Depth Reporting

Google tries to organize the world's knowledge with Knol

2008-07-24T09:47:00.001-05:00

Google says a Knol is "A unit of knowledge." It's the name Google's chosen for its new Wikipedia-like site, where anyone can write "an authoritative article about a specific topic" and theoretically, at least, reap Google ad profits if enough people read it. The Official Google Blog says:

The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to everyone.

There's now a debate whether Google has crossed the line and become a direct competitor to newspapers. The most obvious threat, though, is to Wikipedia, which has a good summary of the issues Knol raises.

Google tried to get into the knowledge-organizing business before with Google Answers and failed, so we'll see how this turns out.

Breitbart.com: "Get connected to the news as fast as possible."

2008-07-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

While scanning the latest list of top 50 online news sources, I noticed Breitbart.com, which ranks 50 and which I hadn't heard of before in spite of the excessive time I already spend on the Web:

Breitbart.com offers real-time access to top news and analysis sources. You can monitor up-to-the-minute feeds from wires, newspapers, networks, key blogs and more. And there are multiple options for exploring topics by channel. While some news sites select stories for the user and others allow users to rank favorite news stories, Breitbart emphasizes user access to the raw news feeds -- kind of an organized grocery store of news.

Cogmap, an organization chart wiki

2008-07-18T09:26:00.001-05:00

This site calls itself "the Wikipedia of organization charts."

This means that it is a collection of organization charts online that anyone can edit, add to, and help maintain.

Cogmap is a tool for sales people, entrepreneurs, and recruiters to understand organizations and keep information up to date. If you are like us, you had some of these things happen to you:

Worked at a company without a published organization chart and had no idea who worked for anyone else
Tried to figure out who to call at a company and come up empty
Bought a list of people to call and had all the information be wrong
Met people that all had different titles and been unable to tell who was the decision-maker in the room!

Organization charts are useful for reporters too, and you should grab them whenever you can or build your own.

I doubt there will be enough people volunteering to make this work. For example, there's a page for Gannett, The Courier-Journal's parent company, but no one has put together a chart yet even though the page appears to have been online since May 2007.

To their credit the creators are realistic about it:

We are a web site, not a business. Businesses have business models. Web sites are just good ideas.

We are some passionate people with an interesting idea trying to make our way in the big world. Help us out!

They also have a blog.

[via view.theinfo]

Just how stupid, shortsighted and out-of-touch are newspaper executives?

2008-07-16T09:29:00.001-05:00

Last week I read the book Burn Rate. A great read. Burn Rate ruthlessly but hilariously chronicles author Michael Wolff's attempt to cash in on the early days of the Internet. One scene that grabbed my attention was when Wolff described a speech he gave before a conference of newspaper editors in 1996:

It was a cross section of Middle-America that I saw in the audience. Two hundred or so inartfully dressed average Joes. They had a far different look from the software groups and technology business audiences I usually found myself in front of. The newspaper editors lacked an edge. They seemed to be looking for a way not to be noticed whereas those other groups were strictly a "shine that light over here" bunch. Newspaper people had fallen way behind the technology curve. Their management, fat on monopoly profits, had no incentive to make the investment in the resources that technology demanded. It was a sad state. Newspaper editor was a job alongside schoolteacher or bank teller. It was a small-town job, underpaid, underskilled, inexorably being downgraded from profession to back-office function.

When I read that, I thought to myself: Wolff was a seer. That's so deadly accurate, it makes me want to cry. The entire newspaper industry is in a steep decline now because newspaper executives didn't wake up in time. They ignored the Internet until it was too late. And Wolff foresaw it all, right there at the very beginning.

There's just one problem with what he wrote: It isn't true. It's a caricature, a striking but false picture. It appeals to a common prejudice in the news business: That management is hopelessly inept, out of touch, unable to change, and if only it would embrace the new, all would be right with the world.

