You Must Learn

By • • NICAR in Baltimore

Slides

Show the extracted slide text

Slide 3

Data-driven
     journalism
     is the future




Source: Guardian
Photo: Tony-Scarpetta

Slide 4

Literally, a
new kind of
journalism
that did not
exist before




           Source: Slate

Slide 5

- Nieman Journalism Lab
- Washington Post




                                            - Poynter                             - Nature




             - Financial Times




                                                                - Digital Ninja School
 - New York Times




                                                                    - Vox




                    - Nieman Journalism Lab (again)           - Knight News Challange

Slide 10

A) Nate Silver

Slide 11

B) Sarah Cohen

Slide 12

C) Shingy

Slide 17

Julian Assange

Slide 18

Greenwald/Poitras/Gellman

Slide 19

Source: OldPoliticals

Slide 20

Source: New York Times

Slide 26

A) USA!

Slide 27

B) United Kingdom

Slide 28

C) Greece

Slide 37

In five years, a
     computer program
     will win a Pulitzer
     Prize — and I’ll be
     damned if it’s not
     our technology.




Source: New York Times

Slide 38

U MAD BRO?

Slide 41

Source: Sun- Sentinel
Photo: Amy Beth Bennett

Slide 42

powerreporting.com/color/

Slide 46

- Nieman Journalism Lab
- Washington Post




                                            - Poynter                             - Nature




             - Financial Times




                                                                - Digital Ninja School
 - New York Times




                                                                    - Vox




                    - Nieman Journalism Lab (again)           - Knight News Challange

Recording

Show the timestamped transcript
  1. doing these things. I don't know what will happen, but if I self-destruct, I want you
  2. to do what I would do. Tweet it. Okay, so my talk is called You Must Learn Five Lessons
  3. from the History of Data Journalism Thank You for Voting. And you know, what I want
  4. to start with is something that I've heard a lot of talk about, and I bet you have too.
  5. I bet you've heard a lot about the future. Right? Yes? I've heard a lot about the future.
  6. Lots going on. Lots going to happen. You know what I mean? Right? And, you know, one of
  7. the cooler things I've heard in recent years was this. And you guys know who that is? He
  8. was in Jeremy's talk. That's Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. He
  9. said this, or he's reported who said it, at least. And I thought to myself, who got
  10. to him? And whoever in here got to him, you have Natty Bo for the rest of your days, I'll
  11. make them. Because that's great. Now, that's a good thing, right? But not everything we've
  12. been hearing about the future is really all that good, right? Because we hear things kind
  13. of like this. I hear things like this, and I, like, cringe inside. You know what I mean?
  14. I hear, like, it causes me pain to hear someone who means well and who wants to get on with
  15. the future, as we've been told, about say things like what we're doing here, and everybody
  16. hears about this in this room, is brand new. Something that's recently been invented. And
  17. one of the things that happens is when powerful people think ideas like this, and then they
  18. act on them, they go out into the world and they have ripple effects. And I think each
  19. ever one of you in here sees ripple effects. They look like this. Right? These are all
  20. some job listings and stories about many of the people in this room, and trying to get
  21. many of the people in this room to apply, right? And they sound like someone whose history
  22. of journalism comes from, like, a Japanese, like, article. It has, like, a history of the
  23. world that's, like, totally on board from any reality. Right? And that's just, like,
  24. bugs me. Right? You know what I mean? Because it bugs me, that's what got me fired up to give
  25. this talk. And so that's why I'm here. Right? And, you know, I used to live in Washington, D.C.,
  26. not that far from here. And I lived in a neighborhood called Shaw. And I love living in Shaw. And Shaw
  27. is a great place. And on 9th Street, Northwestern Shaw, there's this awesome mural for this guy,
  28. Carter Woodson. You guys know who Carter Woodson was? His house was right across the street. Carter
  29. Woodson is the man who had the idea that we ought to have something in 1926 called Black History
  30. Week. Right? Which ultimately became Black History Month, and which is just ending now, here in the
  31. United States. Right? And I think Black History Month is an awesome thing. And why do I think
  32. it's awesome? Because it challenges us. It confronts us with an alternative history, which facts in the
  33. past that we don't normally hear about. And it makes us try to process them. And to think about,
  34. to think about our own, the stories we tell ourselves about history. I love it. Right? And,
  35. you know what's good at confrontation, besides that, is hip-hop music. Right? A few things are
