I have already broken my promise...

Not too long ago, I decided it was time to post more often here. Maybe I'd post some random thoughts about something new I was learning...you know, self-indulgent stuff.

But I've broken my promise.

It's been a couple weeks since our editor told us to expect layoffs in the newsroom. In fact, it was the week after IRE. A lot of numbers have floated around, but it's safe to say we're talking significant layoffs from a newsroom of 300 or so reporters and editors.

It's real tough to stay motivated about journalism when the ax is falling all around you. Mr. Hartnett up in swanky Palm Beach Co. has a picture that illustrates things perfectly.

I realize THIS is the time we have to stay motivated. This is when we have to innovate, kick ass and take names. But it's almost like you need that period to catch your breath, to take account of what's happening and what's going to happen.

I need a new shrine...or offering...human sacrifice, maybe?

For those who don't know, our friends down south at the Miami Herald had an idea to save their jobs: Make offerings to the Santeria chicken brought in by some priest. Or that's how I understand the story.

So I made a little electronic shrine to the chicken over at a site I set up for just this reason.

But either the chicken didn't like being mocked, or the Santeria chicken didn't work, bringing to mind scenes from the movie Major League:

Pedro Cerrano: Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.
Eddie Harris: You know you might think about taking Jesus Christ as your savior instead of fooling around with all this stuff.
Roger Dorn: Shit, Harris.
Pedro Cerrano: Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.
Eddie Harris: You trying to say Jesus Christ can't hit a curveball?

Anyone have an idea of a new shrine to make offerings? Human sacrifice? It's all in the name of not being canned. Judging from this article, we could use all the help we can get.

Ruby

So while taking Aron Pilhofer to the airport on Sunday, he gave me a nice rundown on Ruby on Rails (and, as a sidebar, Ruby itself). It was interesting enough to convince me to give it a look.

If you're even remotely interested, do yourself a favor and check this out. It kind of gives you a nice little overview of Ruby.

In other news, I got a new Django book in the mail last week. Was intending to mess with it today, but had to take the wife to the hospital when she sliced her paw open while using scissors on flowers at work.

What I'm reading today...

"Left-leaning" or "non-partisan"?

"Why would a Times article call the American Enterprise Institute "conservative-leaning," but not refer in the same article to the politics of the Mike Mansfield Foundation? Why do stories refer to the Brookings Institution variously as "centrist," "conservative" and "nonpartisan"?"

Who Will Tell Us?

"The steady drip of buyouts and layoffs has consumed an estimated four thousand newsroom jobs in print alone since the turn of the century, according to the much-chewed-over annual State of the News Media report released in March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. As to whether the Web is replenishing this reportorial firepower, the authors are blunt: “In print, broadcast and elsewhere, more effort is moving to packaging and repurposing material….But less is being devoted to original newsgathering, especially the bearing witness and monitoring of basic news.”'

Cablevision Chief: Deal will 'bolster' Newsday

"In the News12 interview, James Dolan promised a "renewed invigoration of the newspaper here on Long Island." He said cable executives feel "that we can make this paper at least what it was before," referring to circulation declines experienced under Tribune."

Great shirts....

Full disclosure: I stole this post from Danny Sanchez over at the Orlando Sentinel.

But who doesn't need a shirt like this?


Some of these shirts are almost as nerd-a-rific as my personal favorite (which you can find here):

Back from Tempe....

Well, I actually made it back from Tempe. But more important than getting back, I survived my time in Tempe.

We spent mucho time learning about regression, correlation and several other social science methods useful in journalism.

That all got me thinking.

My friend Allison is a Ph.D sociology student at the University of Colorado in Hippieville. We've spent a few e-mails talking about social science and journalism. The other day, I whined that if newspapers fail, who else is going to do this kind of work?

Her response:

"A lot of people do this kind of work. It just doesn't go as public as a story the Dallas News does. So, we start making it MORE of a priority to get research out to the public. There's definitely a movement towards this right now, but it's more
towards getting research about a particular issue to the practitioners
who work in that area, not the whole general public."

