Megan Taylor

A week ago, I was assigned the task of building the story package for a series on mortgage fraud. This had been in the works at The Miami Herald for quite some time, and the investigative team was finally ready.

When we found out that Congress was working on legislation relevant to the series, the package was fast-tracked. I had one week to build this thing.

It launched yesterday morning and if I do say so myself, it's wicked cool. We have profiles and documentation for 4 major offenders, a flash graphic, a couple of static graphics, a slide show and a video, in addition to all the stories.

I even got a credit line in the footer!

I learned a lot about coding fast - quick and dirty sounds good, but it pays to take just a few extra minutes to do it right. It was also a good team experience. It's so much harder to put things together when no one know what anyone else is doing, it almost justifies meetings! (Except that's why we have instant messenger and Twitter.)

And guys, I forgive you the millions of revisions and changes. Everything turned out great.

Check out how they did the story.

So what's next? I have a bunch of different projects on my plate, but I'll give you a few hints: Video, Flash, ActionScript 3, XML, Twitter, database, Django, Python. Not another word! You can't drag it out of me!

Ever since I made my relationship with journalism official - I finally committed on paper as a junior in college - I've been trolling JournalismJobs.com. That obsession only grew when I graduated 2 months ago.

I keep an eye out for opportunities for myself and people I know, but also for trends: what skills are wanted, what kinds of jobs are open, where papers are hiring.

The first two things I noticed were that the average years of experience desired had gone up, and there were more upper-echelon jobs open. Years of experience went from 2-3 to 5-and-up over the past year or so. Just out of college, that's not good news for me. I also see a lot more ____ Editor jobs - not counting the ubiquitous "Web" or "online" editor position (usually a cut-and-paste job!) - and sports writing positions. Why are there so many sports positions open when that's one of the most popular beats in the newsroom?

More interesting than the job titles are the job descriptions. Lists of skills and vague descriptions of expected duties tell us almost as much about the state of journalism as the recent spate of layoffs.

My favorite job description is the search for "computer jesus". These are the job descriptions that list 100 programming languages plus multimedia skills. Yea, right. Am I running the entire news site and producing content all by myself?

Then there's the "we don't know what we want you to do but we're supposed to hire an online person" job description. This one, from The Times-News in Idaho, actually made me want to cry:

Must have visual design skills and be knowledgeable on Internet concepts and the latest developments on the Web. Must be proficient in PHP, HTML, Javascript, XML, Macromedia Flash, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Writing skills are a plus. (emphasis added)

Writing skills are a plus? Are you serious? Hiring a journalist - you're doing it wrong.

I realize that a lot of these are written by people who really don't know enough to narrow down what they want. And I'm not trying to put those people down. But between this post on putting together a Web team and this one on journalism job salaries, I thought there was a place for a little something on the chaotic state of journalism job descriptions.

Well, my first project is live! The Health section of the Miami Herald's Web site has been redesigned.

My contribution is that slick-looking sidebar on the right. I had some help from Stephanie Rosenblatt for the graphics, and of course she put together the Doctor Sleuth. (They are using Caspio and I have been too busy for training!) The tabs on the results pages are mine though.

There's some more projects on the table for the Health section, so hopefully I'll get to be more involved over the next few weeks.

I finished working on a little PHP script today, with Rob Barry's help, that queries, parses and geocodes some data. Hopefully we'll have that into the DataSleuth system soon.

So last week I got one of my projects to the "show it to the boss" point. Supposedly it's going live tomorrow. I will link then.

My story has been postponed until "official action has been taken" whatever that means. Oh, well.

I have 2 other projects to finish this week, plus a couple of long-term data projects, and the grapevine tells me I'm getting a new assignment today. This is good, cause I'm used to high-pressure deadlines and that hasn't been the case so far.

Over the weekend I purchased Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson by UF's very own Bill McKeen, as well as The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right, by Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss.

I can't wait for these to come in. I really want to continue to learn different programming languages and frameworks. My internet access at home right now consists of finding an open wireless network on my street and sitting outside with the mosquitoes, so some books will be really helpful.

If anyone wants to recommend other books or online resources, please do!

I gave my impressions from the first day or so of work, but a full (sort of) week has given me more time to get acquainted with my new job.

