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Articles tagged: column
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Shields Up: In the Face of Supply Chain Attacks, Stay the Course
By Martin Shelton
Posted onEverything you need to know about supply chain attacks, a kind of security breach that targets trusted distribution channels for delivering software and hardware.
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Shields Up: Using Signal Without Giving Your Phone Number
By Martin Shelton
Posted onEncrypted messaging apps like Signal, as well as WhatsApp and Viber, use your phone number as your main username. This means that if I want to chat with someone on these apps, I have to give them my phone number. But we may have many reasons—both practical and principled—not to share our number with someone. These digits are personal.
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Same Diff: Following the Eclipse Trackers
By David Yanofsky
Posted onA roundup of the custom-designed, interactive news items that helped readers prepare for and understand a solar eclipse.
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Shields Up: Get Your Malware Shots
By Martin Shelton
Posted onMalware lets an unauthorized third party access or take control of your device. In practice, it’s become a catch-all term for a huge variety of malicious software. That could include software that hijacks computing resources, lets an attacker monitor your screen, keystrokes,microphone, or effectively turns your device into an expensive brick.
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Ms. Management: Driving Our Employees Over the Edge
By Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Posted onOur fetishisation of stoicism means we tend to dismiss deteriorating mental health breakdowns as mere distractions, best treated with an hour or so of venting to colleagues and several infusions of hard liquor.
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Ms. Management: I Hope You Find the Time to Read this Column
By Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Posted onIf you’re the kind of person who is into both checks on the executive branch and the finer points of employment law, you may already have come across the case of KNTV, Inc. and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, AFL–CIO. If not—and who can blame you—a quick primer: that case set the precedent that an employer’s use of the phrase “I hope you” could be reasonably construed as “coercive.”
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Same Diff: The English-Language Press Maps the French Election
By David Yanofsky
Posted onHere’s a reminder: In normal times, US-based publications normally don’t put much effort into visualizing foreign elections. Of course, with presidency of Donald Trump, a British vote to leave the European Union, and a presidential election in France without either of the mainstream political parties qualifying, we don’t live in normal times.
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Ms. Management: Whose Stories Do We Consider?
By Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Posted onOn books, checklists, and the cumulative effect of unconscious decisions.
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Two-Factor Authentication for Newsrooms
By Martin Shelton
Posted onPasswords are the brittle wall that keep unwanted visitors out of your accounts. Breaches can hit anyone, but as frequent targets with sensitive sources, work, and personal information at risk, reporters should take extra care. When it comes to account protection, two-factor authentication is one of the most effective defenses available.
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Visually Speaking: Designing for the (Un)wired World
By Dana Amihere
Posted onWhy newsrooms should go responsive, even for complex projects.
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Ms. Management: The Hard Work of Hiring Well
By Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Posted onIn this installment of Ms. Management, we learn why a better interview process is better for everyone, not just the applicants.
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Shields Up: Developing Security Skepticism
By Martin Shelton
Posted onA little fear can motivate us to take action. But as consumers of security news, even the most well-intentioned reporting can scare us into paralysis—or worse, encourage us to adopt behaviors that promote a false sense of security.
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Same Diff: Trump’s Budget Proposal
By David Yanofsky
Posted onThe White House budget proposal was released on March 16, and while the document itself was “skinnier” than in years past, news organizations’ efforts in parsing it were as robust as ever. Let’s take a look at how they found their way into and visually reported out the 60-page document.
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Ms. Management: This Isn’t the Diverse Newsroom You’re Looking For
By Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Posted onThe first column in the “Ms. Management” series: how newsroom managers can take more tangible steps to increase newsroom diversity.
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Opening Secure Channels for Confidential Tips
By Martin Shelton
Posted onTo make it easier for tipsters to share sensitive information, a growing number of news organizations are launching resources for confidential tips. This short guide will describe some basics around how to think about security on behalf of your sources before thinking about tools and practices.
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Same Diff: Tracking Trump’s People
By David Yanofsky
Posted onWelcome! This is the first of an occasional series of posts I’ll be writing here about how news organizations around the world are going about the same things differently. The plan is to focus on the kind of work that doesn’t fit neatly into our CMSes, or that need custom design or code. I’ve been doing this work for seven years and remain to be fascinated by the varying approaches to the same subject matter. When news breaks, (or perhaps when news is planned 12 months ahead) how do we in media make the same things, differently?
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Visually Speaking: Patterns for Humane Data Visualization
By Dana Amihere
Posted onData can be impersonal, especially large datasets with thousands or even millions of records. The fact that most data of this magnitude is calculated by machines is, however, a sharp contrast to the ultimate goal of examining it in the first place—to find human trends and patterns behind the numbers.
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Discrimination by Design
By Lena Groeger
Posted onDiscriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives: from the quality of our health care and education to where we live to what scientific questions we choose to ask. Here are just a few of the many tangible, visual examples that humans interact with every day.
What I Learned from Researching Newsroom On-boarding and Off-Boarding Processes