Story Review

The New York Times on Monday won five of the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, and none of the other 9 went to an online-only news organisation.

On the one hand this seems to indicate that journalism, as practiced by traditional (monolith) media, is indeed in a very good shape and it is just the business side of things that is giving media companies trouble. On the other, it may mean that the Pulitzer Prizes have become irrelevant and fail to recognise great journalism of the new type.

The NYT has featured rather prominently in my reviews of great innovative storytelling and that has already prompted me to note that this firm’s financial problems are unlikely the result of poor or outdated journalism. But that is not by itself reason enough to confirm the Pulitzer Prizes as journalism’s topmost honour.

So the question is open: should we still seek to reinvent journalism, or has it already been reinvented and just needs the financing side tweaked a bit?

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Image by onesevenone.

The Washington Times has just won the Society of Professional Journalists‘ Sigma Delta Chi Award for public service for Disposable Heroes, an investigative series that exposed medical experiments with war veterans to much outrage. Glad as I am that an interactive feature has drawn such high praise, it is hard to overlook the fact that it is not the interactivity of the piece that has won the award. Indeed the Sigma Delta Chi is an old-school award given for old-school reasons and though Disposable Heroes is an investigative feat, on the interactive front it lacks a fair bit.

The content itself is very good and award-deserving by all means. But interactivity is about presenting that content in a new and interesting way and drawing in users who would have never been interested in reading about the topic by luring them to explore on. This is where Disposable Heroes fails.

The report is divided into five sections. Story, as the name suggests, hosts the Washington Times‘ stories about the scandal (Chantix, an anti-smoking drug that has been linked to psychotic behaviour was tested in war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder). The reports may indeed be very good, but just two of them seems like several too few to be the result of a three-month investigation. Now, I am very well aware that investigative journalism is a painstaking affair where great efforts often yield incremental success… But not all of the Washington Times‘ readers know that and interactivity is about bringing those people in (the others would read the story in the paper anyway). The stories would have looked more impressive if they had been lumped together with what has ended in the Follow-Up section. The content from both Story and Follow-Up, and possibly that from Documents, could have been placed on the Timeline. As it is, the latter sits a little awkwardly: like an unwanted guest that could not have not been invited.

But where this interactive report fails epically is in the Multimedia section. That is home to some alright photos and to broken links to two videos.

The video you are trying to watch is no longer available from this website.

Granted, in today’s interlinked web links are bound to get broken. But if you have won an award and are using the occasion to drum up attention to the feature again, the least you could do is test if it still works ok.

VERDICT

Originality: 2 (out of 5)

There is nothing groundbreaking, interaction-wise, in this piece.

Presentation: 3 (out of 5)

The menus are beautiful and elegant, however the content is not coupled together in the best possible way and broken links deal a near-fatal blow to the whole package.

Journalistic value: 3 (out of 5)

It is award-winning journalism, but the poor presentation means it does not go far enough to reach a participating audience. User comments are nowhere to be seen.

Overall: 2.8 (out of 5)

Passable.

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I find it very very hard to remain calm when I come across something as polished and well-presented as this interactive package of the Los Angeles Times‘ coverage of drug wars in Mexico.

The “project” (as is the LA Times jargon for such things) has four impressive sections. The It’s A War bit serves as the homepage for the whole package. On the face of things it’s just an intro serving to highlight the various features. Notice however that most of the numbers are bigger than the rest of the text — they update in real-time as new information is fed into the database. Not that this is so cool in itself, but it is a sign of the tremendous attention to detail that makes the final product shine so bright.

The interactive map not only shows the number of drug-related deaths by state (and you can use the sliders to narrow or widen the time frame you want to be looking at), but also features a list of the thugs who control each region, complete with pictures and bios. Mouse over a hoodlum: and the state they terrorise gets highlighted.

The multimedia gallery contains a large, but not overwhelming, number of videos, individual photographs and slideshows. The navigation is very smooth.

Users are of course invited to comment, and Spanish-language comments are explicitly welcomed. While other newspapers are still pondering whether they should answer to comments, the LA Times has devoted a special section (Video Q&A) where the editor of the project and some of the journalists involved answer questions raised by users.

