Innovation
Khari Johnson: Crowdfunding Beyond the Money
Khari Johnson, Through the Cracks Khari Johnson is a staunch believer in journalism, community, entrepreneurship and bringing underreported stories to light. He’s founder and editor of Through the Cracks: Crowdfunding in Journalism, a news website that monitors crowdfunding platforms to share stories that enable reporters and storytellers. Through the Cracks is a social enterprise whose coverage … Continued
Kristina Halvorson: Content/Communication
Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic Kristina Halvorson is widely recognized as one of the most important voices in content strategy. She is the CEO of Brain Traffic, the coauthor of “Content Strategy for the Web” and the founder of the Confab content strategy conferences. Halvorson’s work focuses on the complex processes, people, and policies that create the … Continued
FL#142: Enlisting product managers and automating more complex stories
This week we explore the role of product managers within news organizations, and we find out how more complex stories might be written by computers. PART 1: Product managers for news Borrowing from the tech and business worlds, several large news organizations have integrated the role of product manager into their workflows. The result can … Continued
FL141: Faster fact-checking and nonprofit partnerships
This week we find out how automation might speed up political fact-checking, and we learn what goes into successful partnerships that involve nonprofit news organizations. PART 1: Faster fact-checking It takes time to investigate whether claims made by politicians are true, but technology might help speed up that process. We get some ideas from PolitiFact … Continued
Structured journalism puts consumers in control of news
In September I wrote about the economics of structured journalism, highlighting the potential for newsrooms to rebundle news as value-accumulating networks of structured information. But what is the market for structure? Why would news consumers want such a radically different way of formatting and consuming news? Why would customers care? Choice. Article-centric journalism has traditionally … Continued
Online news startups explore revenue sources beyond advertising
Revenue was very much on the agenda when more than 100 local news entrepreneurs gathered at the LION Summit in Chicago Oct. 1-3. There were encouraging, if fledgling, signs that some sites are looking beyond banner display advertising. Supplemental sources include crowd-funding, membership programs, sponsored content, and events. For now, however, banner display advertising is … Continued
Examining the new conceptualization of entrepreneurial journalism
The dominant scholarly understanding of and approaches to journalism do not match the variety of practices that make up journalism today. The profession’s recent reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial and altogether atypical way of working calls for new ways to investigate, theorize and teach journalism. Our fellowship project at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute … Continued
The economics of structure: Could structured journalism make quality journalism sustainable?
Structured journalism, an emerging and somewhat obscure approach to digital news, has been getting a lot of attention lately. The last three months have seen articles in the Columbia Journalism Review and on the websites of The Poynter Institute and Nieman Lab. BBC News Labs published “A Manifesto for Structured Journalism,” and pilot projects are … Continued
Could digital stories, written by journalists, be good medicine for the health care industry?
How can health care and journalism organizations work together to create digital stories that improve both the health care system and an individual’s health? As I seek answers during my RJI Fellowship at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, I’ll rely on two life experiences: I’m an ex-health care administrator who later got a Ph.D. … Continued
News startup survey: Revenue growth, capacity challenges
In the chaotic world of online news startups, I think it makes sense to take a long view. Whenever someone asks whether a big breakthrough is coming, I scratch my head. That’s because progress at this time is so incremental — a game of inches, feet, maybe yards but rarely miles — a marathon with no … Continued