Weekend Reading for 4 February 2011

Friday is here, and for most of you it comes with a douse of super cold air and possible snowflakes aplenty.  Not for me mind you- there are definitely advantages to living in the Columbia Valley, one of them being fairly steady temperatures at around 40 degrees.  Yeah, it rains but not that much (generally) and it definitely makes you appreciate the sun- but it rarely goes below freezing and that is something I can get behind.  (Although the Kansan in me does occasionally miss the cold- but just occasionally)

But on to the Weekend Reading.

via Margo Conner

I really only have one source to point out, but woah it is a doozy!  Jonathan Stray, an editor for the AP who blogs about digital culture issues and journalism, recently put together a reading list for what he terms 'computational journalism'.  Here is a quote from his post, explaining the purpose of pulling together this list:

There is something extraordinarily rich in the intersection of computer science and journalism. It feels like there’s a nascent field in the making, tied to the rise of the internet. The last few years have seen calls for a new class of  “programmer journalist” and the birth of a community of hacks and hackers. Meanwhile, several schools are now offering joint degrees. But we’ll need more than competent programmers in newsrooms. What are the key problems of computational journalism? What other fields can we draw upon for ideas and theory? For that matter, what is it? 

I’d like to propose a working definition of computational journalism as the application of computer science to the problems of public information, knowledge, and belief, by practitioners who see their mission as outside of both commerce and government. This includes the journalistic mainstay of “reporting” — because information not published is information not known — but my definition is intentionally much broader than that. To succeed, this young discipline will need to draw heavily from social science, computer science, public communications, cognitive psychology and other fields, as well as the traditional values and practices of the journalism profession.

I am particularly interested in the 'Vizualization' section, as that directly concerns some of my efforts in bringing the study of Russian peasants to a larger audience through more accessible media than books or lectures.  Lots of good choices here, and definitely something worthy of any historians attention.