Futures Lab Update
Each week we bring you a video roundup of fresh ideas, techniques and developments to help spark innovation and change in newsrooms across all media platforms. (2013–2017)
FL#174: Mobile news app Discors
Discors Mobile app Discors is a news aggregator that licenses content from premium, often subscription-based, news organizations. The app pairs news stories with analysis, commentary and insights. Reporting by Jon Doty For more information: The Discors app is available on iOS and Android platforms. The newsreader and background information features are free. To access the … Continued
FL#173: Comparing live-streaming apps
Comparing live-streaming apps It’s never been so easy to just hop on a live video stream and broadcast to the world from wherever you are. So now that anyone with a smartphone can do this, the question is which tool makes the most sense to use? In this episode, we compare three different live-streaming services … Continued
FL#172: Engaging News Project
Engaging News Project research Shannon McGregor and the team at the Engaging News Project believe analytics data can do a lot more than just help newsrooms attract audience. Through academic research out of the University of Texas at Austin, the Engaging News Project seeks to find ways newsrooms can use data to better understand what … Continued
FL#171: IBM Watson Speech to Text
IBM Watson Speech to Text is a service that uses machine intelligence to convert the spoken word into written transcriptions. Pietro Passarelli, a Knight-Mozilla Fellow at Vox Media, has integrated this technology into an open-source tool that can turn video interviews into edited stories.Reporting by Jon Doty For more information The tool Pietro Passarelli describes … Continued
Q&A with Andy Carvin: Building core values and a tight-knit team at Reported.ly
Andy Carvin was founder and editor of Reported.ly, a social media news operation that shut down Aug. 31, 2016, after its parent company, First Look Media, cut funding. In this edited transcript of our interview for the RJI Futures Lab update, Carvin explains Reported.ly’s core values and what made his team unique. He also talks … Continued
FL#170: Lessons from Reported.ly
Lessons from Reported.ly For 20 months, Reported.ly adopted a grassroots approach to telling stories by sourcing from social media to get perspectives from people around the world. But on Aug. 31, Reported.ly was shuttered after its parent company, First Look Media, pulled its funding. We spoke with Reported.ly founder and editor Andy Carvin about what … Continued
FL#168: Electome from MIT Media Lab
Electome from MIT Media Lab Electome is a new tool from the Laboratory for Social Machines at the MIT Media Lab that uses data to help capture and analyze social media conversations around the 2016 presidential election. The system uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze hundreds of millions of Tweets every day. … Continued
FL#167: 4 tips for embracing startup culture in newsrooms
4 tips for fostering innovation through startup culture In recent years, the newspaper industry has suffered a series of blows — from consolidation to a shrinking workforce to declining ad revenues. But with these setbacks comes the opportunity for innovation and growth. McClatchy is one company that’s embraced that opportunity. We sat down with Andrew … Continued
FL#166: CNN’s approach to Snapchat
CNN on Snapchat Most news organizations have limited functionality within Snapchat. But as one of the Snapchat Discover partners, CNN can offer multi-part news updates that are available to all Snapchat users. We talked with Ashley Codianni, director of social publishing, about how CNN hopes its effort on the platform will create a constant news … Continued
FL#165: Trends and ideas from the ONA16 conference in Denver
PART 1: ONA16 conference recap This year’s gathering of the Online News Association brought together more than 2,200 digital journalists and innovators from all over the world for a three-day showcase of the latest trends and ideas moving journalism forward. There were many discussions that took place in Denver this year — on topics including … Continued