Thanks Indi Young For Joining Our April Book Club Hangout!

headshot-Indi-Young3-180x180The News Nerd Book Club met in April, via hangout, to discuss Indi Young’s Practical Empathy. We were very happy the author was able to join us in our discussion and graciously answered our questions.

We discussed the need for practical empathy as a balance for the current focus on big data. Young offered an example: stakeholder interviews tend to be very directed in contrast to open-ended conversations focused on more on listening and developing empathy with your subject to help broaden the spectrum of ideas that come out of the conversation and creating space to explore more ideas off trail.

On an individual level she recommended adding a tiny bit of exploration about the thinking behind a request a colleague makes of you. Admitting you have a “gap in knowledge” can help uncover assumptions and intent.

Next Month

Our next hangout will be Wednesday, May 13th at 1 pm ET.

Take this quick survey by the end of the day this Thursday (April 16) and we'll announce the selection on Friday. You can also have a look at our reading list and add titles you would like us to consider for future meetings.

Follow @newsnerdbooks for the announcement of next month's book this Friday and for details on the hangout. Hope to see you there!

April’s News Nerd Book Club: Practical Empathy

91kIIztgk1LJoin us for the April News Nerd Book Club hangout on Wednesday, April 8 at 1 pm ET.

This month we'll be reading Practical Empathy by Indi Young.

From the book's description:

"Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully."

Sounds great to us.

The meeting this month will be held via Google Hangout and the invite and link to RSVP are right here.

Hope to see you in a few weeks. Happy reading!

March Book Club Recap: The Design Of Everyday Things

For the March Book Club we read The Design of Everyday Things and gathered for pie and ice cream* at NICAR on Thursday, March 5th.

Nelson’s book was first published more than 25 years ago, with new editions and updates. The book’s ideas continue to resonate with readers and designers.

Our discussion included observations and links to other work and resources, including:

  • The value of applying industrial design philosophy to other areas.
  • Giving yourself some grace in response to frustration -- it might just be bad design.
  • UX faces larger and more complex challenges than designing a single use object.
  • The opportunity for organizations to identify the needs of their community and build accordingly.
  • How do responsive and native apps meet users needs?
  • What is the role of testing and types of testing.

Takeaways

Jeni’s Ice Cream for the yummy treats. They are based out of Columbus, Ohio and have shops in many great places, including Atlanta.

We compiled notes from the conversation and links to resources mentioned.

Next Month

Our April meeting will be held at 1pm ET on Wednesday, April 8th (RSVP here) and you can help us pick the book we'll read by voting in this quick survey. We'll announce the selection by the end of the day Friday!

Join Us for Book Club at NICAR 2015

designJoin us for a very special NICAR edition of the News Nerd Book Club. We'll be gathering, IRL, on Thursday, March 5, from 11:20 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.

This month, we're reading The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. We'll talk about how design principles and the fundamentals of human psychology influence our understanding of the world — and the work we do as data journalists.

Plus? We'll *probably* have pie.

The book club gathering will be part of NICAR Conversations — a facilitated conversation track curated by Erika Owens and David Eads. Learn more about it here.

Join Us For The February News Nerd Book Club Hangout

In the Beginning Was the Command Line

The votes have been counted and re-counted, and now we can say with certainty that Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning ... Was the Command Line is the people's choice for the February News Nerds Book Club reading.

This essay was first published online in 1999, and later published as a book in November of that year. You can download a zipped text file from Stephenson's site or buy it wherever older books are sold.

In the Beginning... is about the relationships between users and their computers, and how those relationships have changed over time. It's a 1999 opinion on the state of technology in 1999, leading Neal Stephenson to write just four years later:

In the Beginning was the Command Line is now badly obsolete and probably needs a thorough revision. For the last couple of years I have been a Mac OS X user almost exclusively.
– Neal Stephenson, in a 2003 post on his website and a 2004 Slashdot interview

With that glowing recommendation, we'll let you get started reading. The February meeting will be held via Google Hangout on Wednesday, February 11, at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

The invite and link to RSVP are here (and here is a direct link to the Google hangout for quick reference).

The March book club meeting will be held in person at NICAR. If you'd like to suggest books for that and future meetings, you can do that over on our reading list hackpad.

Happy reading!

January Book Club Recap

Ida Tarbell, as shown in the frontispiece of All in the Day's Work

For January the News Nerd Book Club read Ida Tarbell's autobiography, All in the Day's Work.

Tarbell details her growth from a child in the oil-rich lands of 1850s western Pennsylvania to the muckraker known for her investigations of Standard Oil. Her words take us to Poland Seminary of Poland, Ohio; The Chautauquan in Chautauqua, New York; the streets of 1890s Paris where she researched Madame Roland and wrote for McClure's Magazine. She wrote a series on Bonaparte, then one on Abraham Lincoln, then another on Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller.

Some of what we discussed:

  • Is true objectivity possible in journalism? Tarbell grew up affected by the oil industry, and targeted its illegal practices, but didn't align herself with the muckrackers of the era and tried to find a balance between different sides of the story.
  • The French citizens Tarbell encountered weren't concerned with life outside the borders of France. Are there are modern parallels?
  • Expatriate writers were in such demand that Tarbell funded her time in Paris with articles for American publishers. Are Americans today actually interested in other countries' events beyond just the story of the moment?
  • Her dedication to her work amazed us. She was truant in grade school until she discovered that schoolwork was a puzzle to be solved.
  • Are all journalists driven by an intense curiosity from childhood? Tarbell's story is but one example. If you interviewed every investigative journalist, would you find that the topics of their investigations were related to their childhood experiences?
  • Tarbell's greatest stories were serialized over months or years in magazines. Is Serial a sign that this format of publishing will return?

