Good evening everyone, we're so glad to
have you here and welcome to the sixth
annual open studio night for those of us
for those of you who don't know us well
studio 20 is a graduate program that I
direct it's focused on innovation in
journalism and it's digital first and
user centric we emphasize project-based
learning with our media partners I
sometimes describe studio 20 as sort of
like a consulting group that gets paid
in problems and our graduates had taken
that phrase paid in problems and they
made that the name of their Facebook
group paid in problems so we asked our
media partners to give us custody of a
juicy problem that we can dig into and
research and hopefully solve for them
like one of tonight's problems how do
you launch the Huffington Post in China
when you have the Great Firewall to
contend with that's a good problem and
we have some very high-quality partners
as you can see if you take a look at the
program which we made for you the work
you're going to hear about tonight
started with good juicy problems that
our media partners donated to those they
donate us the problem we donate them the
solutions everybody learns and everybody
wins and so tonight is the culmination
of that our program tonight consists of
nine short presentations by our
graduating students that are sitting
over there then we're gonna have a brief
news announcement breaking news
commencement and then Josh Benton the
director of Neiman lab is going to do
his annual slideshow called the year in
innovation in journalism which is what
Nieman lab if you know it writes about
and studies the entire year then you can
stay and drink with us if you'd like
so this group here is friends and family
of our graduating students it's people
from our partner organizations it's
people from the digital journalism
community of New York and it's also
people who follow me on Twitter and said
begged to come which is which is always
cool the hashtag is hashtag studio 20
and we are almost ready for our first
presenter so that person would be wise
to come up now we certainly encourage
tweeting these presentations are on the
record they are the result of at least
four months and often more like six
months of work and they are entirely the
design of the students who are
presenting we help them find partners or
they find them on their own and then
they come up with the project and we
guide them through Fernanda are you
ready yes I am the floor is yours good
evening everyone I'm here to present my
graduate project
mrs. Portugal mobile phones are with us
everywhere we go they are present in the
good and bad moments of our lives and we
feel very attached to them but the way
we experience news on our phones has yet
a lot to improve it is common to look at
our screens and see things like this
crammed and small images over full of
information it's a bad user experience
usually newsrooms are not thinking
information to be mobile first and here
I say that mobile first is vertical
first because we hold our phones
vertically that's what feels natural for
us when we design content for mobile we
should design for portrait and not
landscape mode that's what I mean by
vertical first my project experimented
with images videos and charts to
understand how to adapt content
for mobile vertical screen the purpose
of this research was to increase what I
call vertical literacy newsrooms and
implement a best practices guide for
journalists to introduce this type of
content in their workflow the amount of
mobile phones in the world has been
growing significantly as well as the
amount of people that accessed news on
these devices around for Prada around 50
percent of smartphone users in the UK
and us already accessed news via mobile
phones which is an increase of almost 20
percent only in the past three years
social networks have been not only
pushing newsrooms to gather content on
smartphones they're also pressing them
to design content to be vertical
snapchat and now Instagram stories have
been leading the way the Financial Times
is aware of this trend and decided to
partner with me to make this project
happen the research involved the
production of 10 Instagram stories to
understand how to think content to be
displayed on a vertical screen and how
the FT audience would react to it before
going deep into the research I want to
show you how Instagram stories work
stories live inside the Instagram app
the circles on the top are accounts you
can click to see a story you can click
on the right to go forward on the left
to go backwards you can also hyperlink a
slide you swipe up and go to a web page
I have learned a lot of with this
research and here's some key takeaways
first I'm going to talk about the design
the most difficult part of this research
was to think how to help to arrange
content for a vertical screen so every
time was producing a new story I kept
asking myself how do users one content
to be displayed on their phones this
question helped me focus on the main
goal of this research which is to
improve users experience on their mobile
phones I also learned how difficult it
is designed for different screen sizes
this table for example shows the
different resolutions for three iPhone
models now imagine having to think for
all types of smartphones in the world
Kelly what I did on premiere which was
my editing platform was to use the
resolution of the iPhone 6s and
concentrate the most important
information in the inner rectangle as
you can see on this image also in
vertical less is more let's look at this
example I took these screenshots from a
story I did about women in Wisconsin
that voted for Trump the first image is
how it appeared on Instagram the second
image how it appeared in the FT website
and what matters here is her interview
it's what she talks about the
president-elect how she behaves during
it and this lady talks about Trump with
a lot of emotion and you can see the
emotion much clearer on the vertical cut
first her face her eyes are closer to
ours makes it easier to connect with her
and second and most importantly there
are no distractions there's no table or
American flag or guy in the background
distracts the user from what really
matters in this story this research also
helped the FT and I understand about
audience behavior on Instagram stories
there was an average of 40 percent
completion rate which means that around
40 percent of the people that clicked to
see the story finished it and also we
had around 400 people swiping up on
Instagram stories to go to the FT page
this proved to be another really good
way to drive traffic to the website now
something interesting that I observed
about the story's performances half the
posts that I worked on were related to
politics if we compare the political
ones with the feature stories the
political ones have better completion
rates however view is appreciated when
we delivered beautifully crafted images
and unique storylines they sent us many
more praising messages when we posted
these featured stories here are some of
the messages that we received the second
is by far my favorite the user seems
very impressed by how the FT is using
Instagram stories there for both
political and feature stories are
relevant for the audience and newsrooms
should balance them together in the
platform not only we received positive
messages the Financial Times Instagram
following
significant increase during this
research this proves that keeping a
constant and innovative presence in this
platform helps to attract followers no
doubt that mobile phones have become a
standard platform to get news and
because of the closeness we share with
these devices the way we display
information has also to be adapted to
sustain this relationship social
networks have been helping journalists
to maximize the storytelling of mobile
and the more we experiment with content
the easiest it will be to make a
successful transition to the vertical
screen may we leave here today with our
phones in hand planning our next steps
to shift how we address news from a
horizontal to a vertical first approach
thank you all for coming here tonight I
