下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
Journalism is an activity or profession that involves collecting information about current events, then reporting facts, findings and conclusions to a wider audience through print, digital or broadcast media. The purpose of journalism is to research and report events that impact people’s lives and society in different ways. The journalists are always involved in the selection and presentation of what they consider to be noteworthy, and in meeting the standard of truth and honesty in journalism reporting. The most important characteristic shared by good journalists is curiosity. Good journalists love to read and want to find out as much as they can about the world around them.
The proliferation of the internet and smartphones has brought significant changes to the media landscape since the turn of the 21st century. This has created a shift in the consumption of printed media channels, as people increasingly consume news through e-readers, smart phones, and other personal electronic devices, as opposed to the more traditional formats of newspapers, magazines, or television news channels.
The rise of social media has drastically changed the nature of journalistic reporting, giving rise to so-called citizen journalists. In a study of journalists in the United States, 40% of participants claimed they rely on social media as a source, with over 20% depending on microblogs to collect facts. The conclusion can be drawn that breaking news nowadays often stems from user-generated content, including videos and pictures posted online in social media. However, though 69.2% of the surveyed journalists agreed that social media allowed them to connect to their audience, only 30% thought it had a positive influence on news credibility. Because of these changes, the credibility ratings of news outlets has reached an all-time low. A study revealed that only 22% of Americans reported a “great deal”or “quite a lot of confidence”in either television news or newspapers.
Consequently, this has resulted in arguments to reconsider journalism as a process distributed among many authors, including the socially mediating public, rather than as individual products and articles written by dedicated journalists.
While various existing codes have some differences, most share common elements, including the principles of—truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability—as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.
Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel propose several guidelines for journalists in their book The Elements of Journalism . Their view is that journalism’s first loyalty is to the citizenry and that journalists are thus obliged to tell the truth and must serve as an independent monitor of powerful individuals and institutions within society. In this view, the essence of journalism is to provide citizens with reliable information through the discipline of verification.
Publishers, owners and other corporate executives, especially advertising sales executives, could try to use their powers over journalists to influence how news is reported and published. For this reason, journalists traditionally relied on top management to create and maintain a “firewall”between the news and other departments in a news organization to prevent undue influence on the news department.
The codes of ethics in journalism vary across various regions of the world. The codes of ethics are created through an interaction of different groups of people such as the public and journalists themselves. Most of the codes of ethics serve as a representation of the economic and political beliefs of the society where the code was written. Despite the fact that there are a variety of codes of ethics, some of the core elements present in all codes are: remaining objective, providing the truth, and being honest.
There is not a profession in the world that doesn’t take time, now and again, to reflect not only on where they’ve been and who they are, but also where they are going. That is a subject that is always good for a hearty debate. What we do know is that journalism was like an ember; it began as an ash in ancient civilizations, and by the late 1600s, it became a single flame that, with proper tending and oversight, grew into the conflagration it is today.
When information technology was introduced to the world, journalists were excited about how it could be used to shape and propel the profession. However, there can be no question that, instead, it has consumed the practice. Technologies also continue to fall over each other, and segue from rigid formats to multi-modalities. What is true, though, once all of the bells and whistles are stripped away, is that the essence of journalism remains the same. No matter what journalism looks like in the future, the practitioner must be unbiased and their work plagiarism-free. They must not bow to bribes or cut corners to get a story to market before a competitor just to be first. The journalists of today and tomorrow must continue to be driven to work to inform the public without fabrication, and be willing to practice the craft tirelessly, so they maintain and improve their ability to reach their audience. It is obvious that journalism will remain ensconced in the category of “profession”, because of the high expectations it imposes, and the high skill level it requires.
credibility：可信性
impartiality：公正，不偏不倚
dissemination：传播
ember：余烬
conflagration：大火
multi-modalities：多模态
There are almost as many answers to definition of news as there are editors and reporters. In fact, no uniformly satisfactory definition has been found. However, it is a given in most city rooms that news is what the editor says it is.
News has a broadly agreed set of values, often referred to as news values. News values, sometimes called news criteria, determine how much prominence a news story is given by a media outlet, and the attention it is given by the audience.
