The Linchpen

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be starting a new role here at The Washington Post, news about which was just sent to the newsroom:

“We are excited to announce that Greg Linch will be moving into a new hybrid technology / newsroom role starting June 1.  Since coming to the Post in December 2010, he has desk-pedaled his way across a few sections.

Greg began by producing for the health, science and environment team.  Those months rekindled a childhood interest by feeding and growing his natural curiosity about the world.  He then put both halves of his journalism-political science double major to use during a short stint with the politics team before starting an exciting year working with the foreign and national security desks.

All the while he’s been improving his technical knowledge with the ultimate goal of doing better journalism, such as creating a few handy tools and helping to make some production tasks more efficient.  That’s no surprise, of course, considering the two start-ups he previously worked on — one for college media when he was at the University of Miami and one that made tools for newsrooms before he joined the Post.

At the Post we have section producers who primarily work in a CMS and engineers who build news applications, but nothing in between.  Greg will pioneer an experimental role to straddle web production and web development – a special projects and applications producer position that will focus on more technical and medium to long-term projects and solutions.

We see Greg as a person who can look beyond standard journalism forms to help develop technology that pushes the boundaries of storytelling alongside the newsroom.  He will partner with editors and technologists to
conceive and create tools that engage users with our journalism; current examples of apps in development include a polling interface and our new live blogging platform.  He will work with the entire newsroom, from
producers to reporters to designers to find places where development can come together to create new technology that serves our users and our journalism.

Greg will spend the first 3 – 6 months of this new role training exclusively with engineers: honing his development skills.  After he completes this initial embedding in web development, he’ll be working in
the newsroom through Cory Haik and be deployed on projects within news and alongside the embedded engineering group run by Washington Post Chief Architect Greg Franczyk.”

Job opening

With my move, there’s an opening for a world/national security producer. That posting is below. Let me know if you’re interested!

“The foreign desk is seeking a producer to play a central role in developing and executing a digital strategy for world and national security. An ideal candidate would bring a passion for foreign and national security news, a
commitment to teamwork, and a highly-developed facility for using the tools of digital journalism to enhance and augment our work.

The world producer is a full member of the foreign-desk team and also works closely with national security editors. With a mission of making our work more engaging, the producer will have primary day-to-day responsibility for the presentation of foreign and national security content on the web, mobile and tablet. The job encompasses roles in nearly every aspect of digital journalism, including blogs, search, social and multimedia. The producer works closely with foreign and national security correspondents
and editors but must also show initiative, an appetite for innovation and strong news judgment. The producer reports to Anup Kaphle, the digital editor for world.

The job will require some early-morning and weekend work. Interested candidates should contact Doug Jehl, Griff Witte or Peter Perl by May 13. We plan to fill the job no later than June 1, when the current producer, Greg Linch, moves on to another job in the newsroom.”

I’ve proposed a session for the Online News Association 2012 conference in San Francisco on:

Better ways to measure journalism

If you’re interested, please up-vote/comment soon! Voting closes Thursday, April 12.

It would begin with an overview of interesting metrics in other fields, how we can learn from those and how we can possibly apply them to journalism. After that groundwork is laid, there would be a moderated discussion among the participants of other examples and how we could best implement new metrics.

For more background on the idea, check out:

Quantifying impact: A better metric for measuring journalism

Carnival of Journalism: Responses to “How can we better measure journalism?”

This month’s Carnival of Journalism topic, “What’s the best way — or ways — to measure journalism and how?” grew out of a post I wrote in February, Quantifying impact: A better metric for measuring journalism.

With this question, I wanted to broaden the possibile metrics beyond just impact. Higlights from the discussion are below. Enjoy!

Sheree Martin offered four important questions we must first consider:

• What is journalism?
• What is impact?
• How do we measure?
• Who is measuring?

Kathy E. Gill asked about similar fundamentals, “What matters? What is the role of journalism, our purpose, our challenge?” and raised a good question of balance:

how does “but it matters!” coexist in an environment where assessment is measured in large part by short-term page views and click-throughs?

Denise Cheng noted an opportunity to measure “inert engagement,” described as “the engagement that doesn’t want to come out of hiding as big steps like shares and comments.” She said:

measuring impact by measuring engagement are manifold. First and foremost, the modus operandi on my patch of the Internet is that journalism’s highest ideal is to equip its readership with information from which they can take judicious action

Specifically, she recommended defining metrics before you embark, measuring topical importance to the audience and acts accordingly, and that the sturdier your metrics become over time, the more of a road map you have.

