Michelle Minkoff » web http://michelleminkoff.com =SUM (Passion + journalism + data + technology) Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:20:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Journ curricula’s need for transition isn’t unique http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/16/journ-curriculas-transition-isnt-unique/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/16/journ-curriculas-transition-isnt-unique/#comments Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:55:40 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=1106 Despite being months out of school, I’m still relatively obsessed with teaching and learning. That’s part of what makes journalism these days fun — we learn about our subject matters, and we learn new tools for information display. But the training of new journos has a special place in my heart. Every day, I benefit from the teachers in my life at the LAT, and elsewhere in the community. In return, you, the knowledgable, tell me to pass it on. So, anytime someone has a question, I make a very serious effort to do whatever I can. All of which is a long way of saying I’m still obsessed with the transition that journalism curricula must go through. We shouldn’t give up our fundamental basics that allow us to find the truth, and convey it to the public. But we must teach new skills as well.

That’s why I absolutely loved last week’s post by TBD’s Steve Buttry on this isssue. Read it, seriously. I was going to write up my comments, but I’ve got something better.

I started discussing this issue with my father Mike Minkoff, who happened to be in town last week. And he helped me realize the struggle our education finds itself in, well, it’s nothing new.

Mike is a computational scientist at Illinois’ Argonne National Laboratory, using his cs skills to enhance the work of his fellow scientists, and enables them to explore problems whose complexity or sheer magnitude is beyond the reach of mere humans. It’s applying tech skills to another field. And that’s a little bit like what we do as journo-programmers, bring the cs to the journalism.

But when he was going to school, computer science curricula weren’t all that certain. And we can learn from that transition. I’ll let him take it away.

I am a computational scientist with an interest in data in journalism. I find a number of exciting and interesting parallels between the current evolution of journalism as discussed in this post and the early history of the field of computer science when I went to grad school in the 1960s.

I studied computer science at the undergraduate level through Ph.D. between 1963 and 1973 at the University of Wisconsin and Princeton University. During that time, there were relatively few schools that had curricula in computer science (Cal Tech, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and a few others) and the programs were principally at the graduate level. In fact, schools didn’t always call it “Computer Science” — some of the courses were listed as “Programs in Numerical Analysis,” as at Wisconsin.

There are two points I’d like to comment on:

  1. In the 1960s, as computer science programs developed there was a fundamental debate regarding what should be taught and where. On the one hand, grad students and faculty felt that learning a programming language was of utmost importance in order to get a job after graduation. On the other hand, others felt that theory is more important so the student can develop and move with the technology rather than become stagnant as technology advanced. Later on, the theory approach justified the placement of computer science in major universities rather than trade schools. There is a parallel here to the “basics” vs. “technology” issue in journalism.

    As this debate developed, the professional societies (notably the Association for Computing Machinery) established a committee to define a core curriculum of an B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. and allow for electives that could be locally defined by the institution. The courses in the core represented the key areas of computer science and are reflected in their decendents today in simulation and modeling, data analysis and operating systems theory:

    • numerical analysis and mathematical optimization
    • systems programming
    • artificial intelligence and automated reasoning

    Of course these are historical topics and just as the technology used in journalism will develop in new ways, so did these areas.

    As to the theory vs. language issue the obvious answer is both. In all fields, as the subject advances there are always new topics to integrate into a curriculum. I would expect that a journalist be as good a writer as in the past, but also he or she must know how to utilize the technology of today (and tomorrow). I would hope that in the rush to move with technology the programs and faculty of traditional journalism is not neglected. There is the danger of being so committed to technology that the core of basic journalism is lost.

  2. One of the most exciting parallels to me has lasted my career. The pioneers of computer science were my teachers, mentors and lifelong friends and advisors just as the present digital journalism teachers and mentors are for their students. Graduate school is not just a spoon-fed set of courses, but a place where inquiry and learning can be nurtured. One of the commonalities of computer science of the 1960s and the technology journalism of today is that once in a generation a field provides the opportunity to meet and learn from the people who created the field. This gives the mentor and student to opportunity to rise to the challenge of working in a new and growing field. While students in both areas need to decide for themselves what they want to get out of a career, for me it is exciting to meet and learn from the people who created the field. As a student, I felt that the difference between studying math and computer science was that you could meet and talk with the developers and authors of the textbooks. Of course today it is the blog rather than the textbook, I guess!

