Northwestern University professor Rich Gordon opens Saturday's session of a computational journalism summit at Georgia Tech with a plea for journalists to understand that the job of the technologist involves creativity and the job of the journalist increasingly involves challenging technology. Gordon is mdoerating a panel, "Advances in News Gathering," at a Symposium on Computation and Journalism in Atlanta. Gordon, who teaches at the Medill School of Journalism, says the event is the first he can think to try and extend the communication between journalists and technologists. With him on the panel are Nic Fulton, chief scientist at Reuters media, Paul Ferguson, supervising editor, international news, at CNN; and Andrew Haeg, senior producer at American Public media's Center for Innovation in Journalism.
Ferguson described the advances CNN has made in using mobile satellite technology to set up within eight minutes the capability to broadcast live television from anywhere in the world -- a package which costs many thousands of dollars, but now weighs only 65 pounds. Fulton described Reuters experiments with technology partner Nokia to use a mobile camera phone for instant, low-resolution, on-the-street video interviews. In addition, he said Reuters is now using computers to electronically "read" news releases and write headlines and lead paragraphs, which are then briefly checked by an editor for accuracy before being transmitted globally. "Now, we're beginning to have machines reading news and turning it into information that triggers trades," says Fulton. From Fulton's point of view, there is no lack of information in the Internet age, but there is a lack of analysis. He said he hopes journalist and technologists will find ways to enable the public to read things such as congressional reports and efficiently extract and submit the news they contain.
Haeg listed three questions which challenge technologists working on journalism solutions: (1) What tools can we use to better spot patterns and emergent issue? (2) What's the most effiicnet way to disseminate all of the information and insights we're receiving? (3) How can we measure trust and confidence?
CLICK ON THE CARAT TO THE LEFT OF THE BAR BELOW TO LAUNCH STREAMING AUDIO OF THIS SESSION:
OR DOWNLOAD AN MP3 PODCAST FOR LATER LISTENING
Comments