SC legslators suggest Wikipedia will do over those expensive databases

(Update: 1:40 p.m. 3/26: Ron Aiken of The Nerve says the language was stricken in conference committee last night but that the sponsor, Rep. Leon Stavrinakis, D-Charleston, says he'll bring it up again next session.)

S.C.'s State Library apparently is up in arms about some legislative budget engineering that would put some requirements and restrictions on the statewide DISCUS system, the free digital library available to everyone in the state and probably one of the state's best (if somewhat hidden) resources.

First there was a House budget proviso that would have prohibited the library from licensing electronic sources "where the same information is easily found in free online products such as Wikipedia." (Oh, there's a reliable source, eh?) It also would have prohibited licensing databases of articles "from mainstream newspapers and magazines, as these can almost always be accessed free online and are easily discovered through Internet search engines."

That same proviso also would have prohibited the inclusion of scholarly articles as not "intellectually accessible to the general population," but that was stricken -- as was the whole proviso.

But now the House has amended the Senate version to insert a new proviso that says no database DISCUS buys can have more than 20% of material freely available online.

There also are a bunch of technical requirements, such as that all databases must have responsive design that allows them to be viewable "down to the smallest smartphone size" and that there be an extensive geolocation service for all users. Video would also have to be delivered as H.264, MPEG-4 AVC format.

So in theory the responsive design requirement is a good one -- but will that put valuable databases/info off limits?

If you are out of state (or even on the border and your cell signal is being picked up by a tower in Georgia or NC) does that mean no access?

Sure, H.264 AVC is the advanced standard now, but things don't change much in tech, do they? So how quickly, if this is specified in state law, will it become outdated?

Generally, the success of legislating specific technology requirements has not gone well through the years.

To see the State Library's take on all this and the source docs:

http://scdiscus.org/provisio-amendment

Data journalism: Cool site on counties' economic recovery

The National Association of Counties has put out a cool site that looks at economic indicators for every county throughout the country, and the picture is not great -- aside from the great oil swath in the middle of the country.

Click on the counties in your area. This definitely could lend itself to more reporting.
More from Governing Magazine.

Journalism Education: A realy good reality check

I encourage you to read this Neiman Lab article by Amy Schmitz Weiss and Cindy Royal, two people in this j-education biz I really respect.

Amy does a good job of laying out the reality and challenges of journalism at the intersection of data and computer science.

Cindy then does a good job of adding perspective, specifically that journalism/media uses of data, computer science, etc., are often specialized applications of others' broad research and knowledge and thus are not always top-of-mind in the priority list of things like computer science departments.

(In other words, all those calls for collaboration are well-placed, but let's not get Pollyannaish about things.)

As I said, I really recommend you read it.

(You might also check this one out from last week: Larry Dailey's reflection on whether trad news orgs are ready for innovation. Goes for j-schools too.)

Bradshaw's data scraping how-to

Paul Bradshaw, one of the people I admire among the future-of-journalism foks, has written an ebook primer on data scraping for journalists.

I'm going to give it a go for $10.99.

Even though my early background was in programming, and I've played with scraping on and off, I think Bradshaw's got a point in an accompanying blog post detailing the barriers journalists trying to learn this stuff run into.

I'll let you know how it goes, but for $10.99, I'd seriously consider giving it a flier yourself.

News generated by computers

A new blog is up, "Just to Clarify," by Kris Hammond - and I'd recommend you read it occasionally. Hammond is the chief technology officer of Narrative Science, which is focused on turning data into computer-generated narratives.

Much of its work is based on research coming out of Northwestern University.

His newest post has the provocative title: Why 90% of news will be computer generated in 15 years.

Hammond's thesis breaks down to four (he says three, but I broke out No. 3 here) points:

1. More and more data is being generated natively in all sorts of areas (business, government,sports, etc.) and it is becoming more accessible
2. New techniques are also allowing computers to take text that previously required human mediation and interpretation and turn it into data
3. Integrating the first two, with some human guidance, will produce richer and more relevant stories
4. As news organizations increasingly have to rely on aggregating revenue streams from numerous niches, instead of a mass audience, doing so without the aid of computers doing some of the writing would be economically infeasible.

As he puts it: "A computer can write highly localized crime reports, personalized stock portfolio reporting, high school and youth sports stories at scale to provide coverage that was previously impossible and could never be possible in a world of purely human generated content."

