Storytelling (Craft II)

The city’s comptroller has approved a contract for rooftop sensor technology for the NYPD to help pinpoint and reduce gunfire. Comptroller Scott Stringer approved the contract for the ShotSpotter Flex System on Monday. The technology will pinpoint the exact location of a gunshot, allowing officers to respond quickly. According to the Wall Street Journal, the two-year $1.5 million contract will allow the NYPD to target about 15 square miles with the new technology. Officials say that’s up to five separate coverage areas in the five boroughs.

Facebook’s algorithm is not news. And it’s not bad. Truth is every way of accessing the news has an algorithm. Before the Internet, what was on the front page of the NYT was determined by a human-implemented algorithm, that was in no way transparent. We had to trust the editors of the paper the same way users of Facebook trust them.

The average story about the Ice Bucket Challenge was much more heavily promoted by Facebook’s algorithms (a factor of 8x) than the average story about Ferguson.

And regarding those plums

i love npr, and didn't realize there were any tumblrs actually run officially by the organization - is there any way someone could send me a few links to other npr run blogs? i'd love that! thanks for doing what you're doing :)

Here’s an example of lock-in: imagine if vanilla ice cream were sold in 90% of restaurants, but chocolate ice cream was only available at 30% of restaurants. Vanilla would become the most eaten ice cream choice because of a supply-side decision. Eventually, supplying chocolate ice cream would become so expensive due to a perceived lack of demand that less and less restaurants would offer it until no restaurants offered it. News discovery is like adding more and more supply-side vanilla ice cream to restaurant menus until we no longer hear about any other kind of ice cream.In academic circles, lock-in has well-known negative affects. As you read these, consider if they sound familiar to any news organizations you read:* It creates a perception of popularity, which many people incorrectly equate to value. * It creates barriers for suppliers to offer other options, because (over time) other options become more expensive to offer. * It can eventually create monopolies, which have a host of additional negative effects on competitive, free-market economies As long as media organizations act in ways that limit the spread of information, they are undercutting their own market value.