would also like to thank my family and
friends Jake ELISA and Lila from the FT
Zoe J in my incredible classmates if you
want to continue the conversation around
vertical content shoot me tweet or an
email thank you while we're getting
ready for the next presentation I
traditionally make a few marks about the
one we just heard and for Fernandes I
want to point out that studio 20 is
increasingly a global program we draw
people from all over the world but as
our network of graduates grows we also
have people working around the world and
Fernandez project began when one of our
graduates who's working on the social
media team in London for the Financial
Times said we need some projects and
it's the fact that we have graduates
around the world now that we can also
start to do projects around the world we
have a couple of those to share with you
today
Igor who's from Brazil are you ready yes
I am
hello everyone I'm Igor kaha school and
this is Elly my final project for studio
20 with The Wall Street Journal as my
partner this is the Wall Street Journal
newsroom more precisely it's the part of
it known as the hub it's the central
nervous system of the whole operation
where editors decide what goes into push
notifications the front page the app and
social media every Friday the people in
charge of social media have to get ready
for the weekend when staff and content
output is lower this process takes at
past a couple of hours sometimes
involving more than one person and is
done manually consists of scheduling
articles that did well during the week
and will still be relevant first things
that came to mind when observing this
process was it takes a disproportionate
amount of time to get over with around 2
to 3 hours depending on the person and
there's hardly an effective way to do it
it was also one of the situations where
content got surfaced again and it took a
lot of effort to find the appropriate
stories to do it this led me to the
insight that there were a lot of
articles in the massive output of the
journal that were being simply
underutilized because of the lack of an
easy way to find them The Wall Street
Journal as other media properties needed
to do a better job to extract value from
existing articles take a look at these
two charts they come from the New York
Times innovation report from 2 years ago
on the top the percentage of views on
the typical Times story measured by time
as you can see most of it happens on the
first few days after publishing the
second chart shows an example of
evergreen a story that generates views
and remains relevant for users long into
the future a high quality story red
means a chance of converting a regular
reader into a subscriber and also brings
in some ad dollars this is what I'm
doing with Ellie I built a tool that
closes the cracks through which good
content is lost by keeping it in a place
where it's readily accessible searchable
and filter
it also makes it easy to surface back up
again
in case you're wondering and the icon
didn't tip you the name comes from
elephant because as you all know an
elephant never forgets this is how it
works a script taps into the analytics
platform being used by the publisher in
this case parsley to find the articles
and stores them into a database that
database is accessed through a web
application in which the editor can see
all the most recently added stories
filter by section or search by keyword
after selecting the stories that fit
editorial criteria the journalist can
publish them to social media which is
done via social flow as you can see it's
all very simple meant to be
straightforward and easy to use the most
important part of it is running in the
background
it's what's feeding the database as the
Wall Street Journal is a huge
organization we needed to make this run
with as little human intervention as
possible training dozens of editors to
manually add storage to this tool was
out of the question
my initial hypothesis after spending
part of the summer working at the
journal and keeping an eye on metrics
was that doing well for two days in a
row seemed like a good indicator of
evergreen potential looking at it on
parsley their traffic would look like
the two bar charts you see on the bottom
here and how did that pan out it works
the hypothesis was proved partially
right after some time analyzing what the
algorithm fed into that database I had
to make some changes turns out that
pretty much every big story does well
for two days in a row at the journal in
part due to the audience profile that is
that of a global organization currently
stories that are doing well for at least
three days in a row are fed into the
system in parsley chart terms the
stories that look like those at the
bottom also after experimenting with
just that one rule I realized that
articles from sections that have a high
density of Evergreen such as life and
culture weren't being registered as they
weren't generating enough traffic to
reach the overall
top 15 of most viewed articles I
therefore started breaking down those
sections in particular so that we could
get those articles and it's been working
pretty well in future development it
seems to me that treating all particular
sections like that will need even better
results during development of the
user-facing part of this project
execution has been improved several
times over using feedback from people at
the journal to ensure that the tool
would be useful for and usable by
editors on top is how it started out at
the bottom is how it's looking right now
features were included to help inform
editorial decisions such as the
incorporation of analytics and publish
dates in conclusion it's very important
that news companies take advantage of
the opportunities that come from having
longer living content in the digital
space there's money to be made and users
to be served by using evergreen more
efficiently and it is possible to
automatically harvest that content
though parameters can always be improved
and getting back to the weekend
scheduling thing that started out all of
this according to early testing early
helps cut time spent doing it by order
of at least a half depending on who's
doing it and also helps with a variety
of articles being resurfaced if you work
in audience engagement or anywhere in
media you know how useful it would be to
have a tool like this the code is
available publicly on the github on your
screen if you think that's interesting
for you grab it take a look if you're
interested dropping your line you can
see my email on the screen right now or
just message me on Twitter I would first
like to thank my wife Gabby without you
I would not have been able to keep it
together I would also like to thank Todd
Carla Tyler and Erin from the journal
for the opportunity time devoted and
thoughtful input and finally to my
studio 20 professors and awesome
colleagues thank you
Thank You Igor many of my students can
complete this sentence the simplest way
to add value is to save the user time
and that's what Igor did in his project
that's one of the reasons I'm so excited
about it I also teach them a formula for
innovation that ed Williams the founder
of Twitter and several other successful
companies as he says if you want to
create innovation take something people
already want to do and remove steps and
that's what Igor did in his project with
le he removes steps for surfacing
evergreen content Steve are you ready
it's yours my name is Steve Rosso and
I'm going to show you a video you just
watched the clip from a game called
Counter Strike global Offensive
welcome to eSports what is eSports
professional competitive video gaming it
may be one of world's best-kept secrets
many people know of it but a lot a lot
of people don't have any idea what it is
among Millennials eSports is as popular
as baseball and ice hockey with 22
percent watching it the industry is
expected to grow at a rate of 30 percent
in the following five years the
tournament where gamers play incredibly
popular games which are projected that
onto massive screens are held in
gigantic stadiums with thousands
