FL#179: 6 favorite digital tools from Reported.ly

The Reported.ly team’s favorite digital tools Reported.ly was a news operation that covered breaking news primarily on social and distributed platforms. It was also the first place many people turned to verify developing stories. But in August, its parent company, First Look Media, pulled funding and shut down the site.   The Reported.ly team was … Continued

FL#176: NowThis innovations: Chatbots and Facebook Live

NowThis has been a pioneer in delivering video news exclusively on social platforms, and it grew quickly thanks to an ability to find new ways to reach young audiences. Now the company is pushing forward with technologies like chatbots and Facebook Live. Reporting by Hailey Godburn For more information: NowThis did away with publishing content … Continued

FL#175: Shortcut from This American Life

Sharing audio with a new tool called Shortcut A new tool called Shortcut from This American Life allows listeners to share clips from episodes of This American Life. Users can select text from episode transcripts, which the app turns into short videos that can be downloaded or posted to social media. Reporting by Hailey Godburn … Continued

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#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

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#169: Building a 360 toolkit

Building a 360-degree toolkit Journalists are routinely using virtual reality and 360 video to put viewers in places they wouldn’t otherwise be. But for smaller newsrooms with modest budgets, 360-degree video can seem out of reach. Shaheryar Popalzai, a Knight International Journalism Fellow, says building a 360 video toolkit is easier and cheaper than you … 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