3 to read: How cartoons are changing journalism | Amazon’s Alexa delivers the news | Collaborate to verify

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Sept. 7, 2016: Cool stuff about journalism, once a week. Get notified via email? Subscribe: 3toread (at) gmail.com.

1. How cartoons are changing the rules of journalism: News cartoons for news have evolved from a single-frame on the editorial page into a long-read, sophisticated story-telling tool. It’s exploded in directions that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. Some examples: Stories about kids with drug-addicted parents and an investigation into narco-terrorists. An interesting take by Shan Wang for Nieman Lab.
2. Alexa, give me news: Amazon’s Echo, the voice-powered speaker, is a huge hit. How newsrooms are figuring out the best ways to work with the AI software and get “Alexa” to provide news to listeners. From Joseph Lichterman at Nieman Lab.
3. A simple key to verification — collaboration. Fergus Bell of First Draft argues that collaboration will drive the movement to improved verification of facts in news stories, and he makes a compelling case. As he writes: “…why start from scratch when somebody has probably already come up with an answer they can share with you? … What about collaborating with competitors to secure newsworthy material? You might just be surprised where you have allies.” A relatively simple answer to a vexing problem. Now if we can just get our competitors to agree…

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Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.