Ricochet

ONA08, the Online News Association’s national conference, has launched several sites online, where you can connect with others who will be in Washington, in person or in avatar, next week.

There’s:

• A Twitter feed that’s the “control tower” for all things ONA08 online

• An embeddable Twitter widget that collects all tweets tagged @ONA08 and #ONA08
• A pre-conference podcast series (RSS feed | iTunes subscription)
• A public bulletin board for discussing panels and workshops, arranging meetings, and making last-minute announcements
• A conference-focused Facebook group
• And the official ONA08 conference site, where you’ll find on-the-scene reports about ONA08 produced by the very talented student newsroom.

My team, the ONA08 Social Media Subcommittee, wants to make ONA08 as much about community as it is about industry. I hope you’ll join the conference online and in person. And if you want to get a hold of me, send me a message or reach me on Twitter.

The Subcommittee members are Mary Ann Chick Whiteside, who will be among those liveblogging the conference; Paul Hyland, who’s been a creative sounding board and instrumental in gathering volunteers for on-site help; and Steven Lubetkin, who’s putting in a tremendous effort producing the podcasts. This conference is made possible in no small part because of them.

Most freelancers will tell you when it comes to deciding who to write for, choose magazines. The pay better. And there’s something nice about seeing your name, your photos, your work on glossy — or if it’s a “green” publication, matte — textweight stock.

They’ll also tell you it’s good to develop relationships with editors. After all, getting assignments is as much about who you know as it is about your story idea.

But what if you’ve never pitched before? Writer’s Market and Writer’s Digest are two sources for beginners’ guidance. Freelance Success has morphed into a dynamic community of newish and experienced guns for hire. And MediaBistro’s popular writing classes provide in-person and online experience with feedback from working professionals.

There’s a lot you can learn online as well. Jason Tanz is posting a step-by-step blogged article about how landing a profile of “Adaptation” screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in Wired magazine. If you’re curious about the pitch process, check it out.

And to show you how quickly word spreads online, check out the Google search.

Once again, NOLA.com has been the go-to resource for those in New Orleans wanting local information about the progress and aftermath of Hurricane Gustav.

Currently, the site reports floodwater has spilled over the Plaquemines Parish levee and officials have ordered everyone out.

Thomas Broadus of Mississippi Public Broadcasting has been tweeting rapid-fire updates, the Houston Chronicle has set up a special section for storm coverage, and KDFM-TV in Beaumont, Texas, has been keeping local residents up-to-date.

Thanks to lessons learned after Hurricane Katrina, no one messed around in preparing for and reporting news of Hurricane Gustav. Some have even said the round-the-clock coverage and days of high alert have been a little too much.

The reaction might have been different had the hurricane made a direct hit.

As it is, the Gulf region is still not in the clear. NOAA reports there will be storm surge flooding of 10 to 14 feet in southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi, and as much as 17 inches of accumulated rain in northwestern Louisiana in the next three days.

Instead of watching helplessly, people have been aggregating online information useful to those seeking shelter, looking for loved ones, and wanting to know if their homes have been damaged. The Hurricane Information Center Wiki (formerly known as GustavWiki), Hurricane Gustav on You C It and Hurricane Gustav Resources are three of the bigger efforts.

It will be interesting to see how many of those directly affected by the storm have made use of these sites. There have been numerous reports of local power outages and lack of cell phone service. Is there a real-time map of active and inactive cell towers? So far I’ve not been able to find one.

Photo by mystarla/Flickr

John Zhu has some thoughtful advice for those who are thinking about leaving the journalism profession. If you’re on the fence, his entry, “How to (Voluntarily) Become an Ex-Journalist” is worth a read.

Hat tip to Kiyoshi Martinez for pointing out that link.

Apologies for not writing more in the last few weeks. Between work, preparation for the upcoming ONA conference (I’m speaking on a panel about fact checking), and trying to cram Django and Rails, I’ve not had as much time as I’d like to write original material.

I have, however, been bookmarking like crazy on Delicious. I’ve also had the opportunity to interview two bright lights in journalism: freelance writer and author David Hochman, and Erica “Graphic Designr” Smith.

They both had some insightful things to say about fearlessly forging your own path in the news business. I hope to post their interviews on Labor Day, so be sure to check back.

Faithful Poynter Online readers may have seen last Thursday’s article describing how Twitter buzz helped the Chicago Tribune break a story.

The Trib’s made a concerted, focused effort to incorporate social media as part of its news gathering and audience building. Perhaps the most brilliant part of the strategy has been to create Colonel Tribune, a persona that represents the company in on Digg, Twitter and elsewhere.

Since introducing the Colonel six months ago, the Tribune has reportedly seen an eight percent increase in pageviews. Not bad. (Make of the Alexa graph what you will.)

In this interview by marketing specialist Andy Sernovitz, Daniel Honigman and Bill Adee of the Tribune describe how they made Colonel Tribune a media star. Heck, he’s even going to SXSW 2009 as an invited panelist.

