Alex Duner

Student Fellow

Projects

Projects Alex Duner has worked on.

Easy-to-make frame comparisons.

Articles

Articles by Alex Duner

  • Ideas |

    Three tools to help you make colorblind-friendly graphics

    by Alex Duner

    This story is part of a series on bringing the journalism we produce to as many people as possible, regardless of language, access to technology, or physical capability. Find the series introduction, as well as a list of published stories here. I am one of the 8% of men of Northern European descent who suffers from red-green colorblindness. Specifically, I have a mild case of protanopia (also called protanomaly), which means that my eyes lack...

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  • NICAR , Events |

    NICAR16: They're coming for us: How platforms shape the way we tell stories

    by Alex Duner

    One of the recurring themes of NICAR was how graphics reporters and news apps developers are grappling with new distribution platforms like Facebook Instant Articles, Google AMP and even Snapchat. There is no one canonical version of a graphic. Instead, you might create different versions of it for different platforms: a fancy D3 interaction for the mobile web, a fun GIF for Twitter and a static image for Facebook Instant Articles. One of the key...

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  • NICAR , Events |

    NICAR 2015: Space Journalism and Remote Sensing

    by Alex Duner

    Some of the coolest investigations that have been published over the last year have made use of remotely sensed data from satellites in space. Space is cool. And journalism is cool. So surely the combination of the two must be interesting. And while it didn’t involve firing rockets with journalists on them into orbit, a session at #NICAR15 titled “Space Journalism” introduced some really cool ideas about using satellite data to find and tell stories....

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  • mozfest , Events |

    MozFest 2014: Designing products for news with the Werewolf game

    by Alex Duner

    Yesterday I attended a fun and interactive MozFest session led by Melody Kramer, a digital strategist at NPR, in which she used the game Werewolf to teach how she makes products for NPR. Only, in our game, the scary Werewolf didn’t kill people, it killed features. In a traditional game of Werewolf: The moderator divides players into two secret teams – the werewolves and the villagers. The werewolves’ goal is to kill all of the...

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  • Lab projects , Ideas |

    What I learned building my first news product, JuxtaposeJS

    by Alex Duner

      Just in time for last week's Online News Association Conference, Knight Lab announced the launch of JuxtaposeJS, a lightweight, easy-to-use, image comparison tool. Any product launch is exciting and I'm excited to see how journalists use JuxtaposeJS to tell stories. But from a personal perspective JuxtaposeJS is more than just a tool — it’s the first tool I’ve ever built from start to finish. It was also my first major Javascript project and I...

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  • Lab projects |

    Introducing JuxtaposeJS, an easy way to compare two frames

    by Alex Duner

    We’re pleased to announce JuxtaposeJS, a new Knight Lab tool that helps journalists tell stories by comparing two frames, including photos and gifs. JuxtaposeJS is an adaptable storytelling tool and is ideal for highlighting then/now stories that explain slow changes over time (growth of a city skyline, regrowth of a forest, etc.) or before/after stories that show the impact of single dramatic events (natural disasters, protests, wars, etc.). For example, check out this NASA image...

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  • NICAR |

    The annual NICAR lightning talks have become the highlight of the conference

    by Alex Duner

    Derek Willis welcoming the crowd to the fourth year of lightning talks. Photo by Aaron KesslerWhen the 2014 CAR conference open call for lightning talk proposals was sent out, the session became the one I was most looking forward to at NICAR 2014. Moderated by Derek Willis of the New York Times, each presentation was entertaining, informative and (as advertised), fast. This year they were sponsored by the Knight Foundation, positioned in a primo Friday...

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  • Ideas |

    Early adopter: Why an incoming freshman wants to be a hacker-journalist, discovering Knight Lab

    by Alex Duner

    This spring incoming Northwestern freshman, Alex Duner, reached out to us in utter excitement about newsroom programming and eager to get started. He's come to this niche of computer science and journalism earlier than most, so we asked him to write about why he wants to study computer science and journalism. Alex Duner, incoming NU freshman. Plans to study journalism and computer science. Hello! My name is Alex Duner, I am a recent high school...

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Posts tagged with Alex Duner

  • Ideas |

    Combatting imposter syndrome with community

    by Nicole Zhu

    Knight Lab squad at NICAR15. Photo by Anne Li. Until college, I never thought coding was for me. I never intended on learning about the “push” and “pull” of GitHub. I was perfectly content not knowing about the existence (and immense power) of the web inspector. I simply fell into it. It’s been exciting to learn and build new things, but part of “falling into” coding has meant that I can’t seem to shake that...

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  • Ideas |

    If you want to learn to build the web, start by building your community

    by KK Rebecca Lai

    Students at Open Lab Hours. Photo by Suyeon Son. For the last two quarters, student fellows at the Knight Lab have been hosting Open Lab Hours each week. The atmosphere, conversations and community that have developed have been more than we have expected. Friendships were born, pizza was consumed, and, most importantly, new projects were pushed online. The idea behind Open Lab Hours is simple: create a space for students interested in journalism and technology...

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  • Lab projects , Team news |

    Updates from the past six months, PLUS! Come be a student fellow

    by Miranda Mulligan

    [KICKS OFF SHOES. FALLS INTO CHAIR. LETS OUT AUDIBLE EXHALE.] Oh. My. Guess what?! Last week was my first anniversary here at the Lab. I came to this job with the intention of substantially chipping away at the media-stack, innovative-systems-for-news-publications, journalism-tech "problem." Well, that  expectation was quite naïve. A university is not positioned to produce and support substantial, commercial-level software technology. One can expect ideas and students from a university. The product that a university contributes...

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  • Ideas |

    Early adopter: Why an incoming freshman wants to be a hacker-journalist, discovering Knight Lab

    by Alex Duner

    This spring incoming Northwestern freshman, Alex Duner, reached out to us in utter excitement about newsroom programming and eager to get started. He's come to this niche of computer science and journalism earlier than most, so we asked him to write about why he wants to study computer science and journalism. Alex Duner, incoming NU freshman. Plans to study journalism and computer science. Hello! My name is Alex Duner, I am a recent high school...

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