Chapter 9: Data-Driven Journalism and Digitizing Your Life
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Digital life is based upon a gratuitous amount of information and data; therefore, managing the data is the most critical part of digital life in journalism. Organized data not only helps journalists retrieve their memories from certain events via computer-assisted reporting, but also helps keeping in contact with colleagues and people of interest, and even coming up with new story ideas. Data-driven journalism excels in the following areas: depth, customization, searchability and long shelf life. The areas of management ranges from:
- Emails
- Contacts
- Digitally stored contact lists expedites search
- To-do lists
- Calendars
- Notes
- Productivity tools
- Word processing
- Spreadsheets
- Presentations
- Images
- Databases
- Project management
- Web or graphic design
- Collaboration with colleagues
Besides Google and Office Live, there are a variety of productivity tools that one can start with
- Instapaper: Saves web pages to be read later
- Remember the Milk: To-do list manager
- Oh don’t forget: Reminder tool that uses SMS
- Evernote: To-do list and note taking utility that can also record audio using cell phone
- Jott: Audio to-do list
- Dropbox: Collaborative cloud file storage
- Backpack: Organizer that is used for document sharing, plus notes, task lists and calendar
- Basecamp: Team project manager
- Socrata: Database and spreadsheet-managment
- MindMeister: Brainstorming helper that uses mip-maps
Often these services use cloud-computing method — in which the user accesses the third-party server outside of his or her own computer to use the service. This method requires internet connection at all times, but it is also convenient that the user does not need to always bring the storage required for the project.
The ability to share data is also a critical advantage in data-driven journalism. Several large news organizations such as the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, and the Guardian utilize application program interface (API) to allow anyone to borrow their data and build tools for their webpages. The API helps circulation of the digital ecosystem, bringing up full potentials of any data provided. Some of examples include interactive maps that geographically explain certain stories.
