An exoskeleton is an interesting thing. It presupposes the existence of another being underneath it. By way of comparison:
- An exoskeleton is not a robot, though it may contain some robotic enhancements.
- An exoskeleton is not a drone, though it may offer the user with sensors or other data.
- An exoskeleton is not AI or an algorithm, though it might use these things to make its user more efficient.
At it's root, an exoskeleton does only what you do. It just does those things better.
- If you can lift things, it helps you lift heavier things.
- If you can jump, it can make you jump higher.
- If you can run, it can make you run faster.
But notice: An exoskeleton doesn't lift, jump or run FOR you. And you don't really "pilot" an exoskeleton. The user interface is basically the same — what changes is your capacity, not your behavior.
The fundamental metaphor behind journalism exoskeletons is that the behaviors and actions that reporters are already doing are things that should be enhanced, not things that should be changed. An exoskeleton brings the technology to the reporter instead of asking the reporter to move closer to the technology.
In fact, when I think about what an exoskeleton is, it acts like a custom-written CMS storing domain-specific content for an individual beat. An exoskeleton for CJ Chivers — a foreign reporter specializing in weaponry and warfare — is different than the exoskeleton for Adam Liptak — a supreme court reporter. But they share some characteristics, namely, that they extend the existing capacities of these reporters without replacing the behaviors they engage in.
I'll mangle this Scott Klein quote until I die.
"Every beat involves some form of structured data; if you're not using structured data on your beat, someone else will scoop you with it."
Many beats quite obviously involve structured data:
- Crime/homicide: Rows in a spreadsheet. Dots on a map. Ticks on a timeline. You can talk about a crime or a series of crimes. But without data, you'll never talk about capital-c Crime as a general category.
- Sports: Box scores are the oldest structured data to show up regularly in news — well, might be tied with stock reports.
- Finance/business: Stock price. Federal Reserve statements. Jobs numbers.
- Elections: Polling and prediction. Votes and results.
But there are some other places where you might not think:
- Politics: Aggregating public statements about legislation. Fact-checking.
- Real estate: Neighborhood-level price rises and drops. Overall trends as a baseline for individual areas.
- War/conflict: Episodic events like drone strikes or bombings. Mass murders or shootings. Anything where a series of individual stories might aggregated.
- Web scrapers: Much of a reporter's reach could be ETLing data available on the Web. Imagine not having to travel to the courthouse for a crime blotter.
- Early warning systems: These are things you could pay an intern to stay up late refreshing the page to do: Ken Schwenke's earthquake bot. Andy Boyle's system for notifying you if a famous athlete gets arrested.
- Computers are great at comparing things, especially when the differences aren't apparent. Like Crash Davis said in Bull Durham: The difference between hitting .250 — and getting demoted — and hitting .300 — and being an all-star — over a full season is 35 hits, or about 1 extra hit every 30 plate appearances. Ben Welsh's neighborhood crime alerts are a great example of this sort of thing; or the change in status of a Guantanamo detainee. Either happens so often or so rarely that it escapes notice.
- A gruff reporter working the police beat.
- A national security reporter writing about drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
- A high school sports reporter covering football and basketball.
- A metro politics reporter covering local politics like mayor and the county commission.
- A reporter who has been leaked thousands of emails that could show impropriety in several important contracts.
- A metro reporter in southern California covering immigration and law enforcement at the border.
- A business reporter in the state capitol covering the finances of the state's largest employers.