Online Journalism News

Changing tools: Journalism blogger turns his hand to multimedia investigative reporting

Investigative journalists don't have to rely on text as a medium to tell a story, multimedia reporter Mark Luckie tells Journalism.co.uk.

Luckie is well-known in online journalism quarters for his journalism blog 10000words.net, which he expanded when he lost his job in 2008. The extra time he spent on it completely changed the direction of his career: allowing him to seek new inspiration and write a book, he says.

10000words.net is about finding different ways to visualise news, and that's what Luckie is now assigned to do in his new job at California Watch, a non-profit project that officially launched last week.

One of only a few investigative outlets in California, the project - part of the Center for Investigative Reporting - has been awarded grants from various organisations: the James Irvine Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Currently based in the Bay Area and Sacremento, it has ambitions to spread to Los Angeles.

"There's such a lack of other investigative reporting outlets in California I think others are excited to see what we're doing and will financially back what we're doing," Luckie says.

California Watch's central aim is to investigate local politics, education, public safety, health care and the environment. To this end, Luckie and his colleagues are building and create interactive tools that journalists and the public can use from home.

A large part of this is offering 20 searchable databases through a Data Center. Like New York-based non-profit investigative organisation, ProPublica, California Watch is calling for citizens to trawl and track their local data.

The other side of Luckie's work is visualising his colleagues' work, through mediums which appeal to different kinds of readers.

"I think internet users have short attention spans," says Luckie. He suggests using different types of content visualisation and presentation that users can "play with'; that "you don't necessarily have to read through" in order to get the gist of a story.

"Some people read stories in a different way," he says. It's about, he adds, "choosing the best medium that will tell the story".

"We're in a place where we can experiment. This is something new and exciting because we're not a traditional newsroom; we have an experimental philosophy."

For journalists thinking about delving into data visualisation tools, Luckie suggests starting with maps: there are free tools like Map Builder to try out, he says.

Key to it all, though, is spreading these tools across the newsroom. While there are two multimedia reporters and one designated data analyst at California Watch, "everyone is dipping their toes in," he says. "It's not a segregated thing. It's a really collaborative effort between all of us to build these stories."

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10000words | california watch | center for investigative reporting | mark luckie |

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