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[theopenreporter]

How Journalists Can Spot Fake Data

We recently posted a short brief as to why journalists should include data as part of their reporting. As more data become available, journalists have a greater responsibility to ensure that they’re relying on valid and accurate data so they don’t embarrass themselves and their publication.

We outlined a few key steps journalists can take in assessing whether their data is valid.

Follow the money — consider who funded the study/data collection and evaluate whether there is a self-selection bias influencing the outcome or solution.

Check the sample — make sure that the data sampled is both large enough and representative to accurately reflect the population.

Look at the numbers — when dealing with large statistics, replicate the formulas used to form conclusions and compare the results.

While these are just a few basic suggestions, there are many resources available that we recommend for people help identify fake data.

http://www.statisticshowto.com/how-to-detect-fake-statistics/

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7602/what-should-raise-red-flags-to-detect-fabricated-data

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2012/11/08/10-questions-to-distinguish-real-from-fake-science/

Let us know what other tips you find helpful.

[theopenreporter]

Why Data Journalism is Not a New Thing

Rick Delgado recently wrote an article detailing how Data Journalism has been around since 1848. We took the liberty of summarizing the key points from the article.

Overview:

Data journalism is not a new phenomenon

The first account of a data journalistic project goes back to 1848 where a New York newspaper investigated a congressional travel reimbursement scam by using postal service travel data

Another account goes back to 1854 where a physician used data to map out the spread of cholera in London by interviewing individuals and mapping where outbreaks were occurring, leading to the discovery that it was spread by water rather than polluted air

Data has always been a big factor in journalism but technology today has made it easier for journalists to use it and include it within their stories

The lessons of early data journalist reports should be examples for today’s reporters to learn about the value of data and its role in telling a story

Read the full story:

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/big-data-journalism-2015-05-21

[theopenreporter]

Why Journalists Should Learn Data

In a recent article posted on MediaShift, Martha Kang writes about the need for journalists to start learning basic data skills. We took the liberty of summarizing the key points from the article and posting them below.

General Summary:

90% of the world’s data was created between 2011–2013 according to a 2013 SINTEF study*

With Big Data, we are now able to gain a better quantitative understanding of our world

Exploring data makes it easier for journalists to better connect the dots while working on a story

Data allows journalists to make their stories more personal, enabling them to better connect with their audience

We can add more context to stories by using interactive graphs, charts, maps and timelines powered by realtime data sets.

Now more than ever, it is fairly easy for journalists with no prior experience to get started

How to get started with data-driven journalism:

Pick a specific topic and keep it simple and focused

Use accessible data that is open to the public and is already published on the web

Look at existing tools by NICAR and Global Investigative Journalism Network

Connect with your local Hacks/Hackers group

See how others are using data, and learn from their examples

Read the full article here:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2015/04/its-time-for-every-journalist-to-learn-basic-data-skills/

*Original article sites an IBM study we were not able to find. But discovered a similar study published by SINTEF

[theopenreporter]

Why Media Gets Data Wrong

Murtaza Haider posted an interesting article about how many news organizations simply fail when it comes to presenting data. We took the liberty of summarizing the key points from the article and posting them below.

General Summary:

Rise in data journalism has allowed editors to reinforce narratives

Many times the data is inaccurately represented

Vast majority of news organizations leave data representation to the graphics department, which lacks formal data visualization training

The end result is graphics that are either false and paint an inaccurate picture or are visually impressive, but conceptually confusing

Solutions:

Newsrooms should start using more standardized programs such as ggplot2, a graphing engine for R, which is increasingly becoming the tool of choice for data scientists

Newsrooms should train editors to make sure the data being used accurately represents the desired message

Newsrooms should stick to simple charts that people are familiar with and can easily comprehend

Read the full article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/murtaza-haider/data-visualization-media_b_7339342.html

[theopenreporter]

Bulletin is Live!

Bulletin now live

We are happy to announce that the long awaited citizen powered wire system for journalists is now live! Bulletin is a simple yet innovative mobile app that allows individuals to report newsworthy events directly to journalists.

Using the app, you can now report daily newsworthy events from environmental, social justice, food, music or just about anything else you deem newsworthy directly from your phone.

Reporters on our platform will now have access to the Bulletin Map and be able to interact with reports as you submit them in real time.

Announcing Our Data API

Our team is hard at work putting the final touches on our Data API; a mechanism for third-party integrators to build data driven and analytical apps that would benefit from the everyday news stories submitted by our users.

At Openreporter, we realize that newsworthy events are newsworthy for only a short period of time, though from a historical research aspect, that data can still be quite valuable. So as a part of our commitment to helping the community, we are happy to announce that once our Data API goes live, 30-day old data will be publically available for researchers and data driven journalists to analyze and build amazing tools.

One more thing:

We are pleased to announce that in our next release we will make the source code of our iOS mobile app open source. We realized that our unique approach allowed us to efficiently build a powerful app with the same ease as building a basic website. Opening up our code will allow newsrooms to produce native iOS apps that will connect with their existing content management platforms without any third-party libraries in a more safe and secure manner.  

