Nerd Alert 206

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Paola: How are journalists adapting to the digital age? The International Center for Journalists is conducting a survey to find out and also share findings from the 2017 survey.

Tyler: Most of us probably take A/B testing as a given these days. Researchers at Northeastern University are digging into the ethical implications of our constantly optimized reality.

Ben: From the WordPress Slack's #core-privacy channel I learned this week that Google Fonts keeps all its fonts in a single GitHub repo, allowing you to self-host permissively-licensed fonts.

Kay: There are many important things to consider when designing for mobile that can impact your organization's trustworthiness and revenue.

🤖 Inndy: A museum built by robots, for robots.

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism/tech peers

Texty published the software and a write-up on how they used machine learning to find "interesting" places in satellite imagery: illegal amber mining in the Ukraine.

For all you ai2html users out there, Vox created and released an Electron/Vue GUI named Vizier to make some of the project management and deployment workflow easier.

Postlight Studios has open-sourced their Mercury web parser, which facilitates extracting article content from web markup.

EVENTS & DEADLINES

Be in the know

February 22: Voting closes on NICAR lightning talks.
February 25-27:  Knight Media Forum in Miami, FL.
February 28: The next biweekly Source Community Call.
March 3: Deadline to apply for a nonprofit fellowship at the 2019 Eyeo Festival.
March 5: Washington post live interview with Tim Berners-Lee.
March 7-9: AEJMC Midwinter Conference in Norman, OK.
March 7-9: NICAR Conference in Newport Beach, CA.
March 8-17: South by Southwest in Austin, TX.
March 15: AAJA's open call for pitches closes.
April 7: Deadline for the Data Journalism Awards.
April 10: Deadline to apply for the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

Kaiser Health News is hiring a data reporter.
American Public Media is hiring a digital analytics manager.
Colorado Public Radio is hiring a web developer.
PBS NewsHour is hiring a senior UX designer.
The Texas Tribune is hiring a visuals team developer/designer.
Northeastern University is hiring a data visualization designer and a front-end web developer.
SCPR's Resound project is hiring software engineers in Pasadena, CA and Boston, MA.
NPR is hiring a product manager for voice platforms.
Chicago Public Media is hiring a lead software engineer.
The Markup is hiring several editorial and product roles.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: Happy Birthday to George Washington. 🎂

DRINK: Margaritas on National Margarita Day. 🍹

EAT: Food to pair with margaritas. 🍛

It's lime time.

Nerd Alert 205

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Ben: Heather Bryant raises an interesting point in this thread about reimbursements for conference costs: the reimbursement model requires applicants to front the cash. What if there were an organization that gave conference attendees up front funding in exchange for the scholarship's later reimbursement money?

Paola: Save the date! On March 5th at 9 a.m., Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, will join Washington Post columnist David Ignatius and share his views on the rise of disinformation and censorship, threats to digital privacy, and more. This event will be livestreamed through the Washington Post. Get all the event details here!

Tyler: My favorite budding tradition at the NICAR conference is a session spotlighting how small, local newsrooms are doing exceptional work in data journalism, digital storytelling or general news nerdery. Got a project that fits that bill? Submit it here (whether or not you're going to NICAR).

Kay: New research from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism confirms what we've known: clicks do not determine the value of an article and there's an opportunity for more personalization.

🤖 Inndy: So long and thanks for all the cool Mars photos, Opportunity.

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism/tech peers

Congratulations to INN member Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, whose collaborative investigation with Quartz and the Associated Press, Hurricane Maria's Dead, won first place in the 2018 Philip Meyer Awards.

More than 200 student journalists worked in collaboration with media organizations, including the Trace, on the Since Parkland project, which tells the stories of 1200 children killed by gun violence since the Parkland shooting one year ago.

Storybench wrote up a quick summary of interesting projects at the the 2019 Computation + Journalism Symposium, including automated article creation, easy textual analysis, and a look at the media's obsession with social media sources.