How do I know what he wrote isn't true? Wolff, for one. As it becomes clear his Web dreams are dying, Wolff revisits the newspaper editors at a later conference and decides they aren't so out of it after all:

I was startled by what I heard. The newspaper people of America, one after another, stood up to profess their faith in the Web and their acceptance of the end of newspapers as we knew them.

It had happened, apparently: In the course of six months or so, the Web had become a strategic avenue for every mid-size paper in the country.

The promise here, I heard from representatives of the great old names in American newspapers, was to be able to bring retailer together with customer in some new, wonderful, and efficient relationship. That was the future. Sixty billion dollars in local advertising was at stake.

There was real excitement. They had really gotten it.

Not just Wolff, though, tells me the caricature is a lie. The next book I read was Speeding the Net, which told the story of the first hugely popular Internet browser, Netscape, and how it was eventually overtaken by Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Even before the Netscape browser got its name, when it was still called Mosaic and well before it was released to the public, a newspaper company, Knight-Ridder, was paying attention. This was 1994, two years before the caricature painted by Wolff:

Knight-Ridder ... had become convinced that the Internet represented the future of publishing -- and better yet, that Mosaic represented the future of the Net.

Knight-Ridder was on board, ready to develop an on-line version of its San Jose Mercury-News for publication on the Web. ... Knight-Ridder would buy a license, for a grand total of $50,000, that would entitle the media company to one copy of everything Mosaic would make in the next year.

Knight-Ridder would end up publishing the Mercury-News online, using a beta version of the Mozilla server software.

The first version of Netscape was in beta still! And Knight-Ridder was there.

The story goes even farther back than that, though. Long before the Internet, there was something called Videotex. In the 1970s and 80s Videotex delivered text and graphics electronically to subscribers, who would view it on televisions screens. Who were among the biggest investors at the time? Newspaper companies. Particularly Knight-Ridder, which invested more than $50 million in it, in 1980s dollars.

Videotex failed, for a lot of reasons, but the stupidity of newspaper executives wasn't one of them. One of the Knight-Ridder executives involved with Videotex -- called Videotron with Knight-Ridder -- was Philip Meyer, who later became a professor at Chapel Hill and is considered one of the pioneers of computer-assisted reporting.

I've dredged all of this up because I read a lot about journalism online these days and there's an endless refrain that goes something like this: The people leading newspapers are imbeciles, and if only they had more foresight, had planned ahead and embraced the Internet sooner, newspapers wouldn't be in the quagmire they're in now. What's amusing is that a lot of this commentary comes from people who, as best I can tell, have never met a payroll, who know absolutely nothing about the advertising business and how it works, and who have never created a truly successful blog, much less an entire self-sustaining, profitable Web site, themselves.

I'm not saying there aren't stupid, shortsighted newspapers executives, because undoubtedly there are. I'm not saying that newspapers can't do a better job on the Web, because they can.

What I am saying is that powerful economic forces, forces that are vastly more complicated than the simplistic drivel about newspaper curmudgeons and their resistance to change, are behind the news industry's malaise today. You would think that the litany of business failures over the last few decades, not just of Videotex but also of Wolff's company, of Netscape, of an untold number of Web startups and of Knight-Ridder itself, which was there at the beginning and still couldn't make it work, would induce a little humility in those who think they have all the answers now.

Unfortunately, it hasn't.

Google Elections Video Search Gadget

2008-07-15T09:39:00.001-05:00

It uses " speech recognition software to automatically produce rough transcripts of presidential campaign videos." You can get it here.

Using the gadget you can search not only the titles and descriptions of the videos, but also their spoken content. Additionally, since speech recognition tells us exactly when words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts of the videos you find.

SearchEngineWatch.com says it "leaves a lot to be desired" because it only transcribes "fragmented snippets" of political speech. I searched for Kentucky and this is how it transcribed Hillary Clinton's speech the night Barack Obama clinched the nomination:

"sex is the media west Virginia and Kentucky why don't we go and."

I'd say that about sums up the campaign so far.

