I love maps and was excited to learn recently about CartoDB, which allows you to build your own map in one click after importing data from a spreadsheet. In colored dots or heat maps, this visualization tool can easily show and compare death tolls, virus hotspots, or popular tourism sites…and a million other things. It empowers a writer to tell compelling stories and save a thousand words. I just began to use it. It seems an essential tool for anyone who needs to put data on a map.

I really love this tool that allows reporters to develop their own data visualization components for a story. For years I was forever waiting for an old-school graphics guy to get me maps or charts I had requested, and they always seemed lacking in creativity and dynamism but I didn’t have the skill set to conceptualize or illustrate something different. This tool allows you to plug your data into a variety of graphs and charts and that experimentation could either lead to something you could publish, take to your data viz guy as a prototype, or expand your concept and enable you to imagine something new altogether. I think it really democratizes the process of data visualization, which is key to keeping readers engaged online, I think.
— Christa

Last year in Israel, I went to a few protests that became quite violent. I filmed and took pictures with my phone – sometimes for reporting, sometime just to post on social media – but was always afraid that the people I was filming (police and right-wing thugs) will see me filming and try to snatch my phone.
That’s why I was very excited to learn about apps that allow journalists and citizen journalists to film with their phone and then send the film to Youtube or to their email automatically.
Some of the tools available are CopWatch by Darren Batista, which allows you to upload the video and sends an alert to Canadian group “Network for the Elimination of Police Violence”, and CA Justice by ACLU which uploads the videos to their website. My life here have been pretty peaceful so I didn’t get a chance to make use of the apps yet, but they are a very important step in allowing reporters and citizen journalists to document violence, from police or other sources.

This is important for two reasons: first, freedom of press has been deteriorating around the world for the past 10 years (according to the freedom of press report) and so tool that enables anyone to report more safely is essential. And as we’ve seen in the last year in the US, documentation of violence – mainly by police and military – is sometimes the only way to prove that problems like police targeting black men, really exists. The tools I mention are not perfect, but they are a start.

I’m a big fan of any tool that allows freelance journalists/citizen journalists to present their content in as polished of a way as you’d find on a mainstream news site.

That’s why I like Medium, which could be described as a blogging platform, but with more class and potential. It’s easy to use (easier than WP by far), allows you to embed photos and videos and aesthetically, it’s pleasing. (Lots of white space. White space is good.)

Writes Harry McCracken in Time:

Medium is attractive if you only have the yen to say something every so often. It’s about individual pieces of content, not a surging sea of items.

The content you find here feels official, serious and credible. The White House posted the text of Obama’s last state of the union address on Medium first. Medium is where important people (Twitter engineer Leslie Miley) go to explain why they quit their job. There is real journalism here.

Medium also gives you just a little bit of metrics – enough to show you where you should promote your content. Here are some metrics on a story I posted a while back.

The site’s sleek look makes the content feel more reliable, so for independent writers who can’t find a home for a story – or just want to share something quickly but in a polished way, Medium is a good fit.

Bonus: 16 Journalism Tools & Resources to Explore in 2016

Wendi C. Thomas

Photo courtesy http://istwitterwrong.tumblr.com/

One of the greatest challenges for journalists, especially conflict journalists, is the validation of user-generated content. Was this picture really taken in Homs? Was it taken at the time my source alleges? Google image searches catch some more obvious reposts, but sometimes it’s too hard to tell. As a result, valuable media gets passed over, or it is used and later disproven.

Way back in 2012, Neiman dedicated an entire issue to the subject. Journalists from many respected institutions weighed in on their preferred methods of verification. The BBC (among other organizations) suggested that “the golden rule…is to get on the phone whoever has posted the material.”

This is a great idea in concept. But in practice is full of problems as even the authors go on to state (emphasis mine): “Unless sources are activists living in a dictatorship who must remain anonymous to protect their lives, people who are genuine witnesses to events are usually eager to talk.” So what are people to do when they are living under an oppressive regime (like Syria), with unreliable cellphone access?

Unfortunately this hardship usually translates to a dearth of publishable content, and, sadly, a dearth of media attention. News organizations fear a backlash if a public-made video or image they publish is later proven to be forged or repurposed. And the more dangerous or unstable an area is, the fewer Western journalists are going to be there. All this leaves areas most in need of attention ignored and left to fend for themselves.

A potential solution was developed in 2008, but in a corner of the Internet no one might expect. Bitcoin, the largely misunderstood cryptocurrency, has a fascinating, and impactful infrastructure, with implications for almost every industry. This supporting technology is the Blockchain.

Go ahead and watch the video, I’ll wait. And the rest of this post will make no sense without an understanding of Blockchain.

Tl;dr: (Too long; didn’t read for those wondering) Blockchain allows for decentralized record-keeping by all users on the blockchain. What’s even better, users do not need to be identified for the system to be effective and ironclad. This is how users on the Silk Road were able to buy and sell illicit goods without anyone knowing who anyone else was.

So now we have a method of community verification that need not be tied to a person’s identity. Next, we combine this method of verification with a way of establishing each user’s presence in the community, through a mesh network. Mesh networks allows Internet-enabled devices within a geographical area to share internet access without passing through a central hub (like traditional networks). Imagine logging on to a social networking app (like FireChat, used for communication during the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong) to communicate with fellow activists or resistance members. Upon logging on, you are verified as being physically present in a location, and your account is provided a certificate of authenticity (of sorts).

As you upload photos or videos to the app, this certificate follows those images and videos thanks to the Blockchain. (A company called Monegraph is doing something similar with copyright and art.) When you leave the mesh network, your certificate is revoked. If, later you tried to change metadata about images or videos, or add other content outside the network, the Blockchain ledgers wouldn’t match, and the changes would be rejected.

Decentralized/Community record-keeping is a game-changer for many areas of life. And it is only a matter of time before we see it shift the balance of power and attention. But where that power and attention shifts to, is largely dependent on the systems we build.

First, a confession: The tool I’m going to talk about doesn’t exist. Not yet. But it seems to have a legitimate shot at becoming a real thing. And if it does, it will almost certainly change the way I and many other science writers do our jobs.

It’s called Science Surveyor, and its developers describe it as “an algorithm-based method to help science journalists rapidly and effectively characterize the rich literature for any topic they might cover.” Basically, you give it a journal article, and it gives you context – whether the ideas presented are old or new, whether they support scientific consensus or challenge it, that kind of thing.

Here’s a prototype screenshot, lifted from Science Surveyor’s github site:

Here’s another:

And here’s NIemanLab’s take on the project.

The screengrabs suggest that, at present, the context that Science Surveyor provides is relatively crude, based on the network concept of centrality. Still, that might be enough to help a reporter make a first guess about a paper’s potential impact. Or it might raise red flags on papers that sound impressive but promote discredited ideas. For journalists who cover science, that could mean less time wasted slogging through articles that turn out to be unimportant. (“Context on deadline,” the site’s tagline promises.)

Of course, it’s possible Science Surveyor will never see the light of day. A team of journalists and scientists at Stanford and Columbia University took up the project in 2014, but they haven’t yet announced a rollout date. (The project is funded by a “Magic Grant” from Columbia University’s Brown Institute.) Still, as a science journalist who’s wasted many an afternoon struggling through the thickets and weeds of the scientific literature, I’ve got my fingers crossed.