The Interactive Museum of News (Newseum) in Washington, D.C has a couple of computer simulations that are available for the public to put them in the shoes of a reporter or an editor.
Both interactive applications are mainly tailored for kids. The first one is a game which is available in numerous computer stations ready for the young-want-to-be-reporters. The goal is to make the kids aware of the journalistic practice, how reporters work in the street, and teach them broadly what makes good journalism. The graphics are completely computer generated, and look like cartoons, which seem a fair choice taking into account the audience. Also, the way that the game addresses their users is more from a teaching perspective where the editor explains and instructs many of the standards of high quality journalism. For example, if you interview someone and the responses sound like a rumor or an opinion, the always-on virtual editor on the corner of the screen will remind us that those inputs are not good quality information and that we should keep digging.
Both interactive applications are mainly tailored for kids. The first one is a game which is available in numerous computer stations ready for the young-want-to-be-reporters. The goal is to make the kids aware of the journalistic practice, how reporters work in the street, and teach them broadly what makes good journalism. The graphics are completely computer generated, and look like cartoons, which seem a fair choice taking into account the audience. Also, the way that the game addresses their users is more from a teaching perspective where the editor explains and instructs many of the standards of high quality journalism. For example, if you interview someone and the responses sound like a rumor or an opinion, the always-on virtual editor on the corner of the screen will remind us that those inputs are not good quality information and that we should keep digging.
The overall experience of the game is dynamic and appealing to the audience. Instead of a notebook, the young-journalist uses a PDA to store their reporting notes. This application uses a videogame/computer generated graphics engine which feels like a fluid experience. Other similar applications use video clips or just text. This is vital to maintain the experience believable to the user, especially kids that are commonly very aware of glitches on a system.Although this is a good effort to teach what a reporter does on the street everyday to gather the news, I believe it touches very close the oversimplification barrier. Most of what the reporter on this game do is to go to the street and ask pre-defined questions about what happened with a circus that was visiting the town. Although this is one of the duties of a journalist, it's just the starting point. The raw data selection process and news creation post-reporting it's vital since it is where the story takes shape, but it is more complex game. Reporting it's just a piece, although it is probably the easier to model. I understand that the creators had to select a few journalism activities to model for this game to make it approachable for kids, but it could have turned journalism into a boring profession. Moreover, the experience is not as intense or high active game like any other one that you would find on a game console and that would be appealing to the kids.
Another installation at the Newseum is the Ethics Center, an interactive table where several users put themselves in the role of a journalist and play against each other. The task is to timely judge if the information shown is newsworthy and if it has the correct level of quality needed to be printed on a newspaper. For example, the system shows an opinion about some issue, the player decides if it should go to the paper, and then the system responds. If the judgment was not correct, the system will explain why an opinion by itself is not worthy to be published. This interaction between the player and the system helps the public to distinguish the differences on the raw information that the journalists deal every day.
An interesting element present on this application is the collaborative aspect. It is not a game that you play by yourself, but a game where different people contribute. This is why an interactive table is such a good choice for this game. However, the intensity of the interaction is not as strong as it could be. The players see how the others are going but there is no actual discussion triggered from the game. Another aspect is the voting: the user has to make a decision, and a commitment, to approve or disapprove an action presented on the screen. Decisions are powerful and probably even more meaningful for kids. Although this game has very simple mechanics and goals, it is effective in showing the general audience what kind of information media and journalist must publish in order to help the members of the society to make the right decisions.
These games are interesting application that in general terms successfully helps the audience understand the work of reporters and editors. Although they are sometimes oversimplifications of the reporter's work, they identify some key elements that people commonly oversees: assessment of raw news information and reporting. Making available to the young audience applications that could help understand what reporters actually do it's a great milestone.