Join our open source mailing list to be notified. 

[theopenreporter]

Platform Updates, News and more

The team here has been hard at work and we wanted to share a few exciting updates with you!

Update on Bulletin:

We are pleased to inform the community that our mobile app, Bulletin, has been submitted to Apple for approval. The app is designed to empower citizens to report newsworthy events directly to the community, creating a crowdsourced wire system for you to discover new stories before they trend on social media.

Enhancements all around:

We are extremely excited to announce that the platform has been overhauled with many new updates and security enhancements in preparation for the launch of Bulletin. With app development nearly complete, we’re looking forward to bringing back a new feature announcements every 2-3 weeks.

An update to Societies:

A key principle of our philosophy at Openreporter is to always innovate and improve. With that in mind, we decided to overhaul Societies into a more intuitive feature, renamed Discussions. Discussions is not so much a new feature as it is a new approach to the goals of Societies, providing users a place to post questions and announcements to the community. We feel this will allow users to better explore and participate within the site so be sure to check it out!

Update to our viewer:

We have also added a new feature to  our viewer, allowing users to link to PDF stories. Simply provide a link to a PDF when posting a publication and the viewer will take care of the rest.

What’s next:

We are actively working on building new features and we encourage you to  join us!

[theopenreporter]

Preventing violence from being swept under the rug

By: Melvin Taylor

One topic that cannot be overlooked in today’s news is the ongoing battle against sexual assault on college campuses. The most troubling, is how often this issue is dealt with in as abrasive of a manner as the incident itself.

Just a few weeks ago, a story went viral about a young woman who was carrying a bed across her campus in protest to raise awareness about her sexual assault that occurred on her college campus. This act alone prompted more students to, not only speak out, but to help her carry her bed across the school's grounds in solidarity. While this unique demonstration attracted attention, it should be remembered that this vicious attack was neither the first nor last of it’s kind.

Assaults like this continue to occur on college campuses across the country. So why isn't the pressure being put on school officials to take more decisive action to keep their students safe? Why is it that perpetrators are still allowed to play frisbee on the quad while their victims are forced to live in fear, constantly reminded of how they were violated and how their university continues to violate them daily.

Not only did Emma Sulkowicz’s protest go viral, but it started an open, honest conversation. But not everyone can be as creative as Emma, nor should they have to be to get public support.

While we may not have the answers to end this senseless violence, we do have another outlet that can help keep the conversation front and center.

The Bulletin can be used to sustain the media attention that is lost between the hearings, police reports, and social media postings. Unfortunately, people tend to take heart with the current news story but forget once it becomes old news.

Instead, we want to provide a platform for individuals to share their story directly to journalist who are able to keep the public aware even after the hype disperse. Our goal is to help journalists discover newsworthy stories faster and more efficiently than ever before while shedding light on things society may leave in the dark. We want to ensure that the dialogue keeps going so events such as this do not happen again.

Through the app, you can keep journalists in the know with regards to events and how they are handled in the aftermath, so stories are no longer lost in the various social media streams, but archived as historical events.

We did not build the Bulletin to recycle popular news but rather to assist those who have a voice and ensure that their story is delivered to those who can amplify it.

[theopenreporter]

Providing context for student journalists looking for work

By: Melvin Taylor

College is a great investment. You spend four years of your most vital development to build yourself to a point where you are ready mentally, physically, and hopefully professionally, to enter the real world and begin the rest of your life. However, the last step of that process is what can become most troublesome.

The transition from college to the real world, also known as your first job, is something that a lot of seniors in college are not prepared for. Think about your senior year if you graduated, or look into the future if you haven’t yet, and realistically list 5-7 things you have done to prepare yourself for that day after graduation thought of what you’re going to do for the rest of your life. If the thought has not yet crossed your mind then that is troublesome enough. However, if there is one thing that is more frustrating than not being able to secure that job out of school, it’s not knowing HOW to even begin to conduct good research for it.

How much contact did you have with your school’s career center? How often did you speak with them throughout your senior? Once, twice, three or more times? It’s reasonable to believe that at the least you were provided with a description of what the job market looks like for your interests. If the market looked dim, that then raises the question of how long your search had been. If it was dim after a long time of searching then maybe the ways in which you had searched need adjusting. Had you contacted human resource personnel directly or even blindly sent your resume? What about interviews? How many of those have you been on?

Looking for a job is no easy task, it’s a very draining, rough, and timely process that you have to be committed to in order to reap results. It has become even more difficult for journalists  today because many people believe they are qualified for journalism jobs which result in an oversaturated market.

In a recent article in IBtimes by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, they wrote that more recent graduates unfortunately are not finding good jobs.

