Finding a definition and purpose for sensor journalism at the Tow Center

#Towsense presentation on mapping mangroves
by Aaron Huslage, photo by Moshin Ali (@moshin)

Before I left for the Tow Center's sensor journalism workshop at Columbia University last weekend, my wife and I hosted some friends for a spinach lasagna dinner. On the stack of books my wife was researching for her dissertation on toxins in science fiction, sat my latest obsession, the DustDuino sensor node.

While we ate, the node's tiny LED lights blinked away as it took particulate matter readings every 30 seconds. A friend pointed out the interesting juxtaposition of the pollution monitor siting on a copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Our friend's husband, an entomologist, asked what it was all about.

"Part of the idea is to have people make these all over the country, especially places with bad air," I said.

"Interesting," he said. "You know... that doesn't sound much like journalism," he said. "It sounds like research."

I thought about it for a moment, and took a sip of the lemon-and-bourbon cocktail my wife prepared. I didn't have a good answer.

"Journalists are kind of unemployed at the moment, so we're looking for other things to do," I replied.

For me at least, the Tow Center's workshop helped find an answer to that question, and provide a deffinition and goal for sensor journalism. About 50 folks with backgrounds in journalism, science, architecture, community informatics, and computer technology came to the Tow Center's first sensor journalism workshop on June 1-2.

I owe a big debt to the organizers of this event: Emily Bell, the Tow Center director; Fergus Pitt, Tow research fellow; Taylor Owen, Tow research director; along with Laura Kurgan, director of the spatial design lab at Columbia; and Chris Van Der Walt and Sara Jayne Farmer of Change Assembly, Inc.