I thought this was definitely something to ponder, and I hope that in a generation, I’ll be the one telling my children about the parallels between what we consider modern journalis, and some new transition their field is going through.

Has this gotten you thinking, too? That’s what the comments section is for!

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/16/journ-curriculas-transition-isnt-unique/feed/ 0 Hosting #wjchat — Finding the story in the data http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/07/hosting-wjchat-finding-the-story-in-the-data/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/07/hosting-wjchat-finding-the-story-in-the-data/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 02:01:29 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=1085 UPDATE: More later, but if you missed the geekery and fantastic exchange of knowledge that you get with a phenomenally sharp, inquisitive and dedicated group like the #wjchatters, you can find the transcript here.

Tomorrow, Wed. Sept. 8, we’ll be discussing “Finding the story in the data” at #wjchat, and I have been tapped to host. (One might ask why, they must really be running low on people….I kid, I kid.)

This issue is extremely important, and one that must be addressed by the Web journalism groups. There’s a difference between telling a journalistic story, but lacking the data and displaying data in an aesthetically pleasing way that doesn’t really tell a story. The best data journalism does both. It’s rare, and I believe we all need to work harder at doing more of it. A tall order for someone to do alone, or even a team, but if the community puts its collective head together, we’ve got a better shot.

I couldn’t be more excited to discuss some of the issues I’ve been spending much of the last year internalizing. I have some better ideas about this now than I did back last September, I hope, but it’s also one of my favorite topics to ponder, because there are so many ideas I know I haven’t considered. I hope to report back with a nice compilation of links and thoughts once we tap into the community’s knowledge, but for now, I’m just spreading the word.

If you read this blog, but aren’t familiar with #wjchat, it’s a gathering on Twitter on Wednesday evenings where we discuss various aspects of online journalism. It ranges from social media, to video, to how to get a job, to data. I love all the facets of journalism, so it’s a great way to guarantee yourself some great conversation and learning all wrapped up into one package. At 5 Pacific, 8 Eastern, on Wednesday, that’s tomorrow, just hop on over to Twitter and follow the hashtag #wjchat. I find it easier to follow via tweetchat.com, which gives you a little chatroom that has a nicer interface than twitter.com — the conversation can get fast and furious.

In the meantime, if there are specific topics you’d like to see discussed, or questions you’d like asked, get at me before, or during the chat.

And if you’re one of my dear NICARian mentors, it’d be really fantastic if you could find the time to drop by. Anything I’ve picked up in my career thus far is minimal, and I owe it all to the collective wisdom of those who’ve taught me what I know as a journalist and a programmer.

See you in the virtual space!

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/09/07/hosting-wjchat-finding-the-story-in-the-data/feed/ 2 First LAT app (or the butterfly on my windowsill) http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/07/11/my-first-lat-django-app-or-the-butterfly-on-my-windowsill/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/07/11/my-first-lat-django-app-or-the-butterfly-on-my-windowsill/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 05:27:56 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=1051 http://projects.latimes.com/prop8

So, there’s that. First launch!

My checklist:

  • Figure out what part of journalism inspires me. CHECK (Data, programming)
  • Find place where I can learn about it from others, but have freedom to try out my ideas and learn from knowledgeable and patient folks. CHECK (LAT)
  • Use this opportunity to learn enough about programming to create at least one app. CHECK (See first line of post)

That was a good time.

I’m planning a post on best practices for creating a searchable database application like this, with examples, and technical geekery, and all that, and I’d love your thoughts in the meantime.  Let me know if you have specific questions.

But in a moment of self-reflection, I’d just like to say this.

I was sitting in my apartment this morning, and found that a butterfly had somehow gotten in (blame a broken screen, maybe).  It sat on my windowsill, facing the outside world.  It would feel around the window, trying to find an opening.  After circling the perimeter of the window, it laid back down, almost motionless, just searching.  An hour later, the cycle repeated.  Wanting to help the poor butterfly, after watching it struggle, I tried to capture it in a small box to take it downstairs.  It was too smart for that.  Fine.  What actually worked?  Covering all the windows and opening the balcony door.  You can’t force the butterfly out, even though you’re helping, it had to find the path out on its own.

Why do I bring this up?  Am I slowly going insane after spending the day with Dive Into Python (rec’d)?  Perhaps. But I have a point.