Not to mention the fifth point - publishers looking for ever-cheaper ways of doing things.

See also Hammond's earlier, thought-provoking post: "The end of destination sites." That ought to give you a snoot full to think about for the rest of the day.

Feds release list of excess properties

News tip for Charleston, Aiken areas - lots of stuff to be disposed of in those areas. Much of it is connected the Savannah River Site, U.S. Agriculture Department Vegetable Laboratory and Sumter and Marion national forests.

Total about 1 million square feet.

See state map here (nationwide here). You can also download the dataset in comma-delimited format.

Data visualization in sports

I'm of the camp that says data visualization is one of those "skills" that j-school grads are going to have to be familiar with. (Remember, familiar does NOT mean everyone must be an expert, but that you have to know about it to communicate with those who can help you pull it off.)

Here's an interesting data viz from the Syracuse-Morgan State game.

Buttry: Time to weigh the value of clean copy

Steve Buttry, former copy editor, trainer for the American Press Institute, editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and now director of community engagement for TBD.com, weighs in on balancing the value of clean copy to today's digital realities.

To summarize (but you should read his entire post because a summary never adequately picks up the nunances) and my thoughts (in italics):

• "But as someone working on journalism innovation, I know that costs and value propositions are a critical factor in financial success and even survival." Yes, and much of this falls at the feet of copy editors. I still haven't seen them make an effective cost/value argument in the language executives use: Dollars and cents. In some quarters, I still sense a sense of fantasy - a fantasy that somehow there will be a massive lawsuit somewhere that will make "the industry" stand up and notice. Not going to happen.
• "My first newspaper had no copy desk and it was nowhere near as good as the Register, but it was good enough. ...I knew the city editor was just going to give my copy a quick glance, so I had to take responsibility for the quality of my copy, and I made it pretty good." "Good enough" still scares me as a standard because I don't know what it means. "Perfection" also scares me because it is a) not attainable and b) as a result tends to lead to paralysis. But striving for a level of perfection seems to be a useful glide slope if we are wise enough to know when the slope is too steep. But Buttry's ultimate point here that we MUST inculcate in all staff that editing is now everyone's responsibility is well-taken.
• "We have no copy editors at TBD (and got criticized for that after a famous correction). While the newsroom staffing was Editor Erik Wemple’s decision, I fully support it. You can’t do everything, and a digital operation can correct after publication with less damage than a print publication (very few people saw the original error that we were correcting; it was the correction that went viral)." Too facile. That original error is likely to be cached somewhere, and even with "very few" (please define - hundreds, a few thousand?), the network effects power means it still can get into the digital bloodstream. Errors have long tails just as much as corrected copy does. Yes, I agree we have to rethink - the digital environment is more plastic than print. But there are some realities that the "we can correct it quickly and few will notice" camp also conveniently overlooks. To TBD's credit, the correction is prominently displayed, something you are less likely to find elsewhere. 
• "Erik gave everyone a writing test in the interview, so we could see their raw copy. You do need to screen for copy quality. If copy editing resources can’t be what they used to be, then maybe you can no longer afford that staff member who’s a good reporter but a mediocre (or even bad) writer. Or even a good writer but a lousy speller. (Or you need to demand that they get better and start compensating for the weaknesses they know they have.)" Amen. Unfortunately, in most newsrooms it's not the case, with reporting and content creation valued far more than the integrated writing/editing skills. Dan Conover even has made a case that journalism's future lies more in a data-intensive model that should value reporting at least equally if not more than writing/editing. As he puts it: "A print journalist is supposed to do both things well, but truth be told, if you can't tell a good story in a compelling way, your print-reporting career is toast. Weak reporter? We'll coach-you-up. Fundamentally clueless as a writer? Consider another line of work. ... Journalism is a profession for storytellers, and our newsroom culture celebrates romantic myths that are generally hostile to structure."
• "Quality has always been a relative matter, with publications deciding how much they could afford to spend in pursuit of unattainable perfection. I hope the value equation continues to support copy editors at most operations, but that’s a decision individual editors, publishers and group presidents will have to make with their budgets, their value equations and their communities." See my above comments about perfection and groups like ACES yet to make the value proposition.
• "Here’s a practical question: Has the chain consolidated editing functions? That’s not as good a solution, in terms of quality, as having copy editors at each location. But if an organization doesn’t have or can’t afford quality editing at each location, consolidation might provide better, more efficient editing and design." If you define editing as "production," this makes absolute sense, and that's where copy editors failed to see their blindside. They assumed they were all about "quality," a squishy, largely unmeasurable term. Their bosses saw them as "production," a very measurable cost. If editing/copy editing is to find a new equilibrium in the digital age, editors are going to have to rethink how to reframe the quality argument.
• "Another thing to consider is whether an organization is spending too much time editing wire copy. I know local copy editors add value when they edit wire copy, having done it myself. I also know that wire copy has already been edited by professional copy editors. The local editing can and should be cut back or nearly eliminated. Or certainly wire editing could be consolidated among affiliated newspapers." I was a wire-service correspondent and later editor. Trust me, consolidate the editing, but don't abandon it.
• The truth is that grammar and editing skills are declining in the population and among journalists. Newspapers are in a difficult spot. Readers are older and learned grammar in a different era when it got greater emphasis (though you’d be amazed how many arrogant, critical letters I received from readers, taking us to task for our errors but containing errors of their own). But many staff members are young people who grew up txting “lol, omg” and the like." Newspapers have always been in a difficult spot - how much to follow and how much to lead. That's why you had editors. I'm unclear what Steve is trying to say here - abandon ship because grammar and editing skills are declining overall - or take a more measured approach and try to lead more? What is the role of media in all this? I tend to favor a leadership role because what I hear from others in the business community outside of media is a great wail about declining language skills. So it would seem there is some value proposition in this. If you have any doubt that business does and will influence things, consider the language/writing changes in the SAT. (And here's a quiz question - find at least one language error in that article I linked to - hint, look for the apostrophe misused to make a plural.)
• "Anyway, I think in today’s value analysis, clean copy (especially AP style) isn’t as valuable as it used to be (or has been surpassed in value by some other factors). As an editor, I did occasionally field calls from people complaining about grammar and spelling, but never about AP style." Why do these things always come down to the straw man of AP style? I agree with Buttry - people who obsess about AP style need to get a life (click on the "style-AP" tag below to see some of my suggestions for removing some of AP's inanities). On the other hand, many publications, not just newspapers, still use it as a unifying element (you want to talk about inefficiency, especially with consolidated editing, try dealing with multiple styles - local variations are bad enough). So for now, in j-school, we probably are still obligated to teach some style (just as we have to teach APA, MLA and Chicago, if those writers are doing academic papers - style is just a fact of publication), but teach it in a balanced, enlightened way, not one that turns people into style enforcers.

