During a session on experimentation in the newsroom, today at the news:rewired conference in London, Amanda Farnsworth, head of visual journalism with the BBC, Pat Long, head of news development with the Times and Sunday Times, and Alessio Balbi, head of audience engagement with Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso (Italy), told delegates about their lessons of starting innovation in a newsroom
As it happened: Engaging younger audiences
This session of the news:rewired conference looked at some of the ways news outlets are reaching out to 16-34 year old readers, with a focus on mobile and social strategies. This is the archived live blog
As it happened: Approaching the elections session
With the UK general elections looming, this panel session at the news:rewired conference looked at the new approaches journalists take to analyse results and produce engaging coverage. This is the archived live blog of the session
Guardian digital chief: Killing off comments ‘a monumental mistake’
The Guardian’s executive editor for digital, Aron Pilhofer, described the trend among news sites of switching off reader comments as a “monumental mistake”
As it happened: Experimenting in the newsroom
This second session of news:rewired looked at how three newsrooms are trying new ideas and finding success in innovation. This is the archived live blog
As it happened: Keynote from Aron Pilhofer
In the opening keynote Aron Pilhofer, executive editor of digital at The Guardian, discussed the importance of visual presentation in modern digital journalism
New speakers and lunchtime workshops announced
With just 10 days to go until the next news:rewired we are excited to announce our final speakers, as well as three optional lunchtime workshops.
Eric Athas, senior digital news specialist at NPR, and Neelay Patel, senior vice president of incubation and innovation at The Economist, will be joining Anna Doble on the New Wave in Audio session.
Didier Hamann, editor-in-chief of Le Soir in Belgium, will be joining the Engaging Younger Audiences session to talk about the outlet’s project #25, alongside Jeroen Zanen of Crowdynews.
Christian Payne, blogger, trainer and creative technologist, will be revealing some of his favourite apps and tools for creating interactives in the visual storytelling session.
Last but not least, Paul Gallagher, digital innovations editor at the Manchester Evening News, Ben Kreimer of the Drone Journalism Lab and Julia Wurz of Bullet News will be discussing drones, Google Glass and smart watches on the emerging technology panel.
6 online tools for investigative journalism
Investigative journalism has long been the marker by which news organisations – and journalists – measure their worth.
“As a journalist your main tool is talking to people and asking the right questions of the right people,” said civic technologist and self-described “OpenGov and data journalism geek” Friedrich Lindenberg in a webinar on investigative journalism tools for the International Centre for Journalists last week.
“This is still true, but also you can ask the right questions with the right databases. You can ask the right questions with the right tools.”
Lindenberg listed an arsenal of tools the investigative journalist can equip themselves with. Here are some of the highlights.
Lindenberg described DocumentCloud as a “shared folder of documents”, offering different folders that can be used for various investigations, control over who can access which documents, the ability to annotate different parts of documents, search throughout and embed segments or entire documents.
Even better, DocumentCloud looks for “entities” – such as people, companies, countries, institutions – identifies them and makes them searchable, which is especially useful for legal documents that may stretch into hundreds of pages when you are only interested in a few key points.
DocumentCloud is run by IRE but Lindenberg encouraged journalists to contact him at SourceAfrica.net, where an open source version of the software is available.
Announcing three news:rewired+ training courses
A news:rewired+ ticket entitles you entry to the main conference on February 3, 2015, plus your choice of one of three training courses to be held at MSN the following day.
Announcing the agenda for the next news:rewired
We are delighted to announce the agenda for the next digital journalism conference news:rewired, to take place in London on Tuesday 3 February.