[theg2]

As a developer in a newsroom who had no intention of ending up here, it is amazing to see the transition in my industry and just how many companies are eager to hire developers who understand journalism or at least are willing to partner with reporters and editors.

I can't say it's what I expected to be doing but news organizations are in a period of massive change and it's an interesting space to be in.

[artifaxx]

Have you worked on visualizations such as those in the article, or do you have a different position? I am very interested in this industry, but I haven't met anyone with experience there yet.

[widgetic]

We did, but on a much smaller scale: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/erotic-fan-fiction-value...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugees-technolo...

Useful to tell better stories and retain readers, these widgets are also a great engagement boost. :-)

[artifaxx]

Yeah, I can definitely see how these widgets and visualizations make an article significantly more engaging. I am hoping to learn more so I can have some visualizations to present of data for my startup. Since we are improving people's productivity, it would provide significant value to better engage users in their data.

[theg2]

I've worked on numerous elections, data projects, and interactives over the past few years. They're a great asset but the narrative behind them is just as important.

I've had reporters say "I found some data, can we do something with it" and it's not nearly as useful as "I'm writing a story about X, how can we use this data to visualize Y to illustrate X?". It's amazing just how rare that understanding can be from traditional media folks.