My bottom line here: Buttry's post is valuable for again highlighting the modern realities and issues surrounding editing and the need to develop its value proposition and not just bemoan "quality." But it's too facile in some areas, as much of this discussion tends to be. I can't make the ACES meeting in Phoenix this year (I have to be at the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium the same weekend), but I'd use Buttry's as the centerpiece around which to start a serious conversation about where editing goes. So far, most of what I've seen are editors hanging on for dear life, along for the ride, not trying to really take charge of what they can about their futures.

And editing educators should have the same conversation - continually.

(Disclaimer - I have no editor on this post, so there probably are some errors. I'm happy to correct them if you point them out.)
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Update: One might also consider this article from across the pond by Allan Prosser commenting on some of the editing cutbacks and rearrangements there. Not only does he manage to get in "Gadarene," he has this wonderful quote from his boss when he asked for a pay raise for handling the especially difficult copy from a star reporter: “His job is to provide the words, but your function is to provide the music. Now piss off.”

Myth No. 6? -Dicussion about journalism without snark

Is it possible to have an intelligent discussion of journalism these days without a heavy dose of snark?

There are times I wonder. Recent exhibit: Mark Luckie's "5 Myths about digital journalism" and Andy Boyle's response "Somebody on the Internet is wrong."

Taken together, I think they make a valuable package of reading - for current journalists and for journalism students - and an excellent stepping-off place for some serious discussions.

Luckie, as I read him, isn't saying, for instance, that journalists shouldn't be familiar with the ins and outs of social media or that they shouldn't be familiar with databases and what they can do. You can't be an effective journalist without knowing something about these things because you must be able to a) gather the necessary material in a form it can be best used and b) discuss intelligently how to use it with those who actually have the expertise.