To be effective, a reporter simply has to understand the theories and concepts of how news is gathered and written as well as the particular role the media plays in a community. While there may be no definitive definition of news, there is a body of knowledge dealing with writing and presenting news that every reporter should master. Most journalists agree that the following eight elements make up what is considered “news”.
The first element is reporting something that has just happened or is about to happen. Time is a strong ingredient, “today, yesterday, early this morning, tomorrow”. The newness of the occurrence makes up “immediacy”, “timeliness”in the news.
Some facts and occurrences are important to you personally, such as inflation, and the Iraq situation particularly if one of the hostages is someone you know or a family member of a close friend.
Some events are less important when it occurs across town. The question most asked by journalists is: “If this happened outside my immediate area, my city, my province, would I be interested in reading about it?”Keeping this question in mind is particularly important to the reporter. You must examine your story to see if indeed it would interest other readers.
Prominence as a news element is well-known to most of us. The public figures, holders of public office, those who stimulate our curiosity, people in positions of influence all enjoy news prominence. For your visitor or speaker to qualify for news prominence, he or she must be well enough known to command the attention of readers either by reputation or by the nature of the topic to be discussed.
Oddity is often news. The bizarre, the unusual, the unexpected often make news. Generally those people who perform striking feats in emergency situations are news, such as a woman lifting an automobile off her child, travelling around the world in a sailboat, unusual recycling methods, and use of materials in a different way. In journalism, oddity is defined as the “man bites dog”formula. That certainly makes the “news”.
Conflict is one element most observed with the clash of ideologies, even worldwide. Although most businesses and organizations shy away from the reporting of conflict, it is understandable that this element is firmly based in the news formula.
Suspense creates and expands news appeal. The outcome of the Iranian hostages is suspenseful news. For the most part, organizations would rarely experience this type of circumstance.
Emotion is a news element commonly called “human interest”stories that stir our recognition of the basic needs both psychological and physical. Stories that prompt the reader toward sympathy, anger or other emotions in all their variety are commonly handled in feature-type stories. Organizations should be alert to the possibilities of “human interest”stories.
The last element of news, consequence, is more difficult to explain, but generally for a story to have consequence it must be important to a great number of readers. It must have some impact for the reader. Such news will affect him or her in some personal way. The safety of the city’s drinking water or the dumping of toxic wastes into rivers will be examined from the standpoint of consequence now and in the future. Thus it becomes an important news story.
From this discussion of news story elements, it becomes clear that a reporter should have these guidelines in mind when he or she is deciding if a message is news or an announcement and whether it’s a feature or an item of limited public interest. From this a reporter decides which format to use for distributing the information and the medium that is most likely to use your information.
immediacy：即时
locality：邻近
proximity：接近
bizarre：稀奇古怪的
oddity：奇异，古怪
A normative theory describes an ideal way for a media system to be controlled and operated by the government, authority, leader and public. These theories are basically different from other communication theories because normative theories of press are not providing any scientific explanations or prediction.
Normative theories are more focused in the relationship between press and the government than press and the audience. These theories are more concerned about the ownership of the media and who controls the press or media in the country.
Authoritarian theory describes that all forms of communications are under the control of the governing elite or authorities or influential bureaucrats.
Authoritarians are necessary to control the media to protect and prevent the people from the national threats through any forms of communication (information or news). The press is an instrument to enhance the ruler’s power in the country rather than any threats. The authorities has all rights to permit any media and control it by providing license to the media and make certain censorship. If any media violate the government policies against license, then the authority has all rights to cancel the license and revoke it. The government has all rights to restrict any sensitive issues from press to maintain peace and security in the nation.
Libertarian theory is also named as free press theory. Libertarian theory sees people are more enough to find and judge good ideas from bad. The theory says people are rational and their rational thoughts lead them to find out what are good and bad. The press should not restrict anything, even a negative content may give knowledge and can make better decision whilst worst situation. The libertarian thoughts are exactly against or opposite to the authoritarian theory which says “all forms of communication works under the control of government or elite like king”.
Freedom of press will give more freedom to media to reveal the real thing happening in the society without any censorship or any authority blockades.