Let’s take the common journalist, yearing to know more about data-driven apps.  (I can’t be the only one, I just can’t!)  I search for the answers, voraciously read, alternate between laying still while observing the space and wandering around the perimeter, feeling it out, trying to dip my toe in the water.  I jump into the pool, head-first, realize it’s not working.  Can’t do it on my own.  Many people who’ve already made the journey try to help.  But they just can’t just give me the knowledge, can’t just take me to my goal, can’t just make it happen.  They must lead me there, give me the same resources they used.  Recommend the books, the sites. But in the end, I’ve got to find my own way out of the house, the prison of not knowing enough coding basics to begin.  Pushes in the right direction, guiding me away from those false starts, this is essential.

I’d just like to take a moment to thank the experts, who guide me away from the false starts, who don’t give up when I keep turning the wrong way.  In particular, in terms of the programming skills I’m learning, it’s Ben Welsh (who I happen to have been working most closely with), who exercises that kind of patience.  Who never tells me not to fly into that closed window, because while it was closed for him, I might discover a way to get out.  Of course, I don’t, and he’s no less interested in helping me get back on course. Thanks!

Still a long way to go.  So, what’s changed?  Now, I’ve gotten outside.  I made my first app.  When someone asks me what steps make up a project, how long it’ll take, I can give a legitimate answer, or know how to find one.

I still remember wondering if I could ever build an application.  And Derek said to me, “There’s only one way to find out.”  Derek, who I used to bug on a daily basis about this stuff.  Derek, who I haven’t asked a Python/Django question of since March.  I’m the LAT’s problem now!

Well, as Derek said, find out we did.  Time to push it further, I say.

There’s a whole world to explore now that I’ve escaped being stuck inside.  LAT folks, prepare yourself, the questions you’ve seen so far are only the beginning.

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/07/11/my-first-lat-django-app-or-the-butterfly-on-my-windowsill/feed/ 0 David Carr at Medill http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/22/david-carr-at-medill/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/22/david-carr-at-medill/#comments Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:40:19 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=701 Today, the New York Times’ David Carr came to speak at Medill. I’ve admired his work for some time, and he was just three floors above me, so I hopped on upstairs.  While not directly data-related, he did talk about many topics relevant to the current journalistic climate. If that’s not a good enough reason, it’s my blog, so we’re going on a diversion.  Here are some choice quotes that may interest you:

  • On journalism’s doom and gloom naysayers: “People always say the sky is falling, and nothing happens.”
  • “The golden age of journalism wasn’t actually all that golden.”
  • “I still like to get the sense of a place from the local newspaper.  It’s harder to get that on the Web because of the lack of hierarchy.”
  • “On the Web, beyond porn, and beyond celebrity gossip, news is the killer app.”
  • On why he likes the iPad: “You’re going from surfing and being hunched over to leaning back and relaxing with your content.”
  • “I worry people will be so busy making media, updating Facebook and Twitter, that they won’t have time to consume it.”
  • On using the NYT’s most emailed list as a metric: “When is the last time I emailed a story to anybody?”
  • “I’ve always thought that as journalists, the skills we have are fungible enough that they could align to different platforms.”

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/22/david-carr-at-medill/feed/ 0 Exploring Drupal — open source tool of the day http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/12/exploring-drupal-open-source-tool-of-the-day/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/12/exploring-drupal-open-source-tool-of-the-day/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:16:22 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=549 As part of an ongoing quest to learn as much about programming and technical tools as I strive to learn about the beats I cover, I jumped at the opportunity to attend a Drupal training this evening. I didn’t know this before today, but there is a robust Drupal user group here in Chicago, appropriately named the Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group.  In real life, they run trainings once a month where they also answer general questions.  Other meetings focus on advance topics, and sometimes it’s just an open time to get together and hack some stuff out — hey, why not? And the discussion continues online through webcasts, video tutorials and an IRC channel.

My total Drupal knowledge before today was that it had two of the same letters as “Ruby”.  Oh, and people use it for citizen journalism, according to one article.  And the White House uses it.  But other than that, a blank slate.

Turns out it’s a way you can structure the back-end of a site to develop a Web site quickly.  It could be a blog, directory, or a database host.  And that’s just the beginning!

From my first two hours with it, I see it as sort of a happy medium between using WordPress and diving into the Django deep end (which isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be anyway.)

There are more modules (module is to Drupal as plug-in is to WordPress) than what I’ve found in WordPress, and they seem more robust, for example, one can add a Google analytics code to thousands of pages at once.

