In chronological order, a handful of the cool tips, tricks and advice I picked up at the Online News Association conference.
- 21 tips to being a mobile ninja: bit.ly/ninjamobile
- Pano apps: Photosynth and DMD
- Mobile GIFs: Cinemagram and Lightt
- “Collaborative video” (AKA: multi-view video): Streamweaver and Vyclone
2) Data
- Tips for data newbies on what to consider when looking for/working with data
- First things first, figure out if data is even available, ie: call someone and ask
- There is a TON of data out there, a small list from Chris Keller here.
- You almost always want to get data in a CSV (comma separated value) format or an Excel file. Avoid PDFs at all costs.
- No slideshow or webpage for this, but the tweets were pretty good.
- Moral of the story was to look at your data and pick the best format for the data
- Sometimes bar charts are the best way to visualize data
- “If it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work”
- Involve data viz people EARLY on when you’re working on a story
- Major talking point: WNYC Cicada Tracker
- Building, coding sensors is a step up from basic web development
- Sensors journalists use are often inaccurate, compared to military-grade sensors, but much cheaper to produce and easier to crowdsource
- Sensors can track many, many things (air quality, chemicals, pressure, wifi, cell phone signals [intensity not specific person], temperature, motion, etc.)
- Still many ethical/legal questions around using sensors in public places
5) There are jobs in journalism…
- …and people are hiring if you have the right skill set
- Biggest buzzwords were “code” followed closely by “data” and “multimedia”
