First of all, +1 on everything Chrys said.

Having been to probably too many conferences about the Future of Journalism, I agree there is a serious lack of meetings where people come away with new knowledge of how to actually DO STUFF. So this would be exciting. Some ideas for content:

a) "Crash courses" where one or two well-spoken experts teach people specific new skills. Potential topics abound on Hacks/Hackers: How to run apps in the cloud, process pdfs, manage mass email, do version control, create visualizations, HTML5, even playing with spreadsheets and how to get started programming. As Chrys mentioned, don't forget the newbies. We're all beginners at something. Give these courses enough time that they can dive into code and have people get their feet wet making something. Ie: a lot more than 50 minutes.

b) "Show and tell." Some of the best sessions are people who built cool apps showing them off, telling how they built them, sharing lessons learned. Lots of folks would to peek behind the scenes of Patchwork Nation, or this month's amazing NYT graphic, or the Times of London's crowdsourcing, or that epic WSJ video on the financial collapse. And we'd like to ask the creators questions.

c) Not all panels are bad. With the right people and the right topic, they can be enlightening. Sometimes panel discussions are the best medium. Some show and tells could be better as panels -- not just how one paper's team builds maps, how several do. Other ideas for panels: How hacks work on investigative teams, how to get a newsroom to buy in, designing for tablets & mobile, trends in UI, making the most of comments, maybe a long audience Q & A with smart people. As long as they keep to specific, practical ideas.

We don't need any more philosophical debates about narratives, niches, imaginary business models or -- God forbid -- social media. There's plenty of all that already. Basically if you ever think "Jeff Jarvis would be really good on this panel," kill the panel.

kevinkoehler

377

Not to be pedantic, but isn't this that site? The only substantive difference I can see is that instead of arbitrarily choosing questions to write answers for the questions are posed as they are needed.

I guess what I am saying is that if you ask the question "How do I turn a spreadsheet of names/lat/lngs into a embeddable Google map?" I would be only too happy to answer it and I'm sure others would as well. (Incidentally, the short answer is Fusion Tables and I wrote a tutorial-style blog post about it a while back.) Moreover, by answering it here it is effectively wiki, becomes a canonical resources, and benefits from all the network effects of being on a Stack* site.

Christopher Groskopf

550

Not sure this counts as a 'wiki' but Yuri Victor mentioned this, and some people on this Stack have contributed:

Tools for news

Jason Bartz

94

Why has it petered out? Serdar explains pretty well: "There are a few nice gems on there but I don't think the site ever gained a wide following."

No wide following leads to a lack of commitment from the few folks (myself included) who have been involved. So, what hasn't worked is doing a broad wiki site without much of a following. What might work is if people take ownership of specific areas within such a site, or starting with an even smaller focus.

BTW, if someone would like to contribute, or restart, or reuse the material there, I'd have no objection.

Derek Willis

305

I think that this site is indeed the news wiki where questions will be answered.

One thing that Aron, Rich and I have thought about that could be extremely useful -- should we set up our own Hacks/Hackers code repository of stuff we want to share among each other and the world?

Burt Herman

385

Yes, yes for the love of Harry Nilsson yes. For awhile now I've wanted to create a news specific "Hey, here's the thing I did I did today" wiki like github gists that collected cool stuff people wrote or found out over the course of their day. To be pedantic (poking fun, Chris), it'd be a place that pointed out the stuff that hack shackers figured out and out of their better parts felt someone somewhere would also want to figure out, or could adapt to fit their own needs. I really like Chris's project, but it needs to be something that adapts well to both big and small (e.g. from external libraries/solutions to roll your own). Like a NICAR tip sheet thing, but more community oriented (or whatever).

Jeff Larson

209

Call it a combination boot camp/code sprint/demo-a-thon.

For people just getting started (which, as Kevin says, is all of us in some area), very hands-on, ground-up training. Coming in knowing a little, leave knowing a little more. Go back to your newsroom with a few ideas you can implement. Do code, video, FOIA, whatever.

For people who want to work, plan a project or three ahead of time. Set the expectation that those who want to can show up, code for a few hours on pizza, beer and Diet Coke and leave with something built (or close to it). CrisisCamp and Sunlight's hackathon are good examples.

Figure out a way to demo cool projects without panels. I've got stuff I can show off, but I'd rather just set up a monitor somewhere with a fact sheet, then leave it all day while I go code or learn Flash or something.

Chris Amico

785

A few years back some folks from the NICAR list-serv (I believe it was Derek Willis) started a site called the Reporter's Cookbook. It includes info on basic computer-assisted reporting tools such as Excel and SQL, mapping, and even some basic code snippets (mostly Perl and Python).

There are a few nice gems on there but I don't think the site ever gained a wide following.

In an ideal world, I'd love to see a mixed approach: part tools inventory, part recipes and part wiki.

I'd be game to hack on a project of that sort if a few others showed interest.

Serdar Tumgoren

175