I've worked on several projects, thought none of them are quite ready to go live yet. I'll link to them when they do. But so far the work has been pretty easy and well within my skills. I was surprised at how much Flash I remember, even though I haven't touched the program in over a year.

I'm also working on a story for next week! I pitched this one myself, and while its nothing big, I'm happy to be writing. My greatest fear is being pigeonholed into the programming room.

I'm supposed to see about some database work in the next week or so, which will be something new to add to my arsenal. I know how databases work and how to work with them, but I've never actually built one.

On the side, I'm continuing to work through Django tutorials and plan on buying some books soon. I'm also in the market for a job after my internship is over.

I've got a couple of posts coming up that should be more stimulating, but I've been too busy to really organize my thoughts yet. Here's hoping I can get one or two out next week.

This morning I met with my IRE mentor, Steve Doig, who is a CAR teacher at the University of Arizona. We talked about some of the work I’d done, people in the industry to learn from, and ways to stay on top of projects at different newspapers.

I love mentorship programs because I get a basically captive audience for my pro-online and data visualization ranting. I guess it’s also a networking shortcut.

I spent a frustrating hour and a half tracking down an internet connection so I could clear out the ::gasp:: 1000+ items that have accumulated in Google Reader after 3 days of neglect.

Then I went to a session called Cutting Edge Digital Journalism from Around the World.

The session was led by Rosental Alves, University of Texas; Sandra Crucianelli, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas; and Fernando Rodriguez, Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism.

One of the things that surprised me was the idea that in Central/South America, CAR/investigative reporting/databases are viewed as “as a gringo thing.”

Rodriguez showed off a database he worked on of politicians in Brazil, called “25,000 politicians and their personal assets.” Politicians have to submit a certain amount of information in order to run for office, including a listing of assets. It took 2 years to track down all this information because the records were not organized and were available only in hard format. Eventually, the database could provide a view of who the politicians were.

The database was published online and stories were written for the newspaper (Folha) as well. Readers started to call in and report inconsistencies. Other newspapers started to use the database for their own stories.

Crucianelli presented a way to monitor government documents online in 4 different countries. (El Salvador, Panama, Honduras and Nicaragua) All 4 countries had recently changed their access laws for public information.

She found that Panama had the best online access to government documents. El Salvador had the worst access.

At noon, Matt Waite presented PolitiFact. Sexy, sexy Politifact. He gave a tour of all the features of the site as well as showing us a little of the back-end: the Django admin setup.

I followed Matt and Aron to a session with Knight grant winner David Cohn, talking about Spot.Us.

Spot.Us is supposed to be an answer to the question: How will we fund reporting that keeps communities informed?

The answer is based on the premise of citizen journalism. Writing is not the only means of participation.

On Spot.Us, anyone can create a story idea. Reporters can pitch stories based on contributed ideas to their communities. People in the community commit money for pitches. Then the reporters cover the stories. Some of the money goes to pay editors. The stories can be republished for free or published exclusively if the original donor is refunded.

And that’s it for me today. I’ll be in for some afternoon sessions tomorrow.

Today through Sunday I'll be attending the 2008 IRE Conference in Miami. Today I'm locked in a room with about 10 others being sprayed with the firehose of Django.

I've played with Django a bit before, but now we're getting serious. I've got my local Django session running and am poking around while Matt Waite, Aron Pilhofer and Chase Davis break us down and rebuild us in the image of Adrian Holovaty or Derek Willis.

This morning we went over the concepts behind Web frameworks and Django, looked at the code behind a homicide database and set up the local administration page. This afternoon we'll be going over each type of file necessary to build a Web application in Django.

For the last month or so I've been taking a really in-depth look at the Google Maps API. Partly out of my own curiosity, and partly as an individual project for the online capstone course at UF.

I've learned some really cool things along the way. How to work with information flowing between a viewer and the server, for instance. I've also learned more about javascript and PHP.

One bad thing though: Google Maps tend to fail when you need to plot more than 200 locations. Ken Schwencke and I found this out when we tried to plot over 800 Gainesville restaurants with their inspection reports from an XML file. We're still looking for a solution. (We've basically parsed a CSV file with python and gotten it to feed into an XML file which is being fed into the map...now I'm hungry.)