  36. better. In the 1980s, Boogie Down Productions, led by KRS1, released a single known as You Must
  37. Learn. And You Must Learn is an awesome song that is really just a walk through kind of an
  38. alternative history of Black people, not just the United States, but in the world. And it's in the
  39. spirit of this, like, badass song, particularly the Live from the Caucus Mountains remix, which I
  40. would totally recommend. Right? That got me going on this talk. Right? And so with that, it's kind of
  41. the outset I want to start in. We've got five lessons. Right? Number one, nothing we are doing
  42. is new. Okay? And I wanted to do this in the format of, like, say, Jeopardy clues. Do you guys
  43. watch Jeopardy? My wife and I every night. It's Hebo, and I love it. Battle of the Decades is awesome.
  44. But so here's the clue. Influenced by academics, this aspiring journalist arrived in New York to
  45. determine to produce an exact quote, quote, facts of scientific value. No, if you asked me to guess,
  46. you might say, hey, Nate Silver. Right? Particularly if you were Dave Plott. Right? Or if you were a
  47. Nicarian, you might say, hey, author of numbers in the newsroom. All right? Recently, New York Times
  48. hire Sarah Cohen might come to mind. Wouldn't be a bad guess, would actually be pretty close to
  49. accurate. You know, you might also just go with Xingy. Hey! Dave Xing, AOL's digital prophet being
  50. monster. Right? He wouldn't be, right? The other two would be okay. But another also correct answer
  51. from history that I want to challenge you with is Lincoln Steffens. Lincoln Steffens in 1890s arrived
  52. in New York City, a rich kid from Sacramento who went off to Germany to study philosophy because he
  53. felt like him. Right? And he didn't feel like him anymore. He felt like making some noise. He felt
  54. like shaking up the world and he went on to become one of the most famous muckrakers. Right? Teddy
  55. Roosevelt coined the phrase muckraker because he had to deal with this asshole. Right? And so he
  56. came to New York in the 1890s and I swear to God he really thought I am going to bring Hegel to
  57. the police beat. Right? No, that's true. Right? And this is a nerdy room. This is like the nerdiest
  58. room in the history of journalism. Nobody here is that nerdy. You know what I'm saying? And he
  59. went on to try to develop like a period of corruption at the city level across the United
  60. States, letting them write a series of books and magazine articles that made him famous.
  61. Right? And he also, he had an intern. You know whose intern was? Walter Lippmann. Got his first
  62. job in journalism with Lincoln Steffens. Went on to popularize the whole idea of public opinion,
  63. which Nate Silver would later analyze 100 years later and become famous. Right? So just think
  64. about that. And if you want to learn more about it, read the new biography of Lincoln Steffens.
  65. I'm like two-thirds the way through it. It's pretty awesome. Right? Lesson two. No. Nothing
  66. we're doing is new. All right? And you can't count on the internet to tell you that. Okay?
  67. Here's another clue. This polarizing journalist rattled Washington DC with a selective release
  68. of provocative documents from a secret cash. Right? Might call some people to mind. Might
  69. make you think of a certain man in London, Julian Assange. It might force you to pick your favorite
  70. from the roster of NSA reporters. Right? And all those would be good answers. They wouldn't
  71. necessarily be wrong. But this answer is also accurate and true if you were to say, who was
  72. William Randolph first? One of the most famous newspaper barons in the history of the United
  73. States, so in the whole series across the United States, including New York and San Francisco.
  74. And in 1908 and in 1912, his publication splashed across their covers a series of leaked,
  75. allegedly leaked, letters written by a standard oil executive named Archibald, which supposedly
  76. contained the correspondence between him and elected officials in the United States detailing
  77. a whole range of political corruption. This was a major scandal which shook two presidential
  78. elections. Right? Which led to Collier's Magazine trying to debunk it with a very, very intense cover
  79. story trying to take it down. And even led to Mr. Hearst himself testifying before the United
  80. States Congress, not unlike the editor of The Guardian last year. And then later in his life,
  81. the tables returned. Mr. Hearst's telegrams were acquired from a source and published by his rival
  82. publications, including the Los Angeles Times, where I work, and the orders that he sent be a
  83. telegram from his home, and believe it or not, West Palm Beach, now home of Rush Limbaugh, right,
  84. were then splashed across the act. And this might be a potentially a sort of instructive lesson for
  85. those reporting on leaks today. But regardless, if you were to go to Wikipedia and you were to search
  86. a phrase like standard oil letters, guess what you get? Nothing. Right? That's because despite
  87. journalism being the history of the world, the first draft of history, we don't do a very good
