Source | Washington Post
NPR news apps developer Jeremy Bowers discusses in Knight-Mozilla OpenNews' Source the legwork that went into the Washington Post's election predictor app.

Bowers worked with the Post's Ezra Klein and graphics editor Emily Chow to produce the tool, which launched in April 2012 using economic data models from to predict the likelihood of President Obama being re-elected. In the essay, Bowers says the work of political science professors John Sides at George Washington University, Lynn Vavreck at UCLA, and Seth Hill at Yale (now of UC-San Diego) was integral to the process. (more...)

News applications editor Scott Klein has written a "ProPublica News Apps Style Guide" that codifies "the typographic and technical best practices" its developers follow.

Much like the AP Stylebook, the News Apps Style Guide helps journalists resolve uncertainty and avoid common mistakes by providing guidance on the most important or often misunderstood points.

Also like the AP Stylebook, the News Apps Style Guide contains an alphabetical list of subjects -- from Accuracy to Updates (no "z-" words yet) -- with a brief discussion and guidance for each.

Which browsers should your news app be sure to work in? "The current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis" as well as "the built-in browsers in the latest revision of the iOS and Android [SDK]," and "if earlier releases represent more than 2.5% of our audience, continue to support them." (more...)

Daniel Sinker
Of all the high-demand jobs software developers can take these days, why choose to work in a newsroom? Dan Sinker of the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews project got six developers at The New York Times and ProPublica to answer that question on video. Their responses are revealing. NYT developer Jeremy Ashkenas explained the allure of fast-paced development:

Something happens, you have to respond. What kind of app can you build in the next 12 hours, in the next 24 hours, that's going to be able to tell a story? That's a really fun challenge, and that's something that you don't have in a lot of programming. (more...)