thornet
commented
9 years ago - Aaron W.
- The Center for Investigative Reporting
- Journalists use web browsers, email clients and the like to research stories, contact sources and do their jobs. That said, these software are built mostly for a one-size-fits-all world. But, what if there was a browser that allowed you to set diffs on a website you were researching? What if there was an email client that had PGP enabled by default? Could we build these tools?
- At the beginning of the session, we would list the tools many journalists use (web browser, email, Excel, etc). From there we'd brainstorm how could these tools be improved specifically for journalist? Would they be browser extensions, mobile applications, desktop software or something else? Lastly, should time permit, we'd begin to prototype some of them. This session would be best served by a larger group. This session would excel by having a large group discuss how journalists use software so we could have a large array of tools to reinvent. If the group is small, we'd probably focus on the most obvious tools, but I'd love to hear about other pieces of software that we don't often think journalist use (fax machine?).
- If the group was very large, I'd actually make sure the tools we listed were small (say five tools) because then we could break into groups and actually try to build a prototype. The outcome of this session is rethink the tools journalists use every day and see if we could build some with their interests in mind. I want folks to leave with the idea that we could actually influence the behavior of journalist (like security best practices) by building tools that had these ideas built in by default.
hannahkane