There are also templates for different types of pages.  Some are built in, in the “core.”  This is distinct from themes (like applying CSS) and modules that you can get from drupal.org and add on, those are considered “contrib,” as in contributed.  One of the built-in features Drupal comes up with upon install is a full-featured blog, another feature adds a page with a complete contact form to your site allowing people to send you email, without exposing your address to robots/spammers.  It seems easier to style individual pages in terms of content and design, as opposed to WordPress.  But there’s still enough standardization that you can make many improvements via modules, and it went quicker for me than Django does.  Maybe that will change with time.  On the other hand, if you want to do something different from the module, you have to code it, and it seemed to me that doing the coding from scratch in Python would just be simpler.  But, in all fairness, it’s hard to get much simpler than Python in terms of coding.

It’s pretty simple to get something on a page quickly in Drupal.  Then you feel you accomplished something!  After that, you can adjust various permissions to make sure everyone can see the page, and you get to select and deselect what goes in the navigation — I’ve found that to be more difficult in WordPress.

I can definitely see that Drupal provides possibilities for journalism, getting development out of the way so you can focus on content.  This is especially true with a mix of using pre-made modules and themes, and using code to modify modules and create your own components from scratch.

Some of the links shared at the meeting can be found under the Drupal tag on my Delicious account: http://delicious.com/michelleminkoff/drupal I’ll add a few more in the coming days as I unpack my physical and mental notes.

I tried to add Drupal to a subsection of this site, but apparently the header Drupal wanted to add conflicted with the site-wide header WordPress had already implemented.  Perhaps that conflict should have been obvious.  I’m debating whether it is worth it to get another domain name to mess with new back end technologies.

Maybe someone can answer this, though.  If I can’t put Drupal and WordPress on the same domain, how do you put Django projects on a special section of a news site when the entire site hasn’t switched to running on Django? Any experiences with Drupal you’d care to share?  Always more to ponder.

More Data Delver posts coming up soon from computer-assisted reporters, news application developers, and others!

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/02/12/exploring-drupal-open-source-tool-of-the-day/feed/ 0 Collaborating with computers to parse “big data” http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/18/bigdata/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/18/bigdata/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:47:32 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=248 Picture it: You’ve been given a new story assignment, and you have to leave for the interview in five minutes. You’ve got to have enough background to ask the right questions, but there’s no time to do research.  Somehow pulling that all-nighter on an English term paper in college seems like a cakewalk. Luckily, you’re a seasoned journalist (where I hope to be in 10 years), and you’re used to figuring it out fast.

Enter the new reporter. He can come up with millions of questions in a millisecond, and assimilate information ten times faster than that. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and he doesn’t even need to spend travel time on his interviews. Oh, and he’s the pinnacle of efficiency – doesn’t take lunch or bathroom breaks, doesn’t even stop to sleep.  He’s the new ace reporter on staff: a computer.

Time to be afraid? No, because the computer has a serious Achilles heel — it has no flexibility, no understanding of nuance. It’s either black or white, right or wrong. The best way to work with your new colleague, so to speak, is to let him focus on his strengths, while you focus on yours. I’m talking about using the machine as an analytical tool for details, but leaving the big picture exploration to the humans.  This concept is buzzing around the Internet these days — the idea of parsing “big data” — data sets that are too big for human brains alone to comprehend.

This idea was explored in a large-scale report (66-page-PDF ahead!)  from the Aspen Institute, titled “The Promise and Peril of Big Data.”  I’m not surprised by a title like that, having long been a believer that all technology is amoral, and like much of life, brings its own good and bad aspects.  The computer can examine these large sets, but we have to use our own judgment to bring journalistic and statistical ethics — just because there is a correlation, that doesn’t mean there is a cause and effect, for example.  But just as we go to expert sources to fill in our own knowledge gaps, the computer serves as a certain type of expert that can aid reporting.

Here’s the computer’s specialty:  It helps us analyze information, and then display it so it’s fit for human consumption. This is the essence of journalism, it’s just that the computer can process more stuff than the human brain can.  But we must make sense of it.  He’ll take care of the trees, we have to deal with the forest.

As for statistical analysis, it’s been big in the business community for years. The idea is simple: Parse the information so it can help people make intelligent decisions. The field is progressing rapidly, and the community is talking about using data for storytelling. Roger Magoulas, director of research for O’Reilly Media, recently said, “You need more sophisticated ways of distilling what you know down. A good visualization, if you turn something into a good story, it’s just going to resonate a lot more…than a simple chart that gets delivered to everyone.”

