I have a problem with Failing Fast. It’s a phrase that crops up in discussions around newsroom evolution, and in presentations at journalism conferences, and I have to wonder, did whoever first coined the phrase (in a non-Product context, at least,) really believe a failing quickly and moving on to the next thing a good thing?... Continue Reading →
#ONALondon keynote: What journalists can learn from game design
Speaker: Lindsay Grace - Associate Professor and Director of American University's Game Lab and Studio, American University Lindsay is a game maker and teaching games and interactive media for 12 years. He is an associate professor at American University and founding director of the American University Game Lab and Studio. More about his work here... Continue Reading →
#ONALondon session: Reaching Unexpected Audiences With New Platforms
Erica Berger, who is founder of Catchpool and Co-Founder of Mileage Media, kicked off her session with some impressive facts: 30 mins a day spent per day for average users of Snapchat Instagram has 77% of audience outside the USA Soundcloud has 350m users a month WhatsApp has 990m users - 70% use it daily;... Continue Reading →
#formatDEN: Audiences, realities and goats in hats
Recurring themes in journalism conferences I’ve been following (and sometimes attended) this year are: Try innovating, not imitating (aka don’t be Buzzfeed-lite) Everyone is a reporter, so be a curator and editor Don’t be scared of failing Get developers coding in the newsroom At FormatDEN this week, these were raised but so were some others…... Continue Reading →
CMS? It’s SEP
I was talking recently with a scarily smart colleague recently about what content/tech/social/CMS might look like in 2018, and I realised I was getting stuck around trying to jam new ideas of onto existing platforms. Way back when, in the heyday of print, everyone owned a printing press and managed their own platforms and distribution. In the 90’s I... Continue Reading →
Facebook and cookies n milk journalism
Here's a paragraph from an article on Digiday earlier today: On the PopSugar Moms Facebook page, PopSugar’s most popular page with nearly a million likes, most videos surpass 100,000 views. A few have cracked a million views.This video about milk-and-cookie shot glasses went viral, racking up more than 9.8 million views since its Feb. 25 post... Continue Reading →
#mojocon15 part I: Talking mobile innovation and storytelling
March 27 and 28 were spent immersed in the world of mobile, journalism, storytelling and content creation, courtesy of the first Mobile Journalism Conference held in Dublin and organised by broadcaster RTÉ. It was the most rewarding, packed and inspiring event - filled with incredible journalists and storytellers doing wonderful things, often armed with just... Continue Reading →
Talking innovation, blockers and culture change at WAN-IFRA summit
I was amazed and delighted when WAN-IFRA contacted me recently to invite me to speak at the upcoming 13th International Newsroom Summit during World Publishing Expo in October, in Amsterdam. I said yes - what an opportunity to hear industry leaders from around the world talk about things I passionately want to learn as much as I can about! - and then... Continue Reading →
Newsrooms: Not what they were, but that’s no bad thing
Been catching up on some thinking around "what future for newspapers?" this week; this one by Michael Wolff was part-anguish and part-nostalgia and of the "on the one hand, [opinion], nevertheless, having said that [counter-opinion]..." school of writing. This one is a pretty unsentimental look at the issue from David Carr, of the NYT, which warns against the cosy sentiment that... Continue Reading →
Innovation and the perils of “yes, but…”
There's an interesting post on the WAN-IFRA blog now, which details are the key attributes of an effective editor, leading at a time of industry disruption. It’s a subject close to my heart as it was the topic of my MA, and I agree with a lot of the points made by David Boardman, Dean of the... Continue Reading →
Alison Gow | Building the New 