A keynote Miguel Paz gave for a brown bag lunch at NPR in April, 2015, organized by the Research, Analysis and Data team of this awesome media organization. While it is focused on NPR most of the ideas apply to other news organizations as well.

1. THE POWER OF STRUCTURED
JOURNALISM & HACKER CULTURE
IN NPR
a @Poderomedia brown bag lunch talk at NPR by @miguelpaz I april 9th, 2015
*Thanks to @tylrfishr and @jeremybowers for the color palette of this presentation

2. @miguelpaz, journalist, Nieman Berkman fellow at Harvard 15`,
founder of Poderopedia.org, president Poderomedia,
founder HacksHackersSCL…
(my first gig was in Radio when I was 17)
Who is this guy

3. Poderopedia
Map who is who in business and politics to show conflicts of
interest and newsworthy connections of powerful people and
organizations

4. Find & filter facts,
data
From news, gov, company
sites, open data, regulators
public and private databases.
Using crawlers, scrapers,
advanced search, a tool we
built called “NewsMapper”
Discover connections
documents & sources
Detect newsworthy relations
between people, institutions
and companies.
Including dates, types of relations
(family, education, work, clubs, etc)
Organize & structure
data
Validate newsworthy relations, write
profile, add connections, documents
and sources
Publish & distribute
Publish news focused profiles,
network maps,
documents & sources
Poderopedia model

5. News are made of a
triggering event + context + archive
News components

6. And they are made of people, conflict & power
News components

7. Poderopedia started with a question
Can we build something that includes many news
components and that can save 30% of a journalist`s
time on pre-reporting & fact checking?

8. Can we build something to save 40% of time on pre-reporting
& fact checking?

9. this is how we found out about
Structured Journalism

10. The way we do stories is by editing. We report and tell
the story. We leave a lot of things out, that we should use.
This is one way of understanding the potential of
Structured Journalism
Structured Journalism

11. Facts & data
Structured Journalism
Story Structured data New Products
{Source: Reg Chua “Structured Journalism”

12. • Help you tell a story or many stories better
• Provide new layers of context and information enrichment for
stories
• Generate new workflows, integrating news editors and data
editors (Librarians, Visuals, Insights teams) for new products
• Reuse NPR`s massive data & metadata for new products (Tiny
Desk concerts, Morning Edition, All Things…?)
• Make machines do work for you (and get $$$ while you sleep)

13. NPR *Awesome* Assets
• Court files and judicial structure data
• 800.000 stories
• 150.000 hours of programming
• 7.000 amazing pictures
• RAD Team> Research, Archives, Data
• Artemis & Orpheus
• Home made Robots
• Brand & Community

14. Examples

15. Boston Globe Trial Data
Link to the Project

16. Poderopedia Data Mapper
Content Editors Data Editors
Content
Management
System
! !
"
"
Data
Management
System
"
"
Entities Profile Pages +
Connections + Maps + Sources +
Documents + Sources + Contextual
Information
Profiles and Relationship Maps
Articles + Photos + Videos + Audios
!
#
Content Editors can add information cards
of Entities in their articles and
relationship map previews into their news
and articles to provide context and new
layers of information.
Poderopedia Data Mapper automatically
extracta articles, photos, vídeos and
audios related to a entity and adds it to
the entity profile page
A news website A news database
Audios + Text + Photos +
Videos + Metadata
Integration Back and Forth

17. Globo Soccer
Credits: Daniel Schwabe, PUC Rio. Rafael Pena, globo.com “Using the Semantic Web for online Sports News Stories”

18. MacroConnections Visualization Engine
Credits: Alexander Simoes, MacroConnections Group, MIT Medialab “The Observatory of Economic Complexity”

19. Building a structure data story helps
you think how to report things in a
broader, richer perspective

20. It can also help you be less “Source
Dependent” and as a organization
think of a Zero Waste reporting policy

21. Rosalind W. Picard. Director of the Affective Computing Group @ MIT MediaLab
The Challenge: Empathy & breaking Silos

22. Empathy is the ability to put yourself in
someone else`s shoes.

23. Having a way to get you to go work
with another team for a few days, helps
you and them understand each others
problems & find solutions

24. How journalist see programmers
How programmers see journalists

25. Hacker culture meets
Journalism

26. • Organize around Products, Users & Goals. Not disciplines.
• 2 Pizzas size Teams: Fast & lightweight communication
(keeps Talent from leaving)
• Release early, often, measure, learn, release: less risk, more
eficient, more impact
• Less is more (run away from Christmas trees)
• Inspect and adapt with data in hand
• Keep pace and flexibility to tone muscles
All this Ideas belong to Brian Boyer (NPR), Trei Brundrett (Vox Media) & Jeff Bezos

27. Journalist Technologist
Passion
Questions
Narrative
Nose/Instinct
Discipline
Languages
Out the box ideas
Tools & methods
Mind Map & Concept by Giannina Segnini
Skill-sets & what we give to one another

28. A provocation:
NPR is a tech company

29. The history of Journalism and it`s Narrative Structure its defined by
technology

30. Today
News consumption and production =
Content + Distribution Channels / Time + Attention
- Other Contents - Other Platforms - Other Activities
of the User

31. Today
Every company is a tech company
Every product is a computer that does something
else

32. If NPR is a media organization that produces content
and quality journalism with a public mission…

33. should it be
Audience First
instead of radio device first?
“Audience First” concept by Amy Webb, 2015 Digital Trends

34. should it be a
Technology company
that produces content, software &
hardware platforms
instead of using technology to only distribute content?

35. can it become a
Responsive Operating System
that “has a Purpose that guides an agile (not linear) Process that enables
People who make (not manage) Products built to evolve (not built to last)
which become Platforms for the world (not just your company) to build
upon”?
Source: *”The Operating Model That Is Eating The World”, Aaron Dignan

36. • What is the Structured Journalism version of “having a
gift for the listener every hour?
• What is the Web version of this story in a radio script?
• What is the Data Journalism version of this interview?
• What is the Yik Yak version of NPR while I am walking in
campus?
• What is the Apple Watch version of a News Show ?
Exercise and Concept by Amy Webb, 2015 Digital Trends
Open Exercise

37. THANKS TO EVERYONE IN NPR
and you in the Internets :)
find us at @poderomedia @poderopedia team@poderopedia.com