EVENTS & DEADLINES

Be in the know

February 20: Deadline to apply to the next Join the Beat community of practice for beat reporters interested in audience engagement.
February 21:
WordPress 5.1 planned release date.
February 25-27:  Knight Media Forum in Miami, FL.
February 27: Two weeks 'til NICAR. Get your flu shot!
February 28: The next biweekly Source Community Call.
March 3: Deadline to apply for a nonprofit fellowship at the 2019 Eyeo Festival.
March 7-9: AEJMC Midwinter Conference in Norman, OK.
March 7-9: NICAR Conference in Newport Beach, CA.
March 8-17: South by Southwest in Austin, TX.
March 15: AAJA's open call for pitches closes.
April 7: Deadline for the Data Journalism Awards.
April 10: Deadline to apply for the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

American Public Media is hiring a digital analytics manager.
Colorado Public Radio is hiring a web developer.
NPR is hiring a product manager for voice platforms.
PBS NewsHour is hiring a senior UX designer.
The Texas Tribune is hiring a visuals team developer/designer.
Northeastern University is hiring a data visualization designer and a front-end web developer.
SCPR's Resound project is hiring software engineers in Pasadena, CA and Boston, MA.
Chicago Public Media is hiring a lead software engineer.
The Markup is hiring several editorial and product roles.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

WATCH: xkcd tv. 📺

EAT: Molten caramel cake. 🍴

DRINK: A pink gin/campari cocktail. 🍷

You're all our Valentines in nerdery.

 

Nerd Alert 204

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Tyler: Things are getting weird in 2019, according to the Next Web's latest roundup of web design trends.

Kay: Are you giving your readers more than 4 options for a membership, as donation levels or for other important conversion points? If so, you might want to re-think it! Learn more about how people make decisions.

Ben: If you want to build a national org to compile police department data, talk to Steven Rich at NICAR. If you just want to download all the books that entered the public domain in 2019, Motherboard has a neat list of lists.

Paola: What are the fundraising trends for 2019?

🤖 Inndy: How exciting that so many of my robot cousins had Super Bowl ads this year!

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism/tech peers

The Trace's investigation into theft of guns from stores has some really cool maps.

ProPublica's rendition of the USS Fitzgerald's crash is beautiful and well-written. We're eagerly awaiting photos of the 1:700 scale model of the ship described in the "how we made it" article.

Capital Public Radio presents 140 years of California wildfires on this interactive map.

EVENTS & DEADLINES

Be in the know

Today: Deadline to submit a NICAR lightning talk proposal.
February 13: INN Town Hall: Possibilities in Nonprofit News.
February 14: The next biweekly Source Community Call.
February 20: Deadline to apply to the next Join the Beat community of practice for beat reporters interested in audience engagement.
February 21:
WordPress 5.1 planned release date.
February 25-27:  Knight Media Forum in Miami, FL.
March 7-9: AEJMC Midwinter Conference in Norman, OK.
March 7-9: NICAR Conference in Newport Beach, CA.
March 8-17: South by Southwest in Austin, TX.
March 15: AAJA's open call for pitches closes.
April 7: Deadline for the Data Journalism Awards.
April 10: Deadline to apply for the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

American Public Media is hiring a digital analytics manager.
Colorado Public Radio is hiring a web developer.
PBS NewsHour is hiring a senior UX designer.
The Texas Tribune is hiring a visuals team developer/designer.
Northeastern University is hiring a data visualization designer and a front-end web developer.
SCPR's Resound project is hiring software engineers in Pasadena, CA and Boston, MA.
NPR is hiring a contract product designer.
Chicago Public Media is hiring a lead software engineer.
The Markup is hiring several editorial and product roles.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: Conlon Nancarrow, black MIDI and irrational music. 🎹

DRINK: Real hot chocolate. ☕️

READ: Dorothy Butler Gilliam at the Washington Post. 📝

Tomorrow is Chocolate Day!

 

Nerd Alert 203

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Ben: Josepha Haden was recently named Executive Director of the WordPress project. Read up on her leadership philosophy, and her review of WordPress' strengths and challenges.

Paola: Over the course of the next three years, Facebook will place a total of $300 million worth of support towards journalism projects including nonprofits focusing on local journalism.

Kay: Dimensions.Guide is a really beautiful and free reference database of drawings which document the standard measurements and sizes of the objects and spaces that make up our world. Super handy for infographics!

Tyler: I recently found out about this Chrome extension that lets you toggle support for CSS grid, flexbox and other modern CSS layout techniques in DevTools — a useful addition to the browser compatibility testing toolkit.

Inndy (bot): I may be smart, but I'm not sure if I can tell the difference between infringing and non-infringing use of copyrighted material.

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism/tech peers

A series of text bubbles reading "yes" and "no"

WBEZ's presentation of their Chicago mayoral candidates interviews is wonderfully clean, for a field of 13 would-be mayors.

For the other races in Chicago's Feb. 26 municipal elections, check out Chi.vote, a ballot and voting info site produced by a collective including the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line and The Triibe.

