Transom→ Santa Ana Winds

2023-12-07 This piece was born out of a strange sense of homesickness I was feeling in the fall of 2022.  It was the first time in the 10 years since I’d left the Central Coast of California that I felt a pull to move back. I didn’t. Instead I made a …›

Transom→ Reporting Out at the Edge

2023-12-05 Theo Greenly remembers there used to be hovercraft transport to Akutan Island but not anymore. To get there to report a story for the public radio station he works for, Theo had to take a white knuckle express, a little six-seater twin prop plane calle …›

Source→ How we used an FOI project to show the public the power they can wield

2023-12-05 By Tom Cardoso The Globe and Mail's Secret Canada website has more than 300,000 FOI summaries for government agencies and public institutions, and educational resources to help readers file their own records requests. There’s a certain f …›

Transom→ Mothers Never Die

2023-11-30 During a visit in Paris at the end of 2022 I mentioned to Laurence that I would like to create an audio piece about the Unspeakable or Unutterable. The idea was to tell a story where we have difficulties finding the right words — it’s eithe …›

Transom→ A Tribute to Mary Gaffney

2023-11-28 September 25, 1950 – September 4, 2023 From Syd Lewis (Transom Editor) Losing Mary Hearing of sound engineer Mary Gaffney’s death staggered me. I’d spoken with her a couple of months earlier and knew she was having health struggles, but …›

Online Journalism Blog→ VIDEO: How automation played a central role in data journalism — and is now playing it again

2023-11-28 Automation was key to the work of data journalism pioneers such as Adrian Holovaty — and it’s becoming increasingly central once again. This video, made for students on the MA in Data Journalism at Birmingham City University, explores the vari …›

Source→ Advice for sharing security advice

2023-11-28 By Martin Shelton (Image from WOCinTech Chat) Writing and sharing security guidance ain’t easy. Without a light touch you can scare or overwhelm your audience. The advice often ages quickly, so you need a plan to help ensure it continue …›

Transom→ Floating

2023-11-23 Floating… Floating is an excerpt from my staged work CHRCH, A BLACK MUSIC STORY.  CHRCH is a work of autofiction that follows my own lived experience, spiritual journey and love for house music. House music is a transcendent music genre and cult …›

NYT Open - Medium→ Designing an App for Audio Journalism — From the Ground Up

2023-11-21 Designing an App for Audio Journalism — From the Ground UpThe Design Journey of The New York Times Audio AppIllustration by Ran ZhengBy Rimar Villasenor, Grace LaRosa, Bon Champion, Daman Chatha and Lavi TangIt’s not often that you get to b …›

Transom→ Mixing Fiction with Non-fiction

2023-11-21 One of the ways I discover new podcasts is by reading “best of” lists. While there can be a lot of dreck in those lists, I often encounter gems. Weirdly, given what I do for work and how many podcasts I listen to in the course of a year, I don’t …›

BuzzMachine→ Artificial general bullshit

2023-11-19 I began writing this as a report from a useful conference on AI that I just attended, where experts and representatives of concerned sectors of society had serious discussion about the risks, benefits, and governance of the technology. But, of …›

Transom→ Pineapple Head

2023-11-16 Sharif Youssef's "Pineapple Head" is a poetic little piece, written like a children's book, but exploring themes of depression and loneliness. The post Pineapple Head appeared first on Transom. …›

HKS Misinformation Review→ What do we study when we study misinformation? A scoping review of experimental research (2016-2022)

2023-11-15 We reviewed 555 papers published from 2016–2022 that presented misinformation to participants. We identified several trends in the literature—increasing frequency of misinformation studies over time, a wide variety of topics covered, and a signif …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 25, with Regina Barber

2023-11-14 Introduction  Welcome back to Starting Out from me and Transom! In this issue I spoke with NPR’s scientist in residence and Short Wave co-host Regina Barber, who made the leap from academia to media. She has a PhD in physics and taught physics a …›

Transom→ Uncovered

2023-11-09 Would you mind turning on the light switch? When I moved to the U.S., I lived for a while in Borough Park, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NYC, with a large Jewish ultra-orthodox community. One Saturday, during Shabbat with no cars around, a Jewish man wit …›

HKS Misinformation Review→ User experiences and needs when responding to misinformation on social media

2023-11-09 This study examines the experiences of those who participate in bottom-up user-led responses to misinformation on social media and outlines how they can be better supported via software tools. Findings show that users desire support tools designed to …›

Transom→ Interview Strangers on the Street, Make a Podcast

2023-11-07 During nearly every workshop I teach, right at the beginning, I send students out to the street to record vox. Talking to strangers with recording gear a student has barely used can be a harrowing experience — especially, the talking to strangers …›

Source→ Covering trans issues well just means <em>doing journalism well</em>

2023-11-07 By Kae Petrin Session facilitators Kae Petrin, left, and Jasmine Mithani capture notes during a SRCCON 2023 workshop about using LGBTQ+ data responsibly for journalism. (Erik Westra photo) Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine a story abo …›

HKS Misinformation Review→ Increasing accuracy motivations using moral reframing does not reduce Republicans’ belief in false news

2023-11-06 In a pre-registered survey experiment with 2,009 conservative Republicans, we evaluated an intervention that framed accurate perceptions of information as consistent with a conservative political identity and conservative values (e.g., patriotis …›

Transom→ All Hear, November 2023

2023-11-02 Hello! Welcome (back) to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. I’m really excited about this month’s edition. It’s filled with so many opportunities open to audio makers — fellowships, grants, scholarships, fully funded uni …›

Source→ Project Diary: How we made the Wage Theft Monitor

2023-11-02 By Max Siegelbaum The Wage Theft Monitor from Documented helps readers find information about businesses that have stolen money from their workers. In August, Documented published the most complete repository of data on New York companies …›

Transom→ Are You Listening?