Social responsibility theory allows free press without any censorship, but at the same time the content of the press should be discussed in public panel and media should accept any obligation from public interference or professional self regulations or both. The theory lies between both authoritarian theory and libertarian theory because it gives total media freedom in one hand but the external controls in the other hand.
The theory helps in creating professionalism in media by setting up a high level of accuracy, truth, and information. The theory allows everyone to say something or express their opinion about the media. Media must take care of social responsibility and if they do not, government or other organization will do.
Social responsibility theory avoids the conflict situation during war or emergency by accepting the public opinion. Media will not play monopoly because the audience and media scholars will raise questions if media published or broadcasted anything wrong or manipulate any story. Media standards will improve.
The Soviet system has passed away and, with it—for the time being at least—Soviet theory. It is still worth outlining its principles. Soviet media theory is imitative of Leninist principles which based on the Carl Marx and Engels’ideology. The government undertakes or controls the total media and communication to serve working classes and their interest. The theory says the state have absolute power to control any media for the benefits of people. They put an end to the private ownership of the press and other media. The government media provide positive thoughts to create a strong socialized society as well as providing information, education, entertainment, motivation and mobilization. The theory describes that the whole purpose of the mass media is to educate the greater masses of working class or workers. Here, the public was encouraged to give feedback which would be able to create interests towards the media.
Soviet media theory looks similar to authoritarian theory but the core part is different from each other. In authoritarian theory it is a one-way communication, there is no feedback allowed from the public, but in Soviet media theory it is a two-way communication, at the same time the whole media is controlled or works under the leadership.
As the name implies, this theory relates to media operating in developing or so-termed third world nations. It has parallels with Soviet theory because media are seen to serve a particular social and political function. It favors journalism which seeks out good news, in contrast to the free press position where journalists respond most readily to stories of disaster, and for whom “bad news is good news”because it commands bigger headlines.
Development theory requires that bad news stories are treated with caution, for such stories can be economically damaging to a nation in the delicate throes of growth and change. Grim headlines can put off investors, even persuade them to pull out their investments. As an antidote to the bad news syndrome, development theory seeks to accentuate the positive: it nurtures the autonomy of the developing nation and gives special emphasis to indigenous cultures. It is both a theory of state support and one of resistance that is to the norms of competing nations and competing theories of media.
This represents the sort of media purpose the idealist dreams up in the bath. It is an aspiration rather than a phenomenon which can be recognized anywhere in practice, yet it is surely one which any healthy democracy should regard as a goal.
This theory places particular value upon horizontal rather than vertical modes of authority and communication. It stands for defense against commercialization and monopoly while at the same time being resistant to the centrism and bureaucracy, the characteristics of public media institutions. The model emphasizes the importance of the role of receiver in the communication process and incorporate what might be termed receiver rights—to relevant information; to be heard as well as to hear and to be shown.
There is a mixture of theoretical elements, including libertarianism, utopianism, socialism, egalitarianism, localism in the model. In short, people power.
normative theory：规范理论
authoritarian：极权主义者
libertarian：自由论者
monopoly：垄断
centrism：中间路线，温和主义
bureaucracy：官僚作风
utopianism：乌托邦思想
egalitarianism：平等主义
What, exactly, does data journalism mean in an age of open data portals, dazzling visualizations and freedom of information battles around the world? A dictionary definition of the two words doesn’t help much—put together, it suggests that data journalism is an occupation of producing news made up of facts or information. Data journalism has come to mean virtually any act of journalism that touches electronically held records and statistics—in other words, virtually all of journalism.
That’s why a lot of people in the field don’t think of themselves as data journalists—they’re more likely to consider themselves explanatory writers, graphic or visual journalists, audience analysts, or news application developers—all more precise names for the many tribes of this growing field. That’s not enough, so add in anything in a newsroom that requires the use of numbers, or anything that requires computer programming. What was once a garage band has now grown big enough to make up an orchestra.
Taxonomies of different branches of data journalism can help students and practitioners clarify their career preferences and the skills needed to make them successful. These different ways of doing data journalism are presented here in an approximate chronology of the development of the field.
