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Saving Journalism With Flash and Java
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 13, 2009 03:40 PM
from the looking-forward-and-looking-back dept.
from the looking-forward-and-looking-back dept.
An anonymous reader writes "New York magazine has a story about some of the flashy new ideas that are coming out of the labs of the New York Times. The piece prompted Peter Wayner to dig up some of the old Java applets he wrote to explore whether more promiscuity really stops AIDS and whether baseball can do anything to speed up the games. He notes that these took a great deal of work to produce and it's not possible to do them on a daily basis. Furthermore, they're cranky and fragile, perhaps thanks to Java. Are cool, interactive features the future of journalism on the web? Or will simple ASCII text continue to be the most efficient way for us to mingle our thoughts, especially when ASCII text won't generate a classloading error?"
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Submission: Can Flash and Java save Journalism? by Anonymous Coward
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Flash is evil... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How dare people try to display information other then forms that can be represented with keys on the typewritter keyboard.
Flash Won... Deal with it. Faster and Fancier then JavaApplets. They try to play nice across platforms. Hey all those flash adds makes them that much easier to detect and disable.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That saddens me. Flash video is very slow, gives me very high CPU usage, and doesn't support overlay.
As usual, the product with the most bling (flashiest, if you will) beats the one with the best functionality.
i for one... (Score:4, Funny)
I welcome our new ASCII overlords, wait, it's New York Magazaine, I welcome our new AXCII overlords.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it time we dumped ASCII and moved over to Unicode? Preferably UTF-8, which is all nicely backwards compatible and stuff?
ASCII sucks!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No one as used ASCII in years, really. And UTF-8 is only backwards compatible if all your needs were covered by ASCII.
It is the way forward, though.
Re:i for one... (Score:5, Funny)
No one as used ASCII in years,
At least ASCII has the letter "h".
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Re:i for one... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sorry, but I can't seem to read your post.
Did you forget to use UTF-8?
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Re:i for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't it time we dumped ASCII and moved over to Unicode?
Nay, it's time we dump all other languages and move over to English!
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saving is not the right adjective (Score:5, Informative)
So far the media's use of flash and java has been a major reason for the development and wide-spread use of browser plug-ins to disable those technologies. I reject your reality and substitute my own.
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They can be abused just as much as Flash or Java can be.
Re:saving is not the right adjective (Score:5, Funny)
It's real progress when many web developers don't know about the BLINK tag anymore. Oh god... it still haunts my dreams.
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Yo dawg, we heard you like blocking plugins so we made a plugin-blocker plugin so you can block plugins while you plugin.
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I disagree. The web's capabilities with dynamic content was great during the US elections, during war reporting of changing borders, or in anything with charts that allow collective/isolated comparisons.
I think the use of the tools can be annoying: when it's flashy and overly attention-grabbing, stuff unrelated to story content or when it's the only way to get the information presented - text should always be available.
The use of any dynamic content, video or not, is - i think - sticking t
Wrong question. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wrong question. (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, it fails to distinguish between being a publisher and being a journalist. Publishers can use Java applets to teach or illustrate educational points, and again - this has nothing to do with journalism as a profession.
We conflate these ideas because so many people who call themselves "journalists" are nothing of the sort. They are tv reporters who make phone calls. Most local news is just taken off the AP wire, or maybe culled from the web. It's broadcasting, it's bullshit, and more and more, it's infotainment.
Newspaper reporters, real reporting simply needs to migrate from printed paper to online. Most of the beat reporters, the guys and gals who dig up stories, chase leads, do the Woodward and Bernstein shtick - they still have a place - a valuable place - in society. For them, the web is even better, as they can mix media. Use an applet to make a map during an invasion, drill down into local reports, even get into designing news user interfaces, something that cnn.com likes to do.
The real problem in the United States is that investigative reporting, digging around, doing follow-up, attributing sources, getting people to go on record - is hard work and nobody wants to do it. The fluffers of news need to find other work. The Bush administration cowed most hardline journalists. 60 Minutes and Frontline are just as home on the web as they are on tv, even more so. But now they compete in an arena where they don't have a monopoly, so they must be worth something independent of CBS or PBS - and they still need REAL journalists.
What we are seeing now is that there are too many newspapers in the world, and so it's just consolidation to the best ones. When I moved to Denver I never read anything local, it was all shit. I read the NYT online. Denver is a shit town for journalism.
