Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code

by Nikki Usher

Overview

Interactive journalism has transformed the newsroom. Emerging out of changes in technology, culture, and economics, this new specialty uses a visual presentation of storytelling that allows users to interact with the reporting of information. Today it stands at a nexus: part of the traditional newsroom, yet still novel enough to contribute innovative practices and thinking to the industry.

Nikki Usher brings together a comprehensive portrait of nothing less than a new journalistic identity. Usher provides a history of the impact of digital technology on reporting, photojournalism, graphics, and other disciplines that define interactive journalism. Her eyewitness study of the field's evolution and accomplishments ranges from the interactive creation of Al Jazeera English to the celebrated data desk at the Guardian to the New York Times' Pulitzer-endowed efforts in the new field. What emerges is an illuminating, richly reported profile of the people coding a revolution that may reverse the decline and fall of traditional journalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252081989
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	10/13/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Nikki Usher is an assistant professor at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. She is the author of Making News at the New York Times.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Interactives in the News 1

1 Interactive Journalism: A Budding Profession 17

2 The Rise of a Subspecialty: Interactive Journalism 37

3 Hacker Journalists, Programmer Journalists, and Data Journalists 71

4 Inside the Interactive Journalism Newsroom 101

5 Interactives and Journalism's Systems of Knowledge 145

Conclusion: Interactives and the Future of Journalism 183

Methodology 209

Notes 219

Bibliography 231

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

"The future of interactive journalism will not depend on whether it can increase page views or session times, but whether it can deepen our readers' and viewers' engagement with complex issues. Nikki Usher's Interactive Journalism is a great introduction into this emerging field of journalism where the most collaborative and interdisciplinary team players will thrive."—Wolfgang Blau, Director of Digital Strategy, Chief Digital Officer, Condé Nast International

"In Interactive Journalism, Nikki Usher skillfully answers three questions rarely addressed at the same time: how are newsrooms changing with their adoption of interactive journalism, what economic and cultural factors are driving this adoption, and why new ways of telling stories may affect the impact of journalism."—James T. Hamilton, author of All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News

"For future scholars of journalism production, this book will provide an important look at how interactive journalism—a subfield that seems likely to expand and transform in the coming decades—was practiced in the second decade of the 21st century." —Newspaper Research Journal

"Usher's book is an ambitious and foundational text for understanding this new subspecialty, and as such, it should beget a new generation of inquiry into the political economy and boundary issues it deftly raises." —New Media & Society

"As the first sustained investigation of this new form of journalism, Usher's main argument is persuasive....Her book will certainly serve as a foundational text for scholars turning their attention to this growing journalistic practice." —Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

"A thorough and multifaceted study of the evolution of journalism and what it means for both journalists, readers and communication in general." —European Journal of Communication

"Walker-McWilliams has written a fascinating accessible biography of union organizer Rev. Addie Wyatt, whose life's work was at the intersection of organized labor, civil rights, women's rights, and the church." —Library Journal

"Nikki Usher is once again on the frontline of the newsroom, with this vivid account of the rise of maker culture in online news. Expertly cutting through the techno-jargon, Usher provides the definitive portrait of interactive journalism—from its economic benefits and professional challenges to its potential to fundamentally transform how all of us see and engage with the world."—Rod Benson, New York University

From the Publisher