Yet while it may seem bleak for those on the job hunt, and even more so for those who have an interest in journalism, here at Openreporter we have a solution for this problem. Our solution is simple, and it’s called Exchange. An aggregation engine that pulls journalism job opportunities from all parts of the web through a simple and easy to use interface.

Many job searching websites today are either very complex or provide no context about the posted position. Along with the difficulty of finding those who have the jobs you like.

Not only do we have an easy to use way to find jobs, we also have a way to provide context for them. Through our societies, journalists can freely discuss the problems you may have with finding a journalism job.

“If all the journalism jobs open and available are already posted and published somewhere on the internet, why not have a central place for someone to quickly find those jobs?”

The Exchange was built to have a global reach, it explores openings daily, and brings you opportunities related to all aspects of the news industry. Making the Exchange a one of a kind experience for people looking for a journalism job.

So for those of you currently looking, or plan to be looking for a journalism job ask yourself how simple of an experience would you like to have? Wouldn’t you like an experience where you can easily find a job within your geography, know that the job opportunity is only 30 days old, and have a place to ask questions and receive professional advice for free? Then be sure to check out and explore the platform for yourself.

[theopenreporter]

Announcing our first mobile app: The Bulletin

The need for an app:

We realized that one of the biggest issues we heard from journalists was the lack of time they had to properly produce quality investigative pieces. Between finding a lead, verifying the source, to finding an expert, many people said that the process is quite time consuming and strenuous. So we asked ourselves how we could help journalist alleviate these issues.

The Bulletin is a mobile app that leverages the power of the community to directly report newsworthy events to journalists, while engaging journalists with subject matter experts to assist in the development of a more informative news story.

How it works:

1. Individuals who witness an event report it as a lead through the mobile app. 

2. Using the Openreporter platform, journalists see the incoming leads on a heat map where they can directly message the source for additional information.

3. Citizens, through the mobile app, are able to respond to journalists’ questions in real-time.  

4. Once the journalists have all of the needed information, they can message a subject matter expert to help verify their facts.

The Bulletin not only expedites the investigative story process for journalists, but provides citizens a unique direct channel to raise awareness, in addition to giving subject matter experts an opportunity to gain exposure and credibility. The anticipated launch date for the app is early September, with the subject matter expert feature going live shortly after. 

If you would like to be notified when the app is available for download or are interested in becoming a subject matter expert please sign up here. 

New Enhancements:

Thank you everyone for your feedback thus far. In preparation for the app, the team has reworked the platform’s current design and improved its functionality, ensuring a more enjoyable user experience. We appreciate your feedback and hope you continue to actively submit suggestions on ways we can make the platform even better.

We want to again thank everyone who has been using the platform; without you we would not be where we are today. If you are visiting us for the first time, we invite you to read about all that we have to offer by visiting our updated website.

[theopenreporter]

Introducing Geo-Search!

Since we launched the Exchange a little over a week ago, we are happy to announce that it has brought in well over 200 jobs. We received a lot of feedback and in response we are happy to announce our newest feature: geo-searching.

Now you are able to search for jobs by city, state, and country. We hope you enjoy this new enhancement and that it makes your job searching experience a little easier.

As always, we are extremely grateful to everyone for using Openreporter and welcome any feedback or suggestions you may have.

[theopenreporter]

Skyword has enhanced its platform with new writer portfolios to help contributors build their brands and find more brand journalism work.

[theopenreporter]

Introducing the Journalism Job Exchange

           In our never-ending quest to keep innovating, we are happy to announce a new feature that will make job searching just a bit easier.

The Exchange:

We know finding work can be overbearing and time consuming, therefore, we are happy to introduce the Journalism Job Exchange. A first of its kind aggregation system that pulls journalism job opportunities from all parts of the web through a simple and easy to use interface.

With well over 30-40 new jobs posted to the exchange every day, we expect to aggregate well over 400 new jobs every month, making it the premiere place for any journalist looking for a job. To access the exchange simply login and navigate to the opportunities section of the site.

New Support Page:

With our site ever expanding and growing, we are happy to announce our new support page. Full of FAQ and guides to help us better serve your needs as we expand.

On the horizon:

In the next couple of weeks we will be preparing to launch the citizen section of the site, featuring many new enhancements that will connect you with subject-matter experts and new tools to help you discover and source stories. Keep checking back with the Openreporter Society for more information.

[theopenreporter]

A fellow from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University has researched an obscure, seemingly trivial facet of today’s ever-changing news industry.

[theopenreporter]

Too often readers get the sense that there is a gigantic bait and switch going on: in the language of impartiality, they are being fed politics.

[theopenreporter]

To better serve mobile audiences, the wire service aims for brevity.

[theopenreporter]

Tony Harcup, author of A Dictionary of Journalism, was recently asked by The Oxford University Press about some of the good – and not so good – things that journalists do. Our favorite: "We identify with other journalists as fellow members of society’s awkward squad"

[theopenreporter]

"My favorite application typo is from someone who is 'detail oriented.' -- Joe Grimm, Michigan State University journalism professor.