watching live and millions watch on
their own computers from home let's
emphasize this point a little bit the
population of the United States is
around 225 million the number of people
who follow eSports is around 300 million
soon each sports dia is expected to
surpass American population that's no
small feat for it for this new virtual
world and journalism is no stranger to
virtual experiences when we think of VR
and its applications to journalism the
majority of the products that come to
mind revolve around footage shot by a
360 camera with the user given the
freedom to observe freely his
surroundings and get an immersive
experience that couldn't be achieved
before the technology came along you
wear your VR glasses and suddenly you're
in the middle of the scene this is a
fantastic medium that the users will
come to experience more and more when
dealing with the news that take place in
the world outside our windows as as time
goes by more people will be getting VR
headsets every day letting everyone
experience the real world in this
thrilling manner but the real world
isn't the only world that journalism
covers my project for which I partnered
with the daily dot takes VR and
implements into the coverage of eSports
which itself exists in a virtual world
my product is the method of presenting
eSports highlights to be watched with VR
glasses as if you're right there in the
middle of the action here you can see a
spectator watching the highlight I just
showed you with VR glasses using my
product this is only a flat clip of what
he's seeing but he is right there in the
middle of the virtual world surrounded
by the gunfire and the action he is part
of that world not ours the product gives
you an immersive and unique experience
with it we're not around you but the
game's characters are if you're
interested in watching what I built with
VR glasses as its intended feel free to
say hi after the presentation this bad
boy will be with me like all other
sports eSports has its own branch of
journalism coverage of eSports events is
one of the key topics of interest of
that branch visit the Facebook page of
any eSports Division of a news
organization and you'll see highlights
of the games videos showing the
atmosphere in the stadiums and all sorts
of visuals that do their best to make
you experience the events to their
fullest if you're a football fan you
would remember this iconic moment the
helmet catch a fantastic play that led
to the Giants game winning touchdown in
the Super Bowl of 2008 bringing the team
the victory against the Patriots
wouldn't it be beautiful if you could
watch that highlight
as if you're in the middle of the field
and see the ball fly over your head with
my project I tried to create an
experience that brings uniqueness and
excitement to eSports coverage and
utilize the virtual nature of eSport in
a way that cannot be realized for other
sports at least for now through my
experience I found a few things firstly
people are already working on developing
different types of coverage for eSports
some of which revolve around 360
technologies as well although VR is new
it's not that new the days of showing
people are not so high-quality we are
product and expecting them to be mas
have past people now have professional
gears and have seen a few professional
products so if one is going to tackle we
are one better do it well thirdly
watching your favorite game as part of
the action is quite cool and it's a
method I that I strongly believe needs
to be expanded upon live eSports
presents you the 3d world of the games
on a plat 2d screen for this 360
coverage is perfect and I have a few
suggestions for the future coverage of
esports esports exists in a virtual
world as attempted in my project this
brings a lot of possibilities that
journalists can pursue and as the
industry is growing and as the world is
constantly creating crazy technologies
it's a very good idea to tackle the
opportunity of covering eSports in ways
traditional sports cannot be covered
another interesting idea is to make
products that are tailored to be viewed
in game so basically take journalism
into the games for example the entire
data of all matches exist and all the
matches can be recreated within the game
what if you put the gamers in the shoes
of the professional players at the very
moment of the iconic place and challenge
them to do what the professional players
accomplished think of the highlight clip
I showed at the beginning of the
presentation the audience can be put in
the position of the player who warmed
around and actively take part in the
highlight the opportunities at this
point are many and it's up to us to
discover them I highly believe that as
more and more journalists start
experimenting with eSports coverage many
unique and beautiful products will come
to life and finally when dealing with
software as complicated as video games
it's hard to meddle with and manipulate
your material it's hard to create new
products from existing sophisticated
programs
so my advice to anyone who wants to
tackle eSports coverage and experimental
ways is that you better get in touch
with the developers of the game without
without their help everything is quite
difficult but on the other hand this
would mean getting help from the people
behind the game when covering the game
it is up for debate whether losing your
independence in this way is good
journalistic practice or not there is
new territory and new territory is
exciting you'll be hearing about
professional video gaming more and more
as time goes by and eventually it'll
stop sounding so very weird take a look
at it when you have time perhaps all of
a sudden you will find yourself cheering
for a gigantic blue demon controlled by
a swedish player trying to take down a
fire monster controlled by a Korean
gamer and maybe just maybe you'll do it
with a VR headset on I would like to
thank these lovely people for all their
incredible help and support them making
this project come to life see you later
if you need me we can meet in the
darkest corners of the web or you can
shoot me an email but the first one is
more fun thank you Steve is one of our
most creative students ever I want you
to understand how cool his project is
people go to Madison Square Garden and
places like it to watch expert players
play video games 20,000 people may be in
the audience
Steve's proposal is to report on that
sports journalism using VR technology
that is a very creative and innovative
idea Chang are you ready yes I'm ready
the floor is yours hello everyone before
I start my presentation I want to show
you guys a video clip first the video
shows how some journalists react whether
first time virtual reality experience
virtuality was first introduced into
journalism war in the year 2012 by known
eto Pina with her story hunger in Los
Angeles in 2015 some news organizations
published their first virtual his
stories no one wants to be left behind
this wave afraid that others might get
into this first and take the advantage
and the year 2016 and she has a crucial
point determining whether virtuality can
be a real reliable tool or just a
passing trend the VR works we talk about
here are mostly a 360 video but facing
the innovation can never be easy take
the video you saw the beginning as an
example it's now easy to produce or even
watch the VR piece well enjoy you start
to build a VR story there are so many
questions coming up and this list of
question can go on and on my project
clear the mist is here to help one
specific news organization to find
answers for those questions to clear the
misc on the way to achieve better
journalism using virtuality my partner
for mine PBS has been producing
documentaries for over 30 years and were
almost every major journalism and
broadcasting award this is a picture I
took when I first built in their office
it really shocked me when I first saw it
since their first BRP Ebola outbreak
came out late 2015
frontlines published this six virtuality
piece is by now most of which are 360
video and now supported by nine
foundation they start work with VR
