Computer-aid journalism: GIGO or the next wave?

John Mecklin of Miller-McCune research writes an intriguing post about Duke University's search to fill an endowed chair of computational journalism.

He makes many points worth considering.

Let's take one, for now.

"If you live in one of the 11 American cities EveryBlock covers, you now can enter your address, and the site gives you civic information (think building permits, police reports and so on), news reports, blog items and other Web-based information, such as consumer reviews and photos, all connected to your immediate geographic neighborhood. In the not-too-distant future, (Duke's James) Hamilton suggests, an algorithm could take information from EveryBlock and other database inputs and actually write articles personalized to your neighborhood and your interests, giving you, for example, a story about crime in your neighborhood this week and whether it has increased or decreased in relation to a month or a year ago."

Intriguing idea. Charlotte is covered by EveryBlock, and my neighborhood blog has a widget with an Everyblock feed. Could EveryBlock's data be combined with tools like Tansa or similar to "write" stories or create readable, understandable lists of local information that wouldn't be shared any other way? Like zoning cases? Or city council actions that affect a small, specific neighborhood?

The idea intrigued me so much that I considered offering it to Howard Rheingold for his master's degree students to explore. He recently tweeted a question asking for ideas for those students.

Then I did a little homework. The latest zoning minutes available today from EveryBlock for Charlotte are from May 19, 2008. The latest city council meetings are from July 21, 2008. EveryBlock lists frequency updates for both kinds of information as "sporadically," and the source as the Charlotte city clerk.

What that lag shows is the need for a real person to contact public officials to remind them of the need for sharing information in a certain way, with a certain audience. EveryBlock isn't funded to be a government watchdog and to make that call.

Charlotte's feeds for crime, building permits and food inspections are relatively up to date, and light years beyond what less-wired, lighter-funded nearby governments are doing.

But the quick reality check shows that even in a year, or two, or five, as the tools advance, technology will not replace human contact that reminds government employees to provide public information to the public.

If nobody's watching, it won't happen.

Spreading the toys around

(aka If Google News can do it, why can't we?)

Kris Kringle: I keep track of the toy market pretty closely. Does that surprise you so? ... Macy's sending people to other stores? The only important thing is to make the children happy. Who sells the toy doesn't make any difference. Don't you feel that way? -- "Miracle on 34th Street"

Ro pointed me to a feature on El Nuevo Herald's Venezuela page. If you scroll down a bit, you'll see a NewsGator widget that features updating links to relevant content from other sites (such as the NY Times and Yahoo News).

Such a feature allows news sites to get Google (and Yahoo) at its own game. Plus, a quick tour of NewsGator's site shows a number of options for creating widgets that would, say, list top Charlotte.com stories. If I'm a Charlotte blogger, or MySpace user or even a corporate site based in the area, you bet I'd consider adding some sort of customizable widget to my site.

MÁS ARTÍCULOS

Adgets (C'mon, you knew they were coming...)

The trend du jour: Interactive -- read: user-generated -- ads, or (I kid you not) Adgets.

From Business 2.0:

A Canadian firm NewspaperDirect is offering the Adget, a new kind of ad that allows online readers to interact with a business - make an appointment, book a restaurant table, even order a product - without ever leaving the newspaper site. Want to arrange a test-drive at a local dealership while browsing the sports section? The Adget can do it.

Widgets (I'm smelling a trend)

On the heels of our friends in Allentown, USA Today and The Washington Post are offering widgets to users.

USA Today's widgets can be added to a user's personal page, blog or social networking profile and display updates from the paper, while also generating ad revenue. Right now, the three they have all deal with travel -- updates on travel deals, airport and air travel news, and travel stories. But more are due soon, with news about pop culture, top headlines and celebrities.

The Post's widget lets users review media coverage and opinion writing on the presidential candidates and the major issues of the '08 campaign.

As The Editors Weblog notes, these easy-to-implement tools can be readily monetized (although USA Today's spokeswoman said no advertisers had signed up yet). Plus, they're good for building the brand.

"We're measuring how much traffic gets driven back to our site, but that's not the only metric," said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com. "Having a cool widget on Facebook is a good thing for us, because it uses a small space to show off a feature that says you can get valuable info from washingtonpost.com."

Who needs a full time web developer?

Hire a company to do it for you.

I had an interview today with Jean Dubail, the AME/Online at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. They've been working with a California-based company called Caspio. Basic idea is that you get them your data through a wizard on their servers. They will then generate html code that you import onto your pagees. Readers can then search the database from your site, pulling information from their servers. Cleveland.com has used this a great deal for campaign finance information, crime, etc. Seems like a great way to get the developer in your hands when you need them most.

Couple examples built with the help of this Caspio technology:
Guitarmania http://www.cleveland.com/guitarmania/
A United Way fundraiser - like the cows or the rocking chairs Charlotte had a while back. Start from this database, pick the guitar you want to look at and it pulls the vitals from the database and then maps the location for you.

The King James Statistical Bible http://www.cleveland.com/sports/lebron_stats/
One of Dubail's favorites, this one lets you take a look at Lebron's stats in any number of ways.

Earthquake report http://www.cleveland.com/weather/earthquake_report/
A minor earthquake a couple months ago. The website asked readers to add their information to the database. It's then mapped on a Google map.

Cleveland.com's top hits are routinely sports - with the Cavs in the NBA Finals that's off the charts right now. Browns fans can't get enough. Dubail gave me today's stats: the top 5 stories were all sports. About half of Monday's unique visitors went to sports pages and accounted for about 45% of the page views.
They're developing a database of all things Browns that will encompass the 60-some year history of the team. It's taking a lot of manpower, but they're aiming to have it running in time for preseason. The hope is this database will let you search game by game for stats AND for stories from the PD. There's also one in the works for a huge high school sports database of schedules, records, results and the like.
For a town where sports traffic means big business, these two seem like fabulous ideas.

Widgets -- buzz of the month

Widgets are the buzzword of the month.
Ideas here and here. Please note there's a Krewson involved in the Allentown project. Yes, he's probably a 16th cousin or so. I've never met him.
But please also be careful of the definition or function of widgets -- Blogger uses them to help non-HTML people personalize the top layer of their templates. The media buzz usage of the term is as a tool to get news organizations to make it easy to share database information with non-traditional media. And in that usage, I think there's lots more to explore, but it's more complicated than it appears on the surface.
I have a small case study of a Flickr widget to share for those who want to hear.
And widgets need to work, for users wherever they are logged in. Some of those at AJC don't. Yet.