Once Narrative Science had mastered the art of telling sports and finance stories, the company realized that it could produce much more than journalism. Indeed, anyone who needed to translate and explain large sets of data could benefit from its services. Requests poured in from people who were buried in spreadsheets and charts. It turned out that those people would pay to convert all that confusing information into a couple of readable paragraphs that hit the key points.

After realizing that turning data into stories presented an opportunity far larger than sports, the company changed its name to Automated Insights. “I used to put limitations on what we do, assuming our stories would be specific to data-rich industries,” founder Robbie Allen says. “Now I think ultimately the sky is the limit.”)


As Hammond explained what he did, the critic became agitated. Times are tough enough in journalism, he said, and now you’re going to replace writers with robots?

“I just looked at him,” Hammond recalls, “and asked him: Have you ever seen a reporter at a Little League game? That’s the most important thing about us. Nobody has lost a single job because of us.”

The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program supports talented journalists, academics and other public policy analysts who offer a fresh and often unpredictable perspective on the major challenges facing our society. Schwartz Fellows are selected on a highly competitive basis, and serve -- some full-time, some on an adjunct basis -- for one or two years. New America provides them with a non-partisan intellectual community where they can pursue their individual research projects. The Schwartz Fellows benefit from their engagement with each other, and with New America's various policy programs, while their presence adds to the intellectual verve of the institution and helps shape its longer-term agenda and focus.

The reason the web works as wonderfully as it does is because the medium leads us, sometimes against our will, into common places, not glass boxes. It’s our job—as journalists, as educators, as publishers, as software developers, and maybe most importantly, as readers—to keep those connections alive.

Welcome to SourceWatch—your guide to the names behind the news. SourceWatch is a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. A primary purpose of SourceWatch is documenting the PR and propaganda activities of public relations firms and public relations professionals engaged in managing and manipulating public perception, opinion and policy. SourceWatch also includes profiles on think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists, government agencies, activists and nongovernmental organizations. Unlike some other wikis, SourceWatch has a policy of strict referencing, and is overseen by a paid editor.

I am writing in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.

Who the hell are all these people enrolling in journalism schools? Forbes has reported today that enrollment is soaring, even though nearly one-sixth of newspaper jobs have evaporated since 2001, and those left pay an average of $40,000 a year— just slightly more than journalism school will cost you. I know people do crazy things in a recession, but taking out a student loan for a degree that won’t give an edge in a wheezing industry actually makes getting an MBA look smart.

It’s not that I’m pessimistic about the future for good journalists. Quite the opposite, in fact. Journalism isn’t dying; it’s just in a period of extreme volatility. And in any time of volatility, there’s huge room for opportunity. But you’re not going to learn how to exploit it in a stuffy classroom taught by people who got there by working at newspapers.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

Journalists will moonlight as bloggers. Bloggers will moonlight as investigative reporters. And other predictions you can bank on for 2009 — if we still have banks.

Oh, Snap!

Fascist pigs! The one of the greatest journalists of our time, arrested at the RNC.

V2K scares me.