Interactive News Editing and

ProductionThursday, March 12

• Guest speaker

• Tableau workshops/homework

• Media trends for 2015+

• Wrap

Today’s agenda

Our guest speaker:

Nausheen Husain from Trib Apps

• Studied at Berkeley and NYU

• Wrote for the Sun-Times, HuffPo and Patch

• Developer for the Trib Apps team

• So now she’s focused on HTML/CSS, R, D3,

jQuery, JavaScript etc

About her …

Tableau

• Tableau is primarily business intelligence

software

• Founded by a Stanford research prof and a

student

• The two basically invented a language called

VizQL (Visual Query Language) that pulls data

and then renders it

• There’s the free version, Tableau Public, and the

full version, Tableau, but they are similar in

execution. More later …

Tableau background

Wall Street Journal: Tech empires

Guardian Datablog: Pay gap

Mashable: Twitter vs. polling

Tableau examples

Pros:

• It’s easy to start moving

• Takes a lot of data types

• It helps you quickly see patterns in data and

build interactive visualizations based on that

info

• It has an expert mode of sorts as it offers

integration with R and Python

Tableau’s good and bad

Cons:

• It’s more business than media focused

• It’s not an open system for development

• Doesn’t do deep dives well

• Not responsive, tho some build multiple

dashboards and only show one using

@media

Tableau’s good and bad

A dimension is an independent

variable that tends to qualitative.

You analyze other datasets against

it, like dates and text fields.

A measure is quantitative data that

serves as a function of dimensions,

like sales prices, # of records and

geometry.

Tableau: Dimension vs. Measure

Tableau divides its visualized datasets into two

categories:

• Sheets are a single unpublished visualization.

• Dashboards are one or more published

sheets.

Tableau: Sheet vs. Dashboard

We’ll together follow the steps in the file Illinois-

Lottery-instructions.docx to create a

visualization of what areas sell the most lottery

tickets in the state.

Workshop I: Lottery sales

We’ll together follow the instructions in the file

home-sales-instructions.docx to create a home

sales viz of evanston-home-sales.csv.

Workshop II: Evanston home sales

Follow the instructions in the file pothole-

visualization-instructions.docx.

You should download the data from Chicago’s

Open Data Portal, but there’s a backup file in

the class file.

Email me, one emails, both a link to the viz and

the answers to the three questions.

Homework I: Chicago pothole repair

Landing Page:

http://www.tableau.com/tft/activation

Desktop Key: TDDM-C032-B880-A982-CCB6

Instructions: Click on the link above and select

Get Started. On the form, enter your university

email address for “Business email”; and under

"Organization", please input the name of your

school.

Contact: mcorbett@tableau.com

Full version of Tableau

10 digital media trends

Yeah, duh

That state of wearing the “Internet of Things” in

2015 exists but it is somewhat limited.

But possibilities are limitless …

1. Wearables

• Expect second-screen experiences, POP

transactions, proximity (more soon) and

biometrics from most developers.

• Tribune Apple Watch app will be focused on

breaking news, weather and glance-type

updates.

• What should the media be doing?

1. Wearables

• The goal is a “frictionless” world where your

environment adapts to you. You walk into

Starbucks, they know your order, make it and

you pay, all without conversation.

• Sounds anti-social

• Who does it well right now?

• Disney, a company not unfamiliar with media.

1. Wearables

Good reading:

• Wired on Disney: http://wrd.cm/1L3eFVa

• Nieman on the smart watch:

http://bit.ly/1MviYUz

1. Wearables

comScore: “The average U.S. smartphone user

now spends 88 percent of his or her time when

using a mobile phone within an app and just 12

percent using the web browser.” And that gap

that is widening

• Gawker and BuzzFeed are going native

• RWD is still important; it’s not everything

Nieman on native: http://bit.ly/1L3fnSj

2. Native apps

There is a growing expectation that the Internet

should not be forever.

• Snapchat

• Confide (screenshot proof)

• Big on Twitter due to recent scandals:

TweetDelete, Tweet Deleter, and TwitWipe

• Downsides?

Fusion on ephemeral: http://fus.in/1CaKSFY

3. Ephemeral content

Geo-targeting has not worked because it’s

imprecise (Foursquare). With new BLE and

NFC devices and receptors, that ends.

• BLE (bluetooth low energy) beacon. It

passively detects a device within feet of the

beacon

• NFC (near field communication) tag. Usually

in the form on a sticker. Must be within inches

of the device. Promo usually encourages a

tap

4. Proximity

Mobile Payments Today

Mobile Payments Today

NFC tags are used on posters promoting tour

dates, ski lift passes, business cards etc

How do they work? They literally draw power

from the device that reads them, thanks to

magnetic induction.

Mobile Payments Today: http://bit.ly/1F4xKBa

4. Proximity

• Huge untapped area for the media.

• How might it work?

• Trigger a review when you approach the

restaurant, transit alerts inside of Union Station,

a live blog as you check out a Lollapalooza

poster bearing an NFC tag, iPhone unboxing

video near that product, a history story near a

landmark

• It’s the ultimate hyper local

4. Proximity

Seeing a lot of interest and experiments in

algorithmic programing and content creation.

Should metrics determine placement? Should

scripts write first drafts of formulaic breaking

news?

LAT earthquake bot: http://slate.me/18fM8dh

It’s small, but that it exists is worth watching.

5. Media algorithms

A few media companies are rediscovering

SMS.

USAToday dumped Twitter share tool for SMS

on the sports For The Win vertical.

“The SMS button has been used three to four

more times more often than the Twitter button

ever was, according to FTW’s editorial director

Jamie Mottram.”

Digiday: http://bit.ly/1F4ARsH

6. Rise of SMS?

Reuters, Re/code, Bloomberg, Sun-Times

ditched them. Easy to see why they are

derided.

But Salon and Gawker’s brands (Kinja) decided

to make them worthwhile.

I think resources will be reinvested in making

them work.

Gigaom: http://bit.ly/1NPWm4D

7. Commenting

8. Podcasts

• Not only responsive design but adaptive

• More endless scroll/endless swipe

• Longer but leaner websites

• #scrollytelling (barf)

• Bigger pictures

• Video backgrounds

Real View trends: http://bit.ly/1GwV3C6

9. Design

Meerkat is an iOS app offering live video

streams through Twitter

You can either start a video stream now or

schedule a stream. When it starts, a tweet

notifies your followers that you’re broadcasting.

It’s going to be huge this week, month and

year.

The Verge: http://bit.ly/1NPYzgl

10. Meerkat

#classwrap

What the hell was this class all about anyway?

• Getting you the baseline skills and

understanding to be a digital journalist, from

editor to reporter to producer.

• More specifically, you’d be well on your way

to running/helping to run a media website.

• This class was, first and foremost, a trailhead

to different paths of deeper knowledge.

Class wrap

What can your resume now say?

Experience with HTML5/CSS/RWD, SEO,

social media, metrics (Adobe Analytics,

Chartbeat, Simply Measured), Google Fusion

Tables, Tableau, Google Charts, Datawrapper,

TimelineJS, Documentcloud etc

Class wrap

What’s next?

If you’re in the digital media, be committed to

being a lifelong learner.

• Tools change

• Readers demand content in different ways

Those who succeed are the ones never

satisfied with their level of learning.

Don’t be the reporter who doesn’t think his or

her job should be tweeting, looking at data or

SEO.

In 2015, it is.

• Deadline: Monday, 11:59 p.m.

• Tableau Chicago pothole visualization and

questions

Homework recap

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