The Daily Cartoonist

2008-07-15T09:34:00.001-05:00

The Daily Cartoonist is "The SOURCE for industry news for the professional cartoonist." Naturally it's blogged the New Yorker/Obama cartoon kerfluffle.

Reporters' Guide to Covering the Olympics

2008-07-14T09:30:00.001-05:00

... from Human Rights Watch (PDF):

Sports journalists who may be unaccustomed to government monitoring should know that even the most basic reporting activities may be of interest to the Chinese government. Chinese officials do not distinguish sports journalists from editorial writers or foreign correspondents and your judgment of what constitutes a story won’t be theirs. You will want to plan and act accordingly.

This guide spells out your rights as a visiting journalist in China—but also the risks you face, and the risks your Chinese contacts will face once the Beijing Games are over and you are back home. You will find here practical information on a range of subjects, from what documents to carry with you to how to identify public security officials. You will find not only general safety tips but very specific suggestions on how to evade online censorship and what to do if you are detained. You will also find a concise summary of human rights conditions in China and ideas for stories that will give your readers a glimpse of the real China behind the curtain of the Olympic extravaganza.

Remember, the victims of Adolph will be watching how you do.

[via Docuticker]

100 Useful Web Tools for Writers

2008-07-11T09:11:00.001-05:00

... from CollegeDegrees.com.

[via Librarians' Internet Index]

Free Medical Dictionary

2008-07-11T09:01:00.001-05:00

... at Medical-Dictionaries.org. The dictionary is by Babylon.com "the world's leading provider of translation software," the site says. Today's term of the day is "inflammation":

[in-fla-MAY-shun] Redness, swelling, pain, and/or a feeling of heat in an area of the body. This is a protective reaction to injury, disease, or irritation of the tissues.

This, incidentally, is a common ailment in the news industry.

[via Marcus P. Zillman]

Free book on data wrestling

2008-07-10T09:00:00.001-05:00

Paul Murrell, a senior lecturer in statistics at New Zealand's University of Auckland, has published a working draft of his upcoming book, opaquely titled "Introduction to Data Technologies," online. There's also a PDF you can download. The book, written for academics but potentially useful to geeky, data-oriented journalists, discusses how to work with HTML, CSS, XML, databases, SQL and R. From the introduction:

The basic premise of this book is that scientists are required to perform many tasks with data other than statistical analyses. A lot of time and effort is usually invested in getting data ready for analysis: collecting the data, storing the data, transforming and subsetting the data, and transferring the data between different operating systems and applications.

Many scientists acquire data management skills in an ad hoc manner, as problems arise in practice. In most cases, skills are self-taught or passed down, guild-like, from master to apprentice. This book aims to provide a more structured and more complete introduction to the skills required for managing data.

The focus of this book is on computational tools that make the management of data faster, more accurate, and more efficient. The intention is to improve the awareness of what sorts of tasks can be achieved and to describe the correct approach to performing these tasks and there is an emphasis on working with data technologies via written computer languages.

[via Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science]

Rating conflicts of interest at medical centers

2008-07-10T08:50:00.001-05:00

The American Medical Student Association scorecard rates the conflict of interest policies at academic medical centers. The scorecard rates 151 medical colleges on such things as policies for accepting gifts and meals, consulting relationships and disclosure policies. Of the three Kentucky schools listed, the University of Kentucky College of Medicine rated a B, the University of Louisville School of Medicine a D and the Pikeville College of Osteopathic Medicine an F. They explain their methodology here.

