#opendata from Open Knowledge Foundation on Vimeo.
You might be wondering what this short documentary has to do with journalism or even what open data has to do with journalism. No doubt you are aware that journalism has been facing a ‘crisis’ for a while now. Not just because of the recession and shrinking advertisers but because of the dominance of the web for getting information to people and allowing them to share amongst themselves.
Open data activists are working with the web to provide information in a way people can engage with and ultimately feel empowered by. Projects like FixMyStreet and Schooloscope are emblematic of this rise in civic engagement projects. Indeed, crime mapping in San Francisco led to local citizens demanding more policing in areas of high crime and a change in the policing schedule to reflect the hours when crime is at its highest.
News used to have some responsibility in this area of engagement but never quite understood the field or didn’t know quite what to do with it. Now they have lost complete control and the masters of the web platforms are again taking informational control of a growing area of interest. But news organizations are missing a very important trick. Data driven journalist, Mirko Lorenz, has written how News organizations must become hubs of trusted data in a market seeking (and valuing) trust.
Which is why I think anyone interested in the area of data journalism should watch this documentary, as not only should traditional media be training journalists to engage with this new streaming of social and civic data, but managers and execs should think about the possible shifting in the traditional media market away from advertising and towards the trust market.
Data Miner UK 