(switch to the German version) Most journalists would probably agree with the following statement: it’s a professionally written story which turns raw data into a journalistic gem.  Adrian Holovaty thinks out of the box: At the Hamburg Scoopcamp, the 28-year-old Chicago journalist and web programmer held a fantastic keynote and at one point during his speech he revealed only half-feigned horror on his face as he described what he feels  when he sees what journalists do: “They have this beautiful clean data and then they turn it into a – BLOB! And then he explained: data like “iPod stolen, value $ 25, 9/17/2009, break-in into private residence,  123 ABC Street, Chicago” becomes a one-inch column in a newspaper. This kind of report doesn’t give readers any chance to make anything more out of it than what’s in there at face value.

Holovaty’s project Everyblock views journalism from the data perspective: Many stories develop out of data. If you make them searchable by as many criteria as possible and if you localise them in every possible detail then you create  value for users that is much bigger than the sum of its parts.

Lets’s stick with the stolen iPod in the police report. Everyblock enables search by any kind of criteria you can possibly think of: In which parts of town were the most iPods stolen? In which streets? Was it by home burglaries? Car break-ins? Muggings? Armed robberies? Pick-pocketing? If I move my usual jogging route by one block, do I have a bigger chance of keeping my iPod? Should I prefer jogging at 5 pm instead of 8 am because less joggers are mugged at 5 pm?  Etc., etc. Such links between data from databases and geotagging are the base for deeper journalistic analysis and new story ideas.

Database  journalism projects like Everyblock.com don’t intend to replace traditional journalism, but add to it. Holovaty works with only six staffers and a computer program that he coded himself. But with this minimal manpower he managed what full-staffed newsrooms wouldn’t be able to do: Everyblock breaks down big stories and minute reports from various sources including government reports to their data core: block by block, street by street, in an astounding number of 15 US cities (4 of them still in beta mode). Adrian received a $ 1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation for his innovative project. It is all open source. But now Everyblock (which was bought by MSNBC.com for an undisclosed sum last month) must develop as a for-profit business.

Does Adrian Holovaty view the future of journalism in databases? Does Everyblock cooperate with newspapers? What are areas in which database journalism works especially well? And what is the business model of Everblock? Click into the interview (9:25 min.)  for Adrian’s answers to these questions. And please excuse some amateurish cuts. I’m only just starting out as a video journalist.

My interview with Adrian is the second in my new blog series Interviewing Innovators.  In these interviews I will be talking to pioneers of social-web journalism.  The first interview was my talk  in Vancouver with Michael Tippett, co-founder of the crowd-sourced journalism platform NowPublic which has meanwhile been sold to Examiner.com. (The video is in English, but the written blog post is in German.)

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