News Impact Summit: Remixing journalism formats, technology and design

Please arrive early to avoid the queues!

Digitalisation brings about opportunities to tell stories in interactive ways through multimedia such as video and infographics. It is, however, often a challenge to identify the best formats for storytelling and engaging with the readers. How are leading media outlets dealing with it? And what can we learn from their experiences? This session will bring together the experts of digital content strategies from major international and Dutch media outlets to discuss the best working formats to better the way we tell the stories.

Journalism is more than just words, it’s all about creating a compelling visual package. From static photos to motion graphics, visual devices are essential in guiding and engaging readers. How to best convey a story, especially with emerging digital tools? This session brings together leading editors who know how to apply principles and best practices of design in the newsroom.

Technology is an important driver of change in the journalism sector. Will journalists embrace it radically or adopt it relunctantly? The Dutch Journalism Fund (Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek) explored four different, plausible scenarios for the future of journalism in 2025. How should we prepare ourselves for that future, and how does the Dutch Journalism Fund supports innovation from start-ups and media-organisations?

In this session we will demonstrate how LocalFocus can facilitate the collaboration between coders, designers, researchers and storytellers when it comes to data-driven journalism.

After two seasons of the TV series ‘Netherlands from Above’, data journalist Frederik Ruys is preparing animations for a third season called ‘Invisible NL’ (scheduled to appear in 2016). This ambitious project will introduce computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the documentary based on 3D data, gathered by radar and laser detection to reveal hidden treasures of our past and possible hazards for our future. But despite the availability of high tech tools, in the end it’s all about good research and an interesting story.

In this session, we will show how Bellingcat used data publishing platform Silk.co to analyze and present crowdsourced conflict data of observed military sightings and incidents in the Ukraine. We’ll also recreate the Silk with part of the data.

The way people consume the news has radically changed. Media organisations are still figuring out how to crack the code when it comes to building integrated, multimedia newsrooms. The editorial and the production side of news are largely separated, but what could happen if developers, designers product developers and journalists actually designed and created stories together? Drawing upon their own experiences, Geert-Jan Bogaerts and Libby Bawcombe will share important lessons from across the Atlantic on the benefits and challenges of having multidisciplinary teams in the newsroom.