Saving Journalism With Flash and Java 206
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?"
Wrong question. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:It all make sense! (Score:2, Interesting)
So if I stick my peen in MORE girls it LESSENS my chances of finding one with AIDS?
No. Obviously not. The idea is based on a fictional, purely heterosexual world. The point was if there were MORE promiscuous women, your chances of getting AIDS from any one of them is much lower than if there were fewer promiscous women. But the converse is not true. Not matter how many promiscuous women there are, no matter what percentage of promiscuous women have AIDS, your chances of finding one with AIDS will always increase with the number you 'stick your peen into,' young padawhan.
That's the whole point of Java-based visual model -- it helps to eliminate erroneous perceptions such as yours.
Re:i for one... (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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (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 of technology suck. Making a widget to view scores is fine, but it's pointless without a top notch web presence, and very few sites have that.
Re:Call me old fashioned... (Score:2, Interesting)
When the choice came to "Select a Role," I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled when I was asked on how to proceed. "I wonder what the consequences of my actions will be..."
But then the game ended and I was suddenly looking at a poll result. I realized that I had just influenced the poll myself, by ordering what I thought were 'my' virtual Hamas troops to engage the IDF with maximum violence. And instead of seeing the results of my actions, now one more percentile of your poll shows that someone thinks the Hamas should indiscriminately attack Israel.
Just thought you'd appreciate the feedback.
Web semantics 101 (Score:2, Interesting)
For most web applications, a developer should think of three layers:
1. Semantic information (Mostly HTML/XHTML, although other semantic content such as movies or games work as well)
2. Basic layout (CSS, non-semantic images)
3. Interactive/Dynamic features(JavaScript, Flash, Applets, and anything else strictly used to dynamically enhance the user experience)
This ensures graceful degradation and flexibility. In general, the larger the percentage of web applications using this model, the better.
If you're able to use Flash/Java without breaking the model, fine by me. Just don't expect me to actually utilize those features.
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (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, but we don't make money directly by circulation. We make money off advertising.
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.
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
At least NYT is embracing open source (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
There's only one thing that can "save" journalism (Score:3, Interesting)
and that's reporting subjects with some real research and analysis, without fear or favour, not beholden to corporate or government interests and without being biased by the prevailing memes.
In my opinion, people are moving away from "traditional" journalism not so much because of the format or media but because they are sick of recycled, verbatimly quoted press-releases and propaganda pieces being constantly repeated with almost no variation by every media outlet.
The attractiveness of "alternative" media seems to be the increased variety of opinion available.
Re:Question from journalist for /. readers (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the comments here sum it up nicely: The craft of and the demand for good journalism hasn't changed. The means of distributing it is changing rapidly.
I read great stories all the time. In the LA Times, on the Reuters and AP wires, in the New York Times.
I read all of their stories exclusively online. I have not dirtied my hands nor killed any trees by picking up a newspaper in many years.
Paying for news in today's free-for-all Internet is another subject. All things being equal, it's hard to justify paying for something you can get free somewhere else.
In a way, I hope this changes. It leaves news outlets to rely entirely on advertising for revenue on the Internet with implications that should be obvious.
I think micropayments would make a great counter to reliance on advertising revenue but we're a long way from that being feasible.
Good luck finding your niche!
Re:Question from journalist for /. readers (Score:3, Interesting)
If you get a serious answer to that question, please do your readers a favor and ignore it.
I had a discussion about this a few years ago with someone who worked at the local paper. I had remarked that the World section had gone from being a full section of the paper to taking up an area about the size of a postcard buried part way through the front section on a page that was otherwise completely filled with advertisements. It was very easy to miss that it even existed. This might have been a gradual transition. I had already switched to reading a better newspaper (at the time a rather bulky paper made close enough that local news was still relevant but of sufficiently high quality that it had national readership). This employee happened to be in a position to know why this change was made.
Seeing declining readership and with competitive pressure from a better (but not exactly good) paper from the neighboring city which had been expanding news coverage to be more of a regional paper and the above mentioned paper with national readership and good reporting, the local paper decided to conduct a survey to find out what readers wanted. Once the survey was finished and the results tabulated and analyzed, the decision makers had a report summarizing what the readers wanted. Or rather, what readers thought they wanted. The paper was changed to reflect the results of the survey. This was a terrible mistake.
I suspect in most businesses, and at least in the market for this local newspaper, customers do not know what they want. They think they know what they want and will be happy to tell you if you ask, but if you offer them what they ask for they won't buy it.
For what it's worth, I still read a competing newspaper every morning and find it superior to the alternatives for general news. The alternatives certainly do have a place. Web sites and feed aggregators do a better job of covering niche topics, radio is a great medium for delivering interviews, and television... well I'm sure it's good for something but I only get local over the air stations which used to have some good news programs, but all I've seen lately provides less news in an hour than you'd get just reading the headlines of the first page of three sections of a newspaper (and often news headlines that were in the newspaper days ago). If I had to choose between a newspaper and any or all of these other news sources, I'd still pick the newspaper. The employee in the story above no longer works for a newspaper. As readership continued to fall, jobs were cut, retirees were not replaced, and he found himself doing a lot more work without additional compensation. He left the paper for a better job with another company. The local paper is still around, but it has fallen foul of financial reporting rules, has been renegotiating terms on its debt, no longer pays a dividend, and it's still not a very good paper. They do get a lot of local traffic to their web site, however.
Re:Can technology aid journalism? (Score:3, Interesting)
I prefer text for that reason, but ask people who run media sites and they'll tell you that video is what is in demand right now.