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Pretty good work. My thoughts on the visualization: Criticisms: 1) The moving around over the city skyline is slick and fun, but I doubt it conveys much usefu

Pretty good work. My thoughts on the visualization: Criticisms: 1) The moving around over the city skyline is slick and fun, but I doubt it conveys much useful information. I'd rather see the growth of new building over time. In visualization, motion should convey some meaning. Here it doesn't seem to. 2) It's important for visualizations to convey both anecdotal information (achieved through the before/after snapshots). But it's also important to convey quantitative information, magnitude and directions of changes. I don't detect anything like that here, even though there is quantitative information embedded in the text (e.g. "Population is up 2,000, but 600 poor people have left"). Numbers are good, visualizations that artfully convey the magnitude and direction of relevant numbers are even better. It's rare to have news narrative that can't be improved by conveying the quantities involved. Things they did right: 1) The before/after snapshots are useful and pack a punch. 2) Inclusive. The visualization includes a a variety of changes and doesn't get sucked down a narrowly focused rabbit hole. 3) Simplicity. It's not a data dump. The visualization does a decent job of conveying single themes without including unnecessary extra. It may go too far with this though (see criticism #2 above). Overall, I look forward to more visualizations like this from NYT and other media outlets.

busterarm 13y ago
I'm with you that it was mostly flashy without useful information. I actually hadn't really noticed just how much new construction had been going on in my neighborhood. I would have loved if the NYT provided something that I could actually interact with and form some conclusions of my own. It seems like good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations -- with most of these stories there hasn't really been much of a story. If they provided something like that, I would actually actively look at their site again, rather than follow the occasional linkbait there.
- benackles 13y ago
  How do you qualify "good journalism"? Data visualization is a powerful tool for story telling and the NYT has been at the forefront of this revolution in news. "Good journalism" is telling a story accurately and in a format that people can understand. Your claim that "good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations" seems to denigrate the work of data scientists such as Mike Bostock who are transforming news in a very meaningful way. How does data visualization qualify as "link bait" in the derogatory sense of the word? [1] http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/
  - busterarm 13y ago
    I don't mean "link bait" in quite the derogatory sense it's usually used (though slightly). I mean it in the sense that other than links from aggregator sites with provocative titles, there is absolutely no reason that I would ever be on the NY Times' site. They've done some pretty serious damage to their reputation in recent years and newspapers are on the decline anyway. While I'm sure these stories are a big hit for them, I don't really feel like I gained anything from my time spent on the site. It looks cool and the work done in data visualization is _very_ cool, but I want to look at some of the data. I want to dig down and look at the parts of data that are interesting to me. So yes, data scientists are transforming news, but they're still failing to deliver a product that I want..and something that I think a lot of people want now. People used to look to newspapers as their go-to information source for current events. Oh the hours of my life that I've spent in a library looking at microfiche. Thankfully we don't have to do that anymore, but instead of going to the NY Times still, most of us go to wikipedia and follow links from there. The NY Times is actually in a position to provide something that would give them some relevance and make people want to use their resources to find out things. This site, however, was little more than entertainment. They could even just present a platform to crowdsource information collection about the locations (pictures of the locations over the years, places to put links to building and tax records, etc) and I would be totally pleased with it. Just give me some interaction with the data.
    - untog 13y ago
      Just give me some interaction with the data. Thing is, most people don't want that. They want something that is the result of digesting that data and pulling out relevant conclusions, presented in a clear and easy to comprehend narrative.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        If you design things on the basis of what you think most people want, you end up with nothing special. People probably won't complain much, as it is what they expected, but it is unlikely to excite or interest them very much.
- benackles 13y ago
  There are many other examples of the New York Times providing interactive data visualizations which do exactly what you're talking about. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/convention-word-counts.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/co... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/pa... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/20/movies/among-the-oscar-contenders-a-host-of-connections.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/20/movies/among-t...
- mason55 13y ago
  > It seems like good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations Slate just wrote an article about this at the end of the week: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/snow_fall_the_jockey_the_scourge_of_the_new_york_times_bell_and_whistle.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/...
jseliger 13y ago
1) The moving around over the city skyline is slick and fun, but I doubt it conveys much useful information. I actually live in New York and it conveyed a lot of useful information for me, because I know my immediate neighborhood very well, along with a few others, but don't have a strong geographic sense of how various neighborhoods connect with each other. The swoops demonstrate how one neighborhood changes into another through space.

busterarm 13y ago

I'm with you that it was mostly flashy without useful information. I actually hadn't really noticed just how much new construction had been going on in my neighborhood. I would have loved if the NYT provided something that I could actually interact with and form some conclusions of my own. It seems like good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations -- with most of these stories there hasn't really been much of a story. If they provided something like that, I would actually actively look at their site again, rather than follow the occasional linkbait there.

benackles 13y ago
How do you qualify "good journalism"? Data visualization is a powerful tool for story telling and the NYT has been at the forefront of this revolution in news. "Good journalism" is telling a story accurately and in a format that people can understand. Your claim that "good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations" seems to denigrate the work of data scientists such as Mike Bostock who are transforming news in a very meaningful way. How does data visualization qualify as "link bait" in the derogatory sense of the word? [1] http://bost.ocks.org/mike/ http://bost.ocks.org/mike/
- busterarm 13y ago
  I don't mean "link bait" in quite the derogatory sense it's usually used (though slightly). I mean it in the sense that other than links from aggregator sites with provocative titles, there is absolutely no reason that I would ever be on the NY Times' site. They've done some pretty serious damage to their reputation in recent years and newspapers are on the decline anyway. While I'm sure these stories are a big hit for them, I don't really feel like I gained anything from my time spent on the site. It looks cool and the work done in data visualization is _very_ cool, but I want to look at some of the data. I want to dig down and look at the parts of data that are interesting to me. So yes, data scientists are transforming news, but they're still failing to deliver a product that I want..and something that I think a lot of people want now. People used to look to newspapers as their go-to information source for current events. Oh the hours of my life that I've spent in a library looking at microfiche. Thankfully we don't have to do that anymore, but instead of going to the NY Times still, most of us go to wikipedia and follow links from there. The NY Times is actually in a position to provide something that would give them some relevance and make people want to use their resources to find out things. This site, however, was little more than entertainment. They could even just present a platform to crowdsource information collection about the locations (pictures of the locations over the years, places to put links to building and tax records, etc) and I would be totally pleased with it. Just give me some interaction with the data.
  - untog 13y ago
    Just give me some interaction with the data. Thing is, most people don't want that. They want something that is the result of digesting that data and pulling out relevant conclusions, presented in a clear and easy to comprehend narrative.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      If you design things on the basis of what you think most people want, you end up with nothing special. People probably won't complain much, as it is what they expected, but it is unlikely to excite or interest them very much.
benackles 13y ago
There are many other examples of the New York Times providing interactive data visualizations which do exactly what you're talking about. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/convention-word-counts.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/06/us/politics/co... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/pa... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/20/movies/among-the-oscar-contenders-a-host-of-connections.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/20/movies/among-t...
mason55 13y ago
> It seems like good journalism has taken a back seat to flashy visualizations Slate just wrote an article about this at the end of the week: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/snow_fall_the_jockey_the_scourge_of_the_new_york_times_bell_and_whistle.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/08/...

jseliger 13y ago

1) The moving around over the city skyline is slick and fun, but I doubt it conveys much useful information. I actually live in New York and it conveyed a lot of useful information for me, because I know my immediate neighborhood very well, along with a few others, but don't have a strong geographic sense of how various neighborhoods connect with each other. The swoops demonstrate how one neighborhood changes into another through space.