We wanted to integrate restaurant reviews using the Yelp API, but the requests are restricted to only 20 businesses, so we're working on our own review backend.

For my class project, I'm building a map with multiple layers, like crime, alcohol licenses, and restaurant inspections, that can be toggled to show only the information a viewer wants to see. Or all of it at once. It'll be on a small scale, just as a proof of concept. But still pretty cool.

After 2 frustrating months, I finally got Django up and running on my laptop. I could have had an easier time installing it on my Windoze machine, but I'm not home very much, so I wouldn't have time to play with it.

Ken Schwencke, whose help was instrumental in finally get Django to work, and I have been working through the tutorials on the Django project Web site. It's time to buy some python programming books.

Ken is a few steps ahead of me, having already written a python script to parse a Twitter friends feed so it can be printed out in plan text. (We discovered GeekTool recently, and have been experimenting with getting all kinds of data printed to the desktop.)

I'm really excited about learning how to use Django and python to build new web projects.

Zac Echola reminded me yesterday what this blog is about and why I started it.

• 1. A networking blog should be a living document of your professional self. You should stay focused on topics that matter to people who may hire you. You should start reading blogs from people in your field.
• 2. When someone makes you think, you should think out loud on your site. Have a conversation with others. Email people questions. Chat with them on twitter. Get to know people. Working a blog isn’t much different than working a room at a conference. Stay focused.
• 3. Show off your work. When you do something good, show it off. Don’t be bashful.
• 4. SEO the crap out of yourself.
• 5. Seize every opportunity you can.
• 6. Always remember that there’s a real human being on the other side of the machine.

I've been really bad at updating lately, and I'm going to work hard to fix that, starting with a bunch of updates on what I've been doing lately. I think short posts are preferred, so I'll split things up. Keep an eye out for stuff on Twitter, Google Maps, Django and more.

A lot of people tell me I'm really good at this Web stuff. Yea, I'm a geek. I love to program and play and diddle around with technology, especially if it can be made useful.

But I've really only had 2 years of this. I fell in love with journalism late in my sophomore year. I'm the managing editor for the Web site of a student-run paper and I'm making it all up as I go along.

OK, I spend hours every day scanning blogs, newspapers, Twitter and other Web sites learning as much as I can about this thing called online journalism. For me, there is no ivory.

But rarely do I get a chance to sit down with someone more experienced than I and discuss what I'm doing and how I should be doing it differently. (Maybe that's a new direction to take this blog in?)

Last week, the Journalism Advisory Council sat down for lunch with us budding journos. It was a really cool experience.

I talked to one member about data potential for B2B magazines.

Another responded to my questions about the Web site by listing the things they do and then shoving me into a conversation with someone else.

I discussed eye-tracking studies and the difference between print and Web design, fairly eloquently for someone who can't...well, I can design my way out of a paper bag, but it's not one of my strengths.

Another member wanted to look at The Independent Florida Alligator's Web site. My baby. No sooner had the site loaded than suggestions for improvements were being made.

Yes, we need to label our multimedia so that readers know what's what. Yes, we should be publishing online as soon as we know something. Yes, I need to make Opinions, Sports and Avenue headlines as Web-friendly as the News heds have become. Yep, that event on the calendar shouldn't be labeled TBA, it's an all day event. Must fix the PHP.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As soon as school is back in session, I'm going to find some unofficial guidance. The print managing editor and the editor go over the paper with one of the professors once a week. The Web site needs similar help. (Mindy, Dave, you up for this?) And I'm going to make sure the guidance continues, because one simple conversation can change so much.

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but I've been completely swamped.

Thanks to Matt Waite's brilliance and patience, I got Django installed on my MacBook. I haven't actually done much more than order the book and start reading through the tutorial and documentation, but I'm really excited to start learning. Right now I'm stuck trying to get MySQL onto the laptop. I'm Terminal-retarded, so this is getting frustrating. Once I get that up and running, I'll be diving into a Django-driven class project.

My independent study project has advanced to the data cleaning stage. I'm still gathering the last bits in, but I started cleaning and organizing and staring blankly at numbers.