If this was all, it would still have been a worthy addition to the inventory of extraordinary projects of the LA Times‘ data desk. But it is not. Scroll down a bit or click on the Complete Series button and you will be brought to a list detailing every story, video, photograph or interactive graphic published as part of the Mexico under siege project since June 2008. You’ve got various options to order the list and, thanks to the great job done by the LA Times‘ team of “librarians”, you can filter the material by topic or location.

A slew of open-source software applications (Django, PostgreSQL, MochiKit and PyAMF) has been used in the project.

The LA Times is one of the leading newspapers in computer-assisted reporting and this brilliant piece of “data-journalism meets old-school reporting” is yet another proof.

VERDICT

Originality: 4 (out of 5)

The only reason this does not get a 5 is that the LA Times has set the bar so high with some of its previous projects that we’ve come to expect jaw-dropping things from them.

Presentation: 5 (out of 5)

As polished as could be. The photographs are great and the videos, especially those in the Video Q&A section, have the production values of a TV broadcast.

Journalistic value: 5 (out of 5)

This is the kind of journalism people want to see from names like the LA Times. It is so good I can’t believe they are giving it free.

Overall: 4.95 (out of 5)

Outstanding.

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Screenshot by revecca.

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A poll of media insiders, conducted by the Atlantic and National Journal in the US last week, showed that an overwhelming majority of what are purported to be “prominent members of the national news media” thought the internet had caused more pain than good to journalism.

That people who consider themselves experts in the field can be so ignorant of the great strides the profession is making thanks to the internet is not new, neither is it really surprising that what they call journalism is actually not journalism.

As Cyra Master of the Atlantic puts it, (t)hose who say that news consumption on the Internet is, on balance, hurting journalism note the way the online experience is changing reader habits.

So the way information is created, presented, moved around and consumed has changed and that is bad for the information? That is almost as stupid as saying inventing the phone was bad for the transfer of news because it meant less business for post carriers.

This leads me to another thing that is very characteristic of a certain type of “influential journalists”: they tend to confuse the practice of journalism with the business of journalism. (I’m one of those who think the former is flourishing even though the latter is struggling to reinvent itself.) Here’s a noteable quote from the “hurts more” camp: (t)he Internet has (…) mortally wounded the financial structure of the news business. And: the cost to the business model (…) and the inability of the business model to monetize the Internet means that there is a disturbing net cost to newsgathering.

The fact that internet-bashers outnumber boosters by two to one may be a hint as to why the news industry is in such a bad shape, but even as they are in the majority detractors cannot help but acknowledge the inevitable: the internet has widened the circle of those participating in the (…) debate. And it will continue to do so.

National Journal also asked bloggers the same question. You can see their responses here, but I think you know what they said.

I’ve stumbled upon another great interactive feature by the New York Times — about the birds of Belize.

I love birds as much as the next guy… meaning I would only very rarely read a two-page article on them. But I love beautiful pictures and hearing the sounds those birds make almost made me feel like I was in the jungle with them. (Seriously, I went to the zoo yesterday and heard fewer birdsongs there; the birds from the NYT’s pictures felt more real.)

This is not the first time the NYT has done something good and it is interesting to note that great storytelling alone seems to not be able to rid struggling newspaper companies of their problems. Whatever the outcome of the current crisis in newspaper publishing, as a reader I hope this kind of journalism survives.

VERDICT

Originality: 2 (out of 5)

Nothing new here really.

Presentation: 5 (out of 5)

What this piece lacks in originality, it more than makes up in presentation. A very well wrapped package includes magnificent pictures, sounds that make you feel like the animals are in your room, a map and a lengthy text piece for those with an unquenchable thirst for bird knowledge.

Journalistic value: 4 (out of 5)

Rather than have pictures and sounds simply support the text, the NYT has created a package of equally impressive features, each of which could stand alone.

Overall: 4.3 (out of 5)

Impressive.

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Photo by Chris Diewlad

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I could use your help. Contact me if you’d like to suggest a story worth reviewing, become a reviewer or get involved in any other way.