Hack the News
1. ) “Local media: Blast at Cairo cathedral kills at least 25”
A 26-pound bomb exploded at an important Egyptian church in Cairo on Sunday, according to an Egyptian state news agency. They say at least 25 people are dead and dozens more are injured. CNN reports the attack targeted one of the most symbolic religious sites for Copts, an ethno-religious group centered in Egypt.
If I were to tell this story, I think the best technology to tell it with would be a 360 video. In a story like this, as bad as it is, people want to see the destruction. Being able to move around 360 degrees on your phone makes it easier to understand the depth of the blast as opposed to still photos or just words on a website trying to tell the story. It’s not just destruction in one place, it’s destruction all around you and 360 video would do a good job of showing you that — mass destruction in a place that probably isn’t the safest for journalists to just set up a bunch of cameras in.
With 360-degree video, it’s important to make sure there’s no bodies, body parts, etc in the wreck that you’re filming when you make the video. You’d have to investigate (and clear) the scene of those things before you place your camera to start your video. As the investigation is ongoing, I think it would be okay if there were people (the investigators) shown in your 360 video. It would show anyone watching the video exactly what it would be like to be in that cathedral at that exact moment. I know we talked about not wanting to have people in the footage, but for this story I think it would almost add to it, as opposed to hurt it.
One of the upsides of 360 cameras is that they’re relatively inexpensive to buy. You could buy the Ricoh Theta S 360 or the Samsung Gear 360 which are both under $400. (It’s important to remember that if you buy the Samsung Gear 360, you need a Samsung phone to make it work.) They’re also pretty small and easy to hide. For a story like this, you wouldn’t want to be in the way or have it take up too much room so the 360 camera is the perfect size and technology for the blast in Cairo.
2.) Warehouse in deadly Oakland fire hadn’t been inspected in 30 years
A warehouse fire in Oakland, California killed 36 people last Friday, December 2, 2016. As time has gone on, officials have released that people were living there, in a place that wasn’t fit for people to live in, but it also wasn’t inspected in 30 years. The warehouse was used by artists to experiment and make different pieces. Officials say they used it as a place to gather for fellowship and to share ideas. Investigators still don’t know what caused the fire, nor if charges will be filed.
For this story, I would want to use augmented/mixed reality. I think it would be really interesting to be standing at the scene of the fire, where the now pile of rubble and burnt remnants stands, but if you had a headset on, you could see what the building looked like before the fire. The image of the building from before the fire would sit directly on top of the rubble so you could see both. It would be very clear what is reality and what isn’t.
I know you can’t go inside the building, but I think it would be especially useful if you could stand on the inside of the building and see an overlay of what the building looked like before the fire. It had old cars, oil containers and oodles of art on the inside of the warehouse. Maybe this augmented/mixed reality headset could help investigators see where everything was before the fire and it could help piece together what might have started the blaze. I imagine the imagines would look similar to those in the Ted Talk by Alex Kipman of Microsoft.
An augmented/mixed reality version of this story would allow news consumers to see the before and after effects of the fire and all the devastation it caused all at once. It might be a stretch, but purely for curiosity and investigative purposes, I think there would be a lot of interest in augmented/mixed reality for this story.
3.) Venezuelan president called a “Grinch” after government toy seizure
Venezuelan officials confiscated nearly 5 million toys from a toy distributor because they believed the company was planning on inflating the prices of said toys during the holiday season. Many families see the consumer protection agency who targeted the toy warehouse as being similar to the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas” as many families won’t be able purchase the confiscated presents before Christmas this year. CNN reports that the Venezuelan government says they’re going to make the 4.8 million toys available to impoverished families at cheaper than normal prices.
For this story, I’d want to use a drone. There’s no way to comprehend how many toys 4.8 million toys actually are until you’re seeing it. A drone would offer a wide shot of the factory where the Venezuelan government seized the toys from. The millions and millions of boxes would be able to be seen from an above shot from the drone and would probably take up most of the screen. Drone footage would give an inside look that you wouldn’t normally get from just a still photo or an article published on a website.
