Interhacktives Newsletter #1: We’re back
Welcome to Interhacktives’ first newsletter of the year! We are a team of 17 nerds from City, University of London, blogging about anything and everything in the world of digital journalism. If you’re a new subscriber, welcome to the party! If you’re a long-term subscriber, we hope you missed us ❤
We’ve been up to quite a lot since we took over the blog last October. Here’s a glimpse:
We revived the podcast
Check out our new podcast Data Day (get it?), hosted by our very own sound mixing guru and black-turtleneck-wearer Luke Barratt.
Check out episodes where we discuss why people should never make podcasts with 360-degree video, the importance of open government data in the UK and India, and how to win a Data Journalism Award.
We tried to make sense of journalism in the age of fake news and alt-facts
The use of fake news, hoaxes and “alternative facts” has shown itself to be a problem with real world consequences. They’ve swayed votes, allowed rumours to spread and even endangered lives.
Here, we lay out three ways journalists can deal with so-called “alternative facts” peddled by governments around the world, including the White House. You can also listen to us discussing the rise of the problem, questioning whether the crisis had been overstated and examining possible solutions to the problem.
We also stumbled upon a fascinating thread by The New York Times’ Max Fisher on the proliferation of fake news both on the left and the right: “I worry about viral liberal posts that allege grand Trump conspiracies to dismantle democracy… [it] undermines real political scientists who are trying to warn us about subtler but very real dangers.”
Like what you’ve seen so far? Sign up for our newsletter here!
Quick snack: tweet of the week
Kim Kardashian West tweeted a table showing that between 2005 and 2014, the number of Americans killed by another American’s gun was about 5,500 times more than by Islamic jihadists — making her the latest addition to the data world. Welcome to the family, Kim! (She might have gotten more shares if she had turned the data into a visualisation, though. Just a suggestion…)
We wrote a few handy guides
Heard lots of programmers and journalists talk about scraping with R, but secretly have no clue what it is? Don’t worry, same here. Thankfully, we now have a hopelessly pun-heavy guide on how to scrape tweets and find trends before everyone else does (don’t say we didn’t warn you about the puns).
It’s Facebook’s world, and we’re just living in it. Here are 17 ways to use Facebook Live, one of the platform’s most prized tools. Maybe you can be the next Chewbacca Mom.
We also outlined some easy ways to make your bio stand out among the 300 million-plus active Twitter users, and 12 tricks on how to find your voice online.
We spoke to some smart people
Megan Lucero, former data editor of The Times, returned to chat to us about her new job as the head of the Local Data Lab at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
“I am going to listen more than I am going to talk,” she told us. “What are the stories that need to be told at a local level? What are the stories they want to tell? What are the datasets that are not open? What are the challenges to covering local beats?”
Sydette Harry, community lead at the Coral Project and Twitter extraordinaire, spoke to us about the importance of online communities and journalism. “A lot of people feel that sometimes journalism only shows up when they’re having the worst moment of their lives,” she said. Check out our interview for her solutions.
A few things we loved around the Internet
We loved The New York Times’ interactive feature which allowed us to guess how US unemployment rates, national spending on health care and the number of Mexicans illegally living in the US — among others — changed under Barack Obama’s presidency. How many of them did you get right?
We were also pretty baffled by this lengthy VICE report, which paints a bleak picture of companies and governments using big data and personal information to influence elections.
The UK is hopping on the food-porn train: Tastemade is opening a studio in the UK. Its secret? Making relatable yet innovative food choices. The network has also discovered that we in the UK are into some pretty weird stuff, like a “full English breakfast omelette for dinner” and chocolate salami.
Speaking of food, here’s an awesome video tutorial on how to crack an egg with one hand, made by our very own Jasper Pickering for the Mirror.
And just because you read this far…
Here’s a hilarious rant by freelance subeditor Mark Duffy on “meaningless taglines” in the advertising industry (“Apple’s ‘Think Different’ really meant nothing, ignored proper grammar and made the company the biggest computer brand on earth”). It is so good.
Thanks for reading!
Comments? Tips? Love letters? Please email us at interhacktives@gmail.com. We’re also active on Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud and Medium — be our friend, please?
This newsletter was written by Alexandra Ma, and designed by Ryan Watts.