  88. job of telling our own history. Right? And so something like this, which was a major event that
  89. shaped two presidential elections, doesn't even exist according to the internet. Right? Now, if
  90. you want to learn about it, you should read this great book, Citizen Hearst. This book was nominated
  91. to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it's the only book in the history of the Pulitzer Prize that judges
  92. declined to give the award to, ultimately, because Hearst was such an asshole, they couldn't stand it.
  93. Right? Which is a lesson I would suggest, the book that I would suggest to our new media
  94. locals, who I occasionally hear themselves, compare themselves to Hearst. But as you see today,
  95. it's sort of a very casual way as an icon of being a media titan. However, if you were to read this
  96. book, you would find out, one, what an asshole he was. Right? And two, what a bad businessman he was.
  97. You know what I mean? But anyway, read it. It's good. It's a lot of fun. All right. Lesson three,
  98. it is a wild world out there. Right? Clue number three, this nation was the first, the first to
  99. enact a law guaranteeing citizens the right to access government records. Right? You know what
  100. I'm going to say first. You know what I'm going to say? USA. Number one. Right? But you might be
  101. like a history boxer. You might say, well, Ben, if you go back in history, democracy, I like to
  102. settle on, you know, you know, Magna Carta, all that stuff. You know what I'm saying? And if you
  103. read more that way, you might say, I'm going to go even further, Ben. I'm going to go with Athens.
  104. You know what I mean? Like, Greece had this down. It has to be Greece. It has to. Now,
  105. it's this guy, this guy whose name is on that notepad, I forgot to walk over.
  106. His name is, here we go.
  107. Anders K. Dätten. Anders K. Dätten.
  108. They answer this. In 1766. Say it.
  109. Anders K. Dätten. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
  110. So in 1766, he led an effort to pass the World's First Freedom of Press Act,
  111. which included not just something similar to the First Amendment before the First Amendment,
  112. but also the first law that suggested that the public has a right to inspect government records.
  113. And where is he? What country was that? It was, of course, Sweden.
  114. Right? This is a blingy frame that I saw on my recent trip to Sweden.
  115. This is a real thing from a gift shop.
  116. And the man in the sunset is the current prime minister.
  117. Right? That's pretty good. Yeah. But it's a little more complicated because back then,
  118. you know, Sweden was its own empire. And it was big enough that it included this whole
  119. little eastern area, which you map heads in here might recognize today as Finland.
  120. And so if you go there, there's certain Finns will tell you, no, no, no, no, it was Finland.
  121. We had the first public records law. Right?
  122. To disagreement, the Swedes do not concede that point, however.
  123. I'm from Finland.
  124. Right. Well, the Swedes have put the guy on the highest bill available in Finland,
  125. I've been told. Is this guy in space? I mean, I look at our money and it's a bunch of conspiracy
  126. shit. I don't have ceremonies and eyeballs and a bunch of crap. You know what I'm talking about?
  127. We need to get the First Amendment on the dollar bill. I'm just saying that right here now.
  128. So anyway, so I've knocked Finland a little bit. If you go to the Reports Without Borders
  129. was a ranking of countries in the world and Finland makes number one for world press freedom,
  130. United States 32 and falling. Right? And if you could read that report, if you go to the website,
  131. and I'd recommend you check it out. It's very informative. It might broaden your worldview.
  132. Lesson four, you have already been scooped by a computer. Right? So this is a point I like to
  133. trot out from time to time to poke fun at. This is Christian Hammond. He's the CEO of a really
  134. awesome company called Narrative Science, who makes really awesome software that gets robots
  135. to like write stuff, to algorithms, to like churn out paragraphs, to find stuff, to write sports
  136. stories, to do all kinds of cool stuff at Wall Street. And two and a half years ago, he told the
  137. New York Times this, in five years your computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize and I will be
  138. damned if it is not our technology. Right? It sounds good. Sounds good. But unfortunately,
  139. like many internet entrepreneurs, he has zero sense of history. And I know that in this room,
  140. people know who really was the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize with their software.
  141. It was built that way. Right? That dude just got to live with it.
  142. And I love it. You know what I mean? He's two and a half years in. We'll see how he does.
  143. Right? And he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 before computers were even close to cool.
  144. Right? If you're doing a story about redlining of housing in Atlanta, it's really good stuff. And I
