Weekly journalism news update: design thinking, mobile journalism for local news and UK data units

Every Friday, Journalism.co.uk brings you a round-up of our week’s top stories, giving you all the information you need to know, wherever you are.

Here is the latest journalism news from this week:

Mental health: Although large-scale investigations, like the Panama Papers, can have a monumental impact in holding power to account, they can also come at a big personal cost to those close to the project.

Mar Cabra, a former investigative journalist and one of the members of the leadership team in the investigation, opened up about her mental health during the project. Read more

Data journalism: The BBC's Shared Data Unit returns in 2020, with twelve more local news journalists set to receive training in data journalism.

Among those who have benefited from the scheme include journalists from Newsquest and JPI Media, who have gone on to create their own data units to provide local stories for their regional titles. Read more

Mobile journalism: With such a range of different smartphones available, it can be hard to know whether your current device is suitable or whether you need to upgrade.

We spoke to a handful of Android-using mobile journalists about their devices of choice and how it fuels their reporting. Read more

Mobile journalism has also become an easier and more effective way for newsrooms to report stories, particularly for smaller news organisations.

In this week's podcast, we speak to mojo trainer Caroline Scott about the benefits and challenges of mojo reporting for local newsrooms and their typical day-to-day coverage. Listen now

Artificial intelligence: Global newsrooms must collaborate with competitors to embrace artificial intelligence or face extinction in the next five years, a report published this week warned.

The study explained that the rate of technological advancement in deepfakes, natural language processing and text generation means that inaction will only result in a widening knowledge gap in this area. Read more

Design thinking: In reporting stories, journalists often ask direct questions of sources and look for verifiable evidence. However, this approach can come across as abrupt when looking to engage on a deeper level with communities.

Anja Svetina Nabergoj, one of the leading experts in design thinking, shared her advice in how to engage with news sources in empathetic ways to uncover their stories. Read more

Misinformation: At a time when the public holds little trust in journalists and local newsrooms are forced into closure, news audiences often turn to unreliable sources for news.

However, organisations across journalism and wider industries are working on a number of approaches to promote credible news and sensible reporting. Read more

Online abuse: The International News Safety Institute (INSI), Facebook and Google have launched a joint project to support the safety of journalists.

News organisations that make up the INSI will discuss the issue of targeted harassment with the two tech giants in a series of meetings, with the goal of developing joint solutions to address the issue. Read more

Diversity: Standards of reporting in newsrooms can suffer when media organisations fail to address unconscious bias in their reporters and have a lack of diversity in their team.

Tabea Grzeszyk, CEO and co-founder of journalist collaborative network Hostwriter, explained that challenging underlying social stereotypes, alongside cross-border collaboration and using considerate language in stories can help improve trust among marginalised communities. Read more

Newsrewired takes place next week on 27 November at Reuters, London. There are only a few tickets left, so grab yours now at newsrewired.com!

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).