Hellas, Hitler and the complete collection of official Olympic reports

2008-07-09T09:16:00.001-05:00

You can download PDFs of the "official Olympic reports" back to the first Olympics of the modern era in 1896. The reports summarize each of the games, including how they were organized, what happened from day to day and who won each event. From the preface of the 1896 edition:

This revival, after the lapse of many centuries, of the international athletic Games of the ancients, irresistibly draws our thoughts towards the historic valley of Elis, within which during almost twelve centuries the flower of the Hellenic world, that is in other words, the flower of the civilized humanity of antiquity, assembled, in order, beneath the ægis of a mighty and pacific divinity, to bear witness to the continuous development and improvement, both intellectual and physical, of those who were the rulers, the inhabitants, and the defenders of the cities subject to them. Moreover the assembling and welding together of the finest specimens of ancient civilization, together with the cessation of all hostilities during the celebration of the Games, prefigured the rise of that more general doctrine of the brotherhood and peaceful union of all nations dwelling upon earth, and was a step in advance towards the grand idea of united humanity. Thus no fundamental principle of the civilization of man remained foreign to ancient Hellas.

The undertaking of a brief, but clear and accurate description of the ancient Olympic Games upon which the excavations made twenty years ago at Olympia have cast a clear light, is undoubtedly useful for a better and fuller comprehension of the International Athletic Games which are to be celebrated in Athens. We learn from it how very little modern Athletic Games differ from the ancient, not only in the general idea, but even in details, being founded on the same eternal principles which the Greeks laid down for the appreciation of the moral and physical improvement of all free citizens.

Now that's writing. The author, Timoleon Philemon, was a Greek journalist from Cyprus and the secretary general of the 1896 games.

The 1936 edition for the Berlin games includes this quote from Adolph Hitler:

Sporting and chivalrous competition awakens the best human qualities. It does not sever, but on the contrary, unites the opponents in mutual understanding and reciprocal respect. It also helps to strengthen the bonds of peace between the nations. May the Olympic Flame therefore never be extinguished.

You couldn't have a clearer reminder why you should never take politicians words at face value, even more so when they wrap themselves in the glory of ancient traditions. I wonder if the next edition will include mention of Tibet.

[via Global-l]

In search of hard numbers on mass newspaper layoffs

2008-07-05T10:31:00.002-05:00

Last week an anonymous reader commented on my post about the newspaper layoff map:

All this fuss over some layoffs. What a bunch of cry babies. Now that the newspapers are going through what the rest of us have been dealing with for decades all of a sudden its big news. There are hardly any news articles about US companies replacing American workers with 65,000 H1B visa temporary workers each year and that is not even counting the L1 visas. Journalists callously wrote articles about how poor foreigners need those jobs. Well where are the articles about how the outsourcing in the news industry is good and helps poor immigrants get jobs. As far as I'm concerned, the current downsizing/outsourcing going on in the news industry is some much needed bitter medicine for the out of touch media.

Journalists do come across as oblivious to the economic reality faced by most other workers. Layoffs are common in other industries, even in the allegedly fast-growing and dynamic high-tech world. Companies like Sun Microsystems, Motorola and Yahoo! have laid off workers in the last year. And in many industries, workers aren't offered expensive buyout packages, as most newsroom employees seem to be getting. They're just let go, period.
Newspaper layoffs don't show up in the mass layoff statistics kept by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last month, after reading about The Palm Beach Post cutting 130 jobs from its newsroom, I looked there for signs of a more general surge in big newspaper job cuts and couldn't find any. The bureau releases the data monthly, with the most recent release for May, so presumably large newspaper layoffs would show up there. I couldn't find data sliced as finely as I wanted it, however, so its possible a trend is visible in other numbers I didn't have access to.
The bureau classifies industries using the North American Industry Classification System. There is a category, 511111, for newspaper publishers, but narrowest data grouping I could find online was a breakdown by "Publishing Industries (except Internet)." That isn't on point because it includes not only newspaper publishers but also magazine, book, directory, software and greeting card publishers.
Here's what the yearly figures since 1996 look like in a Google Chart. I assume the spike in 2001 reflects the dot-com bubble bursting.