Maurice Tamman of Reuters coined the term “empirical journalism”as a way to combine two data journalism traditions. Precision journalism, developed in the 1960s by Philip Meyer, sought to use social science methods in stories. His work ranged from conducting a survey of rioters in Detroit to directing the data collection and analysis of an investigation into racial bias in Philadelphia courts. He laid the groundwork for investigations for a generation. Empirical journalism can also encompass what became known as computer-assisted reporting in the 1990s, a genre led by Eliot Jaspin in Providence, Rhode Island. In this branch, reporters seek out documentary evidence in electronic form—or create it when they must—to investigate a tip or a story idea.
More recently, these reporters have begun using artificial intelligence and machine learning to assist in finding or simplifying story development. They can be used to help answer simple questions, or to identify difficult patterns.
These reporters are almost pure newsgatherers—their goal is not to produce a visualization nor to tell stories with data. Instead, they use records to explore a potential story. Their work is integral to the reporting project, often driving the development of an investigation. They are usually less involved in the presentation aspects of a story.
Arguably the newest entry into this world of “data journalism”could be the growing impact of visual and open-source investigations worldwide. This genre, which derives from intelligence and human rights research, expands our notion of “data”into videos, crowdsourced social media and other digital artefacts. While it’s less dependent on coding, it fits solidly in the tradition of data journalism by uncovering—through original research—what others would like to hold secret.
Looking at the winners of the international Data Journalism Awards would lead a reader to think that visualization is the key to any data journalism. If statistics are currency, visualization is the price of admission to the club. Visualizations can be an important part of a data journalist’s toolbox. But they require a toolkit that comes from the design and art world as much as the data, statistics and reporting worlds. Alberto Cairo, one of the most famous visual journalists working in academia today, came from the infographics world of magazines and newspapers. His work focuses on telling stories through visualization—a storytelling role as much as a newsgathering one.
portal：大门；门户网站
orchestra：管弦乐队
taxonomy：分类学
practitioner：从业人员；专门人才
chronology：年表
empirical：以实验为依据的
Data journalism is the analysis of statistics to numerically justify stories and make predictions. To some degree, journalists have used data since the start of its widespread accessibility; some of the first examples of computer-analyzed data-based stories come from Harvard’s Nieman Foundation in the 1960s. The increased volume of polls that became publicly accessible with the development of the internet in the early 2000s made data journalism more mainstream.
Among the first sites that began focusing on data journalism was RealClearPolitics (RCP), whose purpose was to collate polls along with interesting political editorials to allow the public to find both forms of political information on one site. RCP’s first foray into true data analysis was the development of the RCP polling aggregate, which summarized all the publically available polls by reporting their median. This simple statistical analysis took the first step towards eliminating possible polling biases and allowing the public to gain a better perception to the true state of the race. However, data-based predictions using these techniques in the 2004 presidential elections were not particularly successful compared to their non-data-based counterparts.
In 2008, Nate Silver, a relatively unknown baseball statistician, correctly predicted every Senate race and all but one state in the presidential election. He accomplished this by neither physically reporting from the ground nor by using some esoteric technique of political science. Instead, he used basic statistics to analyze the large volume of polls available and predict an outcome. The message was clear: data-based electoral predictions appeared to be significantly more accurate than predictions based on traditional political science. Since then, data journalism has become increasingly popular and has made analysis of elections and other issues more accurate and quantitative.
FiveThirtyEight and other sites, such as Vox.com, have attempted to apply data to other forms of journalism beyond electoral and sports predictions. Common applications include testing conventional wisdom in political science such as the opposition party gaining seats during midterms and the party affiliation of a state fully determining Congressional races, and looking at the effects of certain media-hyped events on the campaign. Another trend is the increasing use of journalist-created or crowd-sourced datasets. More recently, data journalism has been extended by the relaunch of FiveThirtyEight at ESPN to analyze the benefits of college, nutritional guidelines, and restaurant rating systems. Nate Silver is pushing the limits of data journalism and appears to be outcompeting traditional journalism across all fields.
