Story Review

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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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 would be very surprised if any of the 16 or so people who read this blog hasn’t heard of Wordle and word clouds, but back in August 2008 that was brand new stuff. (The first entry in the official Wordle blog is from late June and the first post on the official Wordle forum is from December.)

August was when 10,000 Words, a blog about journalism and technology, posted these “word cloud analyses” of speeches delivered to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. The amazing thing is not that someone thought of using word clouds for journalism — clever as it is, somebody was bound to eventually, — the amazing thing is how well chosen the subject of the wordling is. A month later, Joanna Geary, then of the Birmingham Post, posted a word cloud of a Gordon Brown speech and said: “you can’t read much (or anything, really) into words taken out of context”. It’s been almost half a year since then and there are loads of speeches that have been wordled. Turns out that speeches by politicians, and by anyone with some kind of an agenda, lend themselves especially well to word clouds; and people seem to agree they are quite unambiguous in their message.

Maybe it’s because it is all done by a machine following an algorithm, but people find it hard to say that a speech was not about XYZ if XYZ dominates the picture. Word clouds are seen as objective (although they can be very easily manipulated by their creators). I’ve used wordled speeches to make fun of politicians and not once has anyone doubted their objectivity.

If nothing else, word clouds make for a decent picture to enliven the otherwise ultimately boring story about some old fart giving a speech.

VERDICT

Originality: 4.5 (out of 5)

I have no way to prove it, but it is likely that 10,000 Words‘ was the first use of word clouds for political journalism. At the very least, it’s been one of the pioneers.

Presentation: 5 (out of 5)

Word clouds are beautiful and that 10,000 Words hasn’t diluted their effect by adding observations on how big or small one or another word was doesn’t hurt.

Journalistic value: 5 (out of 5)

Some stories can be perfectly told with just a word cloud and stories about speeches often fall into this category.

Overall: 4.9 (out of 5)

Outstanding.

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I know the Super Bowl is old news now, but I’ve been itching to blog about this incredible piece of interactive journalism by the New York Times’ Matthew Bloch and Shan Carter.

As the caption states, this “map shows the location and frequency of commonly used words in Super Bowl related [DD:Twitter] messages”. Sounds simple and even a bit boring, but is instead almost unbelievably cool and fascinating. I have yet to meet the person whose jaw does not drop when they first realise what the real effect of this interactive graphic is.

In essence, it’s just words from geo-tagged tweets placed on a map. But because the authors have also chosen to highlight the frequency of each word by making it bigger if it is more commonly mentioned, what we get is something that really feels like a cheering crowd watching sport’s biggest event for the season (according to Americans, that is). We can even feel how the tension rises as the game draws to an end and can almost imagine the fans shouting the names of Fitzgerald and Holmes during the dramatic finish.

Of course, the Super Bowl is not only a sporting but also a great marketing event and sure enough, we’ve got tweets from people talking about ads. It is amazing how passionate people can get about advertising. The universal support for Hulu, the free online video service, is especially noticeable.

VERDICT

Originality: 5 (out of 5)

We are not sure if Bloch and Carter knew what they were going to end up with when they first hatched the idea, but it just smacks of pure creative genius.

Presentation: 5 (out of 5)

Simple, slick and compelling. The idea to express word frequency by a larger font works out incredibly well.

Journalistic value: 5 (out of 5)

This is the best example we have come across so far of the media being just a facilitator in a discussion that goes on in the community. Barring the headline, the caption and the menus, all of the content is user-generated. The newspaper plays a role in the background, by making it all possible through its superior technological expertise and resources.

Overall: 5 (out of 5)

Outstanding.

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Thanks to Eric Ulken (@eulken) who pointed me to this interactive map.

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