Database journalism was born in the 1950's as a synonym for computer-assisted reporting. Since then, computers have become ubiquitous, to the point that database journalism in its original meaning has come to merge with the very definition of journalism.
The developments of the internet have given database journalism a new definition, according to which it defines a process where the database becomes the center of the journalistic work (as opposed to the story in traditional journalism). Another concept is Digital Journalism in Database, that sees the DB's like a new paradigm for dynamic digital journalistic sites. This is the model which has databases as definers of structure and of organization, as well as the presentation of content of a journalistic nature, in accordance with specific functionalities and categories, which will make possible the creation, maintenance, updating, availability and circulation of dynamic digital journalistic products.
Computer-assisted reporting
Computer-assisted reporting is the use of computers A computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data, and provides output in a useful format to gather and analyze the data necessary to write news The news is the communication on the of information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience stories.
The spread of computers, software Computer software, or just software is a general term primarily used for digitally stored data such as computer programs and other kinds of information read and written by computers. Today, this includes data that has not traditionally been associated with computers, such as film, tapes and records. The term was coined in order to contrast to the and the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and is changing how reporters A reporter is a type of journalist who researches and presents information in certain types of mass media work. Reporters now routinely collect information in databases A database is an integrated collection of logically-related records or files consolidated into a common pool that provides data for one or more multiple uses. One way of classifying databases involves the type of content, for example: bibliographic, full-text, numeric, image. Other classification methods start from examining database models or, analyze public records with spreadsheets A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper, accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values. A spreadsheet cell may alternatively contain a formula that defines how the content of that cell is to be and statistical programs A statistical package is a suite of computer programs that are specialised for statistical analysis. It enables people to obtain the results of standard statistical procedures and statistical significance tests, without requiring low-level numerical programming. Most statistical packages also provide facilities for data management, study political and demographic Demographics or demographic data are the characteristics of a human population as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Note the distinction from the term "demography" Commonly-used demographics include sex, race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time change with geographic information system Technically, a GIS is a system that includes mapping software and its application to remote sensing, land surveying, aerial photography, mathematics, photogrammetry, geography, and tools that can be implemented with GIS software. Still, many refer to "Geographic Information System" as "GIS" even though it doesn't cover all mapping, conduct interviews by e-mail Electronic mail, most commonly abbreviated email and e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages. E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure, typically an e-mail server,, and research Research can be defined as the search for knowledge or any systematic investigation to establish facts. The primary purpose for applied research is discovering, interpreting, and the development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge on a wide variety of scientific matters of our world and the universe. Research can use the background for articles on the Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as The Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents contained on the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British.
Collectively this has become known as computer-assisted reporting, or CAR. It is closely tied to "precision" or "analytic" journalism Journalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and opinion via a widening spectrum of media. These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and even, more recently, the mobile phone. Journalists—be they writers, editors or photographers; broadcast presenters or producers—serve as the chief purveyors of, which refer specifically to the use of techniques of the social sciences The social sciences are the fields of academic scholarship which explore aspects of human society. Social sciences may draw upon empirical methods and attempt to emulate the standards of conventional scientific practice. By contrast, other social scientists employ critical analysis or hermeneutic methods to study objects of enquiry they regard as and other disciplines by journalists.
CAR's greatest growth has been in recent years, coinciding with the adoption of computers for everyday use. Its roots, however, go back decades. One researcher argues the "age of computer-assisted reporting" began in 1952, when CBS CBS Inc. is a major American television network. CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the Eye Network or more simply The Eye, in reference to the shape of the company's logo. It has also been called the Tiffany television used a UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC. Design work was begun by their company, Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and was completed after the company had been acquired by Remington Rand. (In the years before computer to analyze returns from the U.S. presidential election An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local[1] . One of the earliest examples came in 1967, after riots A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized by disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against people or property. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are typically chaotic and exhibit herd behavior in Detroit, when Philip Meyer of the Detroit Free Press The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "Freep" . It primarily serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties used a mainframe computer Mainframes are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing to show that people who had attended college were equally likely to have rioted as were high school dropouts[2].
Since the 1950's, computer-assisted developed to the point that databases became central to the journalist's work by the 1980's. In his book, Precision Journalism, the first edition of which was written in 1969, Philip Meyer argues that a journalist must make use of databases and surveys, both computer-assisted. In the 2002 edition, he goes even further and states that "a journalist has to be a database manager" [3].
