What Is News in theInteractive Era?

Algorithm-Generated NewsDaniel X. O’Neil

Co-Founder and People Person EveryBlock

Outline

• Where I’m coming from• Definition of news• EveryBlock• Algorithm-generated news• Role of traditional reporters is huge (war is

over if you want to)• User contributions, more broadly defined

My background

• Co-founder of EveryBlock• Responsible for content acquisition• Data from governments (crime, inspections, 311,

permits, etc.)• Partnerships (reviews, coupons, etc.)• Poet (English and Anthropology in college, no

journalism degree)• Working exclusively on the Web since 1998• I am a journalist

What is news?

• Same as it ever was• The answer to the question, “what

happened”?• Never more valuable than it is now• It is gathered and delivered through some

different processes (though they’re not as new as we’d like to think)

• Expansiveness in distribution

Lots of Automatic Stuff

• Featured neighborhood• City map• All data scraped without anyone thinking

about it• The totals are updated, pages are created,

charts are rendered• Etc.

Humans

• “An increasing amount of news and information will be produced not by traditional reporters and news organizations but rather enabled by new technologies that enable information to be generated, organized and located via technologies that require little, if any, human intervention”

Humans are everywhere

• The idea of pure machine-generation just isn’t true

• Decades of GPS– drawing roads by hand• Millions of hours of enterprise-style software

development in government departments• Cops answering 911 calls• People caring to call• Handwritten police reports

An example• Demolition Hold List• Lots of human gymnastics in the “algorithm”• Tools

– TextWrangler– formatting text from the source– OpenOffice-- any spreadsheet software like Excel will do– Hostmonster w/ Fantastico-- a cheap Web host with super-easy-to-install open

source tools included– WordPress-- powerful, flexible publishing platform that is sophisticated for smart

people and forgiving of the rest of us– Transmit-- need some way to transfer files onto your server– "Importing Posts from CSV file into Wordpress" thingy-- invaluable– Google Docs-- for sharing spreadsheets and syndicating RSS updates to the sheet– Versionista-- a good way to monitor Web pages that don't have an RSS feed– Yahoo! Pipes-- the inevitable hoop-jumping hoo-ha

Traditional reporters are essential

• Think in skills rather than methods• Very stuck, and not in a good way• It used to just be going to the PR dark side• But there are a *ton* of jobs real journalists

can fill better than anyone else

Journalists are better than other people

• Military intelligence– why not?• Corporate intelligence– spiked stories• Data gathering redux– hotel meetings• This is already done in the magazine article/

books world• Julie/ Julia – Salon Blogs• David Axelrod• Loosen

Users

• “User participation and response increasingly is shaping the news agenda, how stories are covered and the way ‘audience participation’”

We are all users

• We’re not in the audience• We’re participating in our lives• It’s the most natural thing I can think of• Start thinking more about the 4th estate• Election coverage is a boon• What if we always cared?• What if everyone were always engaged in their

government processes?• Tim O’Reilly – Gov 2.0 movement• News organizations have a role here

Quality

• “Are we are getting the same quality of journalism that was produced by conventional means? Is it worse? Or is it better?”

Not relevant

• Not to be iconoclastic, but it’s time to move on

• Do good work and stop gazing at navels• Invest• Experiment• Do• And do it at the journalist level, if it’s not

possible to do it on the enterprise level