The Pew Research Center launched a new blog earlier this week that’s supposed to provide Pew-quality data and information at a real-time pace. It’s called Fact Tank, and it will be a home for what Pew calls it’s “unique brand of data journalism.” Since Tuesday, they’ve written up data snapshots on topics like Secretary of…

If I had only one short sentence to describe it, I’d say that journalism is factual reports of current events. At least, that’s what I used to say, and I think it’s what most people imagine journalism is. But reports of events have been a shrinking part of American journalism for more than 100 years,…

Outrage at seizure of AP records: The journalism and media world was collectively seething in a way you don’t often see this week after the Associated Press revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice had secretly obtained more than two months of phone records from more than 20 of its journalists’ work and home lines….

On Wednesday, the New Yorker launched a Tor- and open-source-based file-sharing tool/tip line called Strongbox meant to allow sources to communicate information to the magazine without fear of it being traced back to them. Since then, Source has compiled a wealth of context and information, including a litany of responses from across Twitter. Today, Source…

Since ITV News launched its atomized, live, streaming redesign a little over a year ago, they’ve adhered fairly resolutely to a single maxim: “We’ll tell you what we know, when we know it.” Julian March, ITV’s online director, argues that because of that philosophy, ITV has become widely considered the speediest outlet for breaking news…

April 15 was always going to be a big day for The Boston Globe. Marathon Day is traditionally one of the busiest for the newspaper, with its staff deployed around the city following the race, running the race, or on the scene at Fenway for the Red Sox game. It’s a long day, as reporters…

Editor’s note: Our friends at Harvard’s Digital Media Law Project have taken a look at the legal implications of the sort of erroneous reporting — in both traditional and in social media — we saw in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. Here, project director Jeff Hermes explores the case law to put the…

Reuters, as a wire service, has the concept of a minute-by-minute stream of news deep in its DNA. So it’s natural that its digital presence would echo that — a flowing river of information, where moving from story to story feels unencumbered. Yesterday Reuters unveiled a preview site for the future look and design of…

Editor’s note: Herbert Gans is a professor emeritus of sociology at Columbia University and the author of, among other works, Deciding What’s News. Read his previous essays for Nieman Lab on journalism and democracy here and here. Polls have long been newsworthy, but never more so than when their conclusions can be compared to contrary…

Stemming the misinformation epidemic: As The New York Times’ Brian Stelter pointed out, the media — both old and new — played as large a role in the manhunt that followed last week’s Boston Marathon bombing as it has in any major news story in recent history. There are a myriad of angles to this story, but…

To understand how politics works in China, you have to understand guanxi: the web of interpersonal relationships, alliances, and influence underlying the one-party system. The best way to see how this works is Connected China. Built over 18 months by a team of reporters and researchers in Hong Kong and Fathom Design in Boston, the…

Speak only if it improves upon the silence. —Mohandas Gandhi Last week’s coverage of the events in Boston showed how much the networked press needs to better understand two things: silence and timing. The Internet makes it possible for people other than traditional journalists to express themselves, quickly, to potentially large audiences. But the ideal…

Editor’s note: Hong Qu is a user experience designer who was part of the startup team that built YouTube. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Nieman Foundation, working on an application to help journalists and other users better follow stories though Twitter. In a breaking news situation, journalists get an adrenaline rush. There…

Editor’s note: On April 23, Nicco Mele’s new book The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath will be released. Nicco — a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, a political and digital strategist, and the Internet operations director for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential race — argues that digital technology empowers…

TAIPEI — I recently had the pleasure of teaching a two-day data journalism workshop at the Commonwealth Magazine Group in Taiwan’s capital city. The signature moment came when I showed these journalists the L.A. Times crime map, and explained that it updated automatically from government data feeds. There were gasps from my audience. “Why does…