In Vermont, VTDigger has the definitive rundown of every new state house member.

Mapzen's tools and IP have found a new home as a project of The Linux Foundation, giving the community a solid legal framework for future fundraising to ensure the continued availability of their data.

CALmatters' Frayed Wires series will dig into the details of California's electrical generation and how that system is being upgraded.

Facebook has taken steps to prevent ProPublica from automatedly collecting political ads. We laud ProPublica's persistence.

St. Louis Public Radio has put several hundred tiny multiple charts in this one story.

And thank you to Stephen Pruitt and all Wikipedians.

EVENTS & DEADLINES

Be in the know

February 1: Deadline to submit to SND's Best of Digital Design competition.
February 7: City Bureau webinar: Creating Accountability with City Scrapers.
February 8:
Deadline to submit a NICAR lightning talk proposal.
February 13: INN Town Hall: Possibilities in Nonprofit News
February 25-27:  Knight Media Forum in Miami, FL.
March 7-9: AEJMC Midwinter Conference in Norman, OK.
March 7-9: NICAR Conference in Newport Beach, CA.
March 8-17: South by Southwest in Austin, TX.
March 15: AAJA's open call for pitches closes.
April 7: Deadline for the Data Journalism Awards.

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

JOIN OUR TEAM! INN Labs is hiring a senior developer and a digital project manager – come work with us!

NPR is hiring a contract product designer.
Chicago Public Media is hiring a lead software engineer.
Pacific Standard is hiring a data editor.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is hiring an interactive graphics editor.
The News Literacy Project is hiring an associate director of education.
Minnesota Public Radio is hiring a digital analytics manager.
The Markup is hiring several editorial and product roles.
Pew Research Center is hiring a digital design intern for summer 2019.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

LISTEN: Miguel Zenón featuring the Spektral Quartet. 🎻🇵🇷

EAT: FOIA borscht. 🍲🇷🇺

READ: The Amazing Spider-Man vs The Prodigy, 1976. 🕸

The Mailchimp monkey sits on a rock in the water, surrounded by sharks

We're trying something new with Nerd Alert this week.
Let us know what you think.

 

Guest Post: Publishing elections results on the cheap

Caitlin Ostroff is the Miami Herald's data reporter and a graduate of the University of Florida. Mike Stucka is the data dork at the Palm Beach Post and is a graduate of Northeastern University, Loyola University Chicago, and a great IRE bootcamp a decade ago. Today, they contribute a guest post to INN Labs about the elections software they built.

Want to get live election results on a shoestring budget? We did. The result is a multi-component package of election reporting tools that ease the way for newsrooms to build their own scrapers, output them in a semi-standardized format and optionally use a frontend for display.

Python code parses through several pipe-delimited text files published by Florida’s Secretary of State to get statewide results, and also scrapes local results for several counties. The key was to adopt pseudo-standards from software created by The New York Times and National Public Radio, who worked together to process election results from The Associated Press.

By building scrapers against the CSV format of the Elex package, it became easy to combine multiple levels of results that could be handled and processed by a single system. You can combine your own scrapers and AP's data — or just your own scrapers, or just AP's data — to get results for your pages. The Miami-Dade County scraper was easily adapted for Kentucky, and Palm Beach County's scraper easily became West Virginia's.

The Palm Beach Post built a front end by baking out the pages using Flask. Three scrapers ran on Election Night and were beaten into more than 500 different widget embeds for 11 newspapers, with each complete scrape-parse-build run taking about 40 seconds total.

The Miami Herald used JavaScript to parse out the results from a JSON file and render them to the Herald’s static media server, using fixed-size iframes of different breakwidths to bring them into its proprietary content management system. The Herald enabled cross-origin sharing, which allowed it to control caching in an .htaccess file.

Part of the Miami Herald's election results page, showing the ballot initiative results for Florida Amendment 13, which would end dog racing.
Part of the Miami Herald's election results page, showing the ballot initiative results for Florida Amendment 13, which would end dog racing.

There's a lot of flexibility: one of us un-called a race from a cell phone while waiting to pick up a kid from school, because the open-sourced publishing tool uses a Google Sheet to allow edits of race names, candidate names, parties, winners and runoffs.

In addition to rendering live election results, this setup also allowed both papers’ newsrooms easy access to data, from the margins between candidates to live vote count changes from newly-tallied votes. The data structures and workflow helped on election night and through a recount process that stretched more than a week. The Miami Herald and The Palm Beach Post used the code to render the current tallies as Florida inched closer to a recount after the election, as well as to drive analysis for reporting.