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Re:Wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Investigative journalism will certainly still be a "needed skill" and "useful to society" if all the papers die. That's the whole issue. See, right now, those papers and magazines provide most of the infrastructure and career opportunities for journalists. Want to be the next Woodward? Well, you go to journalism school, then get a job at whatever paper will take you and (hopefully) work your way up to the NY Times or whatever prestigious news organization.
You need print media, and not just a few "elite" papers but a whole bunch of options, if you want journalism to remain even a semi-viable choice of profession for smart and motivated individuals. (And "semi-viable" is generous; most of the journalists I know are lucky to stay above the poverty line.)
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Right answer, Wrong question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Display Applications are for web sites.
Research applications are for research.
Content is for journalism.
Journalism receives data from research.
Journalism provides raw materials to the web.
The web presents them to us.
IT and developers create that web and hence its doodads.
Journalists (and other creators) then populate that web and doodad with content. ...
The point being: No, java / flash / doodads won't save journalism. And journalism isn't dying. It still exists but has a WEALTH of new contributors, which leaves demand for the few highly trained contributors low enough that many are leaving the field. Yet we still get our news.
I don't like doodads. When I want news I want content. Not buttons. Not animations (unless they are truly pertinent).
Journalists that create doodads are trying to salvage their career by doing something that is not PART of their career. Just like Developers who try to create content.
So ... long answer given the short answer is: No, doodads won't save journalism. But journalism is evolving, not dying.
yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, the story is the key. What we need much more of, what the real savior of newspapers will be, it hard-hitting, in-depth investigations, and scoops. This worked for Hearst, among others. And the World really needs critical, trained, intelligent people examining what our corporations, our governments and their agents are up to, now more than ever in history.
Any blogger can paraphrase an AP feed, it doesn't take brains. This is what newspapers have been concentrating on in the past few years, while ignoring actual journalism.
Also, there's plenty examples of how technology is misused in TV media. Bugs, hyperbole-laced graphics, and skewed graphs. Let's not replicate that either. Let's not see powerpoint presentation news. By all means illustrate the facts, but make sure you have the facts too.
ebooks (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, they should partner with Amazon to get their papers delivered to the Kindle automatically for a subscription fee.
Also, Amazon should release an ebook reader designed for netbooks.
Both would go a long way toward getting revenue for their publications.
Call me old fashioned... (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel like I am in the majority when I say that most of my news-reading comes during work during the few minutes I get every hour or so when waiting on something (like a compile). I don't really have the time to tinker around with a simulation exploring the possibilities. And even if I did, my patience will likely wear thin unless the simulation is either really exciting (not the case in the article) or something I'm really interested in (also not the case in the article).
Yes, it's kinda cool. But changing the face of modern journalism? I think not.
Cranky and fragile, due to Java? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Java Hating Slashdot Editors,
Java is not responsible for "generating class loader errors", any more than Perl is responsible for all the HTML errors on the Slashdot front page.
Here's the link to the W3C HTML Validator [w3.org], go get yourself a clue.
Re:Cranky and fragile, due to Java? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cranky and fragile, due to Java? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Useless. (Score:4, Interesting)
The linked articles are exactly what's wrong with newspaper sites.
I go to the newspaper for two things: become informed about current events, and laugh at the horoscopes. I have no use for silly little games and whatnot.
If newspapers want to become relevant, they need to expand their NEWS horizons and print news that matters to ME. A fire across town is NOT news; it's gossip about people I don't know. If said fire concens you, you're going to know about it before the newspaper does.
The Governor getting impeached is news, as is the reasons for his iompeachment. The Libertarians' and Greens' Presidential candidates' stances on the issues was news, and it wasn't even covered.
They have become marginalized because what they print is largely worthless.
Now, computer simulations in the other link are a different story altogether. IF it's not just done for show. Unfortunately most of them are just for show.
Whoa there! (Score:4, Informative)
If you think plain ASCII text can't cause a system failure on loading, you need to spend some time grading undergraduate essays. Or reading corporate memos. Or, for that mater, some of the more egregious /. article summaries.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you think plane ASC 2 text can't on loading cause failure off your system, need too spend sometime grading undergraduate written by essays. Ore reading corporate-memos. Ore, four that matter, sum of teh more eggreigious article sumaries on this cite.