Want to know what the local audience thinks of the Colonel? Read on.

• Windy Citizen
• Huffington Post Chicago
• sociALL Media
• poise.cc
• Online Marketer Blog
• Quigblog

NBC may have a death grip on the U.S. broadcast of the Summer Olympics, but that hasn’t stopped other outlets from coming up with different ways to cover the Beijing Games online. Here are a few medal-contending approaches you may have missed.

“Soaring Over the Bar” from the New York Times
American gymnast Justin Spring explains the mechanics of some of his tricks (moves) on the high bar in this combo news graphic-video-audio feature. The video’s a little grainy and the difficulty legend in the lower left-hand corner could do a better job (is A the hardest or the easiest?), but we give the news organization props for another great interactive. Go Team NYT.

“Now Diving: Sir Isaac Newton” from The Wall Street Journal
With the Journal’s reputation as the country’s dominant business news outlet and as the home of personal tech guru Walt Mossberg, it’s easy to forget they cover other subjects too.

This sparkling article by Barry Newman explains the evolution of the low-tech DiveCam in the high-tech Water Cube. It also includes an interactive graphic that demonstrates how the DiveCam works. Click to watch the diver plunge into the pool over … and over …. It’s geeky, but so much fun. Go Team WSJ.

“Off the Wall: Foot Massage” from the Associated Press
(Go to the “Interactives” box, scroll down and click the title)
Say what you want about the Associated Press’s business policies, their reporters are still top contenders in solid reporting and creative story ideas. This video by John Marshall is a gem of the latter category.

Marshall has been sampling Beijing’s culture outside the Olympic venues in a video series called “Off The Wall.” In this piece, he took his tired dogs to a local foot massage spa and got an experience much different than he expected. Listen to the nat sound and the narrative. It’ll make you smile. Go Team AP.

Fourth-Place Medal’s Investigative Unit from Yahoo Sports
A team of Yahoos has been writing a rip-roaring Olympics blog and doing what bloggers to best: acting on reader questions. They call the posts “Olympic mysteries.” So far they’ve answered:

• Who was that mas linda Paraguan marching in the opening ceremony?
• Where was swimmer Cullen Jones during the rowdy 4×100 men’s relay celebration that kept Michael Phelps’s gold medal record hopes alive and solidified Jason Lezak’s reputation as the team’s strongest closer?
• Why do divers shower between each dive?
• What’s that black stuff on beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh’s shoulder?
• And from a question asked last night during Michael Phelps’s 200 meter IM race, what’s on the golden Olympian’s iPod playlist?

The off-the-cuff blog has an enthusiastic following, judging by reader comments. Expect live-blogging and reader reaction again tonight as Phelps whips through water in the 100 meter fly, and women take to the track in the 10,000 meter final. Go Team 4PM.

Using public records data for reporting isn’t new. Neither is using computers to pore through information to find patterns. But as news organizations look for more ways to offer public records to readers, new takes on old standbys keep popping up.

The pet names database, a favorite of newspaper and TV websites, got a fresh twist from the Los Angeles Times this week by offering more than the standard search-and-list of names, breeds and locations. On it, you’ll find collections of interesting dog names as chosen by the staff, a common names tag cloud, maps of the breeds and names by ZIP code, a tie-in with the reader photos page, and space for user comments.

Times database developer Ben Welsh says the project was a way for him to learn how to navigate through Los Angeles’ complex bureaucracy.

Welsh moved to L.A. from Washington, D.C. several months ago. “When I got here, I knew that learning how many cities make up L.A. County and how the different services get managed was going to be something I needed to get skilled at, so I thought: I need kind of a test case,” he says. The dog names database became his experiment.

The first step was to figure out which offices held the records, then to request the information in accordance with the California Public Records Act. To avoid being turned down for privacy concerns, “I made sure in my earliest communications with people, kind of the first round, to say I don’t want the address of the owner, but I do want their ZIP code,” Welsh says.

Data from each agency was merged into a single file, then the development stage began. Welsh built the database on Django, an open-source development tool created at the Lawrence Journal-World and based on the Python programming language.

Though Welsh says he tries not to advocate one framework or language over another, he personally prefers Django for two reasons: he knows Python, and Django instantly produces a form that allows anyone, not just people with programming skills, to enter data.

That said, the pets database is only the second Times project to be developed on Django. Other programmers at the news company have used Ruby on Rails for site sections including the photo-driven Hollywood Backlot and the L.A. listings and review section, The Guide.

“It’s clear that the people who made (Django) worked in a newsroom,” Welsh says. In tight-deadline situations, having many people working on different aspects of a project at the same time is imperative. On the same day the backend database was created, reporters and researchers began entering data.

“And then simultaneously as they’re working on entry, the developer can also be working on building the public-facing site, which is where you want to invest your most resources, because that’s going to decide whether you sink or swim,” Welsh says.

Though Welsh couldn’t estimate how long the project took from the first public information request to official launch, he says he dedicated most of about two or three weeks to development once the database became top priority.