A screenshot of a line chart, showing that DeSanis, Scott, and Caldwell had high initial leads in the vote count, but their leads declined as more votes came in. Caldwell's lead disappeared entirely, ending up several thousand votes behind the competition.
Chris Persaud and Mike Stucka built a Datawrapper chart of Republican candidates' lead in vote counts, using data from their election handling tool.

Existing widgets ran with stories, and new widgets were fed in near-real-time from the data we'd pulled. The code for whole-election results gave both publications a framework for pulling precinct-level results.

How cheaply done was this? We think we might have gotten about five weeks total to work on this. A much more ambitious project is Politico's open-sourced Civic, on which a development team of five focused for about five weeks each to add improvements. Our effort is far more limited, but likely also a lighter lift to get started with. Weigh your options and see what fits your organization.

Would you like to use our code? The front-end is available now and you can check out the scrapers here and here, and all are released under the MIT License. You can use this code as-is or contribute improvements. We have a sample widget collection here, and implementations at the Herald and the Post. Want to improve the project? We'd welcome that; send a pull request, drop us an email, find us in News Nerdery, call us by phone.

Nerd Alert 141: We wish you a merry weekend

We wish you a merry weekend
We wish you a happy weekend
We wish you a restful weekend
And a happy day off ♬

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Ben: The RNNoise Project is collecting donations of noise to help improve real-time noise suppression algorithms. Record a sample in your browser, review it to make sure that there's nothing sensitive, and submit. It's that easy!

RC: Pierrick Calvez's "A Five Minutes Guide to Better Typography" is a beautifully-laid-out demonstration of its own principles.

Julia: “Want readers to start trusting you? Stop stalking them across the internet,” says Melody Kramer.

Kay: How are you treating your most committed users? You have potential to expand your loyal members/followers/supporters and you can start with talking to them like they matter.

Inndy: Other robots are calling you, and it’s because the Do Not Call list has a big hole in it.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Listen up!

The News Match logo is plain text that reads: News Match. Quality Journalism Matters.

News Match is back, and our team is working to help participating organizations take advantage of this unique and impactful opportunity. Read more about how we can help, and check back here every week for updates. We’ll be posting plugin release announcements, how-tos for configuring donation forms, best practices for user experience design, and advice on maximizing Google Analytics for donation campaigns. You won’t want to miss it.

EVENTS/DEADLINES

Be in the know

October 6: Last day to apply for Catalyst AAJA’s Media Entrepreneurship Program
October 13-14: Computation and Journalism Symposium 2017 at Northwestern University
October 14: Last day to apply to participate in the Washington News Nerds’ Tacoma (un)conference
November 3: Deadline for proposals for Propublica’s Local Reporting Network
December 1-3: WordCamp US in Nashville
December 7-8: SRCCON:WORK in Philadelphia

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism peers

A graph showing the percent of Puerto Rican power customers who have service. It starts below 5% and slowly grows to 10.7%.

When FEMA removed drinking water and power statistics from its page covering Puerto Rico's recovery, The Washington Post started graphing those stats. And FEMA started posting those stats again.

The Financial Times has created an eye-opening game based on real reporting, including interviews with dozens of Uber drivers, that shines a light on the realities of working in the gig economy. You're an Uber driver. Can you make your mortgage payment?

Do you develop or maintain database-reliant interactive websites? How will they be preserved for the future? Katherine Boss at New York University Libraries, and Meredith Broussard at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute are conducting a survey of news apps, to help figure out what the best ways to archive such projects are.

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

NPR is hiring a product designer.

The Center for Public Integrity is hiring a news developer.

St. Louis Public Radio is hiring a digital engagement producer and a bunch of other positions.

Poynter has a massive roundup of journalism internships and fellowships.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

READ: Wordways, an open-access journal dedicated to "recreational logology."

LISTEN: It’s Halloween Month, but if you don’t want to listen to the Otomatone cover of Spooky Scary Skeletonscheck out The Guardian's list of the best 50 tracks from September. 🎶

PLAY: Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing meets Asteroids in Ztype.

WATCH: Three hours and 47 minutes of live YouTube comments being fed into a shredder.

EAT: Overnight sous-vide bacon.

DRINK: Pumpkin beverages — including ones without pumpkin spice!


It’s been a tough week. You survived!

The Pokémon Staryu floats against a blue background with motion-blurred purple and white stripes. From its central gem, endless streams of stars pour towards the viewer.

