Open Journalism & the Open Web

Hi all. My name is Dave Goodchild and I am a UK-based web developer and digital media maker. I freelance in and around London, currently using the Drupal content management framework but also code in Ruby. I built boobase.com, a Google maps - Audioboo (audioboo.fm) mashup and was involved in the experimental #rubyinthepub hookups between coders and journalists which has since morphed into the UK arm of Hackshackers, an initiative that originated in the US and driven by the NY Times. Fascinated by this space and looking forward to an interesting experience.

I have broad programming and system skills across internet, government, health, education etc realms, with an emphasis on structured wikis for open, participatory development. I recently completed a course in text mining, useful for processing volumes of text for entity recognition, sentiment analysis, etc. Since I'm at least the third David and at least the second David M, people can call me Vid. Looking forward to the course! http://zooid.org/~vid

I'm Lew Friedland, a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison. I'm involved in building several commons journalism projects in Madison and Seattle. I'm teaching a course, "The Future of News," and decided it was time to upgrade my coding skills.

David Medinets, here's where I took the course: https://gate.ac.uk/conferences/montreal-2010/index.html

GATE is quite a mature and sophisticated framework with many features and a large community, so I will be able to do a lot of things relatively easily. It's also a bit of a beast to contend with. I wish the course (one of three) had been able to cover more, including programming with GATE, but it gave me a good grounding for further learning and use.

Hi, I'm Jorge Rivas based in Los Angeles. I write and produce new media stories for colorlines.com, a news site that looks at race and politics in the US. Although I can produce media components like videos and narrated slideshows, I'm interested in learning more about programming and start thinking about ways to build stronger connections with our audience.

Hello everyone,
My name is Mai Hoang and I'm a business reporter for the Yakima Herald-Republic in Yakima, Wash. I am really into the idea of how technology can really enhance the journalism industry's ability to inform the public. I look forward to exchanging ideas.

@Lew -- I was wondering if you could tell me more about the common journalism project you're working on in Seattle. You can send me a message off this forum if you would like.

Hi,

My name is Chris Nicholson. I'm a UK web developer specialising in Java and XML, but have a load of other programming/scripting languages under my belt too. It is mostly heavy-duty server-side and database technologies I deal with, rather than pretty front-end stuff. I've started playing with Ruby too, so Dave Goodchild is someone I'd be interested in talking to (as he's based in the UK too and I'll be moving to London soon). If anyone is interested in British comedy, one of my recent freelance projects is with Graham Linehan (writer of "Father Ted" and "The IT Crowd"). I have serious interests in the political/philosophical impact of the web and ramble on my blog about it (if I'm not rambling about television or Goths). So, I guess I'm not your usual shrinking violet geek

Looking forward to this course and talking to ALL of you, journalists and ICT dudes alike!

By my calculations, the first lecture is in 40 minutes, unless I've got my timezones wrong for the UK...

Hello all -- In the few minutes before the conference call starts (if I've timed my time zones correctly) I will also introduce myself.

My name is Grant Hamilton, and I've been a reporter/photographer with the Brandon Sun for about five years. This year, though, I've moved into the position of Internet Coordinator, which means I'm "the guy who does computers" at our paper.

We're small enough to be nimble, although we're not, yet, and I'm hoping this course can help set a path for open, online, collaborative journalism.

Hi all,

My name is Kay Steiger, and I'm the editor of CampusProgress.org, a site for progressive and politically engaged young people in the 18-29 age range. Though my background is primarily in journalism, I first learned of the concept of Open Web through a college friend who eventually landed at Amazon.

Since then, I've worked in various web producer capacities in addition to my journalistic editing and writing responsibilities. I'm very interested in learning more about coding beyond the basic HTML I've already mastered.

I'm looking forward to learning a lot through this course!

Hey, I'm Marlon. I'm a fairly experienced programmer and sysadmin. I am a media activist with Indymedia, which pioneered the idea of radically participatory web journalism way back in 1999 during demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle. I also work with Copwatch, which helps civilians record and document police activity in their communities.

I mainly use web technology like Drupal to create tools that try to "de-professionalize" journalism and make news creation accessible to everyone.

Hi, I'm Mariano Blejman, editor-in-chief of a youth supplement in a national newspaper located in Buenos Aires. I am also writting about technology since 1996, when I made my degree thesis about privacy and internet. I have been writting about free software since then, and I have been always connected to local hackers community (if that really exist) I've been looking this kind of projects, and I think that the umbrella of p2pu is the apropiate way to find this kind of people. I'm open to proposals about hacking as a way to produce journalistic content. And, yeah... I think that Google is the most ironic open source company in the world.

