This is part 2.5.1 of 3. You should read 1 and 2 and 2.5

As I wrote in part 2.5, if you were designing a new generation of content management systems (which you’ll be shocked to hear I am), it would not be unreasonable to ask for journalists to include markup in their typescripts. It seems to me to be the simplest way to get preserve as much data as possible as close to the original sources as possible – something that I’ve described as utterly necessary for a multi-outlet world.

Having to learn to write in markup isn’t an imposition, any more than having to learn shorthand or telegraphese. And as with learning any new language, you gain a new soul: writing in markup would allow you to embed code.

The ability to embed code within a story gives us whole new realms of possibilities for journalism and publishing. Digital platforms are connected and location aware, so why not use that? At the moment the answer is “because your infrastructure won’t let you,” but if it could, the potential is extraordinary.

Pseudocode Example – you could use it to display live data:

As the temperature in Central London hits <data feed=”London Temp”/>…

Or location:

As the temperature in <data feed=”Device Location Town”/> hits…

Or live forex:

The hotel’s rooms cost a reasonable 5000 Pesos (<data feed=”UKP/Pesos” amount=”5000″/>)…

Or:

The quickest way there is <data feed=”Routing” start=”<DeviceLocation>” end=”Carnegie Hall” />

Or even putting in logic blocks like this:

<IF $UKGovernment = “Tory AND Litigious” THEN unpublish;>
One of the rumours I recent heard about…

We have heard, during the endless discussions of the death of journalism over the past few years, of many new forms of reporting just ready to save us: database journalism, ambient data journalism, sensor-driven-city journalism, interactive infographic journalism. At the same time, if it can be measured chances are there’s a feed for it somewhere online. The world is monitored, live, in millions of internet-addressable ways.

But today there’s no method to bring the world of live data to the multi-outlet publishing world. By allowing a journalist to embed live data and logic into a piece, however, you give them this whole new palette. Yes, live data doesn’t work in a print product directly, and more thought is needed for a variety of issues (such as archiving), and, yes, journalists will have one more set of skills to learn – but digital platforms require us to stop thinking that submitting a flat 800 words of English prose is enough. For publishers and editors to base their expectations of submitted content on the restrictions of paper seems foolish, and yet they are forced to by their systems. That must change.

You should now read Introducing Budding.