Comments on: NPRbackstory: Finding value in news archives through automation

By: Vivian Schiller on NPR’s new Public Media Platform, the Argo project, and the org’s reporting priorities » Nieman Journalism Lab

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:09:24 +0000

[...] or full text, other entities, and to software developers, who can take our content to develop cool new applications with it, which they [...]

By: koven j. smith dot com » Museums In the Digital Domain, Part Four - Generative Assets

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:47:12 +0000

[...] interesting example of immediacy would be NPRbackstory, which was created by Public Interactive, a division of National Public Radio. NPRbackstory is a [...]

By: a work on process » NPR Backstory: Using twitter to contextualise news

a work on process » NPR Backstory: Using twitter to contextualise news — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:06:59 +0000

[...] really liked this story about the NPRbackstory twitter account. The panel at SxSW about newspaper APIs (which NPR was [...]

By: Julia Bailey

Julia Bailey — Sat, 16 May 2009 01:51:58 +0000

This is brilliant — considering that NPR first made its name by putting news in context, this is a great way to take advantage of new technology to present some background or context for the latest topic de jour. This seems especially valuable for the current generation who who is most likely to use it — and least likely to have any grasp of historical context.

By: Making News Valuable Again | Open The Dialogue

Making News Valuable Again | Open The Dialogue — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:17:05 +0000

[...] videos are no longer embeddable but that is an argument I’ll make another day). Via the Neiman Journalism Lab, they’ve created an experimental account that mines NPR’s archives trying it’s [...]

By: Nieman Journalism Lab: How NPR maximised its news archive | DAILYMAIL.ME

Nieman Journalism Lab: How NPR maximised its news archive | DAILYMAIL.ME — Thu, 07 May 2009 07:25:24 +0000

[...] Full story at this link… [...]

By: Nieman Journalism Lab: How NPR maximised its news archive | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog

Tue, 05 May 2009 09:07:46 +0000

[...] Full story at this link… [...]

By: When newspaper archives meet Twitter | csmonitor.com

When newspaper archives meet Twitter | csmonitor.com — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:44:37 +0000

[...] Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton has posted a fascinating look at how NPR is marrying its extensive story archive and Twitter to provide background on current [...]

By: Terry Steichen

Terry Steichen — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:05:21 +0000

The idea, as I understand it, is to use Google Trends to decide what’s hot, and then search the archives to find a matching article, and then feed a link to that article into Twitter.

Frankly, it sounds like a way to magnify brainless chatter, especially if a good proportion of the hits pertain to current news reports. This is made even worse by the relatively low precision (85%).

While this is indeed clever, I’m not sure about it’s utility, especially when more players decide to get on the act. What’s the value of a bunch of bots serving up tweets about articles about what everyone’s already tweeting about? It seems likely to make twitter less and less useful, not more.

By: Seamus Condron

Seamus Condron — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:45:10 +0000

Wonderful idea and brilliant use of Twitter. The relevance issues will no doubt improve over time.