To me, this is the very problem. Social scientists write for other social scientists. Academics write for academics. It doesn't matter if academia starts trying to find more ways to publicize their work --- it's still going to be written for other academics.

During the camp, Steve Doig told of a story where a journalist presented his findings to an academic, who was astounded. "I never knew newspapers could do work like this," he said. As I remember the story, and forgive me if I'm a little off, the academic was planning to do the same work, but was going to take a year to apply for grant, start figuring out a framework, on and on and on.

Journalists can do social science-type work and make it palatable to the general public. But this kind of work dies in a compressing newsroom environment.

So this is my depressing thought for the day. I guess I really don't have a point to all of this, other than my hope we can find a way out of this current environment.

Data ghettos....

Some random rambling thoughts...

Fellow Floridian Matt Waite has coined a new term: "Data ghetto."

"The Data Ghetto is that one mishmash page where all of that site’s databases are lumped together."

I think Matt hits on some great points here. I've gotten that feeling that most of the industry is just plain confused. Sometimes it seems like we want stuff online just for the sake of having stuff online, but we don't have a clear mission.

Chalk it up to the tumultuous time in our industry, I suppose. But the confusion can't last long. Or we're in trouble.

At the same time, I am a bit of a fan of the data ghetto for some reasons, a lot of it having to do with public service. I think we should take advantage of the ability to bring the power of public records to our readers --- and add some transparency to what we do.

"That said, here’s how we can get out of the data ghetto: add some journalism to it."

I agree. And I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how to do it.

Like one of Matt's readers points out, a lot of this is version 1.0. Hopefully we keep going to version 2.0 and beyond.

Have I seen our savior?

A music critic at my old paper used to end every column with something along the lines of, "I have seen the future of rock and roll and it is..." and he would discuss a new group.

So I wonder if I've seen the future of journalism.

For anyone who hasn't taken a peek, the St. Pete paper launched the results of four years of work this week. Who would've thought a zoo held such a story?

More evidence that a great reporter can find a great story in anything.

But I digress.

In this era of trimming resources, this reporter went to Africa to help chronicle a local story. In an era of shrinking news hole, the St. Pete paper dedicated the space. In an era of short stories, this runs long.

This is the kind of journalism that will save our product. Not gimmicks. Not schemes.

We have to provide our readers something they can't find elsewhere. That's CAR. That's investigations. That's fearless writing about stories that matter.

If we don't do those things, who will? TV won't. They're too busy covering meth busts and house fires.

It's the content that matters. Medium is secondary.

We have to find our niche. And we have to promote it. And we have to convince readers it's worthing taking the time to read, whether it's in print or online.

The Front Page...

Finally got around to watching The Front Page. Well, not the original --- the remake with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Earl Williams: You don't have to answer this, Mollie, but is it true what they said in the papers?
Mollie Malloy: Is what true?
Earl Williams: That you were going to marry me on the gallows.
Mollie Malloy: Well, if it's in the papers, it must be true. They wouldn't print a lie.

Classic.

But it still doesn't beat the greatest journalism movie of all time --- The Paper.

Carmen: You wanna cover Brooklyn, then cover Brooklyn! But let me tell you something, it's a little tough to do from a barstool in Manhattan.

What other movie so closely resembles the characters of the great American newsroom?

I'm convinced that characters in The Paper can fit someone in your newsroom.

Alicia: We're not exactly the Washington Post, okay?
Michael McDougal: No, we're not. We run stupid headlines because we think they're funny. We run maimings on the front page because we got good art. And I spend three weeks bitching about my car because it sells papers. But at least it's the truth. As far as I can remeber we never ever, ever knowingly got a story wrong, until tonight.

There's got to be a better way......

The Houston Chronicle's Chase Davis has put together a great idea for the Knight News Challenge.

His idea for a sort of collaborative lawmaking site --- to put it lightly --- is very interesting.