Boyle provides a counter dose of reality, explaining, for instance, that in his times in his current job and past internship past positions at papers in St. Pete and Erie, for instance, the reality has been more of the "jack of all trades" model. In doing that, he helps highlight some real questions, such as is this the best way to do things or are news organizations once again careering into the future more reactively than intelligently - or, perhaps, Luckie is a bit off base when the reality of running a business - including the labor resources you can afford and how to employ them - has to be factored in.

As I said, all worth intelligent and extensive discussion. But Boyd Boyle tends to move to snark instead, which I don't think serves him - or the discussion well. My comment at the end of his post points to one specific thing. Luckie, for instance, says Myth 2 is "Social Media is the Answer." And he starts it out this way, which Boyle quotes:

We’ve all heard it before: Twitter, Facebook, online commenting, mobile check-ins and the like are what’s going to save journalism. The truth is nobody knows what’s going to save journalism. Nobody. Not even the social media gurus.

Boyle's response:
The basic premise of this is flawed, too. Just repeat after me, everyone: NO SINGLE THING IS GOING TO SAVE JOURNALISM. What are people wanting to go back to? A time when one single thing saved journalism? THAT TIME DIDN’T REALLY EXIST (Okay maybe a monopoly in classifieds). But discussion like this is sort of pointless.
Of course social media isn’t going to be THE answer. It’s just one of those things that you can use to help make more people come to your website, which, of course, helps the bottom line. It can also help you brand your product and thus bring more people to your product, whatever it may be.
So let’s all just once and for all stop discussing whether or not it’s worth using social media. Because it is.

But Boyle leaves out the second part of Luckie's post, which is critically important to context. My comment on his site:

Andy:
Taken together, I think yours and Mark's make a valuable complete package. But I also think you shortchange him on No.2. I don't see him arguing against using social media, but to be intelligent about it. You left out the second part of his post:

"What we do know is that social media can help augment and improve the distribution process of news stories. It also makes news audiences more invested in the development and discussion of news, something that wasn’t possible before the rise of social media. Is this the money-maker that’s going to stem the tide of red ink? That remains to be seen."

In fact, through most of his post, I don't see his arguing against any of that stuff. What I read is someone trying to say let's be intelligent about all this, that too many "truisms" have cropped up that may need just a little leavening.

I think your arguments are good, but your snark is misplaced.

These are important issues. I don't think we have to be ponderous, but a little less snark would sometimes help, too.

Help through the tech thicket for journalists

The Hack/Hackers group, which is designed to help journalists connect with and understand the technology running their lives, has a very useful glossary of tech terms.

I suggest reading it - two or three times. You don't have to get all tech-talk about things, but these days you do have to understand what the tech talk is all about.

Another version of the glossary with a little more commentary is on Poynter.

Hack/Hackers was put together by three journalists: Rich Gordon of Northwestern, Aron Pilhofer of the New York Times and former AP correspondent Burt Herman.

MSNBC buys EveryBlock

Today is a day a lot of news orgs and j-schools need to pay attention to.

MSNBC has bought EveryBlock, the hyperlocal news/data site started by Adrian Holovaty and initially funded by Knight.

Too many news orgs still don't get it when it comes to this kind of geo-local data (yet it is the foundation on which most mobile opportunities for newsrooms will exist). And j-schools are generally even further behind because of curriculum, funding and expertise constraints.

MSNBC's acquisition may be the thing that finally stops the "is it journalism" debate.

Local news value = 0? Not exactly, but ...

Vin Crosbie, who like Clay Shirky has a pettty good track record with his observations and predictions, is out with a column on Click-Z that suggests local news as it is practiced now has little value to the local audience.

Now, pay attention to the italics. Shirky isn't arguing that components of local news aren't important, but that the way we present them are. Essentially, as I read it, he's taking the path forged by Adrian Holovaty, Dan Conover and others who say the story as the building block is much of the problem -- that when it comes to the "factual expositions" we tend to do as "story," all people really want is the data, the info (as Holovaty's Everyblock tries to present it, or Pegasus News in Dallas).

Crosbie kind of buries the lede in his last graf:

Investigative stories are worthy and always need to be done, but newspapers and local news broadcasters must first give people comprehensive information and data -- including access to all the source data, be that the town government's reports or each restaurant's daily menu. Only then should local journalists consider writing stories.

I think we are coming to a serious crossroads on this, and this also means a serious crossroads in journalism education -- and, frankly, I'm not sure how we approach it.

