[00:00] doing these things. I don't know what will happen, but if I self-destruct, I want you
[00:05] to do what I would do. Tweet it. Okay, so my talk is called You Must Learn Five Lessons
[00:16] from the History of Data Journalism Thank You for Voting. And you know, what I want
[00:20] to start with is something that I've heard a lot of talk about, and I bet you have too.
[00:24] I bet you've heard a lot about the future. Right? Yes? I've heard a lot about the future.
[00:32] Lots going on. Lots going to happen. You know what I mean? Right? And, you know, one of
[00:40] the cooler things I've heard in recent years was this. And you guys know who that is? He
[00:44] was in Jeremy's talk. That's Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web. He
[00:49] said this, or he's reported who said it, at least. And I thought to myself, who got
[00:56] to him? And whoever in here got to him, you have Natty Bo for the rest of your days, I'll
[01:03] make them. Because that's great. Now, that's a good thing, right? But not everything we've
[01:10] been hearing about the future is really all that good, right? Because we hear things kind
[01:13] of like this. I hear things like this, and I, like, cringe inside. You know what I mean?
[01:18] I hear, like, it causes me pain to hear someone who means well and who wants to get on with
[01:23] the future, as we've been told, about say things like what we're doing here, and everybody
[01:27] hears about this in this room, is brand new. Something that's recently been invented. And
[01:33] one of the things that happens is when powerful people think ideas like this, and then they
[01:37] act on them, they go out into the world and they have ripple effects. And I think each
[01:42] ever one of you in here sees ripple effects. They look like this. Right? These are all
[01:52] some job listings and stories about many of the people in this room, and trying to get
[01:56] many of the people in this room to apply, right? And they sound like someone whose history
[02:00] of journalism comes from, like, a Japanese, like, article. It has, like, a history of the
[02:07] world that's, like, totally on board from any reality. Right? And that's just, like,
[02:11] bugs me. Right? You know what I mean? Because it bugs me, that's what got me fired up to give
[02:16] this talk. And so that's why I'm here. Right? And, you know, I used to live in Washington, D.C.,
[02:20] not that far from here. And I lived in a neighborhood called Shaw. And I love living in Shaw. And Shaw
[02:24] is a great place. And on 9th Street, Northwestern Shaw, there's this awesome mural for this guy,
[02:28] Carter Woodson. You guys know who Carter Woodson was? His house was right across the street. Carter
[02:32] Woodson is the man who had the idea that we ought to have something in 1926 called Black History
[02:38] Week. Right? Which ultimately became Black History Month, and which is just ending now, here in the
[02:43] United States. Right? And I think Black History Month is an awesome thing. And why do I think
[02:47] it's awesome? Because it challenges us. It confronts us with an alternative history, which facts in the
[02:53] past that we don't normally hear about. And it makes us try to process them. And to think about,
[02:58] to think about our own, the stories we tell ourselves about history. I love it. Right? And,
[03:03] you know what's good at confrontation, besides that, is hip-hop music. Right? A few things are
[03:08] better. In the 1980s, Boogie Down Productions, led by KRS1, released a single known as You Must
[03:14] Learn. And You Must Learn is an awesome song that is really just a walk through kind of an
[03:19] alternative history of Black people, not just the United States, but in the world. And it's in the
[03:23] spirit of this, like, badass song, particularly the Live from the Caucus Mountains remix, which I
[03:28] would totally recommend. Right? That got me going on this talk. Right? And so with that, it's kind of
[03:38] the outset I want to start in. We've got five lessons. Right? Number one, nothing we are doing
[03:43] is new. Okay? And I wanted to do this in the format of, like, say, Jeopardy clues. Do you guys
[03:47] watch Jeopardy? My wife and I every night. It's Hebo, and I love it. Battle of the Decades is awesome.