Wait, isn’t that what journalists do? Only difference is that instead of making data accessible to a few decision makers, it’s about making data accessible to a bigger group of people.  Many call it data analysis, I call it opening up democracy.

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/18/bigdata/feed/ 0 Why technology matters: It’s about reporting http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/11/why-technology-matters-its-about-reporting/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/11/why-technology-matters-its-about-reporting/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:04:33 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/?p=193 “Figure out what you want to do, and get really good at it.”  That’s been the overarching advice I’ve heard in the past few weeks, as I seek to understand where I might fit in the “new media” world.  It all sounds fine, although the more I meet interesting people who’ve been looking at data analysis and web presentation for a long time, the more it becomes apparent that getting “really good at it” is a lifelong endeavor.  But what curious journalist wouldn’t find that a plus?  My struggle has been figuring out the first clause of that sentence, what I want to do.  There’s about 85 answers I could give, and they all have to do with journalism and technology.  But the sooner I figured out where my primary interest was, the sooner I could focus on getting those skills down.

I’ve been talking to a lot of mentors, and suddenly, it all became clear to me.  When I first met people doing CAR, I thought to myself, “I didn’t know you could do that!  That’s so cool!”  It didn’t seem like work, just a fun endeavor.  And then it hit me.  I’m a reporter.  I love and respect everyone across journalistic disciplines, and I’m not adverse to working out of an office.  But I report things, I dig things up.  Properly placing a heading is interesting for a while, but ten years from now, I just see it becoming a frustration.  New media and technology is great, and as journalists, we say our medium isn’t dying (because it’s not!) because it’s just new ways of delivering content.  I guess that’s supposed to allay our fears.  But I never really thought of new media as something to be afraid of.  So telling me that Twitter doesn’t change the content I create, that online communities are just about bringing others into the content creation process, that doesn’t make me feel better.  But tell me that I can code to report, take hundreds of thousands of rows of gobbelty-gook, and get a story out of it?  I’m there!  Tell me those new tools are going to help us keep better tabs on our government, are going to help us find out information about our world that isn’t explicit.  I’m there!

It all seems obvious now, and perhaps I should have known this was the direction I was pointing in all along.  I know it’s right, because I can stay up a whole night learning to parse HTML, and never bat an eyelid until the alarm clock goes off and I realize I never really went to sleep.

Oops.

The next step is striking a balance.  And attacking these technologies, which various Medill and industry experts say are essential to the backend: Python, Django, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, R and Javascript.  But the interesting part isn’t just learning them so I can lump them on the resume page of this site.  The real fun is seeing how I can apply them, make sense of our world and get the stories out there to the people who really matter — the public that we journalists serve.

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2010/01/11/why-technology-matters-its-about-reporting/feed/ 0 Printies and webbies — we’re all journalists! http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/11/22/printies-and-webbies-were-all-journalists/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/11/22/printies-and-webbies-were-all-journalists/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:53:25 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/blog/?p=34 Oh, why can’t we just get along?  There’s been a lot of talk recently about the cuts at the Washington Post of workers in the separate print and online departments.  There’s been an outpouring of comments on the nature of the news business due to this issue.  Some say the web is all about presentation, and without print journalists, there won’t be anything to post.  The web workers say that content just won’t be seen if it isnt’ presented properly.  Stories of the lack of understanding between the two, such as this of former WaPo print-turned-online staffer (and my current Medill professor) Derek Willis are harrowing.  As a student, I thought if I could just get the skills down, my journo-tech obsession would have a place in this world.  Turns out, there’s a lot to be concerned about.

It’s not surprising though.  My own, admittedly minimal, media experiences show a deep rift between print and online workers. The Washington Post separated its print and online headquarters across a river. Sure, that’s a very literal example of the problem, but it’s no better than many of the organizations I’m familiar with.  In my role as web content intern at WTTW last summer, people on both the web and editorial side worked with me, but they were on opposite sides of the building.  At one point, there was talk of me having two desks!  Same at the Boston Phoenix about three years ago.  The notion that the “web people” is separate from editorial is a big part of the problem.  Web workers are not just about presentation, they are content creators too.  The Web is best used when it is considered from concept to final product. That means people with diverse backgrounds should be involved in conceiving new ideas. We must all consider the possibilities technology brings to journalism.