J-education (as is journalism in general) is much too tied to "writing." In that it sends the wrong message -- that it's all about writing, when it isn't. What distinguishes journalism is that it's all about gathering and hunting and finding out -- and then wanting to tell people about it. Yet, what is the first real "skill" class most students get? Writing. And so we send that signal, that it's all about writing. And then others say, well, we do writing, too, so it can't be that hard. And then off we go into all the debates.

(BTW, I would debate whether writing is a "skill" as we really tend to use the word -- I think it's much more than that -- but that's for another time.)

Most journalism schools are not set up to teach a truly data-driven form of journalism. I don't know if they ever will be. It requires some finesse to teach a dual-track (or perhaps better described as a "crossover") discipline - when to do data and when to do story-- at least as accreditation standards and hours limitations currently exist.

Interestingly enough, it seems that more people examining and commenting on journalism, its business models, etc., are coming roundabout to the same conclusion. Michael Shapiro, for instance, in his comprehensive look at the free/paid debate so far for Columbia Journalism Review, suggests that what we might be able to sell are those turn-of-the-screw, process details we have largely eschewed in journalism in the past three decades in favor of "story" (only most of those attempts still were not the kind of "story" Crosbie refers to). The process is what has value to a select group of people who have to react to every change.

And Holovaty and others repeatedly have said that what we really are collecting daily is a large database - auto accidents, births, deaths, zoning disputes, crimes. The sorts of things that, say, lawyers might be willing to pay for as they prospect for clients.

You may or may not shudder at that as unsavory, but I suspect we'll have to confront the reality before long.

Quick hits

Two quick things to read as we approach the holiday weekend:

• Just had a chance to read Malcolm Gladwell's review/critique in the New Yorker of Chris Anderson's newest book "Free," due out next week. Obviously, I haven't read the book yet, but I have read a lot of the buzz and some of what Anderson has written in advance, and I think Gladwell does a good job of grounding this discussion in reality. As Gladwell writes:

  Anderson wants to take “too cheap to meter” seriously, because he believes that we are on the cusp of our own “too cheap to meter” revolution with computer processing, storage, and bandwidth. But here is the second and broader problem with Anderson’s argument: he is asking the wrong question. It is pointless to wonder what would have happened if Strauss’s prediction had come true while rushing past the reasons that it could not have come true. ...
  Strauss’s optimism was driven by the fuel cost of nuclear energy—which was so low compared with its fossil-fuel counterparts that he considered it (to borrow Anderson’s phrase) close enough to free to round down. Generating and distributing electricity, however, requires a vast and expensive infrastructure of transmission lines and power plants—and it is this infrastructure that accounts for most of the cost of electricity. Fuel prices are only a small part of that. As Gordon Dean, Strauss’s predecessor at the A.E.C., wrote, “Even if coal were mined and distributed free to electric generating plants today, the reduction in your monthly electricity bill would amount to but twenty per cent, so great is the cost of the plant itself and the distribution system.”
  
  This is the kind of error that technological utopians make. They assume that their particular scientific revolution will wipe away all traces of its predecessors—that if you change the fuel you change the whole system.

• UPDATE: A Squidoo site has been set up to aggregate lots of the arguments for and against "Free." As you can tell from above, I think Gladwell brings some reality to the debate. I also think Mitch Ratcliffe's argument that free is part of a business strategy but not an entire business plan carries some weight. And Seth Godin is right when he says the editor's role to sort through all this takes on more importance -- something I'm not sure newsrooms understand as they jettison copy editors instead of retraining and repurposing their talents, which can be a good match for this. One thing, of course, is certain, there will be lots of arguments about this - and none of it is really new. Back in 2002, Clay Shirky was writing about the paradox of the amateur. (And here's the short link to Fin O'Reilly's post that kind of runs out of the margins in the comments.
  

• EveryBlock has just released its source code. Playtime, everyone! Everyblock is a love child of the meme that an important part of journalism in the future will be data driven and that a major function will be collecting that data and presenting it in a way that users can construct their own stories. (See also Dan Conover's excellent think piece "2020 Vision: What's next for news.")

Happy holiday weekend!

Dan Conover's vision of news

Conover has taken his previously noted "2020 vision" and combined it with a follow-up "The lack of vision thing," into a long but thought-stimulating post for AEJMC's "2020 vision" project looking at the future of news.

