Linkdump: some more programmer-journalist resources

A while back, I wrote about my plan of self-directed study to become a programmer-journalist. Since then, I’ve started plugging away at Google’s free Python class. I’ve also come across a few articles and resources that may be helpful for others with similar ambitions.

Will Columbia-Trained, Code-Savvy Journalists Bridge the Media/Tech Divide? from Wired.com’s Epicenter blog:

Journalism schools have frantically updated their programs in the last decade or so, as it became increasingly clear that traditional, newspaper-oriented skills were no longer enough to prepare students for the real world. But even fluency in broadly defined “multimedia skills” isn’t enough, with coding becoming as crucial to the news business as knowing how to use a computer was a couple of generations ago.

Coders meet journalists; journalists meet coders by Judith Townend:

Do journalists need to learn to code? Probably not, but those who can are likely to find themselves quickly snapped up by news organisations with interactive and data teams.

I have no grand hopes of learning to code properly, but I would like to feel a little more comfortable with the language and learn more about the ways programmers work and how it could help journalism.

Coding for Journalists 101: A four-part series by Dan Nguyen. Focuses on using Ruby to scrape websites:

I set out to write some tutorials that would guide the non-coding-but-computer-savvy journalist through enough programming fundamentals so that he/she could write a web scraper to collect data from public websites.

In Praise of the Dumbphone

It’s been a summer of mobile phone announcements. The Droid X. The iPhone 4. The Blackberry 9800 is expected to be announced on Tuesday. And there’s been a lot of talk: “Should I upgrade to the new iPhone 4?” “Should I switch to an Android?”

Strangely, there’s little talk of downgrading to a “dumbphone.” You know, a plain old cell phone that makes calls, sends texts, and not much else.

About six weeks ago, I sold my used iPhone 3G, and I’ve been living with just such a dumbphone: a Motorola L7. As it turns out, I’m not the only one living life without a data plan and full QWERTY keyboard. Only 15-17% of the world’s cell phones are classified as “smartphones,” which means the vast majority of cell phones are not smart.

Still, the smarties get all the press.

So, what’s life like with a dummy? After the initial shaking, tears, and denial, I was surprised at how easy it was to shed my data plan. And there have been noticeable benefits:

• I’m way less compulsive about checking email/Twitter/random trivia
• I’m way more observant about the world around me. I pay more attention, because I’m less distracted.
• My dumbphone is way cheaper to operate. My Fido bill for July was $15.63, compared to $80-85/month with the iPhone

For my CBC tech column this week, I’m talking about the virtues of the dumbphone: why regular old cell phones aren’t necessarily sexy, but are still a good choice for many people.

Do you have a dumbphone? Do you love it? I’d love to know why. Leave a comment or shoot me an email: dan@misener.org

What’s better than DRM? Guilt!

Apparently, Tumblr has chosen to use URL-based guilt trips to fight copyright infringement:

Please Rob Me

According to this CBC News story, if you post your vacation plans online, you might get robbed:

It’s now routine for police officers to ask robbery victims what information they put on Facebook and Twitter before the crime and if their online connections are true friends or potential suspects, according to [Cpl. Janis] Jean [of the Saanich Police Department, north of Victoria].

Sound familiar?

It should. Of course, earlier this year, there was all the ruckus surrounding PleaseRobMe.com.

But as Andy Baio pointed out back in February, back in 1983, the Montreal Gazette warned against outgoing answering machine messages that tell callers you’re not at home. And in 1977, another article suggested that you shouldn’t list family weddings or funerals in the newspaper, lest you tip off would-be robbers.

CBC Jobs RSS feed

Update June 7, 2011: MediaJobsSearchCanada’s RSS feed no longer includes 8-character CBC job numbers (e.g. EDM00183), which breaks the whole thing I’d rigged up in Yahoo Pipes. I may someday write my own scraper for CBC’s terrible jobs site, but until then, the feed won’t be updated. Curiously, the MJSC change seems to have happened one day after CBC HR took control of @CBCjobs. Coincidence?

Update May 19, 2011: A representative from CBC HR asked for control of the @CBCjobs Twitter handle. I agreed to change the Twitter username of my automated CBC job posting robot, allowing them to create a new account with the @CBCjobs username. It appears that they’ve created a new account under the name @CBCjobs, listing it as the “Official account for HR @ Canada’s national public broadcaster.” As I write this, the account seems to be manually updated, without automatic job postings. Too bad.

If you still want automated CBC jobs postings, you can now follow @workatCBC on Twitter, or subscribe to this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/workatCBC. If you were previously following @CBCjobs, Twitter should have automatically switched you over.

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Here’s the short version of this story: The CBC’s jobs website doesn’t have an RSS feed. So I made one:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cbcjobs

http://feeds.feedburner.com/workatCBC

This feed is completely unofficial, and comes with no guarantees. You can also follow @cbcjobs @workatCBC on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

You’re welcome.

—

Here’s the longer version of the story: The CBC’s jobs website (“Powered by Taleo“) is basically pretty terrible. And astonishingly, it doesn’t have an RSS feed. If you want new CBC job postings via RSS, you can get them from a couple of places, but these sources aren’t exactly what I was looking for:

• The Tea Makers HR Department (appears to be a human-powered cut/paste job, sometimes delayed by days)
• CBCJobsBC on Twitter (seemingly official, but only posts jobs in British Columbia)
• MediaJobSearchCanada’s main RSS feed (updated frequently – by a scraper, I suspect, but contains every media job in Canada, and links point back to MJSC, where you can’t directly apply for any jobs)

So, using Yahoo Pipes and Feedburner, I cobbled together a feed that I hope will be useful to some people. Basically, this pipe takes the frequently-updated MJSC feed, and then filters out postings that don’t have “CBC RADIO-CANADA” listed as the Company. Then, it grabs the 8-character CBC job number (e.g. EDM00183) from the title, and appends it to

https://cbc.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobdetail.ftl?job=

to create a permalink. Feedburner makes the feed pretty, and periodically sends new postings to @cbcjobs @workatCBC on Twitter.

Obviously, it would be much better if the CBC made official job RSS feeds available, but until then, I hope this helps some people out.