Listen up, media folks.  All journalism projects are web projects. I don’t care if you’re a newspaper, tv program or blog.  The notion of a completely platform-based journalism is laughable.  It’s no longer about how it’s presented, because any piece is likely to be (and should be) distributed in multiple platforms.  This isn’t a radically different concept from the common admonition that we should diversify newsrooms by bringing together people from different racial and economic backgrounds, as it helps to inform the newspaper’s overall judgment.  It’s not a war, but a question of coming together.  Kumbayah, indeed.

We can start in the journalism schools.  I consider many different tasks part of my daily reporting class. It’s not just about asking people questions and writing stories. It’s not even just about photos and video.  Figuring out how to query databases and display thousands of records at once on an interactive map, and even design questions such as how to layout a story on a page in a way that’s aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly, it’s all essential.

I continue to be devastated every time a professor starts to discuss any type of code — it doesn’t matter if it’s HTML or Python — and makes a joke that”This is a warning, we’re going to code.”  Why are we warning people? There’s no warning before we talk about photos or videos, it’s just another tool.  And as we presumptuously try to “save journalism,” (and you know, find gainful employment) we can use as many tools as we can get.

So when one thinks about learning all this, it’s pretty scary.  After a year in j-school, there’s so much more to learn. And it’s completely intimidating.  And if there’s talk of great videographers like Travis Fox being in danger, because their work isn’t applicable in print, what about those of us just finding our footing in the digital world?

The answer, perhaps, is that we keep dreaming, keep innovating and never stop learning.  As journalists, I thought that was part of our commonality – -we love to learn anything and everything, each day is an education. Let’s make it so that’s not just a description of our approach to subject matter, but to techniques that allow us to give people the info they need. The more tools available, the better.

And most importantly of all, let’s remember to appreciate the journey — because if you stop and think about it, it’s a pretty exciting and fun way for us to spend our days!

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/11/22/printies-and-webbies-were-all-journalists/feed/ 0 NYTimes Global Edition — do people care? Should they? http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/04/05/nytimes-global-edition-do-people-care-should-they/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/04/05/nytimes-global-edition-do-people-care-should-they/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:16:30 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/blog/?p=29 I recently returned from my spring break trip to Paris. Besides my obligatory Eiffel Tower at sunset trips, eating copious amounts of escargots and pain au chocolat — not together, obviously — the other reason I was there was for an international media seminar trip with Northwestern. Meeting with foreign correspondents, online journalists, authors and marketers, we also had the opportunity to visit several media organizations — newspapers and tv stations.

One of the sites we went to was the International Herald Tribune, mere days before iht.com was folded into nytimes.com, where as we all now know, users can pick the international or U.S.-based edition. Have more people chosen to view their news through a global lens when it’s as easy as a click? I certainly know I’ve been reading more international news when it’s that close. Or maybe I just miss the crepes filled with nutella and banana.

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]]> http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/04/05/nytimes-global-edition-do-people-care-should-they/feed/ 0 “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, Michelle” http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/02/08/you-dont-have-to-reinvent-the-wheel-michelle/ http://michelleminkoff.com/2009/02/08/you-dont-have-to-reinvent-the-wheel-michelle/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:24:05 +0000 Michelle Minkoff http://michelleminkoff.com/blog/?p=21 As some of you may know, my reporting beat at Medill right now is medical research.  One of my recent struggles has been fulfilling my class’ requirements for taking pictures, which is tough to do when dealing with large Chicago hospitals.  Perseverance can get you to speak to the chief of surgery, but it’s very hard to get in the door to take a photo.  As I commented to one of my professors that I meant to do a diagram to make up for this, but instead had merely found a picture of an x-ray that showed the device I was writing about, the professor told me, “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, Michelle.”

Good point.  It doesn’t make me want to do less with diagrams, but if another piece of media can do a better job than original content could, why push it?  I thought this reflects nicely on the fact that while user-generated content can bring interesting perspectives to the news, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some things still best left to journalists operating in the traditional way.

Twitter can be great for getting the pulse of what people think about the issue, but that’s in the Twitterverse (I need a better word than that).  Journalists don’t have to reinvent stopping people on the street asking for their thoughts.

It’s a calming, but scary, thought.  Take it too far, and there will be no reinvention of journalism, and obviously the status quo is not without fault.

But for someone who errs on the side of a hyperactive overzealous obsession for journalism (it’s a good thing, really!), maybe once in a while it’s time to relax and use what is already out there.

Oh, and my solution to the picture issue – find medical research at smaller labs.  It’s working out well so far, but I’ll keep you posted.

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