Four reasons your newsroom needs an FPV drone

“FPV” stands for First Person View, a reference to how pilots fly these drones. Rather than a pilot looking down at a screen, FPV pilots wear immersive goggles that give them the feeling they’re inside the drone, flying it like a tiny, on-board pilot.

Augmented video editing: Tips and tricks

For Innovation in Focus this month, we partnered with mid-Missouri’s NBC affiliate KOMU-TV 8 to incorporate augmented video editing, combining animation with video footage, into a news piece.

How to build data capacity in your newsroom

Introducing DUG, our beta data unit guide Forget the gist of the photo up there—the one reading “data has a better idea.” I don’t buy it. (Lovely photo though, no?) Data rarely has a better idea, because data doesn’t think. People think. Sometimes data can help people think a little better. The problem is that … Continued

Descript, overdub: Q&A with Tamar Charney

Innovation in Focus is a series exploring emerging technology and methods of storytelling for newsrooms worldwide. We interview experts, test tools and provide our findings on a different topic each month. For Innovation in Focus this month I spoke with Tamar Charney, managing director for personalization and curation at NPR, about the ethics of redubbing, … Continued

‘Do people even read captions?’

Why it’s important to test what we THINK we know about mediaYes, people read captions. They’re some of the most scannable, well-read elements in news media. So how can we make them truly worthwhile? It’s time to test. Why is it important to test what we think we already know about how people read the … Continued

Descript video: Tips and tricks

Innovation in Focus is a series exploring emerging technology and methods of storytelling for newsrooms worldwide. We interview experts, test tools and provide our findings on a different topic each month. This month I tested Descript’s new video editing software to create this video about a local maker and his business. Here are five tips … Continued

Journalists are creators now, and that’s a good thing

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Reynolds Journalism Institute or the University of Missouri. Journalism’s hostility is understandable, but our denial is not.In 2009, the former editor-in-chief at Thomson Reuters, David Schlesinger, described journalism as one of the great self-declared professions. He wrote, … Continued