[03:53] But so here's the clue. Influenced by academics, this aspiring journalist arrived in New York to
[03:58] determine to produce an exact quote, quote, facts of scientific value. No, if you asked me to guess,
[04:05] you might say, hey, Nate Silver. Right? Particularly if you were Dave Plott. Right? Or if you were a
[04:12] Nicarian, you might say, hey, author of numbers in the newsroom. All right? Recently, New York Times
[04:18] hire Sarah Cohen might come to mind. Wouldn't be a bad guess, would actually be pretty close to
[04:23] accurate. You know, you might also just go with Xingy. Hey! Dave Xing, AOL's digital prophet being
[04:30] monster. Right? He wouldn't be, right? The other two would be okay. But another also correct answer
[04:35] from history that I want to challenge you with is Lincoln Steffens. Lincoln Steffens in 1890s arrived
[04:42] in New York City, a rich kid from Sacramento who went off to Germany to study philosophy because he
[04:46] felt like him. Right? And he didn't feel like him anymore. He felt like making some noise. He felt
[04:53] like shaking up the world and he went on to become one of the most famous muckrakers. Right? Teddy
[04:58] Roosevelt coined the phrase muckraker because he had to deal with this asshole. Right? And so he
[05:03] came to New York in the 1890s and I swear to God he really thought I am going to bring Hegel to
[05:09] the police beat. Right? No, that's true. Right? And this is a nerdy room. This is like the nerdiest
[05:16] room in the history of journalism. Nobody here is that nerdy. You know what I'm saying? And he
[05:23] went on to try to develop like a period of corruption at the city level across the United
[05:27] States, letting them write a series of books and magazine articles that made him famous.
[05:31] Right? And he also, he had an intern. You know whose intern was? Walter Lippmann. Got his first
[05:36] job in journalism with Lincoln Steffens. Went on to popularize the whole idea of public opinion,
[05:42] which Nate Silver would later analyze 100 years later and become famous. Right? So just think
[05:48] about that. And if you want to learn more about it, read the new biography of Lincoln Steffens.
[05:51] I'm like two-thirds the way through it. It's pretty awesome. Right? Lesson two. No. Nothing
[05:57] we're doing is new. All right? And you can't count on the internet to tell you that. Okay?
[06:02] Here's another clue. This polarizing journalist rattled Washington DC with a selective release
[06:08] of provocative documents from a secret cash. Right? Might call some people to mind. Might
[06:15] make you think of a certain man in London, Julian Assange. It might force you to pick your favorite
[06:21] from the roster of NSA reporters. Right? And all those would be good answers. They wouldn't
[06:26] necessarily be wrong. But this answer is also accurate and true if you were to say, who was
[06:32] William Randolph first? One of the most famous newspaper barons in the history of the United
[06:36] States, so in the whole series across the United States, including New York and San Francisco.
[06:41] And in 1908 and in 1912, his publication splashed across their covers a series of leaked,
[06:48] allegedly leaked, letters written by a standard oil executive named Archibald, which supposedly
[06:54] contained the correspondence between him and elected officials in the United States detailing
[06:59] a whole range of political corruption. This was a major scandal which shook two presidential
[07:04] elections. Right? Which led to Collier's Magazine trying to debunk it with a very, very intense cover
[07:11] story trying to take it down. And even led to Mr. Hearst himself testifying before the United
[07:16] States Congress, not unlike the editor of The Guardian last year. And then later in his life,
[07:23] the tables returned. Mr. Hearst's telegrams were acquired from a source and published by his rival
[07:30] publications, including the Los Angeles Times, where I work, and the orders that he sent be a
[07:35] telegram from his home, and believe it or not, West Palm Beach, now home of Rush Limbaugh, right,
[07:43] were then splashed across the act. And this might be a potentially a sort of instructive lesson for
[07:49] those reporting on leaks today. But regardless, if you were to go to Wikipedia and you were to search
[07:54] a phrase like standard oil letters, guess what you get? Nothing. Right? That's because despite
[08:02] journalism being the history of the world, the first draft of history, we don't do a very good
[08:06] job of telling our own history. Right? And so something like this, which was a major event that
[08:10] shaped two presidential elections, doesn't even exist according to the internet. Right? Now, if
[08:16] you want to learn about it, you should read this great book, Citizen Hearst. This book was nominated
[08:21] to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it's the only book in the history of the Pulitzer Prize that judges
[08:25] declined to give the award to, ultimately, because Hearst was such an asshole, they couldn't stand it.
