Chapter 4: "New Reporting Methods"
By Ginny Atwood, George Mason University, April 9, 2009
Introduction
In the digital age, people are starting to ask themselves, "Do we really need newspapers anymore?" The answer to that is that journalism is no less important now, but it is definitely changing.
Many newsrooms have attempted to keep up by creating databases and using the power of the internet to write stories, but most have not.
Technology and transparency are the "two essential qualities for amplifying the important work of journalism in the digital age," said Mark Briggs in his book Journalism 2.0.Spreadsheets and Storing Data
Paper files that have to be manually searched are extremely inefficient. Converting all paper data into spreadsheets will save alot of time and can be easily shared with all employees and even readers. Remember to use as many fields in your spreadsheets as possible so the information can be easily found.
The benefits of digital data:-Can be quickly searched through by the computer not by hand
-Can be shared with or edited by all employees
-Can also be shared or edited by the readers
-Can be represented visually for the webCrowd Sourcing
In many cases 1,000 dedicated volunteers can do a job much better than 100 trained professionals. So many companies have begun to use the internet population to help them run their businesses. For instance, Amazon pays its users to do tasks that humans do better than computerslike identifying objects in a photograph.
Google, Amazon and Proctor and Gamble have all wised up and started harnessing the power of the masses and now a few news rooms have to. In 2006, the Cincinati Enquirer enlisted the help of its website users to gauge the effects of a public smoking ban by asking them to submit which bars and restaurants were complying and which weren't. They were able to get answers for all 1,488 businesses.
This has recently been dubbed "crowd sourcing" but has also been referred to as "distributed", "collaborative," or "open source" journalism. The only drawback is that in order to get the help of the public news companies must release their story ideas early in the process, contrary to the normal secrecy and competition with other newsrooms.
Hobbies
I currently volunteer for the Mid Atlantic Pug Rescue by fostering homeless pugs in my house. My Pug Dog Blog has more information about all of my rescue endeavors.
Resources