Form over facts (Score:5, Interesting)
Bluntly? If your news page is filled with flash and java, I'll close the browser never to return. If you have no content and have to mask it with flashy graphics, I don't want to hear your story.
It's the same with news networks. Ever watched the news recently? It's flashy "breaking news" jingles and enough FX to make the average hollywood movie drop its jaw in awe (which, btw, also rely more and more on flashy explosions and FX to hide that the script is thin enough to fit in a standard envelope), but where's the beef?
JibJab [youtube.com] summed it up quite nicely.
Gimme news! Gimme information! And keep your flashy crap!
It can be done right. (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen very helpful Flash visualizations on news websites that helped understand the story better.
For example, this interactive map [latimes.com] of drug war related deaths in Mexico is very well done. It doesn't just clarify the conflict, but encourages the reader to analyze and research the topic independently in addition to linearly reading the text of an article.
Just reading an article, listening to the radio or watching a news program often gives the illusion of learning and understanding new information, whereas in reality very little is retained.
Innovative and interactive ways of presenting information solve this problem.
AIDS, promiscuity, and flash (Score:5, Funny)
The article focused on a hypothetical heterosexual world in which all the men but only a few of the women were promiscuous. In this situation, the promiscuous women quickly caught the virus and became a sort of viral clearinghouse, spreading HIV to every man with whom they had contact. The men, in turn, brought it home to their wives. If the number of promiscuous women increased, the Landsburg-Kremer model posited, each man would be less likely to find an infected woman in his nightly wanderings, and the spread of HIV would slow.
Not sure of the link to flash (only skimmed TFA), but flash has apperantly cured AIDS AND made women more willing to sleep with me. Either one really would have made up for all the annoyances, both together? Can we declare Flash a saint?
Journalism suffers (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps journalism is suffering because unsubstantiated lies are repeated so often people think they're true.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or because they are repeated so often that nobody believes anything they say any more. Or a mix of the 2.
Enough Java Bashing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only if you're looking at the title alone.
I actually work tech at a big media organization, so this is something I think about constantly, and the article is a perfect example of the media missing the goddamn point.
The way to persist is to deliver a better product. Print journalism is by far the most prolific news medium in existence, and traditional print newspapers are still the biggest providers of that content...right now.
But increasingly they're cutting jobs and reducing the quality of their physical product in order to try and retain their profitability, and, magically, it's not helping their product.
At the same time they're investing in ideas like the ones described in the article, which are 100% substance-free, cute little web 2.0 widgets that may occupy a few minutes of someone's time, but don't add any lasting value to the product, and don't pull the new users they need (people like us), but instead appeal primarily to the same technophobes who are their core market already.
What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregators and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.
It's inevitable that the print product is going to get superceded by a web product. The industry is dragging its feet, however, on really dealing out a first class web product, and so they're basically guaranteeing that when the first really savvy web-based news organization comes along, that they're going to get their marketshare ripped away.
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Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a newspaper company. We haven't cut the quality of our physical product, and we're still quite profitable. Then again, we're in the midwest and people here still like physical papers.
That being said, I think the big keys is to have exclusive stories that people want to read.
I read the baseball story linked in the article. The Java app allowed users to see the numbers for themselves, but I didn't feel it was necessary. What really turned me off was how poorly the article itself was written. I think a well written article could have made the case without the need for the java app.
I still think on principle, technology if well utilized will help journalism.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea, we're still making a 20% margin, so we're profitable as well...Damn profitable. If I could invest my savings at 20% today, I'd retire.
But 10 years ago it was a 35% margin and our circulation was 25% larger. What's yer parent company, just out of curiosity?
Don't kid yourself that the industry is going to do an amazing rebound. The demographics suck, the paper and ink costs are steadily increasing, and the internet is eating up a big chunk of the ad pool.
The thing that bothers me is that the applications
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for the Omaha World-Herald. We own most of the papers in Nebraska and Iowa. We just had the second best year of the company (second only to 2007). Ink costs are much higher. Paper costs are much higher. We've installed ink saving software. I really think we could cut down on paper waste.
We also have Omaha.com and we're pushing our web presence more and more.
What makes the print product work is that our advertisers still greatly prefer a physical insert over a web ad.
