Tag Archives: interview

Tim Harford on telling data stories with audio: “You need to keep simplifying”

Economist and podcaster Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up, spoke to MA Data Journalism students this month. In a guest post for OJB Niels de Hoog rounds up Tim’s tips on creating compelling number-driven stories for radio and podcasts

Orson Welles famously said that there’s nothing an audience won’t understand, as long as you can get them to be interested.

Listening to Tim Harford’s podcasts it is clear that he has taken this message to heart.

“If you’ve got a hook, a personality, or a question people want answered, that will carry people through a certain degree of complexity that they wouldn’t tolerate if it was reported straight.”

Take More or Less, his podcast about statistics for BBC Radio 4. At first glance it doesn’t offer the easiest subject for an engaging audio story — yet somehow the programme is very entertaining to listen to. Continue reading →

FAQ: Data journalism, scraping and Help Me Investigate

1 Reply

As part of my ongoing FAQ series, here are some answers in English to an interview by Balkan magazine Medicentar_Online: Continue reading →

Interview: Bethanie Maples Krogstad on the TranscribeMe mobile transcription app

Interview: the team behind the Transcribe audio transcription app

2 Replies

After test-driving the audio transcription app Transcribe, Antoinette Siu interviewed Jason and Kishore of Wreally Studios, the team behind Transcribe.

What do you hope to do with this project?

We want to make journalists’ lives easier through software. From what we’ve heard, transcription is one of their pain points and while Transcribe can’t do the transcription automatically for them (at least, not yet) we could make the transcription process a little easier for them through our tool. Continue reading →

Video: Guardian's Beat Blogger for Cardiff: breaking the boundaries between blogger and journalist

5 Replies

It’s an modern day battle: journalist versus blogger. Often operating in the same field, but with very different aims and objectives, some traditional reporters are wary of this new breed of content creator. However, a new Beat-Blogger role, created by The Guardian, has brought the 2 fields closer together.

Having a local blogger based in several cities around the UK, The Guardian has given itself direct contact with the community, something a national paper would often overlook.

Hannah Waldram is the beat-blogger in Cardiff. At News:Rewired she told OJB more about how the new project is going, and how it has been accepted in the city.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEAaLCcjsbk%5D

Crowdsourcing an investigation: interview with The Faster Times' Nathan Hegedus

4 Replies

The Faster Times have been experimenting with crowdsourcing as with their users they investigate the backgrounds of own brand foods (that is, foods which are sold under the brand of a supermarket, e.g. ‘Tesco cornflakes’). I spoke to Nathan Hegedus who is overseeing the investigation:

Listen!

Dave Cohn in the Spotlight

6 Replies

Alex Gamela talks to Dave Cohn, founder of the non-profit, crowdfunding journalism project Spot.us, winner of a Knight News Challenge grant, and a suggested new model for the news business. On the eve of launching the Spot.us official website, Dave told OJB how he is putting his ideas into practice, and his views on the current state of journalism.

Four months after winning the KNC grant, Dave Cohn is a happy man. He started with a wiki where he presented and tested the different sides to his project, and he quickly managed to fund three stories. Now it is on its way to fund a fourth one. All of this even before having an official website. Continue reading →

Online Journalism Blog

Comment, analysis and links covering online journalism and online news, citizen journalism, blogging, vlogging, photoblogging, podcasts, vodcasts, interactive storytelling, publishing, Computer Assisted Reporting, User Generated Content, searching and all things internet.