Another issue is that the definition of a mass layoff -- "Fifty or more initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits filed against an employer during a 5-week period, regardless of duration" -- doesn't apply in most newspaper situations. The number fired is either less than that or reached through buyouts, which don't count as layoffs.
Newspaper layoffs also don't appear to be fall under the WARN Act, which requires companies to to give advance notice of mass layoffs under certain conditions. The government's guide to what must be reported (PDF) says you may be covered by the law if your job loss occurs as part of:

A plant closing ... where your employer shuts down a facility or operating unit ... within a single site of employment ... and lays off at least 50 full-time workers;

A mass layoff .... where your employer lays off either between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the single site of employment; or

A situation where your employer ... lays off 500 or more full-time workers at a single site of employment.

These don't apply to the typical newspaper scenario.
Many states report these layoff notices on the Web, including Kentucky (PDF). The only mention of a newspaper I found after checking a few other states was in Florida, where in March McClatchy reported 71 of its layoffs.
I found the layoff lists interesting to scroll through. They're a window onto the grinding wheels of the economy and put the news industry's woes, however sorrowful they may be, in context. There are lots of layoffs by mortgage companies, restaurant chains and transportation companies. And if nothing else, you can take cold comfort in knowing that you're in the same predicament as the 162 people let go at Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede.

"Speechology. Political rhetoric examined."

2008-06-26T07:07:00.001-05:00

Speechology offers "User-powered analysis of political debates, speeches and campaign ads."

Speechology is an archive of videos that show politicians stumping for your vote. If a candidate or elected representative said it on TV, we want you to be able to find it on here.

But instead of just showing you the video, we invite you to do your own research and then tell the rest of us what you found. Speechology is a place that does not care what your political preferences are. We only care if you contribute good research. If you would like to argue over politics, go somewhere else. Here, we value facts.

Taking the stand

2008-06-19T10:32:00.002-05:00

I don’t know about you, but I always take the stand with me, because the case might be lost…

Basics of fact checking

2008-06-19T09:05:00.001-05:00

The Infotoday blog summarizes what Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org had to say at a conference:

Look for expert agreement
Check primary sources
Know what counts (with statistics)
Know who is talking (consider the source)
Cross check everything that matters

"Five Ways to Write Faster"

2008-06-19T08:38:00.001-05:00

... courtesy Daily Writing Tips.

Newspaper layoff map

2008-06-18T08:51:00.002-05:00

graphicdesignr plots "paper cuts". - i.e. buyouts and layoffs in the newspaper industry. The closest to home recently was the Lexington Herald-Leader, which is cutting its work force 4 percent. graphicdesignr says the total industry-wide this year is 4,420+.

[via CyberJournalist]

Research Recap

2008-06-17T21:57:00.002-05:00

... highlights "the best equity, credit, market and economic research." Their latest post summarizes a Forrester report on newspapers' "Near-Death Spiral":

The inability of print newspapers to provide a high level of accountability to advertisers, combined with falling circulation as consumers abandon their subscriptions for content they can get elsewhere, will lead to print becoming a cost center rather than a profit center for newspapers.

Can't read the full report - "The Fragmentation of Yesterday's Newspaper" - online, though. That will cost you $279 -- $86 more than a year's subscription to The Courier-Journal.

[Via Media Stock Blog]

Get car repair estimates from RepairPal or Driverside

2008-06-16T09:19:00.001-05:00

TechCrunch reviews RepairPal, a service that promises to make it easier to know what car repairs should cost. TechCrunch summarizes the need:

Going to the mechanic is like going to the doctor. When something needs to be fixed, for most people there is no easy way to tell if they are being charged the going rate or are being ripped off. Enter RepairPal, a new site launching publicly today where you can get price estimates for different parts and repair jobs for your car. You enter your car year, model, and mileage, and it spits out price ranges for your zip code.

Another similar site that launched recently, also reviewed by TechCrunch, is DriverSide.

[thanks to Jim Malone for the tip]

On the passing of Tim Russert

2008-06-15T09:37:00.001-05:00

Certain stories are always untrustworthy.

This includes stories written within hours of an event and stories about people who have died unexpectedly, as with Tim Russert.