Next month!

Our book club hangout next month will be Wednesday, February 11, at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

Help us select the book for February's hangout by filling out this quick survey.

The three titles under consideration are:

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

The Design of Everyday Things is even more relevant today than it was when first published.
– Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO

Responsive Web Design, second edition by Ethan Marcotte

Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Ethan’s straightforward approach to designing for this complexity represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.
– Jeffrey Veen, CEO and cofounder of Typekit, VP of Products at Adobe

In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson

In the Beginning was the Command Line is now badly obsolete and probably needs a thorough revision. For the last couple of years I have been a Mac OS X user almost exclusively.
– Neal Stephenson, in a 2003 post on his website and a 2004 Slashdot interview

You can also add suggestions to our book club reading list or tweet them to us @newsnerdbooks.


Ida Tarbell on pie:

Of the Monthly I have more distinct recollections. It was in these that I first began to read freely. Many a private picnic did I have with the Monthly under the thorn bushes on the hillside above Oil Creek, a lunch basket at my side. There are still in the family storeroom copies of Harper's Monthly stained with lemon pie dropped when I was too deep into a story to be careful.

Join Us For The January News Nerd Book Club Hangout

Thanks to everyone who has participated in our Nerd News Book Club in our first couple of months out of the gates and to everyone who voted to help us choose the book for next month.

ida tarbell stampFittingly, since our friends at the Chicago Tribune just released a new version of their static site publishing tool named in her honor, the book for our January meeting will be "All in the Day’s Work: An Autobiography" by Ida M Tarbell.   You can download a copy from the Internet Archive.

The January meeting will be held via hangout on Wednesday, January 14th at 1 pm (ET).

The invite and link to RSVP are here (and here is a direct link to the Google hangout for quick reference).

The Smithsonian offers a short primer on Ida M Tarbell, seen in this 2002 stamp. She reminds us:

"Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists—with it all things are possible"
– Ida M. Tarbell

Hope to see you for hangout next month and if you'd like to suggest books for future hangouts you can always do that over on our reading list hackpad.

Happy reading!

December Book Club Recap

chart libraries offering book club
Libraries offering book clubs

For December the News Nerd Book Club read Charles Wheelan’s Naked Statistics, his effort to help readers become more knowledgeable about statistics. Wheelan opens the book with his own story of indifference to “learning” stats in the classroom.

The book is designed to build a reader's knowledge and familiarity with statistical concepts from one chapter to the next, tackling more complex topics in later chapters. Between the “lessons," Wheelan includes anecdotes applying the concepts presented to help readers become more adept in spotting misleading inferences, perspectives and think more critically about published findings.

Naked Statistics uses both real world and hypothetical examples to illustrate statistical concepts. When the book was released, Salon offered an excerpt from the book that discusses how probability and overconfidence affected the global financial system.

Wheelan also talks about the The Monty Hall Problem, a classic illustration of probability based on a scenario in the show Let's Make a Deal. The New York Times created a simulation of this scenario you can try for yourself.

In his conclusion Wheelan poses five questions and suggests how many of the book’s methods could be applied to find solutions.

  • What is the future of football?
  • What (if anything is causing the dramatic rise in the incidence of autism?)
  • How can we identify and reward good teachers and schools?
  • What are the best tools for fighting global poverty?
  • Who gets to know what about you?

The news nerds book club discussion centered on how this book might be relevant to our work and linking it to other ideas, like those raised in November’s book selection.

Journalists might find the chapters on deceptive statistics and polling good places to start should you find this book on a recommended resource list or are looking for a quick stats primer before attending a more in-depth workshop, like the boot camp on statistics offered by Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Next Month!

Our book club hangout next month will be Wednesday, January 14 at 1 pm ET.

Help us select the book for January’s hangout by filling out this quick survey.

The three titles under consideration are:

War by Sebastian Junger

"Absorbing and original…Junger has found a novel and interesting lens through which to view the conflict in Afghanistan, and he captures many things a lesser writer might miss."
– The New York Times

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

The Design of Everyday Things is even more relevant today than it was when first published.”
– Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO

All in the Day’s Work by Ida Tarbell

"[Tarbell] achieved a career as interesting and as fruitful as any writer of her time. Now she tells about it, with characteristic and sincere modesty."
– The New York Times

You can also add suggestions to our book club reading list or tweet them to us @newsnerdbooks.

Join Us For The December News Nerd Book Club Hangout

Naked StatisticsThanks to everyone who came to our hangout last week and to everyone who responded to our survey to pick the next book for our News Nerd Book Club!

The book for the December meeting will be Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan.

The December meeting will again be held via Google Hangout on Wednesday, December 10, at 1pm ET (we're going to stick to 1pm ET on the second Wednesday of the month from now on unless we're meeting in person at a conference).

The invite and link to RSVP is here (and here's the direct link to the hangout for quick reference).

Just a reminder that you can suggest future books you'd like to read over on our reading list hackpad.

Hope to see you on December 10. Happy reading!

And Our Book Club Book For November Is…

51oXKWrcYYLThanks to everyone who responded to our survey to pick the next book for our News Nerd Book Club!

It was a close contest but the winner, and our book for November, is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The November meeting will be held via Google Hangout on Wednesday, November 12, at 1pm ET. The invite and link to RSVP is here (and here's the direct link to the hangout for quick reference).

Just a reminder that you can suggest future books you'd like to read over on our reading list hackpad.

Hope to see you on November 12. Happy reading!