I think he's hit on something here:

My first reporting job wasn’t for a newspaper, but for NATO. My armored cavalry troop drove jeeps along the borders of East Germany and Czechoslovakia and watched for activity on the other side of the fences. When we spotted something interesting, we recorded it in a highly structured way that could be accurately and quickly communicated over a two-way radio, to be transcribed by specialists at our border camp and relayed to intelligence analysts in Brussells.

Since the audience for this reporting was comprised entirely of intelligence experts, and since the ultimate value of such trivia is its ability to be stored in ways that might eventually indicate a pattern, my ability to communicate information accurately and quickly was prized. My ability as a storyteller? Utterly insignificant.

A print journalist is supposed to do both things well, but truth be told, if you can’t tell a good story in a compelling way, your print-reporting career is toast. Weak reporter? We’ll coach-you-up. Fundamentally clueless as a writer? Consider another line of work.

Journalism is a profession for storytellers, and our newsroom culture celebrates romantic myths that are generally hostile to structure. We enjoy jockeying with authority, poking bureaucrats and annoying anal-retentive city editors. Few journalists are good with numbers, and we don’t see that as a weakness. It’s all part of a rebellious “ink-stained wretch” identity that hasn’t reflected reality in at least a generation, if in fact it ever did.

As I said, worth reading and thinking about.

Everyblock - good interview

A lot has been written on Everyblock, the data mashup site created by Adrian Holovaty that lets people construct their own news narrative from mining all those things happening in their neighborhoods (think crime, restaurant inspections, news stories, etc.)

Probably the best interview so far, however is Rex Sorgatz's with Holovaty published last week. It's worth reading.

If the Internet scares you, try this

For a lot of journalists (and journalism students), the Internet is still a big scary place with things like XML, PHP, AJAX, XHTML and lots of other low-flying abbreviations.

Oh sure, they know how to Google and maybe use some databases online. But lurking out there is "geekdom" -- you know, that mystical land where they can make really cool stuff happen on a Web page and you just know that that's the skills stuff they're going to be looking for and I can't learn all this coding and ...

Slow down, Bunky. As many have said, you won't necessarily have to be a code jockey to be a journalist. But it will be useful to know the sorts of things that can be done and the effort and resources needed to do them.

Into the picture comes Zac Echola, whose blog I have started reading recently and who has some very down-to-earth thoughts on all of this. In catching up on some of his posts, I found two very good ones I'd point you to.

• First is his "Code on deadline (or how I learned to program without actually doing any programming." His point is that there are a ton of free services out there that, when cobbled together, provide much of the same functionality a raw code would.
• Second is the example he posted later, "Simple and free online journalism project to do in 45 minutes"
  in which he shows you how to harness some of these services - Google reader, Feedburner and Twitter -- to land weather alerts on your home page.
  

Now you may never have to put a weather alert on a page or parse a feed and extract -- and then display - another piece for information. You might never need a map with your story. And you probably wouldn't be asked to draw it and save it and get it online, even if it was needed. But wouldn't it be cool to know a quick and dirty way to do it, to know what those "Web" folks are talking about when they discuss some of what they're about to do -- to your story?

And even if you don't have mad programming skills, you still are going to have to be able, in the future, to discuss with others in the newsroom the online possibilities, so it doesn't hurt to know the jargon and a little bit how to do it quick and dirty.

This is what I'm trying to produce -- young reporters and editors who know enough at least to converse intelligently in a multimedia newsroom. Echola shows that it's pretty easy to do in this Web 2.0 world where the operative word is "share."

Concealing concealed weapons permits

South Carolina could be become the next state to put concealed weapons permits under wraps.

A bill has advanced from a state Senate subcommittee that would make the records secret. The bill's sponsor has pulled out one of the standard arguments -- houses (presumably not on the permit list) could be targeted for break-ins. (Among others that have surfaced in the past: the overbroad "privacy" argument and "you can't deter crime if the bad guys know who's packing.")

But as Brant Houston, then director of Investigative Repoters and Editors, said in that 2004 article from News Media and the Law, Journalists need access to permit records to effectively report on the use of concealed weapons by convicted felons and domestic abusers, as well as the day-to-day incidents that involve guns. The records also allow reporters to look into how the permitting process is being implemented by officials. Keeping those records secret, Houston said, "doesn't make any sense . . . especially when you're dealing with dangerous weapons."