One of the greatest pros of using a drone on this story would be that it would gather news in a place that might not be the safest for journalists to go to. I’m sure Venezuela isn’t the most welcoming to journalists, especially not journalists who are looking to expose the government and its flaws. It’s not very hard to get a licensed drone pilot to fly a drone inside of a factory like the one mentioned in this story. The pilot would have to make sure that the air space is legal and isn’t near any airports, schools or prohibited airspaces. As long as the drone wasn’t too too expensive, if something happened to it, it wouldn’t be a big deal. As we all know, drones can range in price from $3 to tens of thousands of dollars depending on what cameras are attached to it, the brand and other tech specifications.
After the footage of the inside of the factory was captured, I’d want b-roll of the streets of Venezuela and how the people live to try and compare the type of people who are affected by this story to the story itself. It might be hard to accomplish all of this as I’m not sure what the laws of using drones in Venezuela are, but I think this story has a lot of potential with the drones.
4.) Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox buys Sky in $23 billion deal
Rupert Murdoch’s media group, 21st Century Fox has made a deal to take control of one of the world’s biggest TV Providers, Sky. According to CNN, Fox will pay $13.50 per share for the 60% of Sky it doesn’t own.
For stories with a lot of numbers and complicated statistics such as this one, I think it’s really fitting to use automation journalism. With automation, a program can create an algorithm and figure out how to take all of the information and put it in to an easy-to-understand story.
Stories with a lot of math or statistics can bog down journalists because they’re too busy focusing on the numbers and lose sight of what the true story really is. Automation journalism allows journalists to focus on the stories that really matter such as crime, investigative pieces or breaking news without making sports, business and money stories suffer. Just like in the article we read for class from The Verge says, automated journalism allows news agencies to report on things that would normally take hundreds of journalists to report.
Automation journalism also is significantly cheaper for news agencies because instead of needing to hire a journalist to report on tedious topics, one person can just be in charge of creating the algorithm. Once the algorithm is created, it can be reused for different types of math/number/statistic stories.
When we did that exercise in class where we tried to figure out which stories were written by an actual journalist and which were written by automation, we couldn’t even tell which was which. That exercise alone proves that stories like this would really benefit by automation technology. If we couldn’t tell if an actual person is writing articles, that means that consumers can’t either. Why not save money and people’s sanity and just use automation? #teamautomation
5.) Bana Alabed’s paints bleek picture of life in Aleppo
A 7-year-old girl named Bana has been Tweeting about what it’s like to grow up and live in the war-torn city of Aleppo, Syria. Alabed has amassed a massive 236,000 followers on Twitter who check in on her and her family daily. She tweets things like, “the army is so near now. I don’t know what to do. Only way to flee is to regime side which I fear coz they will kill me.” #Aleppo”
For this story, I’d want to use gaming. While I normally wouldn’t think gaming belongs in journalism, I think for this story, you could use it as a “what should Bana do?” kind of game. In the game it could say things like, “how should Bana occupy her time today?” and then it could give you options such as “read books, tweet, do a Facebook Live, etc.” In the game, when you clicked each of those options listed above, it would bring you to another set of options that would continue to help you make decisions within the game. Included in the game would be facts about Aleppo, facts about Bana and her mom/family and ways you can help people like her, Syrian refugees and the war in general. I would want it to also include pictures of Bana, her family and the war. The idea here is that the game would be educational and raise awareness of what this girl’s family is going through.
Unlike some of the games we looked at in class (ie: Gauging Your Distraction, Floppy Candidate, etc) I’d want this game to incorporate options for users, educational facts, and resources so if anyone else or anyone else’s families are going through this, they can have resources available to get help.
6. Computer-generated VR
For me, computer generated VR doesn’t really have a place in journalism. When we used the HTC Vive in class, no part of me felt like I was exercising my journalistic skills in any way. That experience was merely fun and games. There was no news, news gathering nor producing involved in the experience.
One of the biggest downsides of the HTC Vive is the price. If you order the Vive from HTC’s website, it’ll cost you $800 before tax. Included in that $800 is the headset, headphones, controllers, the base stations, and other accessories. While this bundle will come with some free games, others can be downloaded and/or paid for, depending on what you want.
