Videos from International Symposium of Online Journalism

I did not attend the International Symposium on Online Journalism back in April in Austin, Texas, (nice place to be in April) but now the sponsors have posted videos from most of the presenters at the conference, and Nieman Journalism Lab has picked some of their favorites.

Ben Welsh of the L.A. Times tries to convince us all that it is not that hard to set up automated computer searches to parse data and he has some great examples of using that technique to automatically sort through real estate transactions or police blotters, at least for large cities such as Los Angeles. (It doesn’t work as well in those towns where the cops hand the reporter the handwritten log book to peruse in the chief’s office).

Brian Boyer of NPR makes the good point that too often flashy design trumps usability in interactive graphics (what’s wrong with on old-fashioned spreadsheet, he asks).

And University of Memphis j-school prof Carrie Brown-Smith shows how a local Twitter hashtag during a recent severe storm was useful to journalists.