production company in Rome any group on
three stories now which are not only
limited to 360 video but trying to be
more interactivity in virtual
environment the whole idea of my project
started when I work with far lie on this
piece called Richard to Chernobyl this
April I was in charge of shooting and
part of the editing that was the first
time I realized how different how
difficult it is to produce a VR content
and I want to explore more into that I
focused my project mania interviews for
my editors filmmakers who work with them
and people from emblematic grouped
luckily I was also able to attend some
of their story meetings during the
interview I put my focus mainly on
following three parts what is foreign
line how about the VR works they have
already done and what they can improve
in the future
here are some key features I found about
foreign line and there we are the value
of character driven narrative pieces
they values quality more than quality
and they are visual thinkers beat down
their long history dealing with
documentary in terms of we are they are
not satisfied with only the immersion
experience but also need to layer in
some intelligence investigative
journalism they don't need to be the
leader in VR work but since we are more
as a digital tool to tell a better story
for them here comes to me
main findings about what challenges and
most in VR production first deep
storytelling can be difficult in we are
foreign lines dealing with long-form
documentary for a long time but most of
the VR works are short so they are
hesitant to super convincing everything
secondly some of the best working we are
are tying the field and you can't do
much about it in editing room
that requires a lot of pre-production
works and you need to make important
oral decisions beforehand some new
technologies in VR includes a lot of
computer-generated scenes and recreation
but in journalism work people don't make
things up Sony they need to be very
cultures about now trick the audience
based on my study I came up with
following suggestions which are divided
into three parts
during the interview they all mentioned
choosing the right story for VR is so
important so I came up with check this
check this out choosing qualified we are
story idea here are highly the first
three points I think are most important
location environment is a key of good BR
story the most intriguing point of VR is
the audience can get into a place that
in they never had a chance to be in real
world but only have a cool place is now
cool enough
the story itself needs to have some
levels of interaction here injection can
mean dropping off bags from the sky in
the 360 video or the audience is able to
pick up a book from the ground
computer-generated scene a strong
character can be more important here
than it is in a linear film a good
character will lead the audience into
the flow of telling a story without
Khadem loss in the 3d work as I
mentioned before front line is
struggling with computer-generated skill
which challenged the accuracy and
transparency in journalism well this new
technology photogrammetry can be a cool
solution to that dilemma it involves
using photos taken from different
positions and angles and creating a 3d
model to put it another way you compute
the virtual space based on the photos
you took it brings realistic details as
well as ability for interaction further
I started to use this in their new
stories but I will highly recommend them
to do more I have an example of this set
up in our students ante room and if you
have interest you can let me know after
this audio is not getting enough
attention we are so far we are isn't
only about vision it's a complete
experience that includes sound and the
best practice so far in VR is spatial
audio which bring brings you into the
place and you can tell the direction of
the sound you heard just like you do in
real life world when you risk missing a
key point by looking around a lot noise
will directly guide you back
fara has been doing pretty well you
exploring virtuality and based on my
findings I gave the suggestion for
improvement the key is to find the right
story technologies to the place in
aerica a chance to be in real world
building immersive experience with
interactivity embracing new technology
without harming the journalistic value
as I mentioned at the beginning this
year is seen as a key year in
determining the future of VR as far as I
can see it has bright future in drone
thanks to those people who help and
support me for this project I can never
get this done without your help and if
you have any interest real questions
about virtuality
please let me know here is where you can
reach thank you for your time
Thank You Jiang I hope you heard that if
you want to take a look at a VR peace
connect with Jiang after and he can show
you a little bit of it his project is a
good example of what I said about
getting paid in problems the problem he
took on was what is a smart virtual
reality strategy not for journalism
overall but for one organization
frontline headquartered in Boston with a
great documentary tradition and and he
gave them the answer here's a smart
strategy for frontline belly are you
ready yes go good evening everyone
I'm here to present my project compass a
user centered analytics dashboard I have
been working on with my partners at
quartz I will start by reading something
that a journalist said early on during
my research honestly I almost never
checked the analytics on my stories
because those metrics focus on traffic
and not on serving my readers a lot of
journalists feel this way about
analytics because even though media
companies have made it a point to be
data-driven a lot of emphasis has been
placed on page views and it's evil twin
unique visits and these metrics are
useful but they are mostly geared
towards the needs of media companies
that want to know the reach in order to
sell ads and optimize their performance
but honestly they do very little to help
journalists with their job so I decided
to take on this problem and explore what
a user centered analytics would look
like and what do I mean by user centered
analytics well while traditional
analytics are focus on traffic
performance and short term optimization
user centric metrics should be guided by
this one fundamental question what are
my user is trying to accomplish and what
metrics might actually help them my
partner for this project was quartz we
set out to develop a user centric
analytics dashboard for their very
recently launched
building platform Atlas Atlas is a
platform for creating publishing and
sharing charts you can think about it as
being something like a Pinterest for
charts users can create their own charge
with their own data publish them on the
platform and sort through charts created
by other users all the charts published
can be shared by anyone on social media
and other websites most people using
Atlas right now are quartz journalists
but the platform was recently opened for
external users so I set out to develop
compass for the many journalists and the
other users who are building on
publishing charts on Atlas the first
thing I needed to do was get to know who
these users are and what are their goals
with Atlas and the first thing I found
found was that when I asked users about
their interest in metrics I actually
mostly received very discouraging
answers users seem to feel wary of data
analytics and weren't sure if they would
use them for Atlas however when I
refrain my questions and I stopped
asking them about metrics and started
asking them what questions they might
have about their readers the response
was completely different this led to my
first discovery and one of the
fundamental principles guiding the
design of confess journalists are not
interested in metrics but they are
interested in learning more about the
readers therefore the challenge is not
providing users with the information
that we are technically capable of
tracking but providing them with
insightful data that is data that
answers real questions that they have
and that they can act upon so the first
