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Journalism ​

The New York Times now has a web Flash player ​

Before we had D3 and all this fancy web technology, interactive news pieces on the web were usually built using Adobe Flash. Since the demise of Flash, they have all been broken, but now the NY Times has added a web-based Flash player to their archives so they can be experienced again in all their interactive glory! Read more…

Scott Klein of ProPublica has written a great story about an early use of data in journalism, and Horace Greeley, the colorful journalist behind it. Greeley found an issue and then gathered the data to show the extent of the problem. This is not unlike today. Read more…

The BizWeekGraphics tumblr (well worth following in general) has a series of postings with a beautiful collection of graphics from the very early days of Businessweek, and also some more recent ones. Read more…

When Bars Point Down ​

It's so simple it feels entirely trivial: bars in a bar chart pointing down instead of up. But the effect can be striking. And it's not as obvious when to show downward-pointing bars as it might seem. Read more…

A Glimpse Into the New York Times Graphics Department ​

How does the New York Times Graphics Department produce the fantastic work that wins so many awards? To get a taste of the secret sauce, all you need to do is track down their Twitter accounts and blogs, where they openly share sketches and talk about process. Here is a guide. Read more…

Malofiej 20 ​

Malofiej was an exhausting week with many great conversations, fascinating insights, and great company. My sleep-deprived and jet-lagged brain is buzzing with things to write about, and this is only the first of several articles about or inspired by Malofiej. I start with a discussion on why I think The New York Times did so well this year, and what other newspapers can do to catch up. Read more…

Watchlist: Jessica Hullman ​

Among the papers that stood out at InfoVis 2011 were two that shared an author, and that were presented in the same session by the same person: Jessica Hullman. These papers were Benefitting InfoVis with Visual Difficulties (with Eytan Adar and Priti Shah) and Visualization Rhetoric: Framing Effects in Narrative Visualization (with Nicholas Diakopoulos). Read more…

New Series: Watchlist ​

Some of the most exciting work in our field is done by up-and-coming doctoral students, post-docs, and junior faculty members. In a new semi-regular series, I will highlight some of the people whose work I find particularly interesting and promising. The goal is to get their names onto people's radars earlier than this would have otherwise happened, in particular for those individuals who don't make a lot of noise about their work. Read more…