Comments on: The programmer as journalist: a Q&A with Adrian Holovaty

By: Milt Martin

Milt Martin — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:44:24 +0000

I suggest it’s much more likely that IT folks who are interested in community based news/media centers will become grassroots journalists instead of the other way around. I base this on being involved with many IT projects in the past 40 years where well meaning users wanted to help “program” their applications.

As an example of the former see http://prattnews.com where most of the founders have an IT background.

By: Lex Alexander

Lex Alexander — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:53:31 +0000

This I’ve gotta try.

Thanks!

By: Derek Willis

Derek Willis — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:34:57 +0000

Sure thing, Lex. Here's an example from my site: I got tired of visiting the FEC's press release page all the time, so I wanted to roll my own RSS feed from it. I used a Python script originally by Sam Ruby and adapted it to my needs. You can see the development process for the script.

By: Lex Alexander

Lex Alexander — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 10:03:20 +0000

Thanks all for the suggestions. I’ve downloaded a copy of Crimson Editor, and if a reasonable goal is to know enough to be dangerous, then I hope to become dangerous very soon.

That said, Derek, can you please be a little more specific about how you did this? Are there (stupid-question alert) sites from which you can download free script?

By: Tom Grubisich

Tom Grubisich — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:17:03 +0000

This hugely valuable Q & A pulls together the important things that are happening in Web journalism. What’s clear from what Adrian says — in response to Robert’s on-spot questions — is that we’re finally seeing developers/programmers and journalists (card carrying and the grassroots variety) coming together instead of being walled off by what used to be their different, sometimes adversarial cultures. When you go to sites like http://www.calacanis.com, you see this convergence happening — journalists adopting to and affirming technology, and, what’s most encouraging, developers/programmers using blogs to reach an audience well beyond what used to be their hermetically sealed world.

By: Derek Willis

Derek Willis — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:14:52 +0000

Lex, the way that I got into it was that in doing spreadsheet and database stuff I kept running into the same situation – namely, I kept having to do repetitive tasks. So I started looking at scripts that took certain tasks and automated them – downloading web pages, pattern matching – and then tried to apply them to what I was working on.

That involves a lot of trial and error, but eventually you get better at. And then I started branching out, reading stuff like what Adrian suggested. To me, it was a lot easier to wrap my head around a concrete task and then learn the steps to accomplish it.

By: Robert Niles

Robert Niles — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:40:33 +0000

I’ve found ColdFusion a painless way for non-programmers to code up data-driven, dynamic webpages. It’s a tag-based mark-up system (like HTML), rather than a script-based system, like PHP, making it easier for a total newbie to digest. It’s also integrated with DreamWeaver, a plus for folks used to that tool.

(Disclosure: OJR’s CMS is written in CF.)

The downsides are that CF is not open-source, and it’s a bear on a server, so you need to find a host that can support it well. It’s also a Web publishing tool, not a programming language, so you won’t use it for computer-assisted reporting (CAR) analysis or stand-alone applications.

But I like CF as a way for a person with nothing more than HTML and Access experience to get oneself to the “a ha!” moment where you see how data and presentation intersect online. From there, I think it is easier to comprehend more sophisticated programming languages, but there are people who would argue with me on that. The opposing view is that a tag-based solution like CF is an intellectual dead-end, and one that might get in the way of people understanding the unique syntax of scripting and programming.

By: Adrian Holovaty

Adrian Holovaty — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:05:31 +0000

Lex: Check out the free book “How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python”.

PDF: http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/dist/thinkCSpy.pdf
Web: http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

From there, the book “Text Processing with Python” would be a good place to go.

Good luck!

By: Lex Alexander

Lex Alexander — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 09:14:05 +0000

For those of us who are journalists, who perhaps have some background in spreadsheets and databases and basic HTML but none in programming, how would you recommend we begin to teach ourselves how to do this stuff?

By: Barbara Iverson

Barbara Iverson — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 07:59:40 +0000

This is a very useful interview. What always impresses me about Adrian and other “programmer journalists” is that they don’t seem afraid to learn and are so enthusiastically curious about new tools and ideas.

These attributes seem to be less evident in lots of “mainstream media” people that I meet. They know it all before you even start talking to them. Everyone in journalism, especially j-education could do well to be abit more willing to explore the area where technology, thinking and communication meet.