thing I did was reframe traditional
metrics in terms of real questions so
for example the metric click referrals
in this case is given the proper context
by framing it as how are my readers
finding my work and the second thing I
did was explore some different metrics
that might help Atlas users for example
where are my readers journalists who
cover the global economy like quartz
might want to see in what countries they
are impacting the most top ten popular
topics will allow journalists to see not
just what articles got the most views
but which subtopics are the most popular
amongst
and what our users are not was looking
for works as a trending topics for Atlas
since Atlas actually has a search bar we
can track what people are looking for on
the platform and by providing
journalists with this information we can
help them find inspiration for ideas or
help them form a better understanding of
who the readers behind Atlas are the
second big discovery that came up during
a research was that Atlas users are
actually very different and have very
different goals even though most users
of Atlas today are journalists since the
platform has opened up we are finding
other sets of users such as marketers
and researchers and they actually have
very different needs and uses four
metrics so it's important to give the
platform some flexibility to adapt to
different needs finally all of this came
together for the first prototype of
compass that I'm going to show you this
is how it works
users will be able to go to their
profiles where they can click on
insights this will take them to their
insights dashboard where they can see a
series of charts the dashboard is
designed in a way like a deck of cards
where each card is a specific metric all
these metrics are framed and
contextualized in terms of questions and
there they can select which cards are
the most useful to them and mark them as
their favorites once they have their
favorites they can easily make sure that
the metrics that these metrics are the
ones I will display on the top in
closing what I would like to say is that
compass might just be a product for a
specific platform but it's also an
exploration on how to transform data
into powerful insight and the lessons
learned during my research can be
extended beyond Atlas and these are my
main takeaways start by understanding
who your users are this will allow you
to focus not on the data but on the
user's needs designing analytics systems
and dashboards we should remember that
the purpose of metrics should be to
truly help your users accomplish goals
provide your users with proper context
by framing metrics in terms of actual
questions that they might actually have
and finally be bold explore
unconventional match metrics data can
also be used to help your journalist
discover interesting things about their
own work fine inspiration
new ideas and get a better understanding
of their own readers thank you very much
to everyone who has helped me my husband
my family my friends were here my
colleagues at course especially Hillary
Josh and sach my professors at Co 20 and
my amazing classmates if anybody wants
to talk more about the possibilities of
user centric analytics please reach out
I love talking about this thank you
thank you
Feli what I love the most about fellows
project is that her partner quartz hired
her full-time which is a good time to
remind you that most of these other
students are looking for jobs if you
need them
they need you Ava are you ready yes take
it away thank you hi my name is Eva
Revere I worked on my project
yesterday's news with ProPublica and the
NYU library if you lived in Chicago in
2006 and you wanted to know what types
of crimes were occurring in your
neighborhood you would visit Chicago
crime org when you got there you'd see
something like this image you'd then go
on to investigate and satisfy all of
your curiosities today however if you go
to Chicago crime org this is all you'll
see the fuzzy image from the previous
slide and memories are almost all that's
left of this innovative work Chicago
crime was created in 2005 by Adrian
whole body and is considered in the
industry as one of the most innovative
news apps of the time it wanted bat an
award for innovation in journalism in
the year of its creation however only
three years later it disappeared due to
tech challenge it changes in Amazon Web
Services yesterday's news is a look at
the technology that is used to create
news apps and how we as an industry can
preserve them we shouldn't go any
further into
the discussion of this project without
making it clear what a news app is news
apps are web applications that are built
on top of databases and give users the
power to explore important data in a way
that is most relevant to them
this is a screenshot of ProPublica z--
dollars for docs which were used for
this study it is an app that lets users
research their doctor to see if they
receive money from pharmaceutical
companies and how that might influence
the type of medications they prescribe
so why is news app preservation such a
challenge news apps as with anything
dynamic on the web are heavily dependent
on libraries and frameworks that are
either constantly updated or stopped
being maintained and these libraries and
frameworks are dependent on other
libraries and frameworks with the same
issue this is called dependency how and
another issue is link rot which is the
process by which hyperlinks on a website
point to page of sites or servers that
are no longer available on average this
will happen to a link within about 44
days obviously librarians and archivists
have a vested interest in this problem
is they want to preserve journalism in
the interest of history however to the
developers who built these applications
more technical needs arise understanding
the process infrastructure and
technology can help news developers
build on the innovations of their
predecessors and without it major
milestones in building blocks and
innovation are lost in order to tackle
this problem we started at the beginning
with an exploration of what a news app
actually is from a technical perspective
to understand what needs to be preserved
in order to better approach the second
issue the technical analysis involved in
sport exploring what news apps exist
what types of technologies were used to
build them what the significant
properties are of these digital objects
and what sorts of metadata can be stored
along with them we also analyzed the
legal aspect of news apps to collect
this to collect this information we used
web surveys interviews and reading new
code the second goal was to apply open
source technologies to preserving one
application dollars for docs see what
works and try to generalize that process
to all of news apps in this process we
aim to discover what was available and
where the technology was lacking and
serving our purposes all in all we found
that news apps generally are made up of
these three main parts and be our
analysis we were able to determine
most commonly used technologies that
were applied to each of these areas we
also noticed a tendency in the news app
developer community to build apps within
the dynamic back in portion to the left
then turn everything into static files
to publish and live entirely within the
elements to the right on the client side
in our analysis of what constitutes the
significant properties of an application
we noted that even when an app appears
on the web as a series of static files
the environment in which the work is
actually developed must also be
considered a significant piece of the
object as this is the portion below the
surface in which all of the journalistic
value is added the server architecture
in which this environment is set up can
also be considered the boundaries in
which the application exists and be the
focal point of preservation efforts and
with this in mind we wanted to find a
method of preservation that would
support those needs using dollars for
Docs we performed a case study applying
various technologies to the process of
preserving apps these included things
