Introducing Fathm
Deep understanding, creative impact
Today we are launching Fathm — an independent news lab, consultancy and agency with a mission to spark creative and impactful change within journalism.
The challenges facing media in 2019 are many: rebuilding audience trust, sustainability and business models, the pace of technological change, diversity and representation, and the proliferation of actors working to undermine our fundamental mission, to name a few.
Experimenting with creative solutions to these urgent challenges can be extremely difficult, especially with limited resources and the constant demands of reporting the global, 24/7 news cycle.
We feel that if ever is there was a time to establish an independent news lab and consultancy that can be there for those in — and those working with — the news industry, it is now.
We know we can help.
At Fathm, we work with your organisation to think creatively and position effectively to capitalise on emergent technologies and digital trends. We help you go from being reactive to new technologies, to being proactive in defining how they are used to innovate and support pioneering, sustainable journalism.
In the three years since we launched Pop-Up Newsroom as a way to harness the power of collaboration for positive change, we have run some of the largest and most impactful editorial collaborations of the last decade. We’ve travelled the world and gathered journalists from different newsrooms and thrown them together with technologists, educators and researchers, to design large-scale collaborations that take on societal challenges like election misinformation.
Through this, we’ve refined a design process that puts our partners at the heart of surfacing challenges of all sizes that we’re facing, reframing them in a way that is actionable and addressable, and prototyping and refining solutions and strategies.
Beyond addressing the challenge at hand, we have given journalists around the world a simple but effective framework for testing creative approaches to challenges they experience in their work. We are in the fortunate position to be able to highlight the lessons journalists in Sweden can learn from their colleagues in Mexico, who then can take the next iteration of that learning to India, the US, Moldova, etc.
We can make sure innovation can happen anywhere, at newsrooms of all shapes and sizes, without a need to involve expensive new technologies.
With Fathm and our network of expert associates, we can help your organisation deeply understand the challenges and opportunities you face. We can test and implement creative solutions that drive sustainable impact, prototype and test new products, find routes for you to grow revenues or simply give you a new and creative approach to an on-going challenge. In the process, we can make sure your organisation is well-positioned to think and act strategically about what journalism will look like in the future.
Let’s get to work! If Fathm sounds like a great fit for your organisation please get in touch via hello@fathm.co
