Published in European Journalism Centre·Nov 14, 2019Five essential ingredients to make your community-driven journalism more resilientResources and takeaways from Engagement Explained Live: Building resilience — When baking a cake, it is vital you don’t forget any of the ingredients. That’s because all of the constituent parts — flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda — fulfil specific and important jobs. …Journalism8 min read
Published in European Journalism Centre·Feb 5, 2019This is why we’re funding these eight news organisations doing engaged journalismBehind-the-scenes of choosing our Engaged Journalism Accelerator grantees — Have you ever asked yourself about what happens behind-the-scenes of a funding call? Maybe you’ve wondered about how an organisation decides who it funds? How is it possible to differentiate a good application from a great one? Our Engaged Journalism Accelerator programme, supported by the News Integrity Initiative and Civil…Journalism6 min read
Published in European Journalism Centre·Oct 24, 2018The product management mistakes most media companies make — and what you can do to fix themThree years ago, I read a piece calling for a revolution in the way product management happened in news organisations. It was written by Espen Sundve, the newly appointed chief product and technology officer at SVG, Norway’s largest media group. In it, he wrote compellingly about the need for media…Product Management8 min read
Published in European Journalism Centre·Sep 14, 2018Why European journalists struggle to engage with their communitiesAfter 25 phone interviews, 11 news organisation visits in five countries and one survey, here’s what we found — Two months ago, we set ourselves the task of finding out what journalists across Europe needed to become more trusted, more open and more resilient. That’s why over the summer we conducted 25 interviews, visited 11 news organisations and carried out an online survey altogether covering more than 15 countries.Journalism7 min read
Published in European Journalism Centre·Jul 4, 2018We’re all in on engaged journalism. Now we need your helpTake five minutes to tell us how the Engaged Journalism Accelerator can help you — Since the Engaged Journalism Accelerator was announced back in April, there’s been a lot of work behind the scenes at the European Journalism Centre. The team (say hello to Kathryn, Madalina and Ben) is now in place and work has begun. Our first task has been to think about the…Journalism3 min read
Published in Digital Times·Apr 1, 2015How to avoid repeating other newspapers’ mistakesReporters will know the following situation well. You’re working on a story and, as part of your research, looking at cuttings from other newspapers in an archive system (like Clipshare) or on the web. …3 min read
Feb 11, 2015Let’s make it a fair fight before we call time on comments on media sitesSocial media tools have far more firepower than commenting platforms. That needs to change. — If 2014 goes down as the year when publishers gave up on comments, 2015 may well mark the early shoots of a fightback. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have re-opened a discussion about the right to self-expression and the benefit of being challenged on our views (something that’s often…4 min read
Nov 14, 2014Reuters were right to close comments because they didn’t know how it could make them moneyEarlier this week, Reuters announced that they would be closing comments on news stories. Their argument, Executive Editor Dan Collarusso explained, was that social media had become the place to discuss news. …3 min read
Nov 2, 2014Comments aren’t about making people angry anymore. We just forgot to tell our readers that was the caseNot so long ago, comments on many news sites were just a way of generating revenue. Lots of comments yielded higher page traffic through repeat visits and time spent on page as well as additional SEO benefit (Disqus did some research in 2011 which summarised these long held ideas). …2 min read
Nov 2, 2014Why my friend’s engagement announcement shows Facebook has a long way to go to achieving its goal of connecting the worldA few weeks ago, I got some good news. One of my good friends proposed to his girlfriend and she said yes. Finding out on Facebook on a thread with five of his other close friends, I couldn’t have been more happy for them both. …4 min read
