Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 65) notes. “My research group is uncovering ways to help people benefit from this flood of information. One central focus of a number of our projects is the creation of information-visualization tools to help people understand large data sets. We also are developing a number of techniques and systems for providing people with peripheral awareness of useful information.” One such project he briefly described for the symposium audience is called Jigsaw, which provides interactive visualizations of the documents in a large collection and the material they contain. Users can then search for connections among key items — people, places, organizations and so forth — mentioned in the collection. Fellow panelist Xaquin Gonzalez Viera, assistant art director at Newsweek.com and a specialist in interactive data graphics, displayed realworld examples of visualization as a powerful storytelling tool. Among them was a graphic containing 12 timelines corresponding to development of each of the tallest buildings in the world that have been started and completed since the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The upper left corner of the graphic was dominated by a photo of the hole at Ground Zero. “It’s way more effective than a thousandword article,” he says. “Some people fear that the role of professional journalists is being reduced, but I do not believe that. Quite the opposite. I think their role continues to grow, but it has to change in some interesting and dynamic ways.” — Amy Bruckman T Historical Precedents for Change he changes buffeting journalism are more profound than simply the new computational tools available to reporters and news organizations, says Carl DiSalvo, an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture. He moderated a panel discussion of aggregation, syndication and Web services. While emphasizing that he is not a journalist, DiSalvo’s “outsider” perspective suggests to him that some of the biggest changes will take place in the definition of news itself. “The kinds of things that get reported will be very different,” he says, referring to the unregulated, inexpensive accessibility of the Internet and its empowerment of a more egalitarian form of news reporting by amateurs and citizen journalists. “It’s not going to change radically overnight, but new kinds of journalism and new kinds of reporting are possible.” What’s not new, he adds, is change itself, noting that journalism has weathered many other new technological approaches to storytelling, from cable television to video camcorders. It’s a historical perspective shared by symposium speaker Mitch Gelman, senior vice president and executive producer for CNN.com. Using wars as benchmarks, he observes that Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008 65 http://Newsweek.com http://CNN.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.