Life at The Alligator isn't particularly impressive lately. We're still mostly fixing. I slapped this little map of upcoming Gainesville shows together last week. Then I had to spend 3 hours trying to get it to work with the publishing system. It's still kind of broken. But on the bright side, Ken Schwencke, a journalism student who is several levels beyond my programming abilities, has joined my staff.

The online capstone course, Applied Interactive Newspapers, is built to work like an internship.

There are 6 students in the class this semester. Each of us is responsible for pulling in 7 stories each week, from The New York Times or AP wire.

These stories are published on Newszine, the Interactive Media Lab's news Web site.

Recently, in addition to the 7 stories, we were assigned a multimedia requirement. Each week, 2 Soundslides and 2 videos will be published to the site along with our stories, with labor divided among the staff.

It was my turn to do a video this week. I chose to do a video tutorial for using Soundslides. I wrote out my script and talked to my partner, Matt Gonzalez, about the shots. We set the camera up and also set the editing computer up for screen-casting.

Then I did my thing. I'm not particularly pleased with the outcome. I get massive stage fright as soon as the camera's watching, even though I'm only on the screen for a few seconds.

But I learned a lot from this. I should have run through my actions a few times before I did it for the camera. It also could have done with a little more editing.

In any case, I'm learning a lot about video and editing, so by the time I graduate I should be pretty good at this.

I've been working at The Independent Florida Alligator since the beginning of the summer. And I've learned a lot about the Web, news, multimedia, design, and programming.

Perhaps the most important area in which I've grown is how I deal with others on a day-to-day basis.

I have a pretty short fuse. I get frustrated easily, I have a big mouth, I love to complain. I curse at the computer regularly and will talk to anyone for hours about how much I despise our content management system. I spend way to much time in front of a computer, so I can be a little socially handicapped.

That's no excuse. Coming from a manager, the people I work with don't take all this as just blowing steam. It makes them more reluctant to work online. It keeps them from suggesting new projects because they don't know how far we can push the limitations of the CMS.

So I'm learning, slowly, about diplomacy and silence and waiting until I'm alone to scream and tear my hair out. It's really hard. But worth the effort. The less I kvetch, the more people wander past my desk and ask what I'm doing for such-and-such an article.

It's important for online journalists to be visible and positive about what they do.

I survived. Again.

As usual, the first week of school was accompanied by lack of sleep and an increase in Mountain Dew purchases.

I find myself in a position to look forward to a time beyond school; I will graduate at the end of this semester. As I said to several people during the week: "I look forward to a time when I'm only doing one job." Juggling the roles of student and employee, especially with multiple points of employment, is more tiring than spending the same amount of time on one area.

This semester I am taking an independent study on Computer-Assisted Reporting. I blogged about this last week, but to recap briefly: I will be learning how to find, clean and analyze data. At the end of the semester I will produce a data-driven story package.

I'm also taking the online capstone for the journalism program at UF. This class will focus on interaction with a CMS and producing video, as well as an independent project (I am hoping to start working with Django here). And just to get past the part-time student level, I am also taking a professional practice class (a.k.a. how to get a job, negotiate salary, etc.)

While I am continuing as Managing Editor at The Independent Florida Alligator, my title is not the only difference from last semester. (We changed New Media to Online.) Many people this semester are new either to The Alligator or to their positions. Although we got off to a rocky start, I think everyone is becoming acclimated and it can only get better. As for the online staff, two out of the three are back, and a total of nine responded to a call for more staff members. This is the most interest that has been shown in a long time.

I am also continuing to update the Citizen Access Project Web site, as well as preparing a newer incarnation for launch. Over the break I started working at the Admissions office at UF, recoding their Web site.

Just writing about my different responsibilities makes me look forward to May. But I know I'll enjoy every minute that I'm learning, creating or teaching something.

I'm doing an independent study on Computer Assisted Reporting with Professor Cory Armstrong in the Spring. I was told at a couple of job interviews that I need CAR experience, but the University of Florida takes data no further than the Fact Finding class.

So I'm going to find a dataset, explore it, and hopefully be able to produce a story package.

Right now I'm doing some research on different datasets currently available, but I'm having trouble narrowing down my subject.

