Faux news in the digital age: Survey results

American adults are more confident than they should be about their ability to distinguish between real and fake news headlines. They also believe they’re much less likely than their friends to share fake news stories on social media, but when pressed, nearly six in 10 will admit they’ve probably shared such a story by accident. … Continued

FL#185: 360-degree VR video from The Wall Street Journal

360 VR video from The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal has been telling stories using immersive 360 video within its recently launched VR app on the Google Daydream platform. Jarrard Cole, an executive producer in video at The Wall Street Journal, explains how this interactivity helps keep viewers engaged. Reporting by Reuben Stern, … Continued

How Trump’s playbook has trickled down to state and local politics

Mike Zweifel was working in the spirit of that most distinct quality of American democracy — compromise — when he built a press pen for the Republican watch party on election night. Those roped off areas are now ubiquitous in national politics. But it had never been done in Boone County, Missouri, so far as … Continued

Trust us, your news consumers really want to talk to you about trust

It turns out, plenty of news consumers are eager to talk to journalists about trust. The 30 official newsroom partners in the Trusting News interview project have begun reaching out to their audiences, and the results have exceeded my expectations. Some newsrooms are seeing more than 1,000 responses to their introductory questionnaires. (Here’s what the … Continued

FL#184: Wall Street Journal’s Daydream VR app

Experiencing the WSJ inside a virtual 3-D environment The Wall Street Journal recently launched a VR app that allows users to experience the Journal in immersive 3-D in Google’s Daydream platform. The app is one of the first to deliver news and live market data inside a virtual 3-D environment. We speak with Himesh Patel, … Continued

How building trust with news consumers is like dating

Relationships take work. You don’t get intimacy without putting in some time. You don’t ask for favors without offering the equivalent yourself. You earn trust by being there consistently, and by listening. The Trusting News project is basically a recipe for a genuine, two-way relationship with news consumers, rather than just an exchange of information. Relationships … Continued

FL#183: Personalized content discovery with CogniK

Customized recommendation engine CogniK CogniK is a start-up that helps media companies personalize content discovery for their users by enabling them to incorporate a customized recommendation engine. According to George Jeng, vice president of product at CogniK, the engine uses machine learning and semantic analysis to automatically tag and characterize stories, and then link together … Continued

Mat Kelly: Final Report—Dodging the Memory Hole

Mat Kelly of LaBelle, Florida, is a doctoral candidate studying computer science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His project addresses the need to provide individuals with ways to collect, archive and access news content they perceive as important. Kelly’s work is intended to supplement the large-scale collection work being done by institutions such … Continued