Well said, Nikki Usher

My thoughts on her analysis of the hacker journalist and evolving journalism

Nikki Usher’s book, Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data and Code, Usher reveals and explains the many evolving roles and intricacies of journalism that have risen in a digitally-based world. Though the entire book is a filled with fascinating details and explanations of how the face of journalism continues to change, a particular excerpt I found interesting was within chapter three of her book when speaking on the term “hacker journalist”. Speaking on behalf of herself as well as quoting others, Usher writes:

” At the same time, The Wall Street Journal would never use the term “hacker journalism”; as a NewsCorp paper, it is especially sensitive to the word hacker because of the UK phone hacking scandal, where journalists hacked into potential sources’ voicemails. But the term still remained a source of inspiration at public radio station WNYC in lower Manhattan, about forty blocks away from The Journal’s headquarters. Head of the Data News Team John Keefe traced the idea of hacker journalism back to the idea of openness and community. He noted, “With hacker journalism, there is a sense among the crowd that they are doing good things. That is really cool. We are sharing and building on work.” In this way, the infusion of hackers into the newsroom represents this Journalism 2.0—the journalists are indeed offering a new way of approaching journalism problems.”

This resonated with me because, in a lot of ways, the quote shows the resiliency and innovation of words used to describe events in our society. Words such as hacker that may have once symbolized a corruption and distrust now symbolize success and exciting new chapters in the steps we have made in our journalistic society.