Derek Willis

Matt Langer: this could have been like ten tweets or one blog post so here's to economy i guess

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:09:27 -0400

Matt Langer: this could have been like ten tweets or one blog post so here's to economy i guess:

oh you spent the last 5 minutes reading a wired article instead of playing farmville? mazel tov, kiddo, here, have a 20 minute panel to tell us all about the emancipatory implications of helvetica neue at a conference that establishes exclusivity not with intellectual rigor but with a $7,500 ticket price.

Testify.

Regulate This

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:21:10 -0400

Complying with Federal Election Commission regulations can make some committees cranky, but rare is the one that threatens legal action if the FEC doesn’t acknowledge that it’s non-filing is, in fact, a proper filing. Let me introduce you to the American Promise PAC’s “April Quarterly report” (emphasis mine):

April Quarterly Report- 
 
No Contributions 
No Expenditures 
 
Cannot file a Form 5 as my FEC number C00513887 does not qualify. 
This is an official submission of my quarterly reporting requirement,

and should be considered as such.

 
The failure to timely acknowledge this report as the true and correct

April Quarterly Report 2/28/2012 - 3/31/2012 required for the

American Promise PAC may result in civil money penalties assessed

against the FEC. Thank you for your cooperation. 
 
Sincerely, 
Gerard Tobin Owen Drumm 
American Promise PAC

Go big or go home, I guess.

storyboard: The Morgue Lives! It is a cramped basement annex,...

Mon, 07 May 2012 11:17:59 -0400

storyboard:

The Morgue Lives!

It is a cramped basement annex, stacked high with metal filing cabinets, full of three-fourths of a million pounds of old newspaper clippings and photos, going back 160 years.

It’s simply called “the morgue.”

To get here, a reporter must leave the shiny glass tower that is the 40th Street headquarters of the New York Times, walk a half-block down the street, and descend three levels below the sidewalk. There, in a nondescript tower, she will emerge from a dirty elevator, walk past a janitor’s closet, then past a giant, rusted pump contraption with running water, and finally reach a pair of metal doors. There are glue traps with belly-up cockroaches in the corner.

Read More

The Mountain Top

Wed, 02 May 2012 20:55:00 -0400

This is hard to relate without sounding like bragging, but here goes: Carolyne wanted to see a video of MLK speaking (we were at his memorial last Saturday), so after dinner we watched a clip from his “Mountain Top” speech. I told her that it was the last one before he was assassinated.

Carolyne watches these kinds of historic videos very closely. At the point when King says that’s he’s not fearing any man, she turned to me and asked, in all seriousness, “Did he know he was going to get shot?”

I don’t know what age that question may have dawned on me, but I’m pretty sure I was not in kindergarten. How did we get here?

I’m struggling with how to answer that beyond, “You’re not really supposed to pick up on these things just yet, kiddo.” Part of me erupts in quiet amazement; part of me worries that she’ll want to read and watch and witness things that are very difficult to comprehend on an emotional basis. You want to protect your child, but you also want her to know that life is complex, that people inflict terrible violence on each other, that good people - and joy - can be taken from us.

Of all the things that make up parenting for me, calibrating the emphasis between her joy and her inquiry is one of the hardest to manage. I really wish I knew what goes on in that brain of hers sometimes.

All in a row.

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:46:49 -0400

All in a row.

NYT @ SXSW: Getting a decent data connection at SXSW can be a challenge, given...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:49:20 -0400

NYT @ SXSW: Getting a decent data connection at SXSW can be a challenge, given...:

nytsxsw:

Getting a decent data connection at SXSW can be a challenge, given that it attracts what may be the most data-hungry crowd in the world. With a project called Homeless Hotspots, a marketing company is helping out with this, while helping the homeless and promoting itself. Homeless people have…

Hey, it’s another reason that SXSW sounds like the worst of humanity gathered together. This is unbelievably idiotic.

cjchivers: A few minutes ago I was skimming through a large...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:11:30 -0500

cjchivers:

A few minutes ago I was skimming through a large folder of recently archived photographs, looking for images of captured Somali pirates for a NYT story in-works, when I found this one.

It’s of Commander Layne McDowell, banking inside the cockpit of an F/A-18F over Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, made while reporting on a decade of changes in American air-to-ground war. I carry a camera to help my work. I am not a photographer. Make no mistake about that. But I’ve found that a camera is an essential tool for fact-gathering. It is also a form of digital notebook, as it is much more efficient to take photographs of passing scenes and people than to try to describe them solely by relying on longhand in a traditional paper notebook. (I use the old-school notebook, too, of course; together these tools complement one another, safeguard accuracy, and allow me to double-check memories and impressions quickly and with confidence.)

