Collaborative projects give a breath of fresh air to journalism
Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.
edited by Marco Nurra
💡 How about participating in the International Journalism Festival #ijf17 with your ideas? If you have a proposal for the 2017 festival programme, please fill in and send this form. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2016.
- On Wednesday, Mathew Ingram tried to answer a crucial question: why is trust in the media at an all-time low? An article that helps frame the importance of the examples we have collected below.
- Facebook, Twitter and many more join First Draft’s partner network to help stop the spread of fake news. The new First Draft Partner Network will bring together over 30 news organizations (including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BuzzFeed) and tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to share best practices on how to verify true news stories and stop the spread of fake ones.
There is a thriving community of specialists working around the world who have developed and honed social newsgathering and verification skills. These include journalists, human rights investigators and academics. There are also teams working within the social networks who have themselves come from newsrooms and understand the challenges of finding, verifying and reporting stories that emerge online. With the launch of this partner network, First Draft brings these people together to work on ideas and initiatives, including a train-the-trainer programme, the launch of a collaborative verification platform, and the creation of a voluntary code of practice.
- Fact-checkers around the world agree on a shared code of principles. Thirty-five organizations from 27 countries have signed a new set of principles that emphasizes the importance of transparency and a non-partisan approach. Signatories include Africa Check, Chequeado, El Objetivo on La Sexta, Factcheck.org, Full Fact, PolitiFact, Snopes and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.
- In USA, ProPublica has launched Electionland, a collaborative initiative created to track and report the voter experience across America in real time. Other partners include First Draft, Google News Lab, WNYC, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Univision News and the USA TODAY Network.
- And in Europe seven publishers, members of the Leading European Newspaper Alliance (LENA), have teamed up to jointly cover the US election. In total, twelve journalists from Die Welt in Germany, La Repubblica in Italy, Le Figaro in France, Le Soir in Belgium, El País in Spain, Tages-Anzeiger and La Tribune de Genève in Switzerland will provide written coverage, as well as images, photos and real-time coverage on social media under the hashtag #EuropeGoesUS, which will be shared amongst the LENA network and translated in multiple languages.
- How to turn investigative journalism on toxic contamination into stand-up comedy? On 29 July, 12 comedians each performed original material at WFMU’s Monty Hall in Jersey City inspired by tales of toxicity in New Jersey, USA. It’s all part of Dirty Little Secrets, a collaborative investigative journalism project involving media and arts partners exploring the state’s toxic legacy.
- Monitoring the Surveillance Industry: using data to protect privacy. The Surveillance Industry Index, a joint initiative between Privacy International and Transparency Toolkit, is the largest publicly available database on the secretive set of companies selling surveillance equipment to governments around the world.
- The Columbia Journalism Review has launched a partnership with the Tow Center, expanding its reach into digital journalism. Beginning next week, Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center, will begin a regular column for CJR.
The new section on the site reflects the shared commitments of CJR and Tow to maintaining a high level of thought around digital journalism, as well as CJR’s growing focus on innovation.
- Denmark has become the first country in the world to apparently buy data from the Panama Papers leak. The government has paid up to £1m for documents from an anonymous source and now plans to investigate whether 500–600 Danes who feature in the offshore archive may have evaded tax.
- Nordic media giant Schibsted has merged tech operations to take on Google and Facebook. The Scandinavian media group is combining technological development at its biggest newspapers, including the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet and the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, to claw back revenue from technology giants such as Google and Facebook.
International Journalism Festival is the biggest annual media event in Europe. It’s an open invitation to interact with the best of world journalism. All sessions are free entry for all attendees, all venues are situated in the stunning setting of the historic town centre of Perugia.
