The course assumes no prior knowledge of code or web development and will be akin to a practical survey class — intended to guide students through understanding and using some key tools. With fundamental understanding and hands-on practice, they’ll be able to dive deeper and teach themselves more after the 12 weeks. Here’s the official description:

Merely using the web and digital tools is no longer enough for today’s media professionals. Journalists and communicators alike need to have a strong foundational and practical understanding of how websites and applications are built and how to troubleshoot when problems arise. This class does not aim to make you hard-core coders or require any web development experience, but we do want you to come away with some coding skills. You’ll also be able to more effectively collaborate with web developers and continue learning on your own.

Students will learn about the various phases of web development and the fundamental technologies used to code and design web pages by diving into HTML and CSS, plus some basic JavaScript, jQuery and PHP. Students set up their own self-hosted website using WordPress. Readings, guest speakers and hands-on learning activities and assignments will be the basis for instruction.

Follow along on the course site, check out the syllabus and let me know in the comments below what you think.

Erika Owen’s post:

So you want to measure impact: BarCamp 2013

CPIJ summary video of the session Brian Abelson, Erika and I led:

Full session video:

Temple University journalism chair Andrew Mendelson’s ”Beyond metrics: Thinking more broadly about journalism’s impact”  talk:

Summary

Full session

I live-tweeted the session and Storified some key points he shared:

Biologists Home in on Turing Patterns: Was Alan Turing right about the mechanism behind tiger stripes?

For the work that led to his 1952 paper, Turing wanted to understand the underlying mechanism that produces natural patterns. He proposed that patterns such as spots form as a result of the interactions between two chemicals that spread throughout a system much like gas atoms in a box do, with one crucial difference. Instead of diffusing evenly like a gas, the chemicals, which Turing called “morphogens,” diffuse at different rates. One serves as an activator to express a unique characteristic, like a tiger’s stripe, and the other acts as an inhibitor, kicking in periodically to shut down the activator’s expression.

And then watched an older video linked from it:

Mathematical Impressions: Shell Games

From the description:

One-dimensional, two-state cellular automata produce a list of bits at discrete time steps, whose output, depending on the parameters, may be trivial or very complex. Surprisingly, this simple mechanism can be Turing complete — that is, capable of calculating anything that any computer can calculate.

The knitting part reminded me of this photo I took of one of my mom’s crocheting pattern books:

“I can read patterns. It’s kind of like programming,” says @excdinglyrandom while crocheting next to me.

I then went to Hart’s site, which included a link to his daughter’s YouTube page. I hadn’t watched one of Vi Hart‘s videos for a while, so I browsed and immediately clicked the one on Folding Space-Time:

And, of course, it reminded me of Crab Canon on a Möbius Strip:

All of this really just being another reminder that I need to continue reading Gödel, Escher, Bach!

Last year I led a more general discussion about impact, which Andrew Spittle expertly documented in his notes. Springboarding from that, Wendy Warren and I did a follow-up #BCNI12 session to dive into specific, qualitative possible news metrics for success.

The thinking and conversations about impact have grown and evolved in the past year, such as with a conversation about impact at #ONA12. With this progress, we’re going to take a much more hands-on approach at the unconference this time, as Erika wrote in her preview post:

It’s pretty easy for the conversations around impact to go in circles, but the aim is for this discussion to be more focused. Greg suggested an “impact-a-thon” format where folks share case studies, discuss them in small groups, and then report back on the findings.

Do you have any case studies of stories you’ve worked on? Analytics and/or anecdotes to share of impact of the stories? Think back to those awards application cover letters, what did you describe for why your story should be honored?

The session, rather than theory, will focus on implementation. How have organizations monitored impact, and what are some specific examples of things they can do for future stories? We look forward to an insightful, action-oriented discussion, and want your help in designing the session. Please email the Google Group, share your thoughts, and join us Saturday morning.

Brian will share his experiences thus far exploring impact measurement as an Open News fellow at The New York Times:

In preparation for the discussion, I’m hoping to get your thoughts and concerns about impact measurement (read up here) – what have we done right so far and what’s missing from the conversation?

