Heather Brooke to give keynote at news:rewired - noise to signal

Journalism.co.uk is pleased to announce that award-winning journalist, author, and freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke will give the keynote speech to open news:rewired - noise to signal on 27 May.

Brooke is best known for her role in bringing MPs' expenses – one of the biggest stories of 2009 – to light after a tireless five-year freedom-of-information campaign.

It was the Telegraph that broke the story in the end, after buying a copy of the expenses files. But long before many newspaper journalists had heard of datasets or infographics, Brooke was fighting tooth and nail for access to the raw data that would eventually tell the story of duck houses, moats, and more, and lead to full-scale reform of the parliamentary expense system.

What began with a simple call to the House of Commons in 2004, in the course of researching a book about the Freedom of Information Act, led Brooke to what she has called the "great investigation of my career".

If the expenses scandal was the UK's biggest story of 2009, then 2010 undoubtedly belonged to WikiLeaks.

In the run up to the publication of the US embassy cables obtained by WikiLeaks, which were supposed to be exclusive to the whistleblowing site's media partners, Brooke managed to obtain a full copy of the cables on her own.

She later joined the WikiLeaks investigations team at the Guardian, which had led the way in making thousands of rows of raw data sing on the pages of newspapers worldwide that year.

As well as an author of two books – Your Right to Know and The Silent State – Brooke is an honorary visiting fellow at City University London's journalism department, where her teaching covers computer-assisted reporting and the effective use of public records and databases.

She will join a leading line-up of speakers at the fourth news:rewired event organised by Journalism.co.uk, including:

• Professor Paul Bradshaw, visiting professor, City University and founder, helpmeinvestigate.com;
• James Ball, data journalist; Guardian investigations team;
• Alex Gubbay, social media editor, BBC;
• Jack Riley, digital media editor, the Independent;
• Robin Hamman, director of digital, Edelman;
• Full list of confirmed speakers at this link.
  

More details of the event are available on the news:rewired event website.

Early-bird tickets will be available until 11 April at a reduced price of £85 (+VAT), a discount of 35% on the full price. Purchase tickets at this link.

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