I've been looking at some PEW studies for ideas on what sort of data to look at, as well as the IRE Database Library.

Some ideas so far:

• Campus Crime: compare Florida colleges or SEC colleges or just look at UF crime
• Walter Reed: I'm not sure how to find this data, or if it is readily available. But it was one of the seriously under covered stories listed by PEW. This could be taken more broadly: reduced funding in VA hospitals, funding vs. number of troops vs. number of living vets, 2001 to present for all kinds of money issues, number of wounded, currently enlisted, vets no longer enlisted, maybe also insurance
• Fluctuating Gas Prices
• Tasering Cases in Florida

Edit: I'm also trolling the Sunlight Foundation's "Insanely Useful Web Sites."

That's it so far. (Thanks to Mindy for the help.)

Picking a subject has always been the hardest thing for me. I just want to look at everything!

Suggestions, as always, are welcome.

I spend a lot of time hanging out with my professors and some really cool grad students. It sounds weird, but they are my greatest resources for stuff like, "What's the best video camera that you can pull stills off of?", "Why isn't [insert reference to code here] working?" and other questions.

On Friday, the topic of conversation, while 2 out of the four of us ate lunch, turned to the j-school curriculum. Currently, there are 4 online journalism courses: a CSS/HTML course, an introduction to multimedia course, a Flash course and the capstone, Applied Interactive Newspapers.

Here's the problem: the CSS/HTML course is required for the Flash course. The intro to multimedia course is not required at all. Given how turned off a lot of students can be by the idea of programming, shouldn't a) the beginner's multimedia class be offered first (its a 4000-level class, the other is a 3000) and b) that course be required?

With people like Rob Curley and Howard Owens complaining about close-minded graduates, journalism students need to be exposed to the mindset behind online journalism. This course takes a brief look at many aspects of online journalism, plus the students learn Soundslides, Google Maps, blogging and audio.

I'm just sayin'.

with Adrian Holovaty! This is the highlight for me, since my background is more programming and I'm defenitely a huge geek. Seeing Adrian speak was the deciding factor in coming to SND.

How to take data and make it efficient in terms of how the hypertext is laid out. Example: Wikipedia = Serendipity

Journalists are essentially collectors of data.

Rant #1 No serendipity in online journalism. Bullshit!
Data browseability: people want it and expect it. (IMDB, Amazon.com)

Serendipity increases stickiness and usefulness.

It all starts with structure. Have a structured list of data (facts) like an Excel spreadsheet. Journalists take clean data and turn it into a story. Computer programs can't read the story. News orgs have the infrastructure to collect data, edit and verify the data and get the data to people. But they don't leverage the data!

Lesson #1 Structure your data
Everything has structure. Sports. Obits. Even photos: subject, photographer, where, when, camera, size, colors (Flickr)

After the structure, the easy part.

Lesson #2 Give your data "the treatment"
Example: crime data
Step 1: lists fields (date, time, type, address, location, arrests, case number)
Step 2: key concepts (what data is useful? date, time, type, address, location)
Step 3: make breakdowns (list all possible values for each field)
Step 4: make list pages (pages for each value in each field)
Step 5: detail pages (pages for each crime)

Things to note
- Permalinks for concepts (distinct URL) linkability/bookmarkability
- SEO
- Serendipity

Example sites: chicagocrime.org, Faces of the Fallen, Video Game Reviews, Mixed Messages.

For my 21st birthday (which was a month and a half ago now) my mother promised to buy me a Blackberry Pearl as soon as I qualified for the T-Mobile discount, which would be sometime in October. Well, October is here. This means, that despite not having a laptop, and my MacBook Pro not being delivered in time, I should be able to blog my way through SNDBoston (Society of News Design conference).

So, this is my tentative plan:

On Thursday, I'll be attending the Student Sessions, which promise advice but are a little vague on structure and content.

Friday

9:30 am You can judge a book by its cover
Described by USA Today as “the closest thing to a rock star in graphic design today,” Chip Kidd revolutionized book design. Kidd shows how to tell and sell stories using conceptual thinking, visual puns, and found images.