You get a star!

Nerd Alert 139: Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

HOT LINKS

  RC: The U.S. Digital Service published a check-in with a few of their alumni to share what they worked on during their time in government, and what they’re up to now.

  Kay: How does your organization set goals? Are they “audacious” enough? Here’s an argument for dreaming big.

  Julia: While Google’s AMP promises improved speed and search rankings, “the cost for the web, and for those who do business on it, is much, much too high."

  Ben:  WordPress is moving away from React because of Facebook’s patent license clause.

  Inndy: Raise a glass to Cassini - a true to friend to humankind over the last 20 years.


WE MADE A THING

Julia and RC joined the good folks from The Trust Project in Washington, DC this week to design better patterns for citations and references on news sites. Here are two concepts they came up with:

  • CiteLine – citations that improve transparency for the story development process.
  • Extra Info Layer – methods, techniques, and ideas for adding additional story components to articles.

EVENTS / DETAILS

Sept. 18: Deadline to propose a session for SRCCON:WORK, happening Dec. 7-8 in Philly.

Sept. 22: Last day to pitch talks to the 2018 Computer Assisted Reporting conference, aka NICAR.

Sept. 23: Data Journalism Bootcamp at CUNY – sign up soon!

Sept. 29: Last day to apply for a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship.


SHOUT OUT

The Chicago Reporter published a fabulous interactive that monitors Chicago’s police reforms.

Databae is a new open-source initiative to share one-off newsroom code.


GET A JOB

Our friends at Alley Interactive are hiring a Director of Javascript Development.

CORRECTIV’s Nerds Team is hiring a full-stack Python developer.

NY Public Radio is hiring a data reporter.

Reese News Lab is hiring a data scientist.

Deseret News is hiring a data visualization / editorial developer.

WGBH with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting is hiring an investigations editor.

The Center for Civic Design is hiring a usability researcher.

CALmatters is hiring an audience engagement manager.

Reese News Lab is hiring a data scientist.

100 Days in Appalachia is hiring a digital managing editor.

WNYC is hiring a data reporter.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!


SOME OTHER STUFF

READ:  The Hidden Life of Trees.

LISTEN: Human Music.

WATCH: Studio Ghibli in Real Life.

EAT: Bacon Wrapped Grilled Peaches.

DRINK:  Make your own homemade Hard Apple Cider.

 


Get outside an enjoy a good campfire this month!

Nerd Alert 138: What if we all worked together on something?

HOT LINKS

What we're reading this week

Ben: Content “blocks” are the happening thing. WordPress is working on Gutenberg. Tumblr is moving from plain HTML to the Neue Post Format. ProPublica now runs on Craft, which is built around blocks. What else is out there?

RC: Jake Spurlock’s presentation, A Biased Guide to Managing Bias, is a must read.

Julia: This post on the narrowing gap between design and code suggests that a new era of design etiquette is upon us.

Kay: Designing, developing, and testing for multiple screen sizes has its challenges - including not being able to work with multiple devices at the same time. That’s why I was excited to read about XRespond, a tool made to simplify that process and give you an all-in-one overview.

Inndy: Fear dumb robots.

PEOPLE ARE MAKING THINGS

Helpful projects that you can join

This is a roundup of all Irma-related things that people can contribute to remotely: mapping projects, newsroom projects, and so on:

The above is what ran in the Nerd Alert Newsletter sent on Friday, September 8. We're keeping an updated version of this list over here.

 

EVENTS/DEADLINES

Be in the know

This Saturday, September 9, is the last day to fill out the OpenNews News Nerd Survey.

September 22: Last day to pitch talks to the 2018 Computer Assisted Reporting conference, aka NICAR.

September 23: Data Journalism Bootcamp at CUNY – sign up soon!

September 29: Last day to apply for a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship.

SHOUT OUT

Work we admire by our journalism peers

The logo of Coral Project's Talk software is a text bubble with three hollow circles in it.
The Washington Post is now using Talk, the Coral Project’s commenting platform. It'll help them engage with commenters, instead of the too-common approach of turning comments off.

 

GET A JOB

Good jobs with good people

ProPublica is hiring a senior reporting fellow and a contract animator.

CALmatters is hiring an audience engagement manager.

Reese News Lab is hiring a data scientist.

100 Days in Appalachia is hiring a digital managing editor.

WNYC is hiring a data reporter.

If you're looking for general jobs in nonprofit news, check out the main INN newsletter and sign up here to get it in your inbox every Tuesday. Two INN newsletters are better than one!

