When I first saw Freebase Gridworks I was a very happy man. Here was a tool that tackled one of the biggest problems in data journalism: cleaning dirty data (and data is invariably dirty). The tool made it easy to identify variations of a single term, and clean them up, to link one set of data to another – and
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One of the forms of data that journalists frequently have to deal with is prices. And while it’s one thing to say that things are getting more expensive, making a meaningful comparison between what things cost now and what things cost then is a different kettle of fish altogether. Factoring in inflation can make all the difference between arbitrary comparisons
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UPDATE 2 – from Cathy in the comments (Nov 11): Dave Belanger has now paid the fee. UPDATE – thanks to Vicki in the comments (Nov 11): Dave Belanger has responded to Suzanne, reinstating the image on their website with a credit and link, and offering to pay. However, he has refused to pay the amount requested by Suzanne, and
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Oliver Chiang reports on a new feature being tested by Facebook that he dubs ‘mentions’. It tells you if more than one of your friends mentions the same thing – a celebrity, for example, or an event, or organisation. I’ve often said that Facebook is the ultimate news publisher. ‘What my friends are doing’ was powerful enough, and they have
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The Hyperlocal Voices series continues with a look at Pits n Pots, a site with its own Wikipedia entry. The site – set up in frustration at the lack of an opeb public forum in the local media – is frequently given as an example of the best of hyperlocal blogging. Who were the people behind the blog? Tony Walley
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I’ve only just come across this post by Robin Sloan applying the economic concepts of flow and stock to online news: There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank, or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour, or three-thousand toothpicks a day. Easy.
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TechCrunch’s Paul Carr has a thoughtful piece on “cyber-vigilantism” where citizens witness or experience a crime and go online to chase it down, name the alleged perpetrators, or pressure the authorities out of complacency: “[W]hen that naming happens, the case is over before it’s begun: no matter whether the accused is guilty or innocent, they are handed a life sentence.
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It’s barely 24 hours since the Cooks Source/Judith Griggs saga blew up, but so much has happened in that time that I thought it worth reflecting on how other publishers might handle a similar situation. Although it’s an extreme example, the story has particular relevance to those publications that rely on Facebook or another web presence to publish material online
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UPDATE 7: The official Cooks Source webpage now features a rather confusing statement on the saga, apologising to Monica Gaudio and saying they have made the donation asked for. The page claims that their Facebook page was “cancelled” and “since hacked”. It’s not clear what they mean by these terms as the original Facebook page is still up and, clearly,
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I’m trying to get a feel for what some of the most innovative government departments and local authorities are doing around releasing data. I spoke to Stuart Harrison of Lichfield Council, which is leading the way at a local level. What has been your involvement with open data so far? I’ve been interested in open data for a few years
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