699382

book-review2017
JMQXXX10.1177/1077699017699382Journalism & Mass Communication QuarterlyBook Reviews

Book Reviews
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
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Book Reviews 2017 AEJMC
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Interactive Journalism: Hackers, Data, and Code. Nikki Usher. Urbana, Illinois: University
of Illinois Press, 2016. 252 pp. $95 hbk. $25 pbk. $22.50 ebk. ISBN: 9780252081989.

Reviewed by: David Ryfe, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
DOI: 10.1177/1077699017699382

Early in her research on technologists in newsrooms, Usher discovered that very few
people from the programming and tech worlds . . . were consistently planning to dedi-
cate their lives to news . . . Instead, she found it was traditional journalists themselves
who were gravitating to technology. The story of interactive journalism was not one
of colonization from the outside, she realized, but of expansion within: the creation, as
she puts it, of a new occupational identity within journalism itself, one built around
the application of code to journalism.
This discovery sets the premise for the book. Granted that interactive journalism is
emerging from within the field, why is this the case? Who are interactive journalists,
and what new practices and forms of knowledge do they possess? To what extent is the
practice becoming a fully fledged subspecialty in the field? How is interactive journal-
ism changing the field? Drawing on interviews with key figures, a review of the popu-
lar and secondary literatures, and short observational stints in seven newsrooms, Usher
provides answers to these questions.
She organizes these answers in five concisely written chapters. In a first, she offers
a definition of her topic: interactive journalism, she writes, is a visual presentation of
storytelling through code for multilayered, tactile user control for the purpose of news
and information. Defined in this way, the practice has antecedents in graphic design,
photography, data visualization, and computational journalism. Yet, interactive jour-
nalism is different from these other subspecialties in its reliance on code. Not every
interactive journalist is a coder, Usher acknowledges, but all interactive journalism is
built on code. Moreover, it is the practice of coding that represents interactive journal-
isms distinctive base of knowledge.
In the next two chapters, Usher shows that interactive journalism emerged in the
1990s and early 2000s, a time of crisis within the field, when journalism was pressured
on the outside by technology and economics, and on the inside by a need to remain
solvent and relevant. In this crucible, traditional journalists have perceived their new
interactive brethren as heroes, colleagues whose work demonstrates the fields abil-
ity to innovate, re-establishes its cultural legitimacy, and drives online revenue. It does
2 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

all of this without challenging traditional journalists long-standing public service mis-
sion, or the fields interest in storytelling. For this reason, Usher concludes, there [has
been] little contest between interactive journalists and their more traditional col-
leagues. Interactive journalists, she writes, [have taken] skills and thinking from
programming and [applied] them to journalism without any sort of evidence of inter-
nal professional tension.
This said, interactive journalism carries with it distinct forms of knowledge and
practice. Usher discusses five in particular. Interactive journalism builds journalistic
products through layers of coding, offers an opportunity to visualize issues at a broad
scope while simultaneously allowing users to zoom in to see how a topic affects
them, is more open and transparent in its work processes, is predisposed to allowing
users to see-it-for-themselves by giving them tools to discover information on their
own, and, finally, reorients the nut-graf in a way that retains a sense of narrative while
allowing users to explore information at their own pace. These forms of knowledge,
Usher concludes, guarantee programmers jurisdiction over [their] worka key ele-
ment of any new occupational identityand broadens the types of people, work and
knowledge found across the profession and inside the newsroom.
As the first sustained sociological investigation of this new form of journalism,
Ushers main argument is persuasive. She shows quite well that interactive journalism
is arising from within the field as a new subspecialty. Her discussion of the new forms
of knowledge and practice injected into the field by interactive journalists is especially
helpful. Her book will certainly serve as a foundational text for scholars turning their
attention to this growing journalistic practice.
Like any foundational text, the book raises many questions worthy of further inves-
tigation. Let me end with one. Usher has spent most of her time in nationally and
internationally oriented news organizations in the United States (e.g., Al Jazeera, the
New York Times). It will be important to discover whether and the extent to which
hacker journalists make their way into smaller newsrooms at the local and regional
level, and comparatively in the newsrooms of other countries. Doing so will help us
understand the relative density and distribution of interactive journalists across the
field and across national contexts. Among other things, learning this information will
help us assess Ushers ultimate claim, namely, that interactive journalism promises to
reorient the entire field of journalism. It is a worthy question, one that this book has
admirably begun to explore.