[08:32] Right? Which is a lesson I would suggest, the book that I would suggest to our new media
[08:37] locals, who I occasionally hear themselves, compare themselves to Hearst. But as you see today,
[08:43] it's sort of a very casual way as an icon of being a media titan. However, if you were to read this
[08:48] book, you would find out, one, what an asshole he was. Right? And two, what a bad businessman he was.
[08:55] You know what I mean? But anyway, read it. It's good. It's a lot of fun. All right. Lesson three,
[08:59] it is a wild world out there. Right? Clue number three, this nation was the first, the first to
[09:08] enact a law guaranteeing citizens the right to access government records. Right? You know what
[09:14] I'm going to say first. You know what I'm going to say? USA. Number one. Right? But you might be
[09:22] like a history boxer. You might say, well, Ben, if you go back in history, democracy, I like to
[09:26] settle on, you know, you know, Magna Carta, all that stuff. You know what I'm saying? And if you
[09:31] read more that way, you might say, I'm going to go even further, Ben. I'm going to go with Athens.
[09:36] You know what I mean? Like, Greece had this down. It has to be Greece. It has to. Now,
[09:42] it's this guy, this guy whose name is on that notepad, I forgot to walk over.
[09:47] His name is, here we go.
[09:51] Anders K. Dätten. Anders K. Dätten.
[09:57] They answer this. In 1766. Say it.
[10:03] Anders K. Dätten. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
[10:10] So in 1766, he led an effort to pass the World's First Freedom of Press Act,
[10:15] which included not just something similar to the First Amendment before the First Amendment,
[10:19] but also the first law that suggested that the public has a right to inspect government records.
[10:25] And where is he? What country was that? It was, of course, Sweden.
[10:30] Right? This is a blingy frame that I saw on my recent trip to Sweden.
[10:39] This is a real thing from a gift shop.
[10:42] And the man in the sunset is the current prime minister.
[10:46] Right? That's pretty good. Yeah. But it's a little more complicated because back then,
[10:51] you know, Sweden was its own empire. And it was big enough that it included this whole
[10:55] little eastern area, which you map heads in here might recognize today as Finland.
[10:59] And so if you go there, there's certain Finns will tell you, no, no, no, no, it was Finland.
[11:03] We had the first public records law. Right?
[11:09] To disagreement, the Swedes do not concede that point, however.
[11:12] I'm from Finland.
[11:20] Right. Well, the Swedes have put the guy on the highest bill available in Finland,
[11:24] I've been told. Is this guy in space? I mean, I look at our money and it's a bunch of conspiracy
[11:28] shit. I don't have ceremonies and eyeballs and a bunch of crap. You know what I'm talking about?
[11:35] We need to get the First Amendment on the dollar bill. I'm just saying that right here now.
[11:42] So anyway, so I've knocked Finland a little bit. If you go to the Reports Without Borders
[11:48] was a ranking of countries in the world and Finland makes number one for world press freedom,
[11:52] United States 32 and falling. Right? And if you could read that report, if you go to the website,
[11:59] and I'd recommend you check it out. It's very informative. It might broaden your worldview.
[12:03] Lesson four, you have already been scooped by a computer. Right? So this is a point I like to
[12:09] trot out from time to time to poke fun at. This is Christian Hammond. He's the CEO of a really
[12:14] awesome company called Narrative Science, who makes really awesome software that gets robots
[12:18] to like write stuff, to algorithms, to like churn out paragraphs, to find stuff, to write sports
[12:23] stories, to do all kinds of cool stuff at Wall Street. And two and a half years ago, he told the
[12:27] New York Times this, in five years your computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize and I will be
[12:33] damned if it is not our technology. Right? It sounds good. Sounds good. But unfortunately,
[12:40] like many internet entrepreneurs, he has zero sense of history. And I know that in this room,
[12:46] people know who really was the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize with their software.
[12:51] It was built that way. Right? That dude just got to live with it.
[12:58] And I love it. You know what I mean? He's two and a half years in. We'll see how he does.
[13:01] Right? And he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 before computers were even close to cool.