However, data is a double-edged sword. It is wrought with difficulties. Most journalists are not trained statisticians and don’t know how to interpret accurately the probabilistic nature of data nor do they know how to deal with models with seemingly contradictory conclusions. The few are publishing their predictions and analyses on sites that aren’t mainstream. More importantly, journalism is not yet fully aware of the latent limits of data-based reporting. As powerful a tool as data is, it is also easy to misuse. Many prominent media outlets such as The New York Times unintentionally misreport data predictions when they report to the general public. As a result, data is often a double-edged sword: it can help improve the public’s awareness of the world around them, but it can also dramatically mislead the public.
The first, most common, pitfall is that data is inherently probabilistic. Predictions are not reported as certainties or facts; they have associated probabilities, which in more advanced analysis have their own error terms. These probabilities arise from a variety of sources: sample sizes and random error of polls, polling biases, potential flaws in the method, etc. The probabilistic nature of data is not respected by many publications.
The second, more subtle, pitfall is that while data is objective, any analysis of data must be subjective. The increasing volume of data available has highlighted a significant problem for data journalists: it is possible to find data saying almost anything. Data analysis must be performed to determine what the “truth”is or to make predictions, but this analysis has assumptions built into the model. At best, journalists should synthesize all the scientifically accurate models and report their results with as little bias as possible; this ensures that the public receives an accurate perspective of what the election would look like. However, a major effect is that many organizations only look at data that supports their own views or perform data analyses with assumptions that lead to favorable results.
Then how far can data go? When correctly done, data journalism can seem incredibly powerful. Probabilistic predictions of virtually anything are possible with sufficiently complicated models and complete information. One of the most powerful applications of data journalism evaluates the effects of a particular action, hypothetical or real, on public opinion or on the state of the campaign. It is virtually impossible to compete with data by using traditional means; in the time a traditional journalist can identify a potential trend by interviewing five people, a data journalist can analyze statistics relating to five million people and make generalizations about the whole country. But even the most powerful and most accurate data journalist is limited. Data can only analyze or confirm trends that are observed on the ground. Data cannot identify movements of people, nor can it explain how people think or why they think the way they do. It can only generate hypotheses about how people will behave and make models that analyze whether those hypotheses are true.
The attempted overuse and extended misuse of data today is not just limited to journalism. Society is approaching a cult of scientism, where all aspects of our lives are distilled into numeric calculations and decisions are made based on calculations. This approach is incredibly powerful, as numbers are more informed and more objective than a person’s feelings can be. However, people must be aware of the limitations of data: any model inherently introduces its own assumptions, which must be tested, and no model can understand certain aspects of an issue. Data will be a ubiquitous part of our lives, just as it will be a ubiquitous part of journalism. It remains to be seen whether it will be a boon or a hindrance for us.
foray into：涉足
quantitative：量化的
probabilistic nature：或然性
hypothetical：假设的
ubiquitous：无所不在的
The definition of data journalism is both painfully simple and frustratingly vague. In his Tow Center paper, Alex Howard offered a detailed definition for data journalism: “gathering, cleaning, organizing, analyzing, visualizing and publishing data to support the creation of acts of journalism.”
Those who practice it do tend to agree on one principle: data journalism is, first and foremost, journalism. It simply uses data as a source in addition to humans.
We tend to delineate a few categories, each with its own skills and job descriptions. While these may vary or overlap depending on who you’re talking to, they tend to fall roughly along these lines:
● Acquisition: Getting data, whether that means scraping a website, downloading a spreadsheet, filing a public records request or some other means.
● Analysis: Doing calculations or other manipulations on data you’ve got, to look for patterns, stories or clues.
● Presentation: Publishing data in an informative and engaging way. Infographics, news apps and web design are all examples of this.
Not all of these categories might fit a strict definition of reporting, but they all do constitute journalism, said Sarah Cohen, who leads a data team at The New York Times . Even news app developers who spend their days writing code are journalists, Cohen says, because they’re writing code in order to explain and communicate information to the public. The necessary skill for a data journalist is journalism and some interest in data.
While data brings its own challenges, it also offers some opportunities that are impossible or harder to get at in more traditional forms of reporting.
