links for 2011-08-03

"The lesson from this is if it sound ridiculous, it probably is and it needs to be checked thoroughly, not the easiest thing to do when you’re on deadline". Really good and honest blog post about checking and re-checking sensational figures

"Doing work on a house doesn’t make you an architect. Splashing paint on a canvas doesn’t make you a painter. Taking a picture with a phone doesn’t make you a photographer. I have some pretty decent dance moves, but I would never call myself a dancer. That would insult the true dancers out there they make it an art. We live in a world of hobbyists and the majority of our peers are hobbyists parading as professionals. They are not designers". [via @mattpointblank]

"I’ve gone from one tweet to knowing an entire family’s names, location, address, contact details, what they look like, how they are connected to the military and, potentially, where a part of the US army is coming under fire. I stop there because I am already completely freaked out by just how far I’ve already got from a few Google searches."

"So ultimately I keep coming back to a simple proposition. Respect is the vital component to all human relationships, whether in person or online, anonymous or identified."

"While archeologists try to recreate what life was like 10,000 years ago, and historians try to recreate what life was like 1,000 years ago, journalists can’t even recreate how they published a newspaper 20 years ago. No one documented the details or saved the old equipment. (I had to buy some of it from creepy old men through Craigslist.)"

"One of the most significant aspects of Open Data is the Government’s definition that it is ‘free’. This is the right decision, of course, but where we make data freely available we risk devaluing that information by not appreciating its real value and potential. It’s important that the Government, in Data.gov, does not produce a ‘dumping ground’ for vast datasets that are irrelevant to most of us, and hence won’t be used."

"In the following study, we analyze Twitter audiences of Al-Jazeera English, BBC News, CNN, The Economist, Fox News and New York Times, seeking to understand the makeup, behavior, interests, similarities and differences between networked audiences. We looked at measures of engagement such as the number of clicks shared urls receive, and the number of times content is retweeted by audience members."

"Unless a once-in-a-lifetime story is breaking in your community, the most urgent challenge facing every news organization today is making a swift and successful transformation to the digital future. Leading that transition is every editor’s most urgent challenge. And, for better or worse, Twitter has become a leading current indicator of a newsroom’s — or an editor’s — willingness to change. You don’t lead change from your comfort zone. You lead change by showing your staff that you are willing to learn a new skill and suffer the discomfort of learning publicly". All good points. But don't the sheer numbers say editors should actually be on Facebook and Tumblr?

Unfortunately, they seem to have fallen for the myth that it is helpful to actually hide information from the user, requiring 8 extra clicks to reveal all the information on the page

"As we look to include more people in our story telling – to add colour, verify facts and engage audiences in the process of publishing news as well as consuming it, we need to ask who are are locking out" - blog post inspired by Laura Oliver's Hacks/Hackers talks