Recognizing an always-on political news cycle demands immediate updates, the New York Times says its updated its campaign finance API to make updates in real time. This will give them (and other apps using this Application Programming Interface, which allows outside app developers to retrieve the data collected) access to information significantly quicker than prior incarnations.

The API, which initially launched during the 2008 presidential election, previously updated every other week. In some cases, some data updated daily, according to a post about the upgrade from NYT developer Derek Willis. Now, the updates happen within minutes after the FEC receives them (updated every 15 minutes).
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Journalists, what are some of your New Year’s resolutions? If one of them happens to be “learn to code”, then search engine titan Google has you covered with Google Code University.

There are many reasons that journalists should learn how to code. Like we’ve stated before here on 10,000 Words, coding skills are an essential part of working in a new media environment. A knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript gives you the tools you need to create your own website, and can make you a valuable resource for any news organization. Not only that, several journalism fellowships and trainee programs are looking for journalists with programming knowledge. You can have the skills to apply for an opportunity to receive funding for your own cutting edge journalism projects.

Google Code University (GCU) does not require any registration, and materials are free to use. In Web Programming, for example, there are lectures, videos, and contributed course content to teach users how to create interactive web applications that go beyond your basic static web page.

Here are just a few of the courses GCU offers:

• Python
• C++
• Java
• CSS, HTML and JavaScript
• HTML5
• Web Security
• Algorithms
• Android Application Development
• Introduction to Databases and MySQL

Computer science educators are also welcome to submit their own coursework for inclusion within GCU. All courses will be placed under a Creative Commons license which will allow for people to reuse and modify the courses for their own curriculum as necessary. And if you’re looking for more curriculum to peruse or get stuck on a particular term, GCU also includes a search feature via Google Directory that includes lectures, assignments, papers and videos from schools like Harvard University, Duke University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

GCU is a part of Google Code’s education resources, which also include Google DocType and the popular HTML5 Rocks website. To get started today, visit http://code.google.com/edu.

While not all news folk can escape from the news cycle during the holidays, if you’re lucky enough to have a day or few off, put down the cookies and milk and put that time to good use advancing your career. Here are three skills you can reasonably learn — or start learning — over your vacation that can help you do your job better or land a better job. If either of those are your New Years Resolution, take the time now to get a head start.

Lesson: Creating a blog and other basic digital skills

If you’re looking for a job or looking to network, there’s no better time than time off your day job to round up your clips/photos/reel/etc. and corral everything into a simple, personalized blog on WordPress or a similar site. If you want to really show off, or add a few more skills to fill out your resume, Mindy McAdams has done the hard part for you by compiling lessons needed to become baseline multimedia journalists. Her multimedia proficiency guide is a few years old, but these are still good basics to get started on everything from reading RSS feeds to recording and editing video and audio.
• http://mindymcadams.com/tojou/2009/rgmp-15-maintain-and-update-your-skills/ (Note this links to the last lesson, the full listing is at the bottom of the post.)

Lesson: Use Excel for data journalism

Knowing the very basics of how to set up a spreadsheet and use the sort feature opens up new possibilities for your stories. Imagine how cool it would be if you could do even more. Even if Excel is outside your (or your newsroom) budget, you can still apply similar skills with free spreadsheet tools, such as Google Docs or Open Office. Dig a little deeper and you’ll soon be requesting government data and mashing up unexpected correlations in pivot tables that tell stories your competition can’t. Trust me when I say pivot tables will change the way you crunch numbers — for the better. Poynter recently posted a detailed explainer on organizing stories/data in Excel. It’s way more detailed than you really need to get started, but it goes from basics to advanced in one sheet, which I like. Don’t get overwhelmed, just dip your toes in and move on when you’re ready. Maybe it will spark some interest in more advanced IRE training?
• http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/154584/how-journalists-can-use-excel-to-organize-data-for-stories/

Lesson: Write computer codes

OK, so this isn’t something that will directly translate into your day job (unless maybe you’re on the web team or want to transition that direction), but learning to code can give you some comfort and confidence with computer and web programming languages. It can help you learn the skills to eventually develop apps and websites, and since that’s the direction journalism is headed, these skills could open doors down the line. Codeacademy makes a game of learning to program, which could be fun if you’re into that. But if you want to expand on their lessons, I recommend Carl Herod’s really detailed lessons originally posted on Reddit, which start at the very “Hello World” beginnings and get more complicated and cool from there.
• http://codeacademy.com
• http://www.highercomputingforeveryone.com/

News organizations collect lots of data, and are increasingly allowing the public to access that data via APIs. Free access to the APIs is seen by news organizations as a form of serving the public’s interest.

But, there’s been a catch: The usage of almost all of these APIs is restricted to noncommercial use.

For example, the terms of use of The New York Times‘ developer network (which contains some of the most robust APIs around) states:

You shall not … use the NYT APIs for any commercial purpose or in any product or service that competes with products or services offered by NYT.

In the eyes of the Times, this constitutes commercial use:

1. Selling New York Times content or data in any application.
2. Charging a subscription fee for any New York Times content or data.
3. Selling any application built with one of our APIs.

(An exception is made for the Times’ Campaign Finance, Congress and NY State Legislature APIs, which use public data.)

But seeing an opportunity, USA Today earlier this month announced that they were going to open up three of their APIs to commercial use. Read more

BOSTON — You don’t need to hire prodigies to build award-winning, traffic-generating news apps according to Matt Waite (professor of journalism at UNL), Jeremy Bowers (senior developer at The Washington Post) and Shazna Nessa (director of interactive at The AP), who spoke on a panel Friday afternoon at The Online News Association about how to build an awesome data team with a few people.

Finding the right team

When looking for talent within your newsroom to recruit for the web, Matt Waite said to look for the following types of people: Those who are angry, passionate and willing.

“Finding people who are being sorely underused — people with skills that will go to waste … convince their bosses they are being wasted, and magic will happen,” Waite said. Read more