The first New York Times post about Russert's death called him "a towering figure in American journalism." The Washington Post said he "revolutionized Sunday morning television" and his death would have "a large — and lasting — impact on the work of politics and journalism for months to come."

My first thought reading all that was, "Really?"

Tim Russert was a celebrity, no doubt. He was likeable, it seems obvious from the outpouring of affection for him. He was an important figure at NBC, where he was a vice president and the Washington bureau chief. He could get really important people to appear on his Sunday morning talk show to talk shop before its 3 million viewers.

But revolutionary? For taking over a long-running political talk show and reviving it by — gasp! — asking tough questions? I had to look up the definition of towering because its meaning — "surpassing others; very great" — didn't fit with my view of Russert.

I thought of him as a better-than-average commentator who loved the game and the people in it a little too much. I thought of him as more a political schmoozer than a fact gatherer, a point I made a year ago when the notion of picking up a phone to nail down facts seemed beyond him. Russert began his career as an apparatchik of politicians, hardly the best training for a professional disinterested observer.

Tim Rutten wrote in the LA Times:

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck — once again — by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

Thus, in all that gush across four networks in dozens and dozens of voices, hardly a word was spoken concerning Russert's role in the recent trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That's odd because Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was, in some large part, based on Russert's testimony. Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby.

That's the way it is when someone dies, no matter who they are. There's an immediate instinct to emphasize the good and suppress the bad. It's understandable, commendable even. But it's hardly an honest reflection of a life. It's hard to put things in perspective when you're in shock.

Russert led a good life and did good things but it's what people will say long after the reporters have stopped typing that will be the true measure of the man.

Dipity, an interactive timeline maker

2008-06-13T09:17:00.006-05:00

It took me less than two minutes to make this timeline of Depth Reporting posts using Dipity.

All I did was register for the site and paste in the blog's feed. Nice. My feed isn't geotagged, so the map view of this widget doesn't work, but that's my problem, not theirs.

I'm beginning to think that eventually all Web data sharing will take place through embeddable widgets like these.

[via Infodoodads]

Google Maps adds Louisville Street View

2008-06-12T09:18:00.002-05:00

Louisville is the latest city to get Google Maps Street View. If you're not familiar with it, Street View gives you a ground-level look at selected cities. You can take a virtual drive down any street, rotating the view 360 degrees to see building fronts and pedestrians. Louisville and Lexington are among 37 new areas added this week. Google is blurring faces now after spotting strange or embarrassing moments captured by Google's roving cameras became a Web sport. Other features added to Google Maps recently include photographs from Panoramio and entries from Wikipedia. To try these just click on the "Street View" or "More" buttons on the upper right corner of the map.

This YouTube video gives you a better idea of what Street View is all about:

[via Twitter]

ProPublica: "Journalism in the Public Interest"

2008-06-11T09:05:00.001-05:00

ProPublica is a New York-based non-profit dedicated to investigative journalism that has hired more than 20 experienced reporters and editors. This week it "quietly" opened its doors on the Web. They call themselves an "experiment" and believe they are "the largest, best-led and best-funded investigative journalism operation in the United States."

Their Web site will feature not only their own work but also a round-up of investigative stories from around the Web; commentary and analysis of some of those stories; and "Scandal Watch," which "will track the top five investigations (other than our own) at any given moment, selected by our editors and ranked by intensity of coverage."

From their about page:

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.
Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy.
The business crisis in publishing and — not unrelated — the revolution in publishing technology are having a number of wide-ranging effects. Among these are that the creation of original journalism in the public interest, and particularly the form that has come to be known as “investigative reporting,” is being squeezed down, and in some cases out.
ProPublica is led by Paul Steiger, the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Stephen Engelberg, a former managing editor of The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon and former investigative editor of The New York Times, is ProPublica’s managing editor.
Lead funding for this effort is being provided by the Sandler Foundation, with Herbert Sandler serving as Chairman of ProPublica; other leading philanthropies also providing important support. A Board of Directors and a Journalism Advisory Board have also been formed.

[via Portfolio.com]