like static site generators however the
most promising technology thus far has
been repressive an open source software
created by PhD students at NYU Tandon
the software can package a piece of
software along with the environment in
which it was developed and the package
can be transferred and run within any
operating system it was built for
scientific reproducibility however we
believe with some modifications it can
be applied to news apps and we've been
working with the developers to apply
reprozip $2 for docs to validate this
assumption with promising results our
analysis of the current state of apps in
their legal situation found that no news
app development team has a strategy for
preserving its work we also found that
the majority of apps are proprietary and
therefore off-limits to the memory
institutions that are interested in
preserving them so while the technical
challenges to this venture are
significant the institutional could be
considered more so an effort to solve
this problem in its entirety will
require first a clear understanding of
this issue within newsrooms and then
cooperation between memory institutions
and the organizations that create news
apps which is the model we put into
practice with this project
and I would like to thank the team at
ProPublica for allowing me access to
their apps I would like to thank
Meredith Broussard and Katie vos for all
of their help and mentorship throughout
this process of course J Zoe my parents
and my awesome classmates at Studio 20
right above this research will be
published in the near future and we hope
to continue making progress on this
issue feel free to email me if you have
questions or interested in hearing more
thank you we we don't usually think of
digital journalism as having a past
because we're always focused on it going
forward but Ava's project is about
preserving innovative and ingenious
solutions and digital journalism is past
the thing that I love the most about it
is it's a pure public good we're just
doing it because it should be done and
doesn't really need any more of a reason
than that Eric are you ready yeah go
good evening everyone I'm going to
discuss my thesis project which I called
a media relationship status engaged that
in partnership with Fusion and their
audience development team in digital
journalism audience development teams
analyze data to better connect content
to their audience in some newsrooms this
team is called audience engagement the
terms are often used interchangeably and
the practices for one are sometimes
misinterpreted as the practices of
another but it's important to keep in
mind development and engagement are not
the same thing but rather opposite sides
of the same coin audience development is
about acquisition reaching new members
and getting them on site audience
engagement is about retention getting
those members to become returned
visitors who are loyal to your site you
do this by maintaining a relationship
with them and since no two audiences are
alike this takes as many forms as there
are media organizations when researching
how to build a relationship with fusions
audience and increase brand loyalty we
wanted to know how we
measure the quality of an article how
our audience was engaging with content
and what insights could be drawn from
their responses when setting out to
answer these questions I established a
golden rule don't focus on the same
metrics used for audience development
the reason being that development
metrics are actually measuring the
social packaging of an article and not
the article itself this practice also
serves advertisers more than our readers
the article here for instance has more
page views than any other piece of
content on fusion but that doesn't mean
that it was read the most so infusions
weekly insights email goes out with
recommendations for improving content in
an effort to retain those audience
members writers and editors often
struggle to act on those insights this
is because the data does not relate to
the content they produce and it doesn't
fall into a journalist writing process
instead of tracking content quality to
retain audience members we be focused on
comments listening for what fusions
audience is looking for in a media
relationship we wanted to answer what do
users want to do once our content is in
front of them what our missed
opportunities for that deeper engagement
and how can we build strategies around
that engagement we found that fusions
audiences are looking to make an impact
on social issues and this is an
opportunity that we missed
Perla Del Mar is a transgendered
immigrant living in poverty and running
a shelter in her home for refugees along
the us-mexico border our audience
members commented under the article
video asking how to support Perla one
person even replied to fusions own
comment and it all fell on deaf ears
eventually one of our own other audience
members chimed in with a link to Perla
shelter where other members could they
get in touch if fusion though can meet
that need
and anticipate it it would allow for
more meaningful impact to be easier and
more accessible it would also encourage
audience members to become engaged this
article is another example of the
audience's desire to make an impact this
time where we seize the opportunity
coverage of the Dakota access pipeline
consistently drives traffic and lower
level engagement with comments showing
anger or concern but on this article
which we was in which we've listed ways
helped protesters the comments showed
things in praise some of them even
thanked us by saying yes fusion more of
this so when listening to Ephesians
audience further we found that issues
most important to them were as follows
for justice the Dakota access pipeline
and immigration reform for sex in life
reproductive justice and sexual assault
on college campuses and for voices
racial biases and LGBT issues such as
transgender legislation with these with
these issues identified fusion can seize
opportunities that would have been
missed in the past and we get to engage
their audiences on a deeper level and
these are my records for how to do that
maintain our journalistic objectivity by
directing audience members to multiple
impact opportunities for instance with
Perlas story we would include her
shelter in a list of places and
organizations that support mexico's
queer and transgender community for
issues related to social biases rather
than legislation invite audience members
to share their story
for example first-hand accounts of
Islamophobia or mental health stigma
these responses would then be published
as content that's raising the volume
around an issue and giving the audience
a sense of ownership around fusions
journalism this can also be done by
publicly recognizing comments or
embedding them under articles or pinning
them under Facebook videos
this also means replying to comments
directed at fusion notifying members if
their comment is used as a story pitch
and asking users to act as sources for
future stories next you want to gather
data around that impact content where
those engagement practices are being
used this would be done by creating a
wordpress tag to label that impact
content and custom reports from google
analytics and chart beat from this data
fusions of growth editors can draw
engagement insights and make actionable
recommendations on how to nurture
fusions relationship with an audience
member these insights would then be
communicated through a new engagement
section and the audience development
team is a weekly insights email which
you saw earlier impact content should
also be packaged with series branding
for featured images and video thumbnails
this is proven to increase engagement
for our competitors and has been
successful for fusion in the
it would make content easily or
distinguishable from other pieces of
content and it tells the audience read
this or watch this and find how you can
make a difference
allowing fusions audience to have an
impact on these issues making engagement
part of the editorial process and
habitually listening to what they're
saying are the first steps in getting
