Assignment: Future
Assignment: Future
By Mark Stencel, Bill Adair and Prashanth Kamalakanthan of the Duke Reporters' Lab, May 2014
With “traffic and weather on the eights,” 144 times a day, WTOP-FM is one of the most successful and best-staffed commercial news radio stations in the United States. It is “on-air, online, mobile,” as an announcer intones hourly. When it comes to the latest shooting, Beltway tie-ups or other this-just-in news, WTOP.com regularly beats the Washington Post’s website and its TV and radio rivals.
But what about digital tools -- the kind that make it easy for journalists to mine and present government information, sift and analyze social media, crunch massive amounts of data, generate maps and charts, and share reams of source documents? The technologies that have helped distinguish digital journalism from print and broadcast play little role in the big news station’s reporting -- on any platform.
Assignment: Future
Assignment: Future