Discovering the digital frontier

Posted June 10, 2014

By Marlena Chertock

One of the goals in News21 is to continue pushing the boundaries and exploring the use of innovative digital tools for its upcoming project on gun laws. The fellows researched Poynter’s News University’s list of innovative reporting, design and social media tools, which is a project of The Poynter Institute and funded by The Knight Foundation.

As an interactive designer and coder, I’m interested in exploring and mastering more of these tools and working with News21 journalists to rethink ways to tell stories. Check back to see which tools we use in the finished project.

Here are 26 tools we researched:

SoundCite.js: produce inline audio
Timeline.js: create interactive timelines with text, video, photos or social content
StoryMap.js: track a story over multiple locations and embed video, photos or social content
D3: Data-Driven Documents: offers countless ways to create data-based visuals
Easel.ly , Piktochart, Info.gram: create infographics
Highcharts and Canvas.js: create interactive charts
Plot.ly: analyze, graph and share data
Datawrapper: create easy-to-embed charts
Cartodb: create interactive maps
TileMill: create interactive maps
Stamen maps: create various textured maps using OpenStreetMap data
Tableau Public: create graphs, maps and tables
Popcorn.js: allow video to control elements of a web page
freeDive: turn Google spreadsheets into searchable databases
import.io: scrape data from any website, turn websites into a datatable or API
CensusReporter: simplifies finding and using data from decennial census and American Community Survey
Census.Ire.org: a simple way to access 2010 Census data
RebelMouse: share multiple social media accounts on a page, can be used for aggregation or user-generated content
Bambuser: capture, share and watch live video
Zeega: combine content with social media curated content to create interactive videos
Videolicious: quickly create video and B-roll
Pop: mix GIFs, photos, videos and easily share them
PANDA: a data library that can be searchable by newsrooms