11 am Brainstorming workshop: design
Inspiring examples and practical tips for fresh approaches to design. Robert Newman (Fortune, Real Simple, Vibe, Entertainment Weekly) and Kate Elazegui (art director, New York magazine).

And at this point I'm conflicted. At 2pm, there are two fantastic looking sessions:

Roundtable: The elections
Print and online designers, graphics artists, and picture editors discuss fresh ways to cover the upcoming elections. Panel includes Elliott Malkin (nytimes.com), Paul Nelson (Design Director, The Virginian Pilot), and Dan Wasserman, editorial cartoonist for The Boston Globe.

and

It’s the little things
Recent innovations in presenting stock tables, sports agate, and other small information. The panel includes Dennis Brack (The Washington Post) and typographer Matthew Carter.

Input anyone? Onward, then.

3:15 pm Multimedia, the next frontier
The next place for great design and photojournalism is multimedia argues Brian Storm founder of MediaStorm and former head of multimedia for MSNBC.

Oh, poppycock, more conflicts:

Brainstorming workshop: graphics
Inspiring examples and practical tips for fresh approaches to infographics Archie Tse (New York Times) and Javier Zarracina (The Boston Globe).

or

Typography roundtable
A discussion on trends from readability to revivals with typographers Matthew Carter and David Berlow.

And Friday ends with

6 pm ‘Helvetica, The Movie’
It’s the 50th anniversary of the typeface you love—or love to hate. Director Gary Hustwit’s documentary has been drawing rave reviews on the film festival circuit. The Chicago Tribune enthused that the film “sharpens your eye in general and makes connections between form and content, and between art and life.”

Saturday

9:30 am Reinventing The Guardian
Mark Porter, creative director of one the 2005 SND World’s Best-Designed newspapers on reinventing the print and online versions of one of Britain’s leading newspapers.

11 am The future is now
A look at new and emerging technologies from The New York Times R&D team. Interface designer Nick Bilton and futurist-in-residence Michael Rogers demonstrate the handheld Times Reader and discuss interactive newspaper technologies in development.

This conflicting sessions thing is really obnoxious. I need a time machine!

2 pm Reinventing page one
Long the most traditional page of the paper, panelists Jeff Hindenach (San Jose Mercury News), Gayle Grin (National Post, Canada) and Søren Nyeland (SND 2006 World's Best-Designed Newspaper Politiken, Denmark) show how to build memorable fronts with photography, graphics, teasers and a strong design voice.

or

2pm Storytelling in print and multimedia
Jenn Crandall (washingtonpost.com's onBeing) project and Kelli Sullivan (Los Angeles Times projects including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Altered Oceans") show how words and images can be combined to create compelling narratives.

At 3:15 I'll be having my portfolio reviewed. I'm really nervous about this because this Web site is in dire need of a redesign (which I'm working on) and I can't really print out a lot of my work.

The (for me) icing on all this newsy cake is a session at 4:45 with Adrian Holovaty.

Making data webby
Adrian Holovaty of washingtonpost.com shares philosophy and strategies for making data browsable online. He’ll touch on several of his past projects, including chicagocrime.org and Faces of the Fallen.

I'm working on a couple of database projects this semester and probably will be working with Django next semester, so I'm looking forward to satisfying my fetish for the geekier side of journalism.

Advanced online media was one of my favorite classes, because it finally hit my level of geek. I was honing my CSS skills, learning Flash, and talking about online journalism...all the things that make me excited. Even better, the famous Mindy McAdams was our professor.

I was really nervous about Flash at first, because I can't draw. One of the things I have difficulty getting my head around is that I don't have to be able to do everything. Not only is it easy to create basic shapes in Flash, but most newspapers have graphic design artists. I got a lot more comfortable when we hit ActionScript. Even though my programming is at an elementary level, I still recognize the properties of the languages. That made ActionScript fairly easy to understand, even if implementing it still gets buggy now and then.

Our projects involved basic animations which became more involved as we learned the different things Flash can do. Motion, buttons, slide shows, until we had to put together a slide show with audio. The culmination was a web portfolio to be graded on design and scripting practices.

Classes in Review series:

Applied Fact Finding
Reporting
Advanced Editing pt3
Advanced Editing pt2
Advanced Editing
Preview