Given the realities in South Carolina, however, this bill probably is headed for the finish line pretty quickly.

A lot of this stems from the Roanoke Times' decision to put Virginia's concealed weapons database on its Web site, only to take it down under the weight of protests.

Which puts a little wider perspective on all this. It isn't the first time that newspapers, empowered by the Internet, have run into a buzzsaw of public opposition. The Lansing State Journal ran into widespread protests last year when it posted state salaries online. As a commenter on that blog put it: But I suspect the State Journal did a disservice to the cause of freedom of information in the way it simply plopped this information out there. Most state employees never even thought about it and were caught off-guard. They are, understandably, outraged at what they perceive as an arrogant, corporate-owned media outlet splashing intensely personal (note I didn't say private) information out for all the world to see.

Bottom line: In this Internet age, where all the rage is putting online any piece of data that moves (think of sites like Everyblock), we sometimes risk winning the battle but losing the war.

No, I'm not suggesting we keep this data secret, but I think we can learn a lot by listening to the person who made that comment. Just plopping it down -- just because we can -- has never been a great reason but is even more fraught with complications in an age where people are becoming hypersensitive to digital privacy invasions. Larry Timbs, Will Atkinson and I raised some of the same issues in our exploration of the ethical issues surrounding the digitization of newspaper archives. (PDF)

Now, more than ever, think before we leap. Have we laid the groundwork for this? Have we explained clearly how this benefits the greater good?

If not, we are likely to see more cases of outrage and more lousy legislation like those bills that are putting concealed weapons permits off limits.

Quick hits

Visit Wired Journalists


Ryan Sholin has formed Wired Journalists, a group on Ning designed to help journalists get more comfortable with the tools and opportunities of he wired world. It's partly an outgrowth of Howard Owens' recent post challenging journalists to set objectives for 2008 that include getting more familiar with the wired (and these days, wireless) world. I've joined and look forward to helping out any way I can.

Actually, one of the first and best lessons for newsroom types out of this might be how easy it is to form such social groups using Ning. Just imagine had this been used during Katrina ...

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Meranda Watling writes about following local folks on Twitter. I admit to not using Twit much (I'm cheap - I don't pay for texting on my cell phone and I forget to log on at the office). But I am intrigued by its possibilities (and probably more interested now that a few people have "found" me). I think Watling has a point when we may need to figure out a way to monitor relevant traffic. Just one more newsroom input. (Think of it as listening to the police scanner.)

She also points to the New York Times article on Twitter's use by journalists on the campaign trail. I don't claim any great foresight here, but this is why for the past year and some one of the syllabus requirements in my advanced editing class has been to produce an SMS version of every story. Students quickly find out it isn't always easy, especially when the story really doesn't have any news. I'm putting together an "Effective SMS" guide for class and maybe to use at the ACES conference, so all thoughts welcome.

(Personally, I'm a big fan of Twittervision, which scampers around a world map showing you the latest tweets. If we'd only had this at 3 a.m. in college ...)

And Bryan Murley points to a student journalist at Ball State who is Twittering a trial.

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Everyblock is up and running in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. This is Adrian Holovaty's project to bring data to the masses. Crime reports, restaurant inspections, true confessions from the personals on Craigslist. Kind of gives a new dimension to the definition of "peeping Tom." It's a fascinating idea, but we'll wait and see if a bunch of raw data, even when presented in a relatively pleasing graphical way, can sustain interest. I predict it will if advertisers are comfortable with the audience churn (much as they had to learn to be at the advent of all-news radio, lo those many years ago). The project is funded by one of the Knight News Challenge grants.

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If you're a journalism student planning to graduate sometime soon, check out Mindy McAdams' resources page for what you should be doing online.

A little insight

One of those small insightful moments came today as I was reading a blog post forwarded through Facebook. It was by Shel Israel commenting on Twitter and a presentation by co-founder Biz Stone.

Israel talks about how, after a small San Francisco earthquake, he and dozens of others were sharing info about it on Twitter.

45 minutes later, SFGate, the official site of the ailing San Francisco Chronicle reported on the quake. As far as I could tell, that was the first quake news report through an officil channel and it was more detailed than what w had learned on Twitter. But by then, those of us using Twitter, knew most of the facts we needed and so did our friends all over the world. In fact, the incident marks the largest and most collaborative US-based example of Citizen Journalism that I know and it happened because of this simple little SMS program.