In that line Brian links to an extremely thorough list of posts, articles, studies, etc. relating to journalistic and media impact. Be sure to read up beforehand, especially ProPublica’s white paper, “Non-profit journalism – Issues around impact.”

The conversations and the company should be fantastic, so please join us on Saturday — and register for BCNI before tickets are gone!

Storified by Greg Linch· Sun, Apr 21 2013 20:32:54

What was your favorite part?

#NICAR13 conference highlights

Feb. 27-March 3 in Louisville, Ky.

Storified by Greg Linch· Sun, Mar 03 2013 19:04:44

Journos & programmers are both curious about how systems work. The relationships & how they interact w those systems is different. Or not?

— Greg Linch (@greglinch) February 12, 2013

Space permitting, I would’ve cc’ed @jonathanstray @jayrosen_nyu on bit.ly/12pRIjh P.S. Has anyone explored “journalism as hacking?”

— Greg Linch (@greglinch) February 12, 2013

@greglinch @jayrosen_nyu they share some logic, but “hacking society’s systems” is way, way harder than programming jonathanstray.com/papers/Rittel_…

— jonathanstray (@jonathanstray) February 12, 2013

@jonathanstray @jayrosen_nyu True. But even at a basic level, exposing “vulnerabilities” in system & reporting them, there’s some similarity

— Greg Linch (@greglinch) February 12, 2013

@jonathanstray @jayrosen_nyu Ah, yes. I recall that paper and others from your solutions journalism post bit.ly/VQkBYD Good stuff!

— Greg Linch (@greglinch) February 12, 2013

@greglinch The Wealth of Networks, maybe not quite what you had in mind, is nonetheless fascinating.

— Sam Petulla (@spetulla) February 12, 2013

@jonathanstray @greglinch @jayrosen_nyu My pet theory is that economics is journalism hacking at the extreme.

— Sam Petulla (@spetulla) February 12, 2013

Ripe for discussion

Have you heard talk of “journalism as hacking?” (Not to be confused with journalists involved in hacking.) If so, please share links — or any thoughts — below!

I’m very excited to announce that I’m now working with the local team on medium- and long-term journalism and technology projects. I’ll also be diving into big breaking stories when those arise.  

This new role blends project management and hands-on work (e.g. continuing to put those improved code skills to use!). I’ll be collaborating with editors, reporters and others across the newsroom, including the developer team. Karaoke is not an official responsibility, but we’ll see how that plays out.

Here’s the announcement:

We’re pleased to announce that Greg Linch is Local’s new innovations editor. He joins the staff after working for six months with newsroom developers building web tools for reporters, editors and producers. Greg was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper at the University of Miami with a focus on traditional writing and reporting until he began dabbling with coding during his junior year. By the time he graduated, he’d become an entrepreneur, co-founding a college media start-up, and gravitated to another start-up in Loudoun County called Publish2. He joined the Post in 2010 as a producer for Health & Science before moving on to Politics, briefly, and then the Foreign Desk.

We’re confident that Greg’s training in journalism and his burgeoning technical skills will enable him to help reporters and editors find new and expansive ways to tell stories, present data, hold public agencies accountable and find new audiences on the web and on mobile devices. He can speak multiple newsroom languages, he understands what’s possible across digital media, and he’s passionate about working closely with reporters and editors. He previously worked on the Zero Day series with Bob O’Harrow, who says Greg is “totally smart, really collegial and makes stuff happen.” In his copious spare time, Greg has also served as an adjunct instructor for Northwestern’s Medill National Security Journalism Initiative for the past two fall quarters. This year, he begins a two-year term on the Online News Association’s board of directors. Please join us in congratulating him on his important new assignment.

Send me your ideas, especially D.C.-area folks!

#ONADC meetup: Washington Post projects

The Washington Post hosted and presented a series of lightning talks for the January 2013 gathering of the Online News Association D.C.

Storified by Greg Linch· Wed, Jan 09 2013 11:56:15