrates a scenario of how an idea pitch might be carried out and ultimately adopted in a newsroom.

5.  Under-promise and over-deliver.

Finally, once you’ve succeeded in introducing a new idea into the newsroom, the best strategy to win over sceptics is to make sure to “under-promise and over-deliver,”  then  “get in the trenches and get down to the job,” says Chris Keller.  “Co-workers are more likely to turn into co-conspirators if you are busting through tasks right alongside them, and whistling while you do it.”

Thanks to all of those who shared their insights. It has been (and will likely continue to be) an unpredictable time for our industry.  Those just starting out— whether in a fellowship or internship, or with their first journalism contract or job — may feel the future of journalism on their shoulders. Hopefully these reminders and new relationships developed over the weeks at the learning lab will help ease the transition into the industry, providing patience and inspiration to facilitate the changes necessary for good journalism to remain possible and relevant through this cultural shift.

On that note, the #MozNewsLab final projects are due today!! Curious about the #MozNewsLab? Take a gander at what we’ve been working on, Tweet us and read our blog posts.

“What is this thing for? What does it do? How does it fit into people’s lives?”

- Jesse James Garrett

These are just a few of the questions participants are grappling with as they develop ideas for software to change journalism – both as an industry, and an experience. At the #MozNewsLab, our second round of speakers Chris Heilmann (HTML5 evangelist at Mozilla), John Resig (JQuery creator) and Jesse James Garrett (UX design pioneer) – excited us with the potential of HTML 5,  schooled us in the principles user experience design and demonstrated to us a few different approaches to community building on the open web.

Tathagata Dasgupta provides an excellent visual synopsis of some of the themes that came out of the #MozNewsLab in week two.

The lectures inspired some thought-provoking – and very diverse – responses to these questions, including: why HTML5 alone can’t unify videos and the web, interface design trends, how programmers can help create a culture of coders and the role of gatekeepers in an ‘open ecosystem.’

They also motivated some to jump into the sandbox to get sketching and prototyping:

Inspired by Phil Gyford’s analysis of news sites (really interesting commentary on it here) Nicola Hughes takes a crack at bringing “friction, readability and finishability” to the news with “Big Picture.” In her video she explains how her project idea aims to help readers “engage, communicate and understand” the news sites they read.

Cody Shotwell hones in on many of the same shortcomings of online news that Nicola identifies. His “Streams” project invites users to personalize their experience of the news by having them following authors, topics, tags and other users.

Part wiki and part social network, Daniel Bello’s news app treats news as a conversation. On the one hand it helps journalists to organize and present additional information related with news stories, while also including readers in the conversation by sharing additional information. Daniel’s got an early demo of his app – take a look at how it works here.

How to sort through the overwhelming number of videos on sites like YouTube? Take a look at this intriguing solution: a dashboard that allows users to quickly scan through endless hours of footage to quickly locate what they need. With the abundance of video content available on the interwebs, this tool created by Juan Gonzalez shows a lot of promise.

Of course, it is not enough just to locate and organize content — in an increasingly data-saturated world, the key is to get data that is accurate. John Bell’s Re:Poste provides a crowd-sourced solution to this pressing problem. Re:Poste is a “citizen fact checker” made up of a network of “experts” who review, comment and critically examine stories produced online. Check out John’s sketches illustrating how his model works.

Once again, these are just a few of the latest projects in progress at the #MozNewsLab – and these learners are always looking for feedback!

We’re in the homestretch of the lab so don’t delay — send your thoughts, resources and greetings to us here and be sure to follow along on Twitter.

The first task was no simple endeavour. We asked participants to think back and write about the ideas presented by our first round of speakers  — Aza Raskin, Burt Herman and Amanda Cox — and apply the concepts these lecturers offered to their own projects — all in a mere 500 words. All of us on the #MozNewsLab team were extremely impressed by the quality of blog posts we received — and the comments responding to them.

"The Life of a Prototype" by Cole Gillespie

Some of the most interesting posts were interactive — allowing the reader to explore the author’s ideas in a non-linear fashion  at their own pace — or used video, sketches or mock-ups to illustrate their points.

Open story telling

Others dove right into proposing  news websites, apps and tools can be more open, interactive and better at facilitating storytelling.

