Tag Archives: javascript

VIDEO: JavaScript Journalism and interactivity

1 Reply

Some of the best interactive storytelling involves the use of JavaScript — what has sometimes been called “JavaScript Journalism“. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explains what JavaScript journalism is, the story formats that are often created with JavaScript, some useful JavaScript libraries, and how to get started.

If you’re interested in this video you might also enjoy the previous two video posts in this series, on concepts of interactivity and on genres of interactivity.

This video is shared as part of a series of video posts.

Here’s the thinking behind my new MA in Data Journalism

3 Replies

A few weeks ago I announced that I was launching a new MA in Data Journalism, and promised that I would write more about the thinking behind it. Here, then, are some of the key ideas underpinning the new course — from coding and storytelling to security and relationships with industry — and how they have informed its development. Continue reading →

Just add JavaScript: use these 3 tools to get instant interactivity

1 Reply

Maria Crosas Batista highlights ways to get started with adding interactivity to your journalism.

This post is for beginners that are learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Below are 3 useful websites to embed maps, charts and timelines in your HTML without going crazy. Continue reading →

Panini sticker albums – a great way to learn programming and statistics

1 Reply

1970 sticker album - image by John Cooper

1970 sticker album – image by John Cooper

When should you stop buying football stickers? I don’t mean how old should you be – but rather, at what point does the law of diminishing returns mean that it no longer makes sense to buy yet another packet of five stickers?

This was the question that struck me after seeing James Offer‘s ‘How much could it cost to fill a World Cup Sticker Album?‘ Continue reading →

Journalisme et code : 10 grands principes de programmation expliqués

Leave a reply

Cedric Motte asked if he could translate Coding for journalists: 10 programming concepts it helps to understand into French. Here’s the result – first published on NewsResources.

Si vous envisagez de vous mettre à la programmation, il y a de fortes chances que vous butiez sur une série de termes techniques, un jargon qui peut être particulièrement rébarbatif, notamment dans les tutoriels, dont les auteurs ont tendance à oublier que vous êtes inexpérimentés en programmation.

Les sections qui suivent décrivent et indiquent dix concepts que vous êtes susceptible de – non, que vous allez – rencontrer. Continue reading →

Coding for journalists: 10 programming concepts it helps to understand

17 Replies

If you’re looking to get into coding chances are you’ll stumble across a raft of jargon which can be off-putting, especially in tutorials which are oblivious to your lack of previous programming experience. Here, then, are 10 concepts you’re likely to come across – and what they mean.

1. Variables

cat in a box

Variables are like boxes which can hold different things at different times. Image by Wolfgang Lonien.

A variable is one of the most basic elements of programming. It is, in a nutshell, a way of referring to something so that you can use it in a line of code. To give some examples:

  • You might create a variable to store a person’s age and call it ‘age’
  • You might create a variable to store the user’s name and call it ‘username’
  • You might create a variable to count how many times something has happened and call it ‘counter’
  • You might create a variable to store something’s position and call it ‘index’

Variables can be changed, which is their real power. A user’s name will likely be different every time one piece of code runs. An age can be added to at a particular time of year. A counter can increase by one every time something happens. A list of items can have other items added to it, or removed. Continue reading →

Guest post: visualising mobile phone data – the data retention app

3 Replies

datarentention_app

In a guest post Lorenz Matzat, editor of ZEIT Online’s Open Data Blog, writes about the background to their online app exploring the issues around data retention by mobile phone companies.

It’s not very often that one can follow the direct impact of an article, let alone a piece of data journalism. But the visualization of the cellphone data of Malte Spitz from the Green party in Germany led to visible repercussions in the US.

Following a piece in the New York Times about Spitz and the data app, some days ago two senators wrote a letter to the 4 main US-carriers for information about their data retention policy.

After publishing the app in German one month ago (and 20 days later the English version), the feedback was overhelming. We didn’t think that so many people would be so interested in it. But Twitter and Facebook in Germany went wild with it for some days – along with coverage in many major tech websites.

Probably this is why data journalism works: Making an abstract notion everybody knows about visible: that every position of you, and every connection of your mobile phone does is – or could be – logged. Every call, text message and data connection.

The background

Around February 1st, ZEIT Online asked me if I had an idea what do do with the dataset of Malte Spitz (read the background story about the legal action of Spitz to get the data here). Continue reading →

Elsevier’s ‘Article of the Future’ resembles websites of the past

8 Replies

Elsevier, the Dutch scientific publisher, has announced details of their grandly titled Article of the Future project.  Their prototypes, published at http://beta.cell.com, are the result of what Emilie Marcus, Editor in Chief, Cell Press called,

“…a challenge to redesign from scratch how to most effectively structure and present the content of a traditional scientific article in an online environment.”

Prototypes
Several things strike me about the prototypes — and let’s bear in mind that these are prototypes, and so are likely to change based on feedback from users in the scientific community and elsewhere; but also that they are published prototypes, and so by definition are completely open for comment — the most obvious being their remarkable lack of futuristic qualities.  Instead, the prototypes resemble an enthusiastic bash at a multimedia-infused online encyclopaedia circa 1997, when multimedia was still a buzzword, or such as you might have found on a CD-ROM magazine cover mounted giveaway around the same time. Continue reading →

Removing Nofollow on blog links and meta – and invisible comments

10 Replies

A couple months ago I installed a plugin on the blog that meant search engines would index links in comments: by default WordPress uses ‘nofollow‘ on comments to stop spammers abusing them to boost search engine rankings, but that prevents genuine commenters getting credit for their contributions.

One problem: as one commenter pointed out, the blog as a whole was set to ‘noindex-nofollow’ “which equals a no trespasing sign for search engines for ALL of the site’s links. It’s Google suicide.” Continue reading →