Interactive Journalism Feed

A Twitter, Mastodon, and BlueSky bot that shares new interactive, graphic, and data vis stories from newsrooms around the world. It works by periodically checking APIs, RSS feeds, and sitemaps.

You can follow it at @InteractiveFeed, @Interactives@botsin.space, or @interactives.bsky.social.

Requirements

• Node v18 or above
• NYT, Guardian, Mastodon, BlueSky, and Twitter credentials for secrets.json or the secret key.

Installation

Use npm i to get all dependecies.

If you know the secret key you can run export KEY=<SECRET-KEY> and then npm run decrypt-secrets to get a complete secrets.json file. If not, you can create your own from secrets.example.json

Publications

An evergrowing list of publications that we check and filter feeds of...

Axios, Berliner Morgenpost, Boston Globe, Bloomberg, CommonWealth Magazine, CNN, De Tijd, El Confidencial, El País, ESPN, FiveThirtyEight, FT, Kontinentalist, LA Times, Le Monde, NBC News, NPR, NZZ, ProPublica, Publico, Politico, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, South China Morning Post, Tagesspiegel, Texas Tribune, The City, The Economist, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Philadlephia Inquirer, The Pudding, The Straits Times, The Verge, The Washington Post, USA Today, and WSJ.

Missing Publications

Not all publications have specific feeds or repeatable url structures to get the types of stories we're looking to share. While this isn't a complete list of what's missing, here's some major newsrooms that we don't have hooked up...

Al Jazeera, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Associated Press, Bayerischer Rundfunk, BBC News, CBC, Chicago Tribune, El Diario, Helsingin Sanomat, Le Monde, Le Nacion, Insider, Marshall Project, Minnepolis Star Tribune, Miami Herald, National Geographic, Quartz, Radio Canada, SB Nation, Seattle Times, SRF, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tampa Bay Times, The Atlantic, The Globe and Mail, The New Yorker, The Times of London, Time Magazine, Toronto Star, Vox, Zeit

Know of how any of these newsrooms can be added? Make a PR! Know of any newsrooms we should add? Tweet me @SamMorrisDesign or add a GitHub Issue

Adding a new Publication

To add a new publication to the bot you should start with the config.json file. This lists out all current publications and their data sources. Ideal sources are APIs or specific RSS feeds, but Twitter accounts and ways of filtering RSS and XML sitemaps are also available. Something to consider when adding a source to an existing publication is that more sources for a publication increases coverage but also slows down the bot.

Top level options for a feed

All are required fields.

Name	Type	Description
publication	String	Name of the publication
twitterHandle	String	An @-less Twitter handle for the publication or specific team
mastondonHandle	String	An @-less mastondon handle for the publication or specific team
sources	Array	An array of source objects. See below for more information

Sources can look different depending on the type - a required field in each source object. The type basically tells src/fetchers.js how it should handle the rest of the information. Some publications, like The Guardian and New York Times have their own type which refer to publication specific APIs. The other two types are XML and Twitter.

Source level options for Twitter.

Sources set to "type": "Twitter" get articles that are tweeted from a specific Twitter feed.

Name	Type	Description
twitterID	String	An ID for the twitter account you want to scrape. TweeterID will give you an ID for from a handle.
domain	String	Optional filtering that will check that this string is contained in any url. Just in case the account shares articles from other publications or non-interactives.

Source level options for XML.

Sources set to "type": "XML" get articles from an RSS feed or a Sitemap.

Name	Type	Description
format	String	Either RSS or Sitemap
path	String	Full URL for your source
domain	String	For RSS feeds only. Optional filtering that will check that this string is contained in any url. Just in case the RSS feed includes non-interactives.
filters.in	Object	For Sitemaps only. Filter to keep articles by property/value pairs. For example: url must contain '/visuals' – the rest will be discarded
filters.out	Object	For Sitemaps only. Filter to exclude articles by property/value pairs. For example: headline should not contain "Week in"

Once you've added a publication to the config you can run npm run test --publication="The New York Times" to test it (only with the name of your publication instead). This will check the feeds but not actually tweet/toot anything. If you're happy with it, make a PR!