  145. gotta tell you, it wasn't just him. Since him, numerous people have won Pulitzer Prizes for
  146. doing computer work, including many people in this room. And the most recent was just last year,
  147. my brothers in bankruptcy at the Sun Center. Brothers and sisters. Right? Took home the
  148. highest Pulitzer Award for an awesome series. And I gotta say, just like an ingenious data analysis,
  149. just like ingenious thing to figure out how you could prove something that everybody thought was
  150. true but couldn't prove. And it's really awesome. And you know what? We hear a lot about data
  151. journalism. We hear that David Plots is the world saying how it's new and how it's all these awesome
  152. people doing new stuff. But in all that hype, you know, one thing I don't hear is I don't hear
  153. about this. And that really bugs me. You know what I mean? Because the data person just did it.
  154. And that person is probably in this room right now. It is John Maynes in the lower left right there.
  155. John, are you here? Yes!
  156. I love this picture. The dream is not so bad. I mean, we took this. But anyway, I recommend you
  157. actually go read the color of money. The whole thing is available for free online at this URL.
  158. That's really the first one to win. Go check it out. You might not even like certain parts about
  159. it. You might think certain things are dated. It could be improved or done better in today's world.
  160. Take that and apply it to your work tomorrow. You know what I mean? Rather than just congratulating
  161. yourself for having a computer, right? Also, John Maynes tomorrow, John Maynes tomorrow is going to
  162. explain how he did this. You can go see him at 3 p.m. tomorrow in Salandhi. You have to be just like,
  163. what? Two rooms over? One room over? I don't even know. You should go. You should go and you should
  164. listen. Because he deserves it. And you can learn something. All right, lesson five. It's about you
  165. or it's about the work. This is not actually history. This is from the wire.
  166. But I think it's a really valuable lesson and I love it. It's not you, it's about the work, right?
  167. Because we go back to this stuff. What is really going on with this? You know what I mean? What is
  168. this trying to communicate to us? It's silly in some sense, but even though it's silly, there's
  169. something deeper. And the deeper thing is narcissistic. It's trying to tell us that we're
  170. special, that we're something that never existed before, that we're like, I don't even know. We're
  171. the unicorns, right? And that's just not true. Where people look at history and the future and
  172. we're part of a really awesome tradition that means something, right? And that is what Nitecar
  173. is about. You know what I mean? Nitecar wasn't the beginning either, but it's a major factor.
  174. And it's the people in this room and it's the spirit and the vehicle for keeping that tradition
  175. alive and getting people inspired and getting people to not just want to win prizes and not
  176. just want to be the first to be winning, but to do something that matters, to tell stories that matter,
  177. to tell stories that otherwise would not be told, is what makes Nitecar so special
  178. and what gets me worked up like right now.
  179. KRS1. You know what I mean? He said some crazy shit. Yes. You know what I mean? I would not
  180. endorse everything to come out of this man's house. I really would not. But I still listen to him,
  181. even to this day. And just like a year or two ago, you put out a song fighting, you know,
  182. not many people listen to him, not famous anymore, you know. And it was called Show Power. It had
  183. showbiz from Showbiz and AG. Yeah. And Show Power had a verse in it and the verse was sent out
  184. to all the young rappers out there, the aspiring rappers, to try to keep them inspired and focused
  185. on what really matters about hip-hop. You know, as we all know, it's cliche at this point. Hip-hop
  186. has been called the CNN of the street. We've heard it, right? But there are some similarities.
  187. You know what I mean? There's a deeper truth to that cliche that's important. And in this verse,
  188. he said something that even though I'm not a rapper, and trust me, you don't want to hear me rap,
  189. right? It really, it actually emotionally touched me and I just want to share it with you. And I
  190. think he captured what I'm trying to get at here and what's really important about what we do and
  191. why we come to Nykar and what we want our future to be, which we control. You know what I mean? And
  192. so it's the second verse and, you know, okay, you ready? I'm going to read a hip-hop song. This is
  193. really going to happen. All right. Excellence in art. We must preserve that. We must improve that.
  194. I mean, bring the news back. Balance the views that. Truly inspire. Like the day that you were
  195. hired and bound to take the art much higher. Right? Bring the news back. Thank you.

Downloads

Slides PDF · Recording video · Extracted slide text · Timestamped transcript