“What would a GitHub for storytelling look like?” asks Jordan Wirfs-Brock in her post. Through doodles and sketches, she explains her idea for a tool that would make a reporter’s notebook open and collaborative, to improve news stories and engage users.

Similarly, Mark James’ ‘wiki-journalism system’ invites participants to become part of the storytelling process, allowing them to propose changes to news and opinion pieces.

Meanwhile,  Corbin Smith links to his ‘people-powered news’ — proposing a platform that engages users to help analyze and collaboratively fact check evidence and source material for a story.

"One space for news, social and work tools" by Amy Zerba

‘Gamifying’ the news

Both Katie Zhu and the team behind Headliner, together with Amy Zerba, identified a similar problem:  people find reading the news a chore.  Yet each blog described very different ways to solve this very real problem.

In Headliner, the news is presented as a game, enticing audiences to “tune in” by making news consumption fun. Zhu describes her team’s approach as one that engages readers in friendly competition, rewarding news literacy.

In contrast, Amy Zerba suggests that part of the reason why young readers are put off by news is that there’s too much to keep track of and not enough socializing.  Zerba ponders whether having social and news sites, applications and windows all together in one space could help resolve this issue, and make the news more social.

Crowdsourced information sharing was proposed as a means to invite audiences into the news production process, thereby engaging them.

Trina Chiasson suggested geotagging might be one way citizens can help inform journalists of stories happening locally.

Jason Spingarn-Koff ‘s Crowdcam project addresses the necessity for free-flowing information through networks of video-enabled cellphone cameras. Through on the ground “Cam” operators, news organizations around the world can access raw footage to supplement their own reporters’ analyses.

"Socializing the news" by Laura Hilliger

A proposal allowing news readers to help curate news stories was pitched by Laura Hilliger.  For Hilliger, reader curation could permit readers to socialize while storytelling, becoming engaged with how news stories are told.

The above are but a small sampling of concepts being explored by #MozNewsLab participants.  With the first two weeks of the #MozNewsLab now behind us, we encourage you to keep thinking, practicing and interacting with lab participants in the weeks to come.

Not a formal participant in the #MozNewsLab, but nonetheless interested in collaborating on one of these projects? Drop participants a line here or on Twitter. And…there’s still time to send a ‘message in a bottle’ to the lab.

The next round of blog posts are trickling in right now — read them as they come in at Planet Mojo (where they are being aggregated)…and look for another post round-up, next week!

Some of the lab participants (via P2PU.org)

This past week saw the launch of the learning lab — the outcome of a series of innovation challenges organized through the Knight-Mozilla partnership. I joined Mozilla’s News Innovation Specialist Phillip Smith to co-lead the four-week online course (woot!).  We are supported by a dream team of advisors:  Emily Bell, Director of Digital Journalism at Columbia U and former Director of Digital Content Director at The Guardian;  Sarah Cohen, Knight Chair in Computational Journalism at Duke U; and Rich Gordon, Professor and Director of Digital Innovation, at Northwestern U.

Like the innovation challenges which took place over the last several months, the focus of the course is to get developers and journalists to think outside the proverbial box when it comes to journalism and communications technologies.  To that end, the lab brings together technology and news visionaries who have been changing the face of the industry.

In addition to lectures and dialogues with these thought leaders, course participants are developing their own projects and pitching these as part of the final outcome of the lab. Then, Mozilla will be shortlisting 20 of these folks for a four day hackfest in Berlin.

The first week of the course featured renowned interface designer Aza Raskin,  and Burt Herman, CEO of Storify.com and founder of Hacks/Hackers,  providing tips and insight on the early stages of launching a project; then, New York Times Graphics Editor, Amanda Cox,  showed us how to creatively identify and express hidden information in large datasets, and convey it in a visually compelling way.

We’ve got 60 really outstanding participants from around the world taking part in the lab; over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging about their projects and progress, both here on my blog and on Planet MoJo.

Interested in following the course and tracking the thoughts and ideas of our bevy of brilliants? No problem! Start an account with P2PU.org and join us! All lectures are recorded and archived there.

And, you can also follow us at your favourite social sites via #MozNewsLab…we love feedback!

The Knight-Mozilla learning lab on Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU.org).