Reporting
Deep South, deep risk: Region faces climate adaptation challenges
In the news President Barack Obama is to visit flood-ravaged Louisiana today in the wake of inundating high water that killed 13 people and left more than 100,000 seeking federal assistance. The Great Flood of 2016 is being called the worst U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with 4,000 people in shelters days … Continued
Dry spell: Covering worsening droughts
In the news A months-long drought has hit the northeastern United States, and while it’s not as dire as the West Coast’s five-year dry spell, it has stressed farms, prompted water restrictions and threatened more wildfires. It stretches from Maine to Pennsylvania and has hit Massachusetts particularly hard, as well as New Hampshire, Maine and … Continued
RJI Fellowship team will use technology to bring more citizens, journalists into the council chamber
As newsrooms shrink in size, so does the amount of meeting coverage, says Mike Wheeler, a member of an RJI Fellowship team working to make meeting deliberations more accessible and “on demand” to journalists and citizens. He is a managing partner for Westerly Partners. Local government transparency is crucial to a community’s well-being, he says. … Continued
RJI Fellow to create pipeline of ‘deputies’ in pursuit of news coverage of Alabama communities
One unseasonably warm weekend this past February, I found myself chatting about transportation spending deep in the bowels of a dark, loud motorcycle club headquarters in a warehouse on Birmingham, Alabama’s gritty west side. We were eagerly waiting for the latest Vikings recruits to be doused in water and beer as an initiation into the … Continued
Does structured journalism work? Evaluating the feasibility of structure for consumers and reporters
Does the traditional news article still make sense as the primary unit of news in the age of the Internet and smartphone? That was the question I asked in my first blog post as an RJI Fellow in July 2015. My fellowship has focused on evaluating a proposed alternative unit of news: the structured story, … Continued
Can structured news reinvent archives and reimagine objectivity?
In earlier posts I have reviewed the long-term potential of structured journalism to make newsrooms economically sustainable, empower news consumers and future-proof journalism as a profession. However, journalism is not just another business. Its economic and market success is important not only to its shareholders, customers and employees, but also to society in general. Journalism, … Continued
Sarah Hill: VR Journalism: One Startup’s Collab Culture
Sarah Hill, StoryUP Sarah Hill is the chief storyteller and CEO of StoryUP, a VR journalism startup based in Columbia, Mo. A former interactive news anchor and chief storyteller for Veterans United Foundation, Hill creates with human media, pushing the transition of text-based storytelling to a three-dimensional world. She was the first person to use … Continued
Mark Horvit: The Power and Peril of Collaboration
Mark Horvit, Investigative Reporters & Editors Mark Horvit is the executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors. He oversees training, conferences and services for more than 5,000 members worldwide, and for programs including the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) and DocumentCloud. Horvit also is an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he teaches … 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