Open the Room Project helps journalists, citizens and towns broadcast on Facebook Live

This week we launch the Open the Room Project, which provides community journalists, citizen activists and town administrators with step-by-step directions to build a scalable, affordable system for streaming public meetings, events and sporting contests. The project was inspired by citizen activists who are streaming town council meetings via smartphones to Facebook Live. Our work … Continued

RJI Fellow expands work on mobile news app for smaller news organizations

Push notifications from The New York Times, the Guardian, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post alert us every day to scandal, horror, scientific achievement and grief. However, this capability lies mainly in the realm of large news organizations. Without a 24-hour news desk, smaller news outlets — especially weeklies and investigative centers — struggle to remind users … Continued

Journalism, the intelligence community and technology

Editor’s note: The author, who spent a year as an RJI Fellow exploring ways to report and create news stories using databases, has recently received funding to develop intelligence applications of his Structured Stories journalism database. The funding is being provided by the U.S. federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Fact-checkers believe appetite for accuracy will grow despite a lack of trust in news

WASHINGTON — Journalists for the three leading fact-checking organizations say their role is to examine the claims of politicians and present the facts, not persuade the public of certain conclusions. The fact-checkers spoke Thursday at the 2017 Hurley Symposium titled “Fact-Checking, Fake News and the Future of Political Reporting,” hosted by the National Press Club. … Continued