Can media organisations remain relevant? News Impact Summit concludes European tour in Dublin

Guest post for Irish Tech News by Alan MacKenna, Co-Founder, Newslinn

The News Impact Summit capped off it’s eight-city European tour with an event in Dublin’s Helix that was packed with leading editors, journalists, media experts and solution-makers from around the world. Started as a collaboration between The European Journalism Centre (EJC) and the News Lab at Google the aim of the summit is to foster discussion, training and innovation in the digital news space and through that, to change the way journalists work in the newsroom, how stories are told and how audiences are engaged with.

The keynote was delivered by Micah Gelman, Director of Editorial Video at The Washington Post. A current focus for The Washington Post is how to best integrate video into their traditional offerings to complement and extend the story for readers. This has led to higher levels of engagement with their audience.

With the Paris attacks still fresh in memory, there was a topical discussion around user generated content (UGC) verification trends and best practices. With contributors from Reported.ly, Storyful, First Draft and Witness. Áine Kerr of Storyful spoke of the importance of having empathy and respect for the people behind the stories, who as these stories are still breaking, could be in very real personal danger and as such journalists need to be careful in how contact is made and how they engage with these people who are caught up in a traumatic event.

Mark Little, founder of Storyful and recently-minted VP of Media Partnerships, Europe and Africa at Twitter had a fire-side chat discussion with Jane Suiter, Director, Institute for Future Media and Journalism (FuJo) on the topic of the future of journalism in Ireland. Mark’s take on this is that opportunity is still ripe for media organisations and technologists to engage in dialogue and innovate new solutions to help media organisations to remain relevant and deliver news the way their audience now wants to consume it. Mark noted that with so many major tech companies based here, who themselves deliver content on their platforms, there is something happening in Dublin today that will shape the way we get news for generations.

Startups were represented on the day by NewsWhip, SAM, Krzana, SocialHoney and Newslinn. Each were given the opportunity to tell their story to a room of industry leaders and thinkers, receiving valuable insights and encouragement to take their products forward.

Alan Mac Kenna, Co-Founder, Newslinn

Newslinn is a free photo-verification platform for journalists, making it easy for crowds to report news photos directly with journalists they trust.

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