If there was any doubt that Justin Auciello, publisher of Jersey Shore Hurricane News, is a media superstar, that was put to rest yesterday when the 33-old South Seaside Park resident was honored at the White House as a Champion of Change for his work during and after Hurricane Sandy. Auciello was one of 17 [...]

John Keefe data visualization training

In this Learning Lunch, we talk to John Mooney, Steve Johnson and Virginia Citrano about the Pew report on the State of the News Media 2013.

Jeff Zarrillo, one of the plaintiffs in the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 before the Supreme Court, is a Montclair State alumni. He was interviewed last year by fellow alum Erica Emmich.

NJ News Commons’ Story Exchange — powered by Repost —  is an initiative to facilitate sharing within the New Jersey news ecosystem. All the stories offered on this page are free to embed on most sites — just like a YouTube video. There are advantages to sharing content: traffic you receive on embedding sites counts [...]

Wheeler Antabanez was the only person in New Jersey to chronicle all six of the detonations that destroyed the old Rt. 3 bridge over the Passaic River.

Video by Montclair State’s School of Communication and Media about the Lady Red Hawks’ undefeated basketball season.

Cory Booker dodges the question on whether he’s officially running for Senate on WBGO’s Feb. 21 edition of “Newark Today”

When he started as a journalist in 1980, Stephen Engelberg was a copy boy in The New York Times’ Washington bureau. “This was back when reporters actually typed their stories on manual typewriters,” Engelberg told a rapt audience at Hack Jersey in January. Engelberg related how reporters would tear their stories out of the typewriter [...]

Journalists who wanted to get into the head of a public servant had that opportunity at Hack Jersey in January when Marc Pfeiffer presented “a former bureaucrat’s view” on “Why It’s Hard to Get Data from State and Local Governments.” Pfeiffer had some good news for journalists, however, pointing out the exceptions to the rule. [...]

At Hack Jersey this past January, Jeff Larson of ProPublica delighted the audience with his “short history of data journalism” — starting with CBS News’ use of the UNIVAC computer to predict the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election in 1952 (spoiler alert: the computer accurately predicted Eisenhower as the winner and was only off the final tally by 4 electoral votes).

Larson moved on to discuss how PolitiFact had inspired journalists like himself: “It woke us up in the news” to see that “we can tell stores in a different framework.” Larson then continued to discuss how data journalism was beneficial not just to breaking news stories but “deep dives.”

One of the most compelling speakers at Hack Jersey — NJ News Commons’ effort to bring together journalists and data specialists for a weekend of crunching open source database numbers and generating leading edge journalism — was Matthew Ericson, deputy graphics director at the New York Times.

During his presentation (captured on video below), Ericson discussed the elements that make a good graphic and gave several examples of how graphics can be used to tell a story. Ericson noted that the NYT graphics department — once the maps department — was now made up of about 30 individuals including cartographers, traditional journalists, statisticians, web developers and 3D artists. The graphics discussed ranged from basic charts comparing unemployment data to interactive graphics that could integrate data, video, maps, graphics, photos, sound and text.

Co-founder of Hack Jersey Tom Meagher highlights some exciting recent data journalism projects during his presentation at Hack Jersey in January 2013.

Meagher is the data editor for Digital First Media, which owns and operates more than 75 daily newspapers in 18 states. At Project Thunderdome, DFM’s Manhattan news hub, Tom leads a team of developers who build interactive web applications and support data reporting projects in local newsrooms across the company.

Before that, Tom spent eight years working as a reporter and editor at New Jersey newspapers small and large. Most recently, he was the data editor at the Star-Ledger after serving as an editor at the Local News Service in Somerville and city editor at the Herald News in West Paterson. He learned the basics of data reporting and pursued investigative projects while he was a municipal reporter covering the city of Paterson. He lives with his wife and children in Maplewood.

Here’s what it looked like in Schmitt Hall Saturday night, as the hours for Hack Jersey developers and journalists began to dwindle. Hack Jersey, sponsored by the NJ News Commons in the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University and Knight-Mozilla Open News, is a 24-hour contest to develop the best journalism-related app [...]

Our student video team (Jack Smith IV, Ken Spooner, Ryan Miller and Lindsay Rassmann) has been filming Hack Jersey since our opening party on Friday night. Here’s a great little piece that sets the scene. Meanwhile, our blogging team (Viveka Garza-Gomez, Omar Ammar, and Samantha Roth) has been interviewing our hackers and checking out the [...]

“Christmas in Sea Bright’s going to be kind of a bummer,” says Chris Wood, owner of Woody’s Ocean Grill in Sea Bright. It’s been almost two months since Superstorm Sandy devastated the town, and only about 20 percent of residents have returned home. But a community Christmas tree with residents’ personal ornaments is one attempt [...]

Listen as John Mooney of NJ Spotlight, Paul Bass of New Haven Independent and Brian Wheeler of Charlottesville Tomorrow talk about why they operate as non-profit news organizations.

A roundup of news around NJ Dec. 3, 2012 Last week, we showed you the Sandy documentary created by 16-year-old Charlotte Nagy of Rumson. Today, via NJ 101.5, comes another video, by John Mark Basile, an avid surfcaster and a set dresser for Law and Order SVU, who survived Hurricane Sandy by spending the night [...]

A roundup of news around New Jersey on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012 A month after Superstorm Sandy hit New Jersey, the best storytelling to come out of it may be the work of a 16-year-old Rumson girl named Charlotte Nagy. Want to remember how it felt to watch Sandy approach and then land? The excitement [...]

Sea Bright is down but not out, as Montclair State student Noah Smith discovered in a pre-Thanksgiving visit this past weekend. Volunteers from both in- and out-of-state joined business owners to begin the job of rebuilding. “The town was destroyed, but the people weren’t,” said volunteer coordinator Nancy Sherman. “So I guess the town’s kind [...]

Surely the most colorful Congressional race in New Jersey this election in the 9th Congressional district, pitting incumbent Bill Pascrell against Orthodox rabbi and sex family thearpist. Schmuley Boteach. Jack Smith IV, a Montclair State student in the School of Communication and Media, did extensive interviews with both candidates and produced this report.