Work habits can lead to all manner of surprises. Often I don’t have time to look carefully at all that ends up on the HD cards or that gets saved to a remote hard drive (remember: photography is not my primary job; it’s a tool supporting my primary job). Then, sometime later, like today, I click on the tiny icons and images I did not know I had made pop up on my screen. This was today’s surprise. We’ll make it THE GUN’s photo of the day.

Now back to looking for those frames of the pirates…. and to more posts, and an edit of the story on-desk.

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPH

By the author. Earlier this month, inside Vengeance 13, a U.S. Navy strike fighter on patrol over southern Afghanistan.

donohoe: I spent last weekend back in New York to attend the...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:58:52 -0500

donohoe:

I spent last weekend back in New York to attend the NYTimes Hack Day. It was a lot of fun.

My project wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as most of the others and with a late start I didn’t get to finish it in time to submit.

Well now its up, courtesy of the 6 hour flight to Seattle. Its called The Last Word.

It takes the Homepage feed, grabs the last paragraph, takes the last line and imposes it next to the photograph. Sometimes its a compelling combination, sometimes not.

The feed is freely available as javascript you can pull into your own little web app via a callback. I have a cron job updating it every 30 minutes. The result is uploaded to a Dropbox.

GIS Analyses of Dr. Snow’s Map Snow’s map,...

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:45:56 -0400

GIS Analyses of Dr. Snow’s Map

Snow’s map, demonstrating the cholera deaths clustered around the Broad Street well, provided strong evidence in support of his theory that cholera was a water-borne disease. Snow drew Thiessen polygons around the wells, defining straight-line least-distance service areas for each. Each Thiessen polygons is comprised of boundary segments that perpendicularly bisect line segments drawn between the point it contains and adjacent points. A large majority of the cholera deaths fell within the Thiessen polygon surrounding the Broad Street pump, amd a large portion of the remaining deaths were on the Broad Street side of the polygon surrouding the bad-tasting Carnaby Street well.

THE GUN by C.J. Chivers: Alive Day, Joao Silva.

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:18:36 -0400

THE GUN by C.J. Chivers: Alive Day, Joao Silva.:

cjchivers:

October 23, 2011 marks the passing of a year since Joao Silva stepped on a landmine in southern Afghanistan, losing both legs and suffering other injuries from which he is still recovering. Please join Joao’s family and friends in wishing him well — and a long, full life, the value of which…

Which States Ban Atheists from Holding Public Office? - Friendly Atheist

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 11:30:10 -0400

Which States Ban Atheists from Holding Public Office? - Friendly Atheist:

underpaidgenius:

North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8:

The following persons shall be disqualified for office:

First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.

Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1:

Atheists disqualified from holding office or testifying as witness.

No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.

…

Mississippi, Article 14, Section 265:

No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.

…

Maryland, Article 37:

That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.

…

South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4:

No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.

…

Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2 (PDF):

No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.

…

Texas, Article 1, Section 4:

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.

USA Today Announces Commercial Terms of Use for Its API

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:34:04 -0400

USA Today Announces Commercial Terms of Use for Its API:

donohoe:

I missed this - big news IMHO - a large publisher opening up their full content vai their API.

In my mind its just the Guardian and USA Today who are doing this.

Research notes: Journalism students vs. tech-focused students

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:46:44 -0400

Research notes: Journalism students vs. tech-focused students:

mattwaite:

Here in my first semester on the faculty at the Harvard of the Plains, I get to work with students in both the College of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Raikes School for Computer Science and Management. With both groups of students, I’m working through problems that can be…

Report: Arts Funding Serves White, Wealthy

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:40:20 -0400

Report: Arts Funding Serves White, Wealthy :

if-arts:

FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: ”Billions of dollars in arts funding is serving a mostly wealthy, white audience that is shrinking while only a small chunk of money goes to emerging art groups that serve poorer communities that are more ethnically diverse, according to a report being released Monday.

The report from the Washington-based National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, shows foundation giving has fallen out of balance with the nation’s increasingly diverse demographics. The report was provided to The Associated Press before its release.

donohoe: The Washington Post Social Reader app unnerves me. The...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:36:42 -0400

donohoe:

The Washington Post Social Reader app unnerves me. The act of “Reading” is now itself an action. You don’t click any “read this” button. It may be benign to some but there are potential pitfalls on the privacy front.

What if your friends saw a steady stream of articles that you were reading?

Finding comedy in cancer

Study: Sexual potency after prostate cancer can depend on age, weight, treatment type

Quiz gives facts about skin cancer

A fight that’s only begun

What do you think they might want to ask you about?

That is just a hastily put together example, but I think it illustrates my point.

We are what we read, and sometimes we need to explore topics and subjects that need to stay in the private realm. There are plenty of good and bad reasons why you would extensively read up on articles regarding to health, diseases, diabetes, marriage, death, suicide, taxes, depression… the list goes on.

