Seven talks on journalism innovation that you should watch
From podcasts to AI and journalism, some food for thought while you are stuck at home
I don’t know about you but I have really been missing the monthly meetups of Hacks/Hackers London. After our March event was cancelled, we managed to come back in a digital format: in April we held our first webinar with three great speakers and we are now working on a new lineup of speakers for a second virtual event in May. (If you are not familiar with Hacks/Hackers London, we are a community of journalists and technologists, who are interested in the future of news and meet monthly to discuss what happens at the intersection of journalism and tech.)
But if you are feeling nostalgic, if you need some inspiration or if you are even just looking for some Hacks/Hackers London vibes, you can always take a look back at our old talks from the past year. In 2019 we launched our YouTube channel, where we publish all the talks from our monthly meetups.
Here are some gems to watch again:
📈 How BBC News data journalists use R for data visualisation
Around this time last year, BBC News Clara Guibourg and Nassos Stylianou showed the Hacks/Hackers London community how they have changed the way they produce graphics for the BBC News website by developing an R package and cookbook.
Guibourg and Stylianou managed to increase the journalists’ productivity by giving more autonomy to the data team and freeing the graphics team from making the same charts over and over.
🙋♀️ Vogue growth strategy pivots around their readers’ needs
With a global web audience of 56 million people and a goal to double its traffic from 2017 to 2020, Vogue has a lot on its plate. And everything gets even more complicated when your audience is distributed on 26 different editions all over the world: how do you know what content is the best for each group of readers?
Sarah Marshall, head of audience growth at Condé Nast and a director of Hacks/Hackers London, explained how Vogue interviewed readers from ten editions to better understand their needs and tailor the content they produce to their readership. Food for thought!
🎧 Podcast lessons from The Guardian’s Today In Focus
After years of growth, the podcast industry is now suffering from the coronavirus pandemic and the global lockdown — it looks like the boredom of commuting time is the real reason we are listening to podcasts 🤷♂️
But we will be back to the office sooner or later and if podcasts will come back stronger, you really don’t want to miss out. In case you are planning to use some of your quarantine time to kick off your new talk show, here are some good learnings from the Guardian’s launch of hit podcast Today in Focus.
🎙 News Podcasting and the Opportunities for Publishers
Another great talk on audio and podcast: Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for Journalism, talks about research into the growth of news podcasting — everything from daily news podcasts, to chat interview shows, episodic series, and true crime.
The research is based on interviews with 30 publishers in five countries to understand where news executives are placing their bets and why. Newman also talked to platforms and podcast intermediaries such as Spotify, Google and Acast to understand their motivations and plans.
🤖 What journalists are doing about AI, apart from dreading it
Charlie Beckett, founding director of the LSE’s journalism think-tank Polis, joined the Hacks/Hackers London community last year to launch the JournalismAI report, based on a global survey on the experiences with AI technologies of dozens of news organisations across the world to paint a picture of what AI can, should and shouldn’t be for journalism. Spoiler: no, the robots are not coming for your job in the newsroom.
🦠 Behind the scenes of the FT’s coronavirus tracker
Let’s conclude with one of our most recent and timely talks. You might have seen the Financial Times’ coronavirus tracker. Well, we bring you behind the scenes of the project with senior data-visualisation journalist John Burn-Murdoch, who told us how he produces every day what has become a must-read for anyone wanting to keep up with how the pandemic is progressing globally.
🚀 Reaching new and diverse audiences through Instagram
Kassy Cho speaks about building young and diverse audiences through pioneering an Instagram-first approach to breaking and delivering news, starting from her experience working on the BuzzFeed @world Instagram, the fastest-growing news account on the platform in 2018.
Want to join Hacks/Hackers London? Check our website or subscribe to our newsletter for future events and info about our guest speakers. You can also watch the talks from previous meetups on our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