Hi I'm Chip Oglesby, a communications assistant with the South Carolina Policy Council. Before that I was an online producer with The State Newspaper and a photojournalist with The Lancaster News.

I've recently started working with more and more government data in my new job and I'd like to learn what everyone is doing in their jobs with data.

Can't see a link to lecture 2 anywhere? Anyone got it - didn't get the email either!

Hello Everyone;

My name is Michael Newman. I current work at WDIV in Detroit where I work on new online projects for the TV station and the other 5 stations owned by the Washington Post. Since starting this job I have been pretty much a full-time programmer, which was needed here.

I graduated from college from Ohio University with a Journalism degree and still very much love to write, news gather, take photos and video. I kind of fell into to programming while trying to create better soundslides, election results, interactive videos and databases.

Now, my preferred programming language is Python and I am big fan of the Django project, which I try to contribute back to as frequently as I can. I currently manage nearly a dozen servers running the new Web sites. All run Linux.

I believe what encompasses HTML5 is the next big thing. Better CSS designs, faster javascript, a more mature HTML, will make the ability to put real interesting useful content on the Web that much easier for everyone. Thanks to Mozilla for being a major proponent of this course and these standards.

I think this should be a fun class, really looking at my two loves and trades,

Michael

Hey everyone,

I'm here, better late than never —

My name is Pattie Reaves and I straddle the line between journalist and programmer. I think it would be unfair to either side to call me any more of one than the other. :)

Currently I work as a Web editor for a 30K circ newspaper in Lewiston, Maine, the Sun Journal. My "official" job duties are content production (and staff training) but as the sole member of the new media department I also do all of our site building and maintenance.

While I can say I appreciate the divide between hacks and hackers in journalism, esp. in my own news organization, I can't say that it's one that I've ever had a problem with. I'm a whiz front-end developer with XHTML/CSS/JS and can hold my own with PHP (though I'm trying to delve more into frameworks and OO stuff). But I also couldn't see myself doing that outside the context of journalism; I love storytelling and being part of a bigger service to the community in that way. I see tech as another tool in the toolbox to do that.

I'm really looking forward to more of this class, and hopefully getting to know some of you better.

Hello all,

I'm pretty widely in both fields, with a lot of my time being spent working on MuckRock.com, a news tool that helps automate, track and analyst freedom of information requests for both journalists and everyone else.

My day job is at ITKnowledgeExchange.com, a blog network/Q&A site for IT folks, where I'm the editorial director.

I also freelance web design, and am the volunteer web developer for Spare Change News, which is partnering with MIT's Media Lab to help better connect local communities both
internally and in particular with the homeless who live in them.

I just finished catching up on the first two classes since breaking news seems to keep interrupting, but I'm hopeful Monday will be quieter. Last week's sessions were great!

Hi All:

I write about wildlife and about human behavior, in books, magazine articles, television documentaries, radio commentaries, and a couple of blogs (strangebehaviors.com, speciesseekers.com). I have a new book, The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth, due out November 1 from W.W. Norton, and another book, Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time--My Life Doing Stuff with Animals, just out in paperback, also from W.W. Norton. I am interested in ways to bring new features into my Wordpress blogs. I'm also interested in ways to recapture some of the excitement I felt getting reader feedback during a couple of stints as a guest online columnist for the New York Times.

As a writer, I'm always trying to find the story line, and not much that I do is data-driven. But as a newspaper reader, I am very excited about using data in new ways to change the nature of government, and for that matter, of citizenry. (Having often voted blind, I really liked the Chi. Trib election page, mentioned in the last class, which allowed readers to go through the ballot and click on all relevant articles for a candidate.)

One other thought: I suspect there are a lot of other idiots like me in this class, who don't know the first thing about almost all of the computer programs being mentioned. While I don't want to hold back the hackers, I hope you can go slow enough to bring along some of us hacks, too.

Thanks.

Richard Conniff

Hey everyone.

I am a sports reporter in Durham, N.C. at the Herald-Sun. I also own an independent news service covering state government and politics here in North Carolina. Odd combination, you might think. Not really. I am a numbers guy at heart and that is how I approach the news service business. I provide about 20 newspapers here in the state with weekly customized reports on how the members of the legislature from their circulation areas vote on bills. I've done this since 1995 mostly by hand but for the past four or five years I've wanted to get this all automated and database driven. Finding this course and participating in it will maybe finally get me off my duff and going in that direction.

I know just enough about about programming to be dangerous but I've not applied it to my business. If there is a case for automation, I've got it.

I'm hooked on sports and politics because both come down to having two teams that just don't like each other. You end up with a winner and loser and I love finding out the reason one side won and the other lost.

Thanks.

Joe Johnson