Would you want those articles bunched together in your public feed?

The Washington Post has an Editor’s Note. Its says many things including:

“All you have to do is read, just as you normally do. No “recommending,” “liking” or “sharing” — just read and we’ll do the rest of the work. The app gets better the more friends you have using it.”

Thats a very nice spin on it.

Earlier this year when I was still at the Times we talked to Facebook about a news app. Facebook had a whole set of new features in the pipeline (presumably just launched) and this passive reading action was one of them and they were pushing hard for us to use it. It came up in conference calls and on-site meetings. I believe Facebook is very eager to catch-up or even displace Twitter as a go-to place for news, and this is how they think they can do that.

To their credit the newsroom shelved the idea. The consensus was that this was intrusive and potentially an invasion of privacy. I think after that was repeatedly communicated that Facebook lost interest in doing anything at all.

I think its one thing to broadcast your taste in music, but what you’re reading raises the stakes a bit. For now, all I have is this isolated case but everything has a beginning.

harrisj: Public Service Announcement: Don’t forget the...

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 07:42:49 -0400

harrisj:

Public Service Announcement: Don’t forget the applications tab of your twitter account. A lot of people have been laughing at the clueless social media expert who fired a ghostwriter and forgot to change his password. But changing a password is not enough, since once a remote client (e.g., Twitter for iPhone) has been authorized against your account, it uses its OAuth credentials and not your password to authenticate. Changing your password will not affect those applications (indeed OAuth was designed so apps could access the account without storing passwords), and the only way to revoke access is to go into the applications tab of your account settings and hit “revoke access.” Try looking at yours and you’ll be struck by a few things immediately:

How many services you’ve forgotten that you granted read and write access to your account a long time ago (and which might be a way to access your account if they are hacked).

OAuth is keyed to an application, but in this ghostwriter-gone-rogue case you’d really want to revoke the access of a person. How do you figure out which application they use?

Most users have little to no idea that this tab even exists.

In conclusion, rotate your passwords in this sort of situation, but don’t forget the applications as well.

"In 1980, while standing near Reagan while he was doing a television interview in New Hampshire, Jack..."

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:41:06 -0400

“In 1980, while standing near Reagan while he was doing a television interview in New Hampshire, Jack Germond, once a titan of the political press, leaned over and said to me - “I know he will never be president but I’m not sure what state is going to stop him.” It was a valuable lesson for a young political reporter about the worth of conventional wisdom.”

- Brian Crowley, Crowley Political Report

Schizopolis: A Random Tumblr API Suggestion

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:18:21 -0400

Schizopolis: A Random Tumblr API Suggestion:

harrisj:

This is an idea for the Tumblr API that occurred to me last night. Despite it likely being a solution to a problem only I am interested in, I figure people might be interested enough in the proposal to share it. I would love to use Tumblr as a general-purpose liveblogging backend.

If you look…

I don’t have the same connection to Sept. 11th that my colleagues and friends in New York do....

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 20:52:24 -0400

I don’t have the same connection to Sept. 11th that my colleagues and friends in New York do. Even though I was in Washington on that September day, I personally never felt in danger, although I probably should have. All I know ten years later is that what my colleagues have done captures so well the sorrow, anger, confusion and rebirth that this anniversary evokes, and I cannot say how proud I am to be associated with them in even the smallest way.

One Into Two

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:37:16 -0400

The couple who attended St. Luke’s Shelter annual Labor Day picnic on Monday were pretty much like any of the others who have come over the years: they were only too glad to help out with setup and cleanup, and the husband manned the grill for much of the time, too.

The Shelter has always attracted families as supporters. One person may start volunteering by bringing meals, and then that one invites a spouse, and it just goes from there. On Monday, a father and son were there.

But in one utterly jarring respect the couple who showed up on Monday differed from every other couple I’ve seen arrive at the picnic. After all of the cleanup was finished, the husband went downstairs to his bed at the Shelter. His wife walked to the bus stop to catch a ride to her shelter, about 10 minutes away.

I was so taken aback that I ran after the woman and found her at the bus stop, and offered her a ride on my way home. She was incredibly positive, although frustrated, by the circumstances she and her husband found themselves in. They both had lost their jobs and then their apartment. They were middle-aged and did not have any dependent children. They were not addicts or in treatment. Yet they could not stay together anywhere in the city. There were no programs for homeless couples without children.

She hungered for work, telling me how much she had enjoyed her last temporary assignment. With a steady job, they could get an apartment in a month or two, she said. She found it very hard to adjust to living with other women after decades of living with her husband: “He’s my best friend, you know?”

She thanked me profusely for the ride, and for listening. I told her not to give up hope, that better days were coming. I can’t imagine having to go through what she and her husband are going through right now. I certainly can’t imagine doing it with their dignity and grace.