• Marcela Kunova, editor, Journalism.co.uk

How do content, product, data, travel, strategy, creativity and monetisation align together?

Dmitry Shishkin, chief content officer at Culture Trip, has joined the UK media startup from BBC World Service where he worked as digital development editor for 41 foreign language news teams. His team now produce hundreds of multi-formatted editorial pieces created by freelance contributors from all over the world.

Their aim is to inspire people to travel across their cultural boundaries and – ultimately – convert them into paying consumers. He will talk about his favourite subject – the intersection of product, content and data – and will share findings around Culture Trip’s full-funnel commissioning process, automation and machine learning.

This panel will look beyond diversity as a box-ticking exercise and explore why newsrooms should start to consider it a legitimate business strategy to grow their audience. This includes not only gender and ethnicity, but also class, nationality, faith, sexual orientation, age, location, and other aspects of identity, all necessary to better understand and represent our audiences.

• Marverine Cole, journalist, broadcaster and academic, Birmingham City University
• Robyn Vinter, founder and editor-in-chief, The Overtake
• Russell Contreras, reporter, The Associated Press
• Joyce Adeluwoye-Adams, editor, newsroom diversity, Reuters
• Alexandra Borchardt, senior research associate, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, chairing

Launched a year ago in partnership with the regional press and the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), the Community News Project is a fund from Facebook designed to support local journalism in the UK with a focus on promoting diversity.

We will take a look at some of the learnings from the programme’s first year and will be joined by some of the reporters recruited to the programme to understand how local people have responded to their community roles, what kind of stories they are unearthing, and how the training side of the project complements their on-the-ground reporting.

• Will Gore, head of partnerships and projects, NCTJ
• Holly Chant, reporter, Hackney Gazette
• James Richings, reporter, Bucks Free Press
• Sian Cox-Brooker, mews partnerships manager, Facebook

Using AI to grow audience engagement during breaking news

When a story breaks, newsrooms often face the difficult choice between being the first to report it while compromising on accuracy, or waiting for more developments at the risk of losing the scoop. This panel of experts will discuss how you can use artificial intelligence to beat your competition while engaging and growing your audience with timely, accurate and trustworthy reporting.

• • James Glynn, breaking news lead, Twitter
  • Karyn Fleeting, head of audience engagement, Reach plc
  • Gavin Allen, digital journalism lecturer, Cardiff University’s School of Journalism
  • Kirsten Dewar, associate director, news, Dataminr, chairing

Workshop: Grow your audience by hosting a live podcast recording

Now that everyone seems to have a podcast, how can your organisation make your offering stand out from the crowd?

In this workshop, podcaster Suchandrika Chakrabarti will show you how to promote your event to interest new and current listeners; plan your show to make the audio visual and interactive; and use multimedia from the event to show off what you did. This will help you grow your audience and, as a bonus, your current listeners will feel more engaged with your content than ever.

This talk will feature Yusuf Omar, a mobile and wearable journalist and co-founder of Hashtag Our Stories, a global video publisher reaching millions of people daily. He has empowered more than 3,000 people across 140 countries to tell stories with wearable cameras and phones.

Yusuf will unpack how 5G internet, augmented reality and artificial intelligence will impact our lives and take media to a new world. And if he is right about the future, there will be no phones!

Lunchtime workshop with Google: Storytelling with Maps

Google’s mapping tools are an easy way to make stories more informative, interactive and visually compelling. Learn how to plot multiple data points in My Maps, find historical imagery in StreetView, and explore how the new Google Earth tools can be used to tell timeline-based stories.

The workshop is led by Abigail Edge, Google News Lab’s Teaching Fellow for the UK and Ireland. Before joining Google in 2018, Abigail was a senior social media producer at BBC News.

What skills will journalists need in the newsroom of 2020?

As we are entering a new decade, we will explore what skills journalists need to develop to succeed in their careers and help their newsrooms thrive.
From data skills to foreign languages, the panel of experts with a stellar track record in newsroom innovation will discuss practical tips and give advice on how to drive change in the years to come.

• Lyndsey Jones, executive editor and day production section chief, Financial Times
• Blathnaid Healy, director EMEA, CNN Digital International
• Alex Wood, Europe editor, Forbes
• Sue Llewellyn, founder and CEO, Ultra Social, chairing

Workshop: Learn to create an audience-first strategy

Have you heard of the Lean Canvas, a template that entrepreneurs use to create a business plan in 45 minutes? In this practical session, you will learn to use the Audience Canvas, a framework for planning an audience growth strategy developed by Condé Nast International for its internal audience growth training. You will leave equipped with fresh skills and tools to attract new audiences and turn fly-by audience members into loyal readers.

The workshop will be led by Sarah Marshall, head of audience growth, Vogue International, Condé Nast International

How quality journalism can thrive in an age of disinformation

News verification now goes way beyond simple fact-checking. From using images out of context to misleading the viewers with ‘deep fake’ videos, misinformation and disinformation is becoming increasingly sophisticated, thus damaging public trust in the media.

This panel will look at the latest techniques used to produce false news material and discuss the best practices for news verification. Experts will also equip you with practical tips on what to watch out for to make your reporting fake-proof.

• Hazel Baker, global head of user-generated content (UGC) newsgathering, Reuters
• Jenni Sargent, managing director, First Draft
• Jack Goodman, journalist, BBC Reality Check
• Solomon Elliott, founder, The Student View, chairing

Workshop: Engage your audience with constructive journalism

Constructive journalism helps counter the negativity bias in our news cycle and portray the world more accurately.

The New York Times, De Correspondent, Die Zeit and The Guardian are using constructive journalism to engage and grow their audiences. But where would you start if you wanted to introduce this approach to your newsroom?

In this practical session, the co-founder of the Constructive Journalism Network, Cathrine Gyldensted will help you pick up the skills, values, interviewing techniques and the software you need to apply a constructive approach to your reporting.

Open minds

This session will feature key takeaways from the conference and will allow you to ask any speaker – or a fellow delegate – any last burning question to keep the conversation going.