3 ms·

What's the difference between news and information? Is it just freshness? Is the story format really the best way to convey the state of the world to the indivi

What's the difference between news and information? Is it just freshness? Is the story format really the best way to convey the state of the world to the individual person on the other end of the wire, or is it just the best format for broadcast? My main frustration with The News is the story format. Not only do I have to spend the mental energy of reading the story, but I have to spend _more_ mental energy unraveling the narrative into its primary sources. Often that's actually impossible to do and I end up giving up and not reading the rest of the story.

danso 14y ago
Right...which is the purpose of having devs in the newsroom, to increase the variety of storytelling formats that the newsroom has, particularly for the online medium. Unfortunately, as most newsrooms have journalists trained almost exclusively in the narrative format, it's not a trivial task to conceive stories that are told differently than they are in print.
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  I don't just object to the narrative format, I object to telling stories. I don't want a more interactive newspaper, I want a more accessible Bloomberg terminal. Everyblock seems to be a step in this direction, and I wholeheartedly approve.
  - knowtheory 14y ago
    mm. I don't think what you want and what Dan Sinker or Dan Nguyen are talking about is different from what you want. There's a "Show Your Work" movement in the news+tech community that's pretty popular, and making its way into stories too. Check out http://www.propublica.org/article/why-cant-linda-carswell-get-her-husbands-heart-back#annotated http://www.propublica.org/article/why-cant-linda-carswell-ge... for example.
    - rabidsnail 14y ago
      Very cool. Are those annotations crawlable? Is there an RDF schema for those kinds of snippets? PS: While this is a very small step in the right direction, it's very small.
dansinker 14y ago
I'd say that the difference between "news" and "information" isn't freshness, but relevancy. There's a lot of information out there that doesn't have relevancy to a user. When it does, that information transitions from simply being "information" into "news." In terms of story, we are as a culture oriented toward story and narrative. I think that's been true for forever. Cave paintings are remnants of ancient narratives (and of the point that information (there are buffaloes) becomes news (there are buffaloes near us, so we killed them) in the same way that newspapers reflect the remnants of more recent narratives and how all sorts of information delivery vehicles now contain narratives today. The key thing about The News today though is that it's still pretty reflective of old forms, and that's probably where your frustration with the story format comes in. Those old forms actually made sense when they were created, in part because they reflected the needs of the delivery systems. Of course now the needs of, say, telegraphs during the civil war (which is where the "reverse pyramid" system was created) is a silly way to make your news. Which is why what some newsrooms and devs are doing to blow up the story, to start thinking about how to put information across in ways that are exciting and new and reflective both of medium but also representational (and respectful) of the information itself is pretty damn kick-ass. I'm thinking of something like this: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/11/sports/basketball/nba-shot-analysis.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/11/sports/basketb... There's actually a lot of narrative there, but it's narrative in a very different way than we'd normally think about it. There's a ton of information there as well, but it's been touched in really thoughtful ways. Things like this, which are happening more and more every day, make me super excited. PS. WOW that was a long answer.
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  I think we're saying basically the same thing, but you're more patient than I am (and possibly more willing to compromise).
  - dansinker 14y ago
    Haha. You are probably correct on both fronts.

danso 14y ago

Right...which is the purpose of having devs in the newsroom, to increase the variety of storytelling formats that the newsroom has, particularly for the online medium. Unfortunately, as most newsrooms have journalists trained almost exclusively in the narrative format, it's not a trivial task to conceive stories that are told differently than they are in print.

rabidsnail 14y ago
I don't just object to the narrative format, I object to telling stories. I don't want a more interactive newspaper, I want a more accessible Bloomberg terminal. Everyblock seems to be a step in this direction, and I wholeheartedly approve.
- knowtheory 14y ago
  mm. I don't think what you want and what Dan Sinker or Dan Nguyen are talking about is different from what you want. There's a "Show Your Work" movement in the news+tech community that's pretty popular, and making its way into stories too. Check out http://www.propublica.org/article/why-cant-linda-carswell-get-her-husbands-heart-back#annotated http://www.propublica.org/article/why-cant-linda-carswell-ge... for example.
  - rabidsnail 14y ago
    Very cool. Are those annotations crawlable? Is there an RDF schema for those kinds of snippets? PS: While this is a very small step in the right direction, it's very small.

dansinker 14y ago

I'd say that the difference between "news" and "information" isn't freshness, but relevancy. There's a lot of information out there that doesn't have relevancy to a user. When it does, that information transitions from simply being "information" into "news." In terms of story, we are as a culture oriented toward story and narrative. I think that's been true for forever. Cave paintings are remnants of ancient narratives (and of the point that information (there are buffaloes) becomes news (there are buffaloes near us, so we killed them) in the same way that newspapers reflect the remnants of more recent narratives and how all sorts of information delivery vehicles now contain narratives today. The key thing about The News today though is that it's still pretty reflective of old forms, and that's probably where your frustration with the story format comes in. Those old forms actually made sense when they were created, in part because they reflected the needs of the delivery systems. Of course now the needs of, say, telegraphs during the civil war (which is where the "reverse pyramid" system was created) is a silly way to make your news. Which is why what some newsrooms and devs are doing to blow up the story, to start thinking about how to put information across in ways that are exciting and new and reflective both of medium but also representational (and respectful) of the information itself is pretty damn kick-ass. I'm thinking of something like this: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/11/sports/basketball/nba-shot-analysis.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/11/sports/basketb... There's actually a lot of narrative there, but it's narrative in a very different way than we'd normally think about it. There's a ton of information there as well, but it's been touched in really thoughtful ways. Things like this, which are happening more and more every day, make me super excited. PS. WOW that was a long answer.

rabidsnail 14y ago
I think we're saying basically the same thing, but you're more patient than I am (and possibly more willing to compromise).
- dansinker 14y ago
  Haha. You are probably correct on both fronts.