If you build interactive news applications or graphics, you likely agonize over this question: “Can I reuse this, or is this a one-off?” If reusable, what uses cases will it cover? Will it integrate with future tools? How far in the future should you plan? If it’s a one-off, are you throwing away that work? Or will similar projects have you rebuilding, repeating yourself and reinventing the same wheel? There’s lots of middle ground and lots of room for debate. So, let’s have that debate.

1. Tools v. Snowflakes
Chris Amico, Frontline, @eyeseast
Priya Krishnakumar, Los Angeles Times,
@priyakkumar
September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools

2. http://bit.ly/ONA16tools
September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools

3. What do we mean when
we talk about tools?
September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools

5. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Built for news
● Tarbell
● Backbone
● python-frontmatter
Built outside of news
● Bootstrap
● Howler.js
● waypoints.js

6. Editorial
Product
Infrastructure
September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools

7. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
A good newsroom tool should...
● Be reusable
● Make your/your team’s life easier
● Help avoid repetitive behavior
What are the things you find yourself doing
over and over?
If you do something more than twice, can it be a tool?

8. ● Audience-focused
● Faster
● Riskier
● Can be department-specific, more room
for experimenting
● What matters: That it works
September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Editorial

9. February ’15
Hard coded :(

10. July ’16
● Django app!
● Can embed
tweets/instagrams
● /youtube videos
● Newsletter
signups
● More engagement
opportunities!

11. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Use cases for editorial tools are
constantly evolving

12. CartoDB,
Dec 2014

13. CartoDB, May 2015 | < 25K pageviews

14. CartoDB, April 2016 | 1.5M pageviews

15. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Product
● Meets a user's recurring need and evolves as that need
changes
● Less risky
● Developed in planned, fixed-length cycles
● It works, and could be used newsroom-wide
● Optional/ideal: doubles as a training tool

16. Los Angeles Times Chartbuilder
(forked from Quartz)

18. Los Angeles Times meme generator
(forked from Vox)

19. https://github.com/datadesk

20. Knight Lab
storytelling tools

22. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Infrastructure
● Slow, risk averse
● Can take upwards of 6 months
● Has to (almost) always work
● Fully integrated with CMS, company workflow

23. Event liveblog
● Django-based app
● Developed over a
year
● Whole newsroom
trained

24. SNAP (a CMS overlay)

25. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Why invest in newsroom tools?
Think of technology as the easy part.

26. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
● Tools are a reflection of strategy and culture in the
newsroom.
● Strategy is what you mean to do
● Culture is what you do without thinking, and what you talk
about while you're doing it.
If you spend 40 minutes every day on
something, what could you do if you got
those 40 minutes back?

27. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
When should something not be a tool?

29. Clayton Kershaw, pitch by pitch

30. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Key questions

31. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Who
Who are your users when you build a tool? Yourself,
reporters, other newsrooms?

32. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
What
What should you not make a tool?
What are the small tools that make big projects easier?
What is a project you wish you had made into a tool?
What are some of the newsroom challenges you run
into when building a new tool?

33. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
When
If you're doing an editorial project, when do you
decide to make something you can reuse?
When do you work within the CMS?
When do you do decide to retire a tool?
When do you open source a tool?

34. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
How
How do you get the bandwidth to work on tools?
How much of your job is maintaining open source tools?
How much time do you invest in tool building?

35. September 15, 2016 #ONA16tools
Some of our favorite tools
Useful libraries
● Bootstrap
● Mapbox/Leaflet
● Howler.js
● isMobile
● Waypoints.js
Editorial tools
● Chartbuilder (Quartz)
● Vox Meme generator
● OpenStreetMap
● QGIS
● Ai2html
● SVG crowbar
● NPR daily graphics rig
● LiceCap (for gifs)
Story templating
● ArchieML
● NPR apps template
● Tarbell
● Ractive
● Django