2023-10-31 Parachuting In the early aughts I was getting my feet wet professionally as a radio reporter in Chicago and increasingly was interested in parts of the city, the South and West Sides, that were often underreported, or covered one-dimensionally, usually …›

Source→ Our search for the best OCR tool in 2023, and what we found

2023-10-31 By Sanjin Ibrahimovic Damaged documents can be fairly readable to the human eye, but warping makes them challenging for OCR tools. Editor's note: This article is published in collaboration with MuckRock. It's an update to a review of OCR t …›

Transom→ Every Library In My Life

2023-10-26 Welcome to my circus This piece embodies a personal journey of resilience. As a young, book-hungry reader in a family without means for books and a town devoid of child-friendly libraries, I manged not only to survive an evil librarian, but I also emer …›

Transom→ Revisiting: Remembering Studs

2023-10-24 Today, Sound School marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Studs Terkel — America’s interviewer. Who didn’t Studs interview?! He chronicled the life of 20th century America from the ground up in books like Working, …›

Transom→ The Collector

2023-10-19 The Plan There was none. I was winging it.  Beginnings So where did I start?  Maybe it was with the pugs. Their snuffles and grunts were their signature as much as those mournful eyes. I had recorded Max and Lola over the years. Their wheezes …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 24, with Claire Murashima

2023-10-17 Introduction   Welcome back to Starting Out from me and Transom!  I’ve got a fun issue for y’all this month, but first, I have one question and one favor to ask:  The question: who do you want me to interview for the next season …›

NYT Open - Medium→ How The New York Times Cooking Team Makes Personalized Recipe Recommendations

2023-10-13 A look into how recommendation algorithms are used to help readers find the right recipes for themselves.Illustration by JooHee YoonBy Kyelee Fitts and Celia EddyWith tens of thousands of recipes in our catalog, The New York Times Cooking team faces …›

Transom→ Pleasing to the Ear

2023-10-10 I was recently interviewed about audio storytelling by a couple of producers from ACB Stories in Germany. They asked all kinds of great questions, like “How do you determine the proper length of a story?” (Honestly, I wish I knew. It’s a mystery. …›

Transom→ All Hear, October 2023

2023-10-05 Hello! I’m Talia. Welcome (back) to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. There are some great opportunities this month, including Arts Emergency’s mentorship scheme for disadvantaged young people in the U.K. looking to pursue …›

Transom→ Salt at 50!

2023-09-26 One day, a bunch of years ago, I was sitting in the kitchen of a women who lived in Phippsburg, Maine, over by Small Point if I remember correctly. As I was asking her questions about life on the Maine coast, I was startled to see on the bookshelf behi …›

BuzzMachine→ Gibberish from the machine

2023-09-22 I’m honored that Germany’s Stern asked me to write about AI and journalism for a 75th anniversary edition. Here’s a version prior to final editing and trimming for print and translation. And I learned a new word: Kauderwelsch (“The va …›

Source→ Product manager diary: Learning to work with vendors and development teams outside of your organization

2023-09-19 By Madison Karas A big part of product management, and career growth too, is figuring out how all the pieces fit together. (Photo by Vlad Hilitanu on Unsplash) This year has been my first as a product manager in a newsroom, after working i …›

Transom→ Starting Out: Issue 23, with Mitra Kaboli

2023-09-19 Hi y’all!  Lately I’ve been trying to make a habit of reaching out to people when I love their work. Not because I want a job from them or their co-sign on a new project or anything else. Just to say, this was great, it meant something to me.& …›

Transom→ Revisiting: Dead Mom Talking

2023-09-12 Some ideas are just so maddeningly simple. You think “Why didn’t I come up with that?!!” I felt like that when I first heard Rachel Matlow’s “Dead Mom Talking.” It was a forehead slap moment. On the face of it, Rachel took some tape she’d …›

BuzzMachine→ A generation later: What have we learned?

2023-09-11 The date sneaked up on me this year, attacking from behind. Every year on 9/11 I reflect, grateful that I survived the attack. This year, though, I find myself angry. Some of that might be my own loss: my father to COVID this year; my imminent une …›

Transom→ All Hear, September 2023

2023-09-07 Hello! I’m Talia. Welcome (back) to All Hear, the Everything List for Audio Opportunities. If you’re new here, in this column, you’ll find international audio opportunities with upcoming deadlines, as well as a couple of Spotlights for in …›

BuzzMachine→ Moving on

2023-09-06 I have news: I am leaving CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the end of this term. Technically I’m retiring, though if you know me you know I will never retire. I’m looking at some things to do next and I’m open to others. Mor …›

BuzzMachine→ Copyright and AI and journalism

2023-09-02 The US Copyright Office just put out a call for comment on copyright and artificial intelligence. It is a thoughtful document based on listening sessions already held, with thirty-four questions on rights regarding inclusion in learning sets, tr …›