As we geared up for this week’s ASJA conference, here are the media and publishing headlines that caught our eye:
- American University launches history project retracing 60 years of investigative journalism: This week, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University launched “Investigating Power,” a website exploring the role investigative journalism in six periods of the twentieth century. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward contributed to the visual history project.
- Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter? Narrative Science’s CTO and cofounder Kristian Hammond predicts that in 15 years, more than 90 percent of news will be written by computers. Still, according to a feature in Wired.com’s Gadget Lab blog, Hammond says he’s not trying to displace journalists or website copywriting services. Computer algorithms have their place, but we still prefer the real life observations and on-the-ground reporting of humans.
- Who owns your stuff in the cloud?: This LA Times article provides a sobering reminder about the importance of reading (and understanding) the user agreement for cloud-based services like the newly launched Google Drive.
- Bloomberg Gives Writers Inaugural NYC Literary Awards: The literarati are still buzzing about last week’s Pulitzer controversy over the lack of a fiction winner. This week gave book lovers reason to celebrate, though, as Mayor Bloomberg presented the first-ever NYC Literary Awards last night.
- ‘News’ loses its top digital editor, Scott Cohen, to startup Vocativ: Scott Cohen, The Daily News’ executive editor for digital, has left the paper to join Vocativ, a news startup for citizen journalists.
While you’re catching up on headlines, be sure to follow our tweets from the ASJA conference, which runs through Saturday.