Jonathan Groves looked at the issue on a more elemental level:

The root of journalism is truth, and the time-tested method that journalists have to uncover that truth is verification. If we want to measure journalism, it must begin here.

Addressing the quantitative vs. qualitative measurement distinction, he said:

Measurement assumes quantification, and some ideas — such as verification — are better evaluated qualitatively. Creating a measure requires including some attributes and excluding others; inevitably, such measures are always imperfect approximations, especially when it comes to complex concepts.

Clarisa Morales Roberts described a possible formula framed by the effects of journalism:

If we want to measure the impact of media and online journalism, we need to consider action. Action is what defines Effective Media (EM), and Effective Media can be measured by the Action that is a direct result of Quality Dialogue that is Shared

…

So, if we want to consider Impact by measuring Action, that measurement has to be proportional.

Michael Rosenblum emphasized the importance of finding niche instead of mass audiences:

As more and more content begins to fill the blogosphere and cyberspace and the cloud and wherever else ‘it’ all is, the competition for the Holy Grail of mass audience becomes ever more intense, and as such, the content itself becomes ever more amorphous.

Yet where is the ‘real’ value?

The web gives us access to discrete groups with specific interests. Our goal should be ‘narrowing the field’, not expanding it. Creating affinity groups with a common interest and common goals, and then, making it possible for those people to achieve those goal – whether its contributing to a new project – as in Kickstarter, or going on a golfing trip to St. Andrews.

Steve Outing looked at how social media is gaining an edge in the impact realm:

When I look at the question, I can’t help but get sidetracked into thinking how social media (i.e., “the crowd” utilizing digital social tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Change.org, among others, to amplify their voices) in a growing number of cases is having more impact than the traditional news media can achieve themselves — or is driving the mainstream news media to pay attention to stories that their editors fail to recognize as important.

Carnival ringmaster David Cohn also proposed an alternative approach :

I want to measure a different kind of impact. The impact of the dollars we spend in pursuit of journalism and its meaningful impact.

…

What we don’t appreciate is the strength of the little guy. What they don’t have in “impact” they do have in efficiency.

Steve Fox challenged the assumption of measuring something like impact:

Perhaps we all need to remember that the true “impact of journalism” rests with the impact we have on people’s lives. Have we given readers/viewers an amazing piece of writing or video that makes them appreciate parts of their life more? Have we created an “Oh, wow” moment for readers/viewer? Have we expanded someone’s universe? Isn’t that why we got into this business? Isn’t that what journalism has always done?

Perhaps the real question should be: “Why are we spending so much time measuring the “impact” of journalism?” Because, it really isn’t quantifiable now, is it?

What would be your ideal measure for journalism?

Let’s say journalism — as a concept — is a software application. Software is a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do and how to do it. To make this comparison, I’ll use WordPress.

Journalism is a tool to be used, both by those who practice it and those who engage with it.

Journalism is inherently interdisciplinary, both in the subjects it covers and how those subjects are covered.

Journalism can applied to any subject, or theme. There are some basic themes you can start with and modify. Child themes can be derived from parent themes; for example, online learning as a child theme of education.

Journalism has core features. Research, reporting, verification, creation and more.

Journalism has more advanced functionality you could call plugins. These can improve the process or the product (here, meaning outcome). Analysis, visualization and feedback/participation mechanisms, for example. Sometimes that functionality gets incorporated into core.

The point is not to make an arbitrary comparison. And, yes, some of these comparisons are apples to oranges.

The point is to think more abstractly both about the concept of journalism and about journalism concepts. The basic ideas. The individual pieces. The fundamentals.

Journalism should be seen as a modular platform that we can customize, develop and improve.

Journalism is an open-source framework constantly in development.

No one owns journalism. No one controls journalism. Anyone can implement it. Anyone can fork it. Anyone can hack at its core.

What are you developing?

Update: I changed “practice” to “concept” in the first line. I think that’s more the frame I was looking for, as indicated by the 8th paragraph.

I missed this week’s #wjchat (congrats on two years running!), but went through afterwards and found some goodies. Enjoy!

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