Author Archives: jskao

Red Sox Opening Day with Vine

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I put together a bunch of Vines shot by people who went to the Red Sox Opening Day on Monday. I found that there were things Vines were great for, and some Vines were really impossible for.

What Vine was great for:

  • Songs! People like singing at baseball games, and it’s great to actually hear and see people singing.
  • The flyover: People like fast planes. You can even enjoy Vines on the flyover without the sound turned on.
  • Watching the actual game: Again, another Vine you can watch and enjoy even without the sound.

What Vine was bad for:

  • Actually learning about what happened in the game: I didn’t see a single Vine that had the score in the caption. I had no clue what the final score was (although I knew the Red Sox had won).

Here’s a screenshot of how my Vineyard of Red Sox looked like (prototype running locally on my laptop — I’ll try to do a demo in class since screenshots of Vines is kind of sad…).

MIT Police Log for Feb.12–Mar.12 2013 in 6 seconds

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For this week’s data journalism assignment, I chose to look at a month’s worth of police logs from the MIT police department. The data in the form of PDFs can be found at http://web.mit.edu/cp/www/crimlog.htm. I put the data into a less awful format, which you can find at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlhEOMxfxhHtdENRakF4WUdPZnNsR3p6YzFEWGtTR1E&usp=sharing.

With the data, I created a short video using Vine.

Calcium Claims

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I chose to look at truth claims related to calcium for our assignment this week. I walked through La Verde’s and took photos of any packaging that mentioned the amount of calcium the product contained.

Everything seems to be internally consistent, which doesn’t necessarily imply that any or all of this is true. Further research and chemical testing for calcium is probably necessary… but that’s probably for a different day.

Meet Rochelle Sharpe

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I sat down with Knight Fellow Rochelle Sharpe yesterday, and we talked about the challenges of freelancing, her fellowship, her journalism background, and what she’s looking forward to in this class. Sharpe was also a great sport and let me drag her outside in the cold and make a few Vines.

Full story: http://joannaskao.com/school/sharpebio/

Here’s a sneak peak:

4 Hour Challenge: Timeline of Saturday’s gunman hoax incident, from report to all-clear

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I worked on a story for The Tech over the weekend and on Monday. In the first four hours, I pieced together the timeline below. The full story that I wrote for the Tech can be found at http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N7/hoax.html.

7:28 a.m. Cambridge Police receive report of male with a “large firearm and wearing body armor.” MIT Police is notified.
7:30 a.m. Cambridge and MIT Police respond to 77 Massachusetts Avenue.
7:35 a.m. Cambridge Police tweet “Report of possible person with gun on Mass Ave in #CambMA”
7:35 a.m. State police begin shutting off traffic on Mass Ave between Vassar Street and Memorial Drive.
7:43 a.m. Police have locked down the area around MIT’s Main Group Buildings (although there were still reports of students and staff in the buildings later).
8:37 a.m. Someone at the MIT Police’s control center asked whether he should contact the Security and Emergency Management Office (SEMO) to send out an alert asking people to stay out of the Main Group (MIT’s central buildings).
8:47 a.m. MIT’s emergency information website, emergency.mit.net, is updated. “This morning information was received from Cambridge Police that there was a person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT. Multiple law enforcement agencies have responded, please stay clear of the area until the authorities can confirm that it is safe to enter. More to follow.”
8:51 a.m. MIT’s emergency alert sends a text message. “Multiple law enforcement agencies on campus in response to a report of a person with a gun on campus, further info on the Emergency Web Page.”
9:10 a.m. A second text message is sent out. “Multiple law enforcement agencies on campus in response to a report of a person with a gun on campus. Stay indoors and shelter in place and report suspicious activity to the campus police dispatch dial 100.”
9:22 a.m. MIT Alert sends out an email to all-campus@mit.edu saying “This morning information was received by Cambridge Police that there was a person with a long rifle and body armor in the Main Group Building of MIT. Multiple law enforcement agencies have responded, stay indoors and shelter in place and report suspicious activity to the campus police dispatch dial 100. More updates to follow on emergency.mit.net.
9:30 a.m. A third text message says “Continue to shelter in place, report suspicious activity by cell phone to MIT Police.”
Around 10:00 a.m. Cambridge Police start to clear the scene.
10:19 a.m. Cambridge Police tweet “Scene is clear. Call unfounded. No threat to public safety in #CambMA #MIT”
10:46 a.m. MIT alert sends a text message saying “Cambridge Police have issued all-clear. MIT returning to normal operation. MIT PD will monitor campus.”

 

Media Diet

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I’m a bit of a Twitter addict — I have the Twitter app on my phone and both Twitter and Tweetdeck on my laptop. For the most part, that’s where I consume the most media. For a week, I tried to keep track of all the links I clicked on and read on Twitter via my laptop and tweet about them at @MediaMemoir. Below is a chart showing the links that I tweeted about at the account.

This graph doesn’t show the types of media that I encountered from TV, articles I read on my phone or in print, or all the tweets I read (if I kept track of every tweet I read… I don’t even want to go there). For the most part, I don’t tend to spend much time clicking links and reading on my phone. However, most of my light media consumption probably comes from reading quick summaries and tweets via Twitter (which is not on this chart).

Most of my heavy media consumption (actually reading an article or watching a video vs. just reading <140 characters about it) happens in a few dense chunks during the day. These chunks are mostly determined by my schedule.