Journalitics and News Applications
Wendell Cochran’s written a blog post at his Investigative Reporting Workshop site laying out his observations about news applications, which by his lights should really be called “journalitics.” The post is worth a read, and lays out some strong observations and useful historical background on CAR’s roots.
I have beef with the word ‘journalitics,’ at least if Wendell means that’s what we ought to call news apps:
1. “News applications” does a better job at getting to what’s really new here: That the result of all of this analysis is a web application displaying the analyzed data itself. The idea of analysis isn’t new, even if the tools we use are. Incidentally, when Brian Boyer and I first dreamed up the name “news applications,” we were playing on both the idea of “applied news” (think “applied math”) and on the phrase “web applications.”
2. If what we want is more news app teams, I think we ought to be careful about coming up with neologisms that hand reluctant editors an easy excuse to avoid innovating. Whiz-bang words invariably make things seem optional and faddish. This is part of my “get boring” strategy — that in order to help it succeed, news apps should seem like an obvious and routine part of everyday journalism, like the sports desk or the photo desk.
3. Journalists tend, I think rightly, to refer to our various subdisciplines by their outputs rather than by their inputs. We don’t call photojournalists “camera journalists” nor do we call radio journalists “microphone assisted reporters.” CAR’s a big exception here, but I’m hard pressed to find a CAR reporter who likes that name.
However, I think Wendell’s exactly right on one of his basic assumptions, and on the far more important point: That CAR and News Apps are cut from the same cloth.
One of the things that the Raleigh conference showed is that the community of practice that news app developers have been looking for is indeed NICAR. NICAR-L and the annual conference have become invaluable gathering places for news app developers. We’ve got a ton to learn and a ton to teach, and we’re glad there’s a rich tradition and community already here and kicking ass.
Speaking for my fellow news app nerds: we’ve suspected for a while that you CAR folks are our kind of nerds, and Raleigh only proves it. A week ago I used to say that CAR and News Apps would become increasingly indistinguishable. After Raleigh, I’ve changed my perspective. I see them as becoming inseparable.