our audience to change their media
relationship status from single to
engaged
I want to thank fusions audience
development team especially the growth
editors who mentored me during my
entrance to bear and Brianna who is
somewhere over there I could not have
done this without her of course when I
think J and Zoe my friends and
colleagues in studio 20 we're all
talented and if you want your media
organization to be more relationship
oriented instead of a player talk to me
and we'll learn how to do it
thank you
thank you Eric a very smart teacher I
had once said when in doubt draw
distinction and Eric's study is built on
a distinction he drew between audience
development and audience engagement
audience development is getting people
to know your site audience engagement is
keeping them there by giving them what
they came for and he build this whole
project on that one a crucial
distinction she found are you ready yeah
go
hi ruins this is my studiously project
parting with Huffington Post China the
world's most populous country also has
an largest and fastest growing online
user base more than half of this
population surfers internet odd number
in the entire United States population
two to one
however because of the censorship
especially the Great Firewall users in
China
expressed the experiencing that very
differently from the West world your URL
is blocked facing this giant aged market
is not easy for American news
organizations to reach Chinese audience
but due to the changing theater world
the news industry in China shares a
similar involving paths as the Western
world news consumption in China shifts
the same way as here China has which had
Weibo by do in comparing to Facebook
Twitter Google Yahoo supports virtual
realities just as you could YouTube does
this new ecosystem is more friendly and
fair to foreign news companies than
before the distance between them and
Chinese readers is narrowing
nevertheless they still lack knowledge
of Chinese audience when considering to
expand the opinions in China my project
the Chinese media landscape guard helps
Western news brands positions themselves
in Chinese debt market and engage their
audience my partners have been imposed
has a global vision its global expansion
started from kind of five years ago it
now runs 17 different editions half of
their site traffic comes
outside the United States it aims at
building a global newsrooms all the
editions share the accountants resources
and benefits each other so - po started
its experiment in China's East May
articles from The Huffington Post was
translated into Chinese and distributed
on WeChat the Chinese Facebook which
dominates the Chinese data world
publishing use on which hat is similar
to a combination of newsletter and
Facebook instant articles users follows
cut accounts receivables and read
withing app users can also comment and
share what they read my first plan were
to test different Ettore
at packaging strategies on which had in
order to improve performance and
engagement but something inspected
happened on September 13 nights where
several Chinese media news sites
reported happen post distribution on
which at the platform fail overexposed
and specifically limited authority of
the having post occur the first stepped
were now broked having setbacks is
common in Chinese journalism world yet
doesn't mean you to give up instead you
seek other ways to succeed so I shifted
my project a little bit to something
with long term impact and that is what
my partner urgently needs now now in my
suggestion a Weibo account will be
registered soon more culture more
contact with potential partners are
undergoing my final report for them
turns into a list of 12 recommendations
with different priority were news
American politics could be the best
selling point intima News has a great
potential reporting China is a necessity
and a key to success but the choice of
topic need to be properly considered
neither too risky which can lead to a
block no too cautious which can lead to
be getting ignored
considering the internet use pace of
China some smaller platform have plenty
of users as well and among which
engaging conversation around having
posts already existed to write this
report I did a Witcher test which was
interrupted late September besides our
interview Chinese journeys and several
foreign media's Chinese address I also
did endless
doesn't solve platform to generate the
conclusion all together four types ends
14 News brands were selected to be
studied including how they revenues in
China there are focused audience group
they are imaging Chinese readers and
their success and Fox on WeChat New York
Times resists its education vertical
only but uses it to corrupt politics
most of them the worst journal literally
says they target rich people to attract
their audience this part is variable for
better defined - host position in
Chinese mid market and evaluating what
degree of risk they are going to take to
me their long-term goal finding a local
media corporators is having a post
global strategy and they are starting to
search for their Chinese partner in
China some big tech companies already
had several collaborations with the
American media such at essence the only
of which had collaborated with ESPN Vox
media to help their brands and China on
the other hand choosing a local newsroom
may have less risk moratoria can show
and benefit from hotness reporting
stress and this is not limited to
picking one of two problem since the
tech companies in China are working more
closely with spec newsrooms in recent
years there are some more findings come
out from this research following the
official instructions may sound like
common sense but in Chinese media what
it not always true among the week chat
accounts showed a few seconds before
long it's verified officially but all
work will however have imposture
unwanted attention and was limited
because of its formality and always keep
an eye on Facebook while struggling with
fake news it may introduce a censorship
to anytime and back China after my
recommendations I'm happy to see that my
patent decided to ask you to on some of
my lists Chinese audience may have be
able to see more heaven post content on
multiple platforms next year China is
not totally unreachable many foreign
media have great success there and as
the digital world involves more
opportunities will be merging this
tempting huge market I'd like to say
all these wonderful people without their
help I'm not able to get here
if you want to know more details about
my study or for me any suggestion
welcome to contact me thank you
chiefin is from China working with the
Huffington Post in the United States on
how to enter China and the editor that
he collaborated with at the Huffington
Post is a studio 20 graduate from China
working in New York on the Chinese
edition of The Huffington Post so can
you tell why I love this project
it's our global network coming to life
and every year it gets bigger our final
presentation is Kim Kim are you ready
yes I am take it away
hi I'm Kim and I'm going to show you how
live video is becoming a powerful tool
for user engagement and news gathering
this Facebook live video is arguably one
of the most important pieces of citizen
journalism
it shows the minutes after falando
costea was shot by a police officer in
minnesota this summer filmed by the
fiance of the dying as it went viral the
video got picked up by the news media
and has since birth the national debate
about racial injustice up in to this day
it has been the most prominent
user-generated live video it surely
won't be the last when it comes to live
video journalism most people you perhaps
think about journalists going life
themselves but while many newsrooms are
experimenting with producing live
content for social media it shouldn't be
limited to that user-generated and user
guided live video is also a valuable
news gathering resource for journalists
with user guided I mean incorporating
questions and comments of the users
taken together I call live video a tool
for user power journalism I've been