The only people who can fully understand the experience of the Vive are people who buy one. No other computer-generated VR are even on the same playing field as the Vive. In my opinion, it’s very advanced compared to other VR programs, but as time goes on, I’m sure it’ll get better and more advanced.
Another big downside to the Vive is that not everyone has the huge space you need to set up in order to use it. You need an empty space in a living room or basement where you can walk around, swing your arms, etc and not have to worry about hitting something. Most houses/apartments don’t offer that kind of empty space.
When we used it in class, we were able to pretend we were chefs in a cooking-type game. We were also able to pretend we were in an “escape the room” type of game, where we looked for clues to try and figure out where they key to escape the room was. There were no stories here. The Vive is something purely fun to pass time.
To me, it seems like the Vive might be better used as a therapy for people who get highly anxious in certain situations. What I mean by that is maybe someone who can’t leave their house to go to the grocery store because they’re nervous, or someone who has post-traumatic stress disorder and doesn’t have enough courage to walk the streets…they could use the HTC Vive to interact virtually with others so they could re-learn how to deal with situations like those. The Vive could be a good way to practice triggering situations like that. As for journalism…there are no opportunities for computer-generated VR like the Vive.
8. 15 gifts travelers will actually want
This story talks about the best 15 gifts for people who like to travel. Included in the list are things like: keyless Bluetooth padlocks, SD card camera readers, Fitness Kits and Go-Pros.
For a story like this, I think the perfect technology to show it would be a wearable. Since the story is less detail oriented and more list-based, there wouldn’t be much reading necessary. There aren’t very many pictures attached to the article so it would be both simple and straight to the point.
In the article, I’d want to somehow be able to hyperlink the webpage where you could buy the items that are listed throughout the article. When you clicked the hyperlink on the Apple Watch within the article, I’d want it to open a webpage on the wearer’s iPhone. I could have this happen because Apple Watches are able to use data and Wi-Fi from whatever phone they’re connected to. It would be a quick and easy way to scan an article and purchase an item that’s mentioned in said article.
One of the biggest downsides to the Apple Watch, though, is the small screen size. Because of this, whoever writes the article would need to literally make this say, “15 gifts travelers want” and then make a bullet-pointed list with each item, a few details about it, the price and the hyperlink to buy it. Less is more on the Apple Watch and other like wearables.
Another really big downside is that Apple Watches can be upwards of $300 and can range anywhere from there to tens of thousands of dollars. Not everyone can afford something that basically can do everything an iPhone can do. I don’t think Apple Watches belong in journalism, but if they did, this is the perfect article to put on them.
9.) Sensors
Sensor journalism is a tricky topic and I have mixed reviews about if it belongs in journalism.
When we learned about sensors in class and read the article from Poynter about WNYC making a Cicada tracker, I didn’t really get it. I understood that the entire point of the article was gathering (and placing) data, but it didn’t seem important enough to be gathering data about, to me. The entire point of the Cicada tracker was to try and figure out when and what temperatures were the most inviting for the Cicadas so they could track it on a map — -but who cares?
For stories like that, I kind of think sensor journalism is a waste of time. This type of thing seems like something that a scientist or someone who studies nature would study, not a journalist. I understand wanting to have data to back up your story, but I don’t think a journalist should be the one gathering the data, in this instance.
I’m sure there are other stories where data would really solidify the other information published in a journalist’s article, but that data would be gathered by an official or someone who knows what they’re doing. Journalists gathering data seems like we’re taking someone else’s job just to say we can.
Don’t get me wrong. Anything a journalist can do to seem more credible is highly encouraged, but at the risk of stretching us (and our skills) too thin, I think sensor journalism is something that should be looked at with the utmost caution. It’s not that hard to find documents to back up the kind of data someone is trying to find to use as background information for articles. It’s also not hard to make phone calls to have officials or professionals speculate on hard to understand statistics and numbers.
For me, it just seems like a journalist should stick to what they’re good at, and should let other officials handle whatever they’re niche is. We shouldn’t try and become scientists just for a story. That’s ridiculous.