Using data as part of a package that drives user interest needs a strong team, and cross-collaboration between reporters, editors and web developers.  At the Los Angeles Times, two key people who work to bring it all together are Web dev duo Ben Welsh and Ken Schwencke.  It’s their job to enhance and enrich the various reporting and projects done by reporters and make sure it’s interesting and accessible to you on the Web.  That may mean creating an interface to display a video package, bringing you the faces behind the numbers of local homicides, allowing you to combine your own comments with a database about your neighborhood, or whatever else they can come up with.  It’s innovation with the freedom of a smaller organization, happening with the support of LAT management.  Combine the reach of the LA Times with creativity and flexibility, and the sky’s the limit.

I had many questions for Welsh and Schwenke — the men behind these applications. And thankfully, they were happy to chat.

This profile of Welsh and Schwencke is a part of my continuing series I’m calling “Data Delvers,” where I pass on summaries, quotes and audio clips from conversations with journalists using technology to find, analyze and convey data-driven stories and/or projects to the modern audience.

Journalist to programmer

Ben Welsh came to the Los Angeles Times through data analysis, learning about the field through NICAR at Missouri, and practicing it at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.  His first real foray into journalism was working with Chicago’s Carol Marin and Don Moseley while he was a student at DePaul University.  He’s a mostly self-taught programmer, and has many great ideas about how we can use data to enhance journalism.  He openly admits Web development was relatively new for him when he started at the Los Angeles Times.

He first learned about Web development as a way to practice journalism when he heard about from Derek Willis and Aron Pilhofer, now both at the New York Times.  Welsh said he felt they spoke to him because they were connected to the Center for Public Integrity, where he worked, and were speaking at NICAR, the organization where he first learned data analysis skills.

“I was positioned very close to them, where I could get the message clearly,” said Welsh.  “I didn’t have to go seek out the message, the message was nearby.  So I said to myself, ‘Well, that seems pretty cool.'”

But thinking something is cool doesn’t mean you know how to do it.  Welsh had been teaching himself Web development on weekends.  And the first project, California’s War Dead, at the Los Angeles Times was a true adventure.  “At that point, I didn’t even really know how Apache worked,” Welsh said, “and we just faked it until we made it. ‘Yeah, we can hit the deadline.  Yeah, we can get the Web site up.’ And version one wasn’t perfect, but we shipped it, and it got out, it went okay, it didn’t crash too bad, and I learned a lot.”

From programmer to journalist

Ken Schwencke thought he was going into computer programming when he entered the University of Florida.  But he shifted to journalism upon realizing that the math requirements were “soul-crushing.”  That was where he met Mindy McAdams, a journalism professor who he said opened up his eyes to the possibilities of combining the two fields.  He was interning at the Times before he officially graduated, taking classes from a distance.  His internship was extended, and eventually converted into a full-time job.

Journalist + Developer = Journalist/Developer

Welsh explained his job as the combination of two fields.  “The technical work is pretty much identical to the typical web developer, but the approach to the data, and the presentation of it, requires the same artistic and analytical skills as being a reporter,” he said.

Projects range from ways to allow users to explore databases to housing visual projects, often Flash or video, requiring intense resources outside of the paper’s CMS structure. Ideas for projects fall into three general categories, although these aren’t the only ways ideas are generated.

• Paper to Web.  The paper is working on a story, and an editor wants to blow it up on the Web.  Example: Mexico Under Siege


• Not possible on paper, dream comes alive on Web.  Someone has an idea for something so dynamic and non-linear it demands the Web.  Example: Doug Smith wanted to do something with mapping neighborhoods, and allowing readers to contribute.  Mapping L.A.


• Editor gives general categories.  Former Web editor Meredith Artley would tell Welsh and Schwencke — whom she called the “geek squad,” she wanted to see pieces in certain general categories.  It was up to them to come up with ideas for the specifics.

The deadline’s the thing!

Welsh points out that for all the intricacies of using programming for analysis, presentation and deployment, it’s essential to remember that you’re in a deadline environment.  Expectations are reasonable, and others trust the team’s assessment of how long something will take.  But like any job in journalism, it needs to get out on time.

Long projects are given long deadlines, but sometimes applications go along with breaking news, and must be done that day.  “Hazy deadlines are common,” said Welsh.  “But at the same time, so is an, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to get something done before tomorrow’s paper’ attitude.  It can often come on and you just get all hands on deck to get something done quickly. “

When that happens, you’ve just got to get it done, Welsh said.  Even so, there have to be limits, especially when you understand how long something takes, and others may not.  “in the long term, you can’t be the person who always says yes, because you’ll kill yourself,” said Welsh.

It’s not a side project anymore

For a lot of journalists who go into programming, they get their practice creating side projects.  But the traffic one gets at a personal site is vastly different from the traffic your sever endures when you’re featured on the latimes.com home page.  “Before, when I was building apps largely on my own time, if my data wasn’t perfect it was usually good enough,” said Schewencke.  “Now the bar is much higher. I also now need to worry about things like scalability — am I hitting the database an unnecessary number of times? Will my app be able to handle traffic from the top spot on the front page, or will it cause our servers to melt down?”

Benefit of a small team

Because it’s pretty much just Welsh and Schwencke, communicating is fairly simple.  “We sit right next to each other, so collaboration is as easy as me yelling until he takes his headphones off,” said Schwencke.  They use GitHub to manage different versions of their applications, and usually don’t work on the same project at the same time.  That means if Welsh is deep into a program, and something new comes up, it’s usually Schwencke’s responsibility. Or vice versa.

The peril of meetings

Both Welsh and Schwencke mentioned that one of their favorite parts about the job is being able to try out interesting new ideas with smart and dedicated people.  The flip side is that sort of work requires a lot of organization, and a lot of meetings.  “As most organizations do, sometimes we can fall prey to designing by committee, or getting sucked into a lot of meetings…The conversations and feedback can be really fruitful, but sometimes it makes me want to stab myself in the face with the nearest pen. Small price to pay to do something I love for a large audience.”

Extended transcripts

For more on Schwencke and Welsh’s stories, and their experiences at the Los Angeles Times, keep reading. Selected responses from my email with Schwencke, and below that, my phone conversation with Welsh, are below.

Ken Schwenke’s email responses

How did your experience in programming grow?  Did you take formal classes, learn everything on the job? Any people/books/Web sites that were particularly helpful?

I started programming when I was young — the end of middle school maybe? Certainly by my freshman year of high school. I remember riding my bike down the street to a now-closed book store to pick up such gems as C For Dummies. I had an old computer at home that wasn’t hooked up to the Internet, so I would go upstairs and carefully key in examples and try to figure out how the hell things like linked lists and pointers worked. There’s still a stack full of books ranging from assembly programming to Programming Windows to C algorithms sitting at my house in Florida. I aced AP Computer Science in high school and then switched to journalism in college largely because I thought the math requirements for computer science were soul-crushing — and hell, I was a pretty good writer.

As for helpful books and sites….when I got back into programming (this time with an eye towards Web and data stuff — credit Mindy McAdams for getting me