I covered the Legislature for about two years at The Oklahoman before becoming the database editor. When I stepped back and noticed how we covered the Legislature --- afraid to miss any little event, a feeling of obligation to write about every back-and-forth political nonsense spewed in a "statement" --- I always thought there had to be a better way.

I just didn't know what it was.

I think sometimes we fell in the trap of thinking the public gave a crap about what went on inside the state Capitol. We thought the public cared whether former House Speaker Todd Hiett and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Morgan got along.

Or whether they called each other names.

Kings in a castle syndrome, I suppose.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could find a way to combine our knowledge of the beat and how things work in legislative bodies with the power of the Web? Like I said, Chase's idea really seems like a gigantic step in that direction.

I've really got a data crush on some of the stuff the folks at the NY Times are doing with some of the national elections, such as this gem on visits by candidates. They did something similar with campaign contributions.

I've always thought it'd be wonderful to come up with a way to show a flow of campaign contributions vs. bills moving through the Legislature. And we wouldn't have to stop there --- you could add in a number of other variables.

Again, I'm not sure what else, though.

But there's got to be a better way.

Even daily reporters need CAR....

Joey Senat, a media law and public affairs reporting professor at Oklahoma State University's journalism school, always told us to stay in a public records state of mind.

In today's world, we need to take it a step along. We need to also stay in a data state of mind.

Ziva Branstetter, projects editor at the Tulsa World, once told a panel I attended that the best ideas for investigations typically spring up from beat reporters. I think it's the same way with CAR stories.

I've always preached that all beat reporters need data skills.

When I first arrived at the Sun-Sentinel earlier this month, one of the first people who e-mailed me was Mc Nelly Torres, who I'd seen around at several IRE and/or NICAR conferences. Mc Nelly, a member of the consumer watchdog team here at the paper, had done some neat analysis of gas pump inspections in south Florida.

"In South Florida, 34 percent of the gas stations inspected in the past
three years had at least one gas pump that failed accuracy tests used to determine if the devices are giving consumers the correct amount of gas they pay for, a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis found."

Mc Nelly produced a great Sunday p1 by requesting the data from the Florida agency with oversight. She knew not only how to get the data, but how to analyze it.

Newspapers across America are spending an awful lot of money training reporters how to get audio and video, and then how to edit it. But aren't newspapers missing the boat by forgetting about content? It doesn't matter what kind of equipment you have or how much audio/video is on the Web site if the content isn't there.

Isn't that what we dislike about TV? All flash but no content?

CAR skills aren't hard to pick up. It just takes time and some monetary commitment from organizations.

Steve Lackmeyer, one of the finest reporters around, is old school. He's a shoe leather guy. But Lackmeyer recognized CAR skills aren't a substitute for shoe leather reporting --- they show you how and where to do better shoe leather reporting.

Lackmeyer, a mentor of mine at The Oklahoman, went to NICAR with me in Denver. He went through some of the boot camp stuff on Access and Excel. He came out excited.

"I can do this!"

This after just a couple hours of training.

I hope the industry doesn't forget that content is the No. 1 issue. Without content, we have nothing.

And I can make a great case that CAR skills will pay off big for beat reporters and the content they produce.

Mc Nelly's story proves it.

What this place is about....

Apparently I don't have enough to do.

So today, I'm trying out a new blog. This is on top of my other site.

I wanted a place where I could talk about journalism.

Journalism Bull is a nod to the stock market. I'm not ready to hang up the cleats on journalism because of the Internet. A friend of mine, who admittedly is a lot smarter than me when it comes to these types of things, tells me he's a bear on the industry. But maybe we're talking Xs and Os.

He was talking about newspapers. I'm talking about journalism. Then again, I don't think the buzzards are circling around newspapers just yet, either.

But it won't take long if we aren't careful. Chalk it up to cheerleading, if you want.

As for journalism, I think the Internet is great for journalism. It provides us a medium to do things print couldn't --- and expand on topics that newspapers prevented because of space reasons.

You'll probably see me talk about data and its role in journalism a lot --- mainly because that's what I do.

So, at risk of rambling with no point and boring you, here we go....