The techniques expanded from polling and surveying to a new opportunity for journalists: using the computer to analyze huge volumes of government records. The first example of this type may have been Clarence Jones of The Miami Herald The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered in Downtown Miami's Media and Entertainment District, Florida, United States. It primarily serves Miami-Dade, but it is also the main newspaper in Monroe County, and circulates throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, who in 1969 worked with a computer to find patterns in the criminal justice system. Other notable early practitioners included David Burnham of The New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as third largest overall in the nation behind only The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has, who in 1972 used a computer to expose discrepancies in crime rates reported by the police; Elliot Jaspin of The Providence Journal, who in 1986 matched databases to expose school bus drivers with bad driving histories and criminal records; and Bill Dedman Bill Dedman, an American journalist, is an investigative reporter for msnbc.com and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only major daily newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and its suburbs. The AJC, as it is called, is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. The staff was combined in 1982. Separate, who received the Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by Hungarian-American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City. According to the administrators of the Pulitzer Prize the correct pronunciation of the name should sound for his 1988 investigation, The Color of Money, which dealt with mortgage lending discrimination Mortgage discrimination or mortgage lending discrimination is the practice of banks, governments or other lending institutions denying loans to one or more groups of people primarily on the basis of race, ethnic origin, sex or religion. One of the most notable instances of wide-spread mortgage discrimination occurred in United States inner city and redlining Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of, services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a Northwestern University sociologist and in middle-income black neighborhoods[1].
In the last 15 years, journalism organizations such as the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR, a program of Investigative Reporters and Editors) and the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting (DICAR), have been created solely to promote the use of CAR in newsgathering. Many other organizations, such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia Nova Scotia is a Canadian province located on Canada's southeastern coast. It is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. Its capital, Halifax, is the major economic centre of the region. Nova Scotia is the second-smallest province in Canada with an area of 55,284 square kilometres (21,300 sq mi). Its population of 940,397 as of 2009 makes, offer CAR training or workshops. Journalists have also created mailing lists A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list" to share ideas about CAR, including NICAR-L, CARR-L and JAGIS-L.
In 2001, computers had reached a critical mass in American newsrooms in terms of general computer use, online research, non-specialist content searching, and daily frequency of online use [4]
This shows that computers and computer-assisted reporting have become ubiquitous in most Western news organizations. Using computers and databases is even, according to some, part of the definition of a journalist. Therefore, database journalism as a form of computer-assisted reporting has, by the beginning of the 21st century, come to merge with journalism Journalism is the craft of conveying news, descriptive material and opinion via a widening spectrum of media. These include newspapers, magazines, radio and television, the internet and even, more recently, the mobile phone. Journalists—be they writers, editors or photographers; broadcast presenters or producers—serve as the chief purveyors of.
Databases as journalistic hubs
The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Colonel Arthur B. Sleigh in June 1855 as the Daily Telegraph and Courier. Owned by David and Frederick Barclay, The Telegraph has the ninth largest daily UK newspaper circulation and is the country''s presentation of a database for the UK general election, November 2008.The development of the internet brought about a redefinition of database journalism. It is now considered as "supplying databases with raw material - articles, photos and other content - by using medium-agnostic publishing systems and then making it available for different devices."[5]
The first projects in this new database journalism were probably mySociety in the UK, launched in 2004 and Adrian Holovaty Adrian Holovaty is an American Web developer, journalist and entrepreneur living in Chicago, Illinois. He is co-creator of the Django Web framework and a noted advocate of "journalism via computer programming."'s ChicagoCrime.org in the US, released in 2005[6]. Adrian Holovaty Adrian Holovaty is an American Web developer, journalist and entrepreneur living in Chicago, Illinois. He is co-creator of the Django Web framework and a noted advocate of "journalism via computer programming." then wrote what is now considered the manifesto of database journalism in September, 2006[7]. In this article, Holovaty writes that most material collected by journalists is "structured information: the type of information that can be sliced-and-diced, in an automated fashion, by computers"[8]. For him, database journalism is opposed to traditional journalism. When the latter puts the story as the finality, database journalism stores facts in databases and publishes them according to ongoing editorial needs.
2007 saw a rapid development in database journalism [9]. Interactive maps have become a central feature of database journalism, often supported by mashups In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data. An example of a. A December, 2007, investigation by The Washington Post The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest, founded in 1877. Located in the nation's capital, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation (Fixing DC's schools) aggregates dozens of data items about over 135 schools, possessed in several ways, whether on a map, individually or through articles.
The importance of database journalism can be assessed by the Knight News Challenge's awarding $1,100,000 to Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock project[10], which aims at gathering and presenting as much data as possible in 11 American cities. The Pulitzer prize received by the St. Petersburg Times The St. Petersburg Times is one of two major newspapers serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Times has won eight Pulitzers since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single year for the first time in the paper's history. It is' Politifact in April, 2009, has been considered as a Color of Money moment by Aron Pilhofer[11], head of the New-York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as third largest overall in the nation behind only The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has technology team, hinting that database journalism has been accepted by the trade and will develop, much like CAR did in the early 1990's.
