(Photo by Aaron Roberts)
In a presentation complete with goofy pictures and references to "blobs", Adrian Holovaty, of washingtonpost.com and Everyblock, let journalists know just how important it is to "make data webby."
It’s all about being able to click and find out more, he said, and data without hyperlinks is "lame." People in the 21st century are so used to Web sites like IMDB and Wikipedia that "not only is data browsability a best practice, people are starting to expect it."
Local crime, births, politics, movie reviews and obituaries are just some of the news that would benefit from hyperlinking. Journalists should embrace data structure as much as possible. "Getting information is the hard part, and we are better equipped than anyone to get it," he said.
The problem with structured data is that if journalists want to make something happen, they have to be smart about organizing their data, Holovaty said. That means, think carefully about what your readers would be interested in and how they would access it.
Examples of sites with successfully structured data include Chicagocrime.org and the Washington Post 2008 election site.
-- Savannah Aepli