carving out opportunities and challenges
of where
with it as well as a range of
suggestions how to improve it I started
my project with the media partnerships
team at Facebook at the summer by
working on a social news gathering
survey we made an interesting discovery
already two-thirds of the almost 200
journalists questioned answered they
searched for live streaming video at
least sometimes when they look for
user-generated content the problem was
while many newsrooms experiment with the
new technology they hadn't shared their
insights much I've interviewed 20
journalists and live video experts in
order to help Facebook and the industry
as a whole to better understand how user
powered live video is used in as a tool
in newsrooms and here's what I found as
I had assumed Facebook life is the most
dominant one of all live streaming
services they're using journalists also
find periscope especially useful when
they are looking for user-generated live
video only a few work with other live
streaming services like Bambuser and
Ustream user-generated live video
already is considered an invaluable
resource for journalists you often get
footage you would never get any other
way when journalist told me like this
one of the hunt down of the Munich
shooter it doesn't necessarily have to
be very unique footage to be useful
though user-generated live video can
also help to monitor an ongoing new
situation and form the reporting and get
witnesses it's about better
understanding what's happening the
protests against the Dakota access
pipeline for instance provided plenty of
opportunities for that oftentimes when
there's no correspondent on the scene
yet citizens with their smartphones are
live video produced by journalists can
benefit a lot from user guidance if done
right it can foster user engagement it
can be used as a new entry point to a
story and reach a bigger audience at the
same time journalists can gather what
people are interested in for example in
an ask me anything for men user guidance
can also assist an investigation and
enrich the reporting bike in this New
York Times example called fragments of a
life
the reporter on the left side here asked
the users to help her solve a mystery of
a trash bag full of photo slides that
she found on the street this kind of
user system reporting hasn't been tried
with hard investigations and I think
it's about time for that but there are
some problems journalists are having
discovery of user-generated live video
is one of the biggest of them at the
moment journalists often have to rely on
their conventional tools for that if not
on pure luck a few of them use
Facebook's live map but wished it it
allowed to zoom in closer this is the
closest you can zoom in around New York
City though there are some ways to work
around it for example by searching
through geographic coordinates it's per
user guided live video newsrooms often
struggle to work with comments sometimes
there are too many to keep up sometimes
they're not enough and sometimes they're
very mean it's proven useful to have at
least one more person in a newsroom to
help produce the live stream and
moderate the comments calling the
commentators by their name is another
way to lead conversation in a more
positive direction not at least lost
signal can be a huge problem when
working with the live video especially
in protest situations phone networks
sometimes scramble due to over
saturation or perhaps even due to
authorities that interfere with the
connectivity platforms like Facebook
can't do much about that but they might
be able to improve their life streaming
tools the people I talk to had plenty of
suggestions how to improve live video as
a tool for journalists for example but a
keyword or location search options I
will share these suggestions with
Facebook in more detail in the coming
weeks meanwhile live video on social
media already is a rich resource for
journalists and a strong acid for user
engagement I think it should be in a
toolkit of any newsroom yet I found it
still widely underused as more and more
users will get familiar with the
technology their power of generating and
guiding news content will strengthen
there will be more videos as important
as those of falando Castillo's des the
munich shooter and pipeline protest the
more journalists know about the
opportunity
and challenges the better journalism
will be I summarized my research in a
post for first draft news which you can
find on a landing page today or by
following the short URL and if you would
like to share your experiences with live
video or hear my findings in more detail
please reach out thank you and Wow
Feli starts to get Josh ready for his
presentation we're gonna do a quick
couple of things first you may have
noticed that each of these students is
thanking Zoe Franklin our our technical
advisor I'd like her to stand up and
show herself he is a key person in
studio 20 helping us teach these
students how to negotiate their projects
she is herself an expert in user testing
and design and has a technical
background that many of our students do
not and so she's an invaluable resource
for us I also mentioned a brief news
announcement that we have and it's that
every year we do a big project with a
major news company last year was fusion
and election coverage in the past we've
partnered with the Guardian on a
semester-long project in the spring and
ProPublica and next year in the spring
of 2017 our partner is going to be The
Wall Street Journal and we have Greg
Emerson here mobile product manager for
The Wall Street Journal and I'm gonna
ask him to quickly jump up here and tell
us about this project
thank you shall I sit down no I won't
take your chair sure thanks Jay
so most people probably know the Wall
Street Journal for our industry-leading
financial coverage and business news and
increasingly though people are coming to
us for other reasons for our coverage of
us news politics and world news what
we've also seen in some user surveys and
market research is that some people feel
intimidated by the sophistication of the
journalist financial coverage so what we
realized is we have a suite of products
that are targeted at the financial
experts they're called pro level wsj Pro
sites and they give you an added level
of analysis and and deeper data on some
of the financial topics that we cover
every day what we don't have though are
a suite of products or solutions for the
more novice end of the financial
literacy spectrum so we're incredibly
excited to work with Jay and Zoe and the
current studio 20 fellows to deploy
their immense and deep skills and
talents as sort of a research and
testing lab to help us at the journal
come up with come up with new ways to
engage readers who are a little bit less
financially literate and to provide more
of an on-ramp and lower the barrier to
entry to our core financial coverage
which is some of our deepest and most
expert analysis and of course some of
the things that most shape the world
that we all live in and even the
politics that we see developing around
us every day
so we are not just looking at how do we
get Millennials to engage with our
content because Millennials are not one
big homogenous group they're very
financially literate Millennials and
there are non you know less financially
literate young people so it's important
for us to devise new products or
persistent strategies that are not just
aimed at creating different content for
young people but rather finding ways to
allow everyone to access our core
coverage a little bit more easily and
expand the audience that can really
benefit from what is one of our most
expert and deep areas of coverage
so we are very much looking forward to
it and we'll look forward to sharing the
results with you at the end of next
semester or next year at this event
maybe thank you my shorthand for that
project business news for dummies that's
what we're doing we're gonna one more
thing and then let y'all go I just want
the students to come back up everybody
on the stage so we can salute you this
is their final hour as graduate students
come on applause