And then came that little insight -- But by then, those of us using Twitter, knew most of the facts we needed.

And that, I think, encapsulates Big-J "Journalism's" problems. As news media have increasingly turned to the easier and less-costly info-bits, be it the incessant stream of cable-style "breaking news" with little depth or the more reviled "infotainment," those media have made themselves less and less relevant to their readers and viewers. Most of us need very little "information" to carry on our daily lives. Absent the control of distribution, which is long gone, this financial well is not very deep.

Which then raises another question in my mind: With the headlong rush to create "information centers," a la Gannett, and digitize everything that moves, I wonder if this is long term likely to be productive. If our information needs aren't that deep, is there an economic model here? Do people come, nibble a bit, and leave, and can a revenue stream be built from that?

It's a similar time in print and online, I think, to the late 1960s when radio was transitioning from what is known as "quarter-hour per person" to "cume" as a way of attracting advertising. KYW, where I had the pleasure of working for a summer, was a good example. That pioneering all-news operation was fighting uphill against long tradition among advertisers of buying "quarter-hour." That measure was not concerned so much with the size of your audience, but with how long each person listened. It was a throwback to the days before TV when radio was filled with "shows," and people would gather 'round the set to listen.

KYW knew it wasn't going to get the quarter-hour with a fast-paced all-news format; in fact its slogan was and still is "you give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." So it had to sell total audience, the "cume." The nice byproduct was that while it promised to deliver a bigger overall audience, advertisers would have to buy more ads to reach that audience because of the churn. (I'll tell you at the end how KYW managed to overcome that and become, along with most other all-news stations, quite profitable.)

How does this apply to newspapers? Well, it seems to me that while papers have on the surface sold circulation, or cume, they've really been selling quarter-hour -- the idea that their readers spent significant time with the paper. Now, with the idea of the information center, they are being asked to truly sell cume, and that's going to be a tough sell in an era when advertisers more and more are looking for quarter-hour attributes (the idea of getting my message to those exact people inclined to buy and willing to spend more time viewing or listening to my pitch).

As evidenced by Israel's post, if all we are really providing is information, then the readers are likely to be easily satiated and move on.

This argues, of course, for journalism -- the more nuanced, contextually full treatment of information that puts it in perspective and gives it special value. But that can be expensive, and expensive is not particularly on the lips of a lot of news executives right now. This makes it even more important that we find new ways to preserve some of those old values, and that will be the challenge, especially for those of us training young journalists.

And really, it argues for both strategies -- the information that they can assemble and reassemble as it meets their needs to get them in your door, but the journalism to keep them there. I fear we forget it likely is a two-sided equation.

But then again, maybe you think I'm daft and that my analysis is backward. Feel free to chime in with comments.
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So, how did KYW pull it off? Well, the story (perhaps apocryphal, but I think there is at least a grain of truth to it because I heard it several times with almost no deviation) was that a smart but desperate salesman knew he had to get the auto dealers on board. If they started advertising, others would follow.

He kept pressing one Ford dealer in Philadelphia's "mainline" suburbs. Finally, this salesman supposedly made a $20 bet with the dealer -- show up at your repair shop at 8 a.m., grab some keys at random and we'll go into the parking lot and see where your customers have their radios tuned. (It was a pretty safe bet, since all-news is very drive-time oriented and people taking their cars into the shop were not likely to have had enough time to get their fill of news and then tune over to their favorite music station. In addition, KYW at 1060 had a nice place on the center of the AM dial.) Sure enough, something like eight of the 10 cars they checked had the radio tuned to KYW.

The rest, as they say, was simply pouring green ink into the printing press.

Behold the DataSphere

The Roanoke Times is the latest to join the online rush to create data warehouses that anyone can search.

Behold the DataSphere. (Cool name, if nothing else). As the story announcing it says (emphasis mine):

Newspapers have produced stories based on data and databases for years, of course.

Roanoke Times education writer David Harrison used data on enrollment at Hurt Park Elementary School in Roanoke as a basis for today's front page story on that school's comeback despite whispers that it might be shuttered before long.

The difference here is that, while we might mine that data for stories to write, we're also offering the same data to you, inviting you to mine the data for yourself, and find stories in it to tell us about.

Let the fun begin.

Addendum: E.W. Scripps project manager Patrick Beeson has a pretty good autopsy of DataSphere's plusses and minuses.