Seeing journalistic content as data has pushed several news organizations to release APIs An application programming interface is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, much in the same way that a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. APIs are implemented by applications, libraries and operating systems to determine the vocabulary and calling conventions, including the BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation , is the largest broadcasting network in the world. The BBC is a public service broadcaster that operates under a Royal Charter. Within the UK, it is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, which is charged to all United Kingdom households, companies and organisations using equipment capable of, the Guardian The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. Founded in 1821, it is unique among major British newspapers in being owned by a foundation (the Scott Trust, via the Guardian Media Group). It is known for its left of centre political stance, the New-York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as third largest overall in the nation behind only The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has and the American National Public Radio National Public Radio is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, and[12]. By doing so, they let others aggregate the data they have collected and organized. In other words, they acknowledge that the core of their activity is not story-writing, but data gathering and data distribution.
Beginning with the early years of the 21st century, some researchers expanded the conceptual dimension for databases in journalism, and in digital journalism or cyberjournalism[13]. A conceptual approach begins to consider databases as a specificity of digital journalism, expanding their meaning and identifying them with a specific code, as opposed to the approach which perceived them as sources for the production of journalistic stories, that is, as tools, according to some of the systematized studies in the 90s.
References
- ^ a b Melisma Cox , The development of computer-assisted reporting, paper presented to the Newspaper Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Southeast Colloquium, March 17-18, 2000, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
- ^ Bowen, Ezra (1986-07-07). "New Paths to Buried Treasure; Computers are revolutionizing investigative journalism". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961680-1,00.html.
- ^ Philip Meyer, Precision Journalism, p.1, Rowman & Littlefield , 2002.
- ^ Bruce Garrison, 2001. Diffusion of online information technologies in newspaper newsrooms, Journalism, volume 2, pp. 221-239.
- ^ Wiebke Loosen, The Second-Level Digital Divide of the Web and Its Impact on Journalism, First Monday, volume 7, number 8 (August 2002).
- ^ Adrian Holovaty Adrian Holovaty is an American Web developer, journalist and entrepreneur living in Chicago, Illinois. He is co-creator of the Django Web framework and a noted advocate of "journalism via computer programming.", Announcing chicagocrime.org
- ^ Adina Levin, Database journalism - a different definition of “news” and “reader”
- ^ Adrian Holovaty, A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
- ^ Rich Gordon, Data as journalism, journalism as data
- ^ Everyblock's page on newschallenge.org [1]
- ^ Aron Pilhofer, A PolitiFact Moment for Journalism
- ^ Jeff Jarvis Jeff Jarvis is an American journalist. He is the former television critic for TV Guide and People magazine, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner, APIs: The new distribution
- ^ Suzana Barbosa; Beatriz Ribas (2008), Databases in Cyberjournalism: methodological paths
Categories: Journalism | Journalism genres
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North County Times
She also proposed a statewide database to track truants --- a system that would tie state funding to the adoption of such a tracking system. ...
Abiodun Dada
Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:45:00 GM
faster than searching by traditional methods, computed assisted, research and report allows reporters to use statistical and . database. manager software to dig deeper and find patterns not possible by traditional . journalism. techniques ...
Q. I am applying to a Master's degree program and I don't know which of these programs to choose, but they all interest me: 1. Library and Information Science- combined Database Management and Archival Studies Track (but the school is in California and I live in Florida, so I have to move). 2. History- Public History Track* 3. Journalism or English 4. Education, M.A. (but I don't want to teach high school or under) 5. Counselor- School Counseling Track (Counselor Education) 6. Social Work 7. Higher Education, M.A. 8. Social Science or English- Community College Education Track *I have a B.A. in History already. So, out of all these majors, which one pays the best or will land me a job faster and/or easier? And will I need a PH.D. to work in… [cont.]
Asked by rainbowgirl07 - Fri Jun 6 07:05:20 2008 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments
A. I hate to say this, but until you have a better sense of what you want to do - you really don't want to go on to grad school. I will let you know that increasingly to teach at the community college level you need more than an MA. CC in many areas are paying better than 4 year schools and so PhD's are flocking to them - so some of your choices might need to come off as I think they are unrealistic. Journalism probably will pay the best if you can get into a major paper or mag. Social work is the most versicle of the degrees you reference and the one that will lead to the most jobs. DA
Answered by Dr_Adventure - Sun Jun 8 01:13:36 2008