[13:09] Right? If you're doing a story about redlining of housing in Atlanta, it's really good stuff. And I
[13:15] gotta tell you, it wasn't just him. Since him, numerous people have won Pulitzer Prizes for
[13:20] doing computer work, including many people in this room. And the most recent was just last year,
[13:25] my brothers in bankruptcy at the Sun Center. Brothers and sisters. Right? Took home the
[13:34] highest Pulitzer Award for an awesome series. And I gotta say, just like an ingenious data analysis,
[13:40] just like ingenious thing to figure out how you could prove something that everybody thought was
[13:44] true but couldn't prove. And it's really awesome. And you know what? We hear a lot about data
[13:48] journalism. We hear that David Plots is the world saying how it's new and how it's all these awesome
[13:52] people doing new stuff. But in all that hype, you know, one thing I don't hear is I don't hear
[13:56] about this. And that really bugs me. You know what I mean? Because the data person just did it.
[14:00] And that person is probably in this room right now. It is John Maynes in the lower left right there.
[14:05] John, are you here? Yes!
[14:22] I love this picture. The dream is not so bad. I mean, we took this. But anyway, I recommend you
[14:28] actually go read the color of money. The whole thing is available for free online at this URL.
[14:33] That's really the first one to win. Go check it out. You might not even like certain parts about
[14:38] it. You might think certain things are dated. It could be improved or done better in today's world.
[14:42] Take that and apply it to your work tomorrow. You know what I mean? Rather than just congratulating
[14:46] yourself for having a computer, right? Also, John Maynes tomorrow, John Maynes tomorrow is going to
[14:54] explain how he did this. You can go see him at 3 p.m. tomorrow in Salandhi. You have to be just like,
[15:00] what? Two rooms over? One room over? I don't even know. You should go. You should go and you should
[15:04] listen. Because he deserves it. And you can learn something. All right, lesson five. It's about you
[15:11] or it's about the work. This is not actually history. This is from the wire.
[15:23] But I think it's a really valuable lesson and I love it. It's not you, it's about the work, right?
[15:28] Because we go back to this stuff. What is really going on with this? You know what I mean? What is
[15:33] this trying to communicate to us? It's silly in some sense, but even though it's silly, there's
[15:38] something deeper. And the deeper thing is narcissistic. It's trying to tell us that we're
[15:42] special, that we're something that never existed before, that we're like, I don't even know. We're
[15:46] the unicorns, right? And that's just not true. Where people look at history and the future and
[15:51] we're part of a really awesome tradition that means something, right? And that is what Nitecar
[15:57] is about. You know what I mean? Nitecar wasn't the beginning either, but it's a major factor.
[16:01] And it's the people in this room and it's the spirit and the vehicle for keeping that tradition
[16:05] alive and getting people inspired and getting people to not just want to win prizes and not
[16:10] just want to be the first to be winning, but to do something that matters, to tell stories that matter,
[16:14] to tell stories that otherwise would not be told, is what makes Nitecar so special
[16:18] and what gets me worked up like right now.
[16:20] KRS1. You know what I mean? He said some crazy shit. Yes. You know what I mean? I would not
[16:38] endorse everything to come out of this man's house. I really would not. But I still listen to him,
[16:44] even to this day. And just like a year or two ago, you put out a song fighting, you know,
[16:47] not many people listen to him, not famous anymore, you know. And it was called Show Power. It had
[16:53] showbiz from Showbiz and AG. Yeah. And Show Power had a verse in it and the verse was sent out
[17:02] to all the young rappers out there, the aspiring rappers, to try to keep them inspired and focused
[17:06] on what really matters about hip-hop. You know, as we all know, it's cliche at this point. Hip-hop
[17:10] has been called the CNN of the street. We've heard it, right? But there are some similarities.
[17:16] You know what I mean? There's a deeper truth to that cliche that's important. And in this verse,
[17:19] he said something that even though I'm not a rapper, and trust me, you don't want to hear me rap,
[17:24] right? It really, it actually emotionally touched me and I just want to share it with you. And I
[17:28] think he captured what I'm trying to get at here and what's really important about what we do and
[17:32] why we come to Nykar and what we want our future to be, which we control. You know what I mean? And
[17:39] so it's the second verse and, you know, okay, you ready? I'm going to read a hip-hop song. This is
[17:44] really going to happen. All right. Excellence in art. We must preserve that. We must improve that.
[17:53] I mean, bring the news back. Balance the views that. Truly inspire. Like the day that you were
[18:02] hired and bound to take the art much higher. Right? Bring the news back. Thank you.