OpenNews/hackdays/storyandalgorithm/newsdiffer
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< OpenNews | hackdays | storyandalgorithm
- Project name: NewsDiffer
- One-line project description: Keeping track of changes the New York Times makes to its articles after publication.
- Your team: Jennifer 8. Lee, Eric Price
- Project URL(s), if applicable: http://ecprice.scripts.mit.edu/newsdiffer/about/
- Hashtag, if #relevant:
- What are you building: The NewsDiffer watches different versions of highly-placed New York Times articles (e.g. mainly the front page) as they evolve over time.
- Who is it for:
- Your goal for this weekend:
- Your starting point:
- Anything else we should know:
- How is this project useful? It's to watch the sausage making in journalism. The NewsDiffer watches different versions of highly-placed New York Times articles (e.g. mainly the front page) as they evolve over time. Sometimes the changes are simply minor, small edits that are tightening of (such as "most" to "many.") Other times, the changes reflect choices in connotation (sometimes political) for example, whether an election was "democratic" vs. "competitive." In still others, the lead and the substance of the articles can substantially change, such as in the story that inspired this project: the article about the arrests of Occupy Wall Street protestors on October 1, 2011 that is pictured above. Two versions, twenty minutes apart, had substantially different first paragraphs, shifting responsibility for the conflicts and arrests.
- Where is this project going and what lessons/concepts can be applied to other projects? The project will focus on the New York Times, but could be adjusted to parse and follow updates from other news organizations. A followup question is about how to surface interesting changes. Also, this tool is a great example of what it means to "diff" two files and the sorts of information and value that type of comparison offers.