The project came together so quickly, in part, because it had been based on a prior effort, a database of California soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan that was launched Memorial Day weekend.

“We were able to save effort by borrowing a lot of the layout and stuff, but not everything, from the ‘War Dead’ design and they have a lot of similarities if you’ve used the two,” Welsh says. “And that was sort of an investment that paid off the second time around.”

A new feature on the dog names database is the list of similar names that appears on each name page. The list is created using the Soundex function in mySQL.

Soundex is a patented phoentic algorithm that converts words into numeric code that can then be used to search for similar-sounding words.

Welsh says he applied the Soundex function in “what’s called a custom manager in the Django code that I wrote that just has a SQL statement that passes in whatever that current name is in the URL into the database and finds names that have a similar Soundex score.”

Among the list of interesting dog names is “Pick of the Litter (Editor’s Choice).” In it, you’ll find Welsh’s selections for “the weirdest, funniest, best names in Los Angeles.”

They include Otis, and Chandler (together, the name of the L.A. Times founder), Dr. Zaius, and several names that may be familiar to Django fans.

“It was also an opportunity to give a tongue-in-cheek shoutout to the Lawrence, Kansas, guys,” Welsh says.

The interesting dog names categories started as “just fiddling through the data and seeing the fun ones and wanting to share that with other people,” Welsh says.

“I think for us, also, there was a desire to find ways to package the information so that it would be useful or be topical for other bloggers on our site, where if we have a list of the presidential names, maybe Andy Malcolm would like to write about it at ‘Top of the Ticket,’ or if we have a list of superhero names, it might fit on our superhero blog — just kind of thinking what are the things that the paper covers and that people come to us for and can we find names in there that sort of line up with that.”

What began as an exercise in learning the L.A. County records system has become a way for Welsh to connect with readers. And he says reader comments, especially those left on the “California’s War Dead” database have been the most rewarding and touching aspect of his work so far.

“The people, to whatever degree, trust the site, or they think it’s worthy of depositing information like that, which is very sensitive and very personal.

“Just the fact that someone felt comfortable enough to do that makes me feel like we must’ve done something right. I’m not exactly sure what, but something.”

“The pet name database is a staple of computer-assisted reporting.”

Derek Willis, Web developer, IRE member

Examples of online pet names databases abound.

Here are a few, listed Woody Allen-style. Feel free to add others in comments.

• Arizona Republic pet names database
• Des Moines Register pet names database
• Kansas City Star cat names database
• The (Tacoma) News-Tribune pet names database and related story
• San Francisco Chronicle pet name popularity search
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch pet database
• Tampa Bay Online pet names database
• WCMH-TV (Columbus, Ohio) pet database

Some Ricochet readers have emailed me to express their appreciation for what’s become known as the “Landing on Your Feet List.”

You say you like the upbeat and forward-looking attitude of the post, and I thank you. But you also say you feel angry and blind-sided by widespread layoffs and want to know where you can let loose about the state of the industry at large.

Readers are welcome to post something in the moderated comments here with the usual caveats about language and personal threats. There are plenty of other places to vent as well, all well-read:

• CJR, the Columbia Journalism Review, has called for your thoughts in 1,500 words or less. So far, the entries have been sober.
• If you’re in the mood to rant without revealing your name, Kiyoshi Martinez’s AngryJournalist.com is the place for you. Anonymity guaranteed, according to the site.
• Romenesko at Poynter Online has been cataloging the slow demise of the newspaper industry and is considered one of the go-to sites for the latest trade news and gossip. Plenty of comments have been logged there.
• LA Times employees have been turning to TellZell for cathartic release. Other Tribune Co. blogs are linked in the “Everybody Has a Zell Sucks Blog” section.

Do you have a preferred site? Feel free to add it in comments.

With Iraq at the forefront of political news, lots of people are asking how and when the U.S. can get itself out. Inevitably some people are also asking, “How did we get here?”

The staff of the left-leaning magazine Mother Jones asked the same question several years ago and created an interactive timeline, “Lie by Lie,” in 2006. It is a tremendous feat of research, reporting and design. And instead of letting the project languish after launch, it’s been updated through Feb. 14, 2008.

Timelines have always been useful for presenting a series of events in linear order. With the Web’s added benefit of linking and interaction, timelines can now be a rich storytelling format that include massive amounts of information: data, photos, video, maps and links to other websites.

“Lie by Lie” is an elegant execution, one that gives readers many ways of exploring a deep and difficult subject. Craig Stoltz at Web 2.Oh Really has an interesting analysis of the timeline including this caveat:

It proves you can advance a political agenda with digital journalism just as easily as you can in the analog world. Edit, select, tweak, ignore. . .and you can assemble your own version of history, just as certainly as the wingnuts at The Washington Times or the pinkos at the New York Times.

Other examples of timelines:

• Timelinescience, which shows developments in scientific thought over 1,000 years
• The evolution of the monarchy in England
• Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination
• HIV and AIDS milestones

If you want to explore further, Jan Battem of the Netherlands has compiled a timeline index.