The clearest advantage data has over other sources is that it’s fact. It’s an actual counted number of fatalities, for instance, or tax dollars or potholes. There’s not as much need to rely on anecdotal evidence when you have the real evidence in front of you.
Take a story by the Associated Press from earlier this year, which used a congressman’s Instagram account as a source for an investigation. This particular politician had been taking flights on his donors’private jets, and billing the public for it, suggesting an overly cozy or even illicit relationship with his top donors.
The reporters had found the scoop by comparing the location data on his Instagram posts to public data on flight records. These days, anything can be data.
With data, size no longer matters: reporters can easily get ahold of information ranging from granular to the global. It might be just as easy to get budgets for every county in the state as it is to get it for just your county, opening up a wealth of new possibilities for exploration.
This capacity gives newsrooms an “investigative edge”they wouldn’t have otherwise, especially small or medium-sized newsrooms. Back in 1992, Steve Doig, a reporter at the Miami Herald , had to examine millions of building code inspections using a computer program called SAS. His investigation revealed the state had been extraordinarily lax about its inspections. Such a monumental task would have been impossible if his team of reporters had to work only with the inspection reports on paper.
With data, reporters can suss out patterns and follow up on leads in a way they can’t with verbal stories or anecdotes. While reporters should still use their journalistic judgment, data offers a view that doesn’t lean so heavily on instinct or personal judgment. Computers are great when it comes to discovering things faster or discovering things you didn’t expect.
Data can also support or oppose an existing claim, or theory, or even an urban legend. Like Steve Doig, a Miami Herald reporter who found a clear connection between building inspections and hurricane damage, The Guardian used hard numbers to clear up what had been an issue of finger pointing. “The core of data journalism, on at least the analysis end, is looking for patterns,”Doig said. “The patterns are going to be what tells the story.”
Just as data can illuminate a murky social issue, it can also quantify it, which contributes valuable information to the social discourse.
In 1989, even before Doig was doing his hurricane investigation, reporters in Atlanta were trying to investigate rumors of racial discrimination in bank loans. Using six years’worth of lender reports, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was able to show African-Americans were denied bank loans at rates far exceeding those for whites. The paper became one of the first to win a Pulitzer for an investigation using data.
The Atlanta reporters already had anecdotes about racial discrimination, Doig said, but the data allowed them to go beyond that and establish clear patterns—even illuminating the quantity and scale of the problem.
Data allows more capacity for showing the ‘near’and ‘far’view of a topic. In other times, a man on the street interview would be the ‘near’and an expert interview would be the ‘far.’There’s not so much need to rely solely on expert testimony when data can provide the ‘far’or ‘macro’view more precisely.
On the other hand, the scale of the data itself can be overwhelming for the audience. While data on every police force in the United States can offer a “far”view for a story, no reader is actually going to sift through all that information if it’s put in front of them. But the web allows them to “look at their own ‘near’”.
At the same time, there may be a reason to share a huge data set with an audience. Data sources and web technology have made it possible for journalists to be transparent as they have never been before. Reporters can even share how they reached their conclusions, or allow readers to come to their own. “Transparency is the new objectivity”became a saying among journalists.
“Outside of the realm of science, objectivity is discredited these days as anything but an aspiration,”Blogger David Weinberger wrote. “If you don’t think objectivity is possible, then presenting information as objective means hiding the biases that inevitably are there. It’d be more accurate and truthful to acknowledge those biases, so that readers can account for them in what they read.”
Reporters frequently collect information from the same sources over and over again: building permits, police reports, census surveys. Obtaining and organizing this information can be made infinitely more efficient, even totally automatic, by keying in to the data behind the reports.
Derek Willis, a developer at ProPublica, found himself constantly checking the Federal Election Commission’s website for new campaign filings. He automated this process, bit by bit, until he had a program that checked for new filings every 15 minutes, and alerted him to interesting ones. “I don’t miss a thing,”he said.
A little programming knowledge had made Willis’task not only more accurate and efficient, but freed up his time for other reporting tasks.
constitute：构成
pothole：坑洼；岩石中的溶洞
fatality：死亡
granular：由颗粒构成的
murky：浑浊的；阴暗的
testimony：证词