Circulation is down a bit, b
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Meh, I googled you and the first editor and publisher article was how you cut 12,000 circ this year [editorandpublisher.com]. Even for a big paper like the OWH, that's a hefty chunk, and that sort of measure really kicks your upbeatness in the fork. Not half as bad as the AJC though; those jokers cut almost 6 times that recently.
Nice that you're not corporate owned though. Corporate ownership is the suck. Our profits are eaten up to support larger, less profitable papers, and to pay fat corporate salaries.
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I read the baseball story linked in the article. The Java app allowed users to see the numbers for themselves,
No it didn't. It allowed me to see the BBOD and force-quit Safari is all.
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I'm right there with you. Who wants to watch 10 minutes of video instead of an article that could be consumed in 90 seconds? (30 seconds for CNN)
I have no problem with video being made available as an extra...If you've got a journalist somewhere, have 'em shoot a little tape while they're there, then post it online with their story, and use that to drive traffic to your website.
But taking away the text article and replacing it with flash or video? That sucks.
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:5, Interesting)
Except consumers want video. Our web site was going down the tube, and another local site was getting more hits than us. Video was the #1 reason. Now we produce our own video.
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Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumers also want text. I can read 5 articles in the time it takes to watch one. But if you don't provide text I won't come at all.
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Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:4, Informative)
But for the love of god, I do not want annoying prompts to update java or flash. ever. period.
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It can, but it doesn't always do that. Sometimes it makes it worse by adding more fluff, like the flashy touchscreens and "holograms" on CNN.
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I'd add John Stewart to that list.
The Green Lantern? Seriously?
Seriously.
Wow.
That's from someone who subscribes to multiple newspapers, and whose idea of a fun afternoon is re-reading articles in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine.
But apparently not reading the titles of TV shows nor their credits.
Assuming there's nothing on CSPAN, of course.
Or Boomerang.
Re:Short answer: (Score:5, Funny)
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Long answer: because it's more portable that way. I don't have a fancy-shmancy iPhone where I would have ubiquitous Internet access (but it doesn't matter anyway because it can't run Java or Flash!) so taking RSS feeds on my gadget with me on the run works best. No need for pictures (most of the time), gimme the vanilla information.
Re:Short answer: (Score:4, Insightful)
what difference does it make whether you have a constant internet connection or not? if you're going to download RSS feeds from the internet onto your gadget, you could do the same with a Java applet or Flash. it's not like streaming video where you need an internet connection to view it.
they're just another form of digital multimedia. and just like photos, not every article needs them, but when it's appropriate they can add a lot to the article. i mean, why hold back when the technology is available, costs nothing, and is easy to use? if there's a story on a new space mission, why not let readers see the accompanying photos or video footage?
this isn't the 90's. we're living in an age now when almost everyone has a cellphone or some other sort of portable device with storage capacity measured in gigabytes and capable of displaying rich multimedia like images/video and play CD-quality audio. so if you're writing a game review, why not include a video clip of the gameplay? if necessary, content publishers can use a format (like MIME) that degrades gracefully. if your device can't play video, it'll just show the images and rich text--or just plain text.
images will probably still be the most common type of media accompanying news stories, but there's no reason for us to arbitrarily limit ourselves to text and images. it's not going to "save" journalism (because there's nothing to be saved), but it would be cool to read a story about a new space vehicle and be able to view a rotatable 3D model of the vehicle.
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Unless the kind of man who sticks his peen into multiple women, tends to find different partners than those who don't...
What's most noteworthy is that there are two settings for male behavior in the simulator. Each of them is totally unrealistic, and they give completely different results. ... So, what am I supposed to learn here?
Not to mention that there's nothing too new about the results, and somehow people in the 60s understood them without a java applet. Basically what happens is that promiscuous women
Re:always blame java... (Score:4, Interesting)
I blame java because "compile once, run anywhere" was sold as an attribute of the language, not the developers.
In my experience, whenever I try to use a different Java applet, it's better than even odds I'll have to spend an hour installing the specific jvm for which it was built. Of the two applets pointed to by the article, only the baseball simulation worked with my Mozilla 3.0 plus Sun built jdk 1.6 RPM.
Perhaps if I were running Windows, life with java would be easier, but that's like noting that khat is easier to obtain in Somalia than the U.S.
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