 

DISCOVER

Gather ye rosebuds

READ: I downloaded an app. And suddenly, was part of the Cajun Navy 📲

LISTEN: Bohemian Rhapsody on a fairground organ 🎶

WATCH: A webcam on Miami Beach ⛱

EAT: Do-it-yourself Meals Ready to Eat 🍴

DRINK: Clean water 🚰

PLAY: The Magic Door ✨

 


 

Stay dry, friend.

An illustration of a white cat sitting on the edge of a pool, watching the goldfish swim. This is in a garden with lots of cabbage.

Nerd Alert 135: Hello from WordCamp!

We're at WordCamp for Publishers this week, so this Nerd Alert is a little light.

If you’re in Denver, come say hi! 👋

If not, never fear! You can follow the events on Twitter at #wcpub, and check out our team's slides here:

You're invited to join us remotely for Contributor Day! The event kicks off tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. MT, and RC will be leading collaboration on Largo. Take a look at the issues on GitHub and jump in wherever you can!

HOT LINKS

  RC: If you haven’t checked out the WP GraphQL project yet, here’s a great presentation on how and why you’d want to get started using it.

  Kay: Tech platforms have long stood by strict neutrality and freedom of expression. That may now be changing.

  Julia: Some Internet history for your Friday afternoon: The languages that almost became CSS.

  Ben: The processes described in this blog post sound incredibly inadvisable – changing a computer’s operating system in place as it runs, live, without rebooting, in a production environment – but Magento did it, and it worked.

  Inndy: Robot dance party?

SOME OTHER STUFF

LISTEN: Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata

EAT: Blueberry Crisp Tart with Oat Crust

DRINK: Nutella Latte

WATCH: You owe it to yourself to experience a total solar eclipse


Whoa.

A dolphin, a whale and a seal bob up and down in the ocean, wearing eclipse glasses, while the sun flicks on and off as the moon passes in front of it.

Nerd Alert 134: What will you listen to this weekend?

HOT LINKS

  Ben: Jenn Schiffer's essay about not policing code ecosystems makes a good point: it's not a good thing for coders or for code ecosystems if people get chased out for not meeting some arbitrary bar of worthiness.

  Julia: The Schools of Journalism dives into the varying communities in the journalism industry, the “interesting” times we live in, and ways to approach the future.

  Kay: An incredibly inspiring coder.

  RC: The guy who invented those annoying password rules now regrets wasting your time.

  Inndy: The Internet Archive is posting digitized 78prm records, and there are now a couple of Tweetbots: @great78project posts every 10 minutes; @78_sampler posts every 2 hours.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

No Office Hours next week — we're all attending WordCamp for Journalists in Denver. If you're in town, come say hi 👋 – and be sure to join us for Contributor Day on Saturday, 8/19, to work on the next Largo release!

WE MADE A THING

It's a map of the United States, with some states more shaded in green than others, according to which have more Largo users.
We’ve collected a partial list of sites using Largo in the wiki on INN/Largo. If you know a site that's not in the list, let us know!

EVENTS/DEADLINES

August 17-19: WordCamp for Publishers.
August 18: Last day to apply for the Poynter-NABJ Leadership Academy for Diversity in Digital Media.
September 29: Last day to apply for a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship.

SHOUT OUT

Screenshots flicker past of Reveal's Sanctuary interactive, showing: Cook County Illinois, Clark County Nevada, Miami-Dade County Florida, and Chicago.
Reveal's "What makes a sanctuary?" compares policies between different sanctuary cities and states.

The Coral Project just released a set of guides designed to help people in journalism improve their strategy, skills, and understanding for effective community engagement.

ProPublica and Public.Resource.org have added an additional 1.9 million electronically-filed Form 990 documents to the Nonprofit Explorer database, bringing the total to more than 3 million records.

The New York Times has open-sourced a text-message-based facial-recognition system for members of Congress. It's called Who the Hill.

GET A JOB

Center for Public Integrity is hiring a data editor in DC.

The Texas Tribune is hiring an interactive designer/developer.

Chalkbeat is hiring a digital producer.

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DISCOVER

LISTEN: The Preytorians 📻

WATCH: Surfers playing with a floating dock 🌊

EAT: 17 different home-made ramen recipes 🍜

DRINK: A vanilla and fresh cherry bourbon cocktail 🍸


Watching MP3s being copied is nowhere near as fun.

A record press makes a record by pressing a blob of vinyl between two grooved platens.