Crowdsourcing, engagement and 360-degree video: Here is your weekly journalism news update

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's the latest journalism news from this week:

Vox continues to expand its network, crowdsourcing for its latest documentary series

Image by Vox

Back in May last year, Vox began a crowdsourcing campaign for Borders, its documentary series about the impact that borders have on people living either side of them.

Series one saw reporter Johnny Harris travel through Japan, Svalbard, The Dominican Republic and Haiti, The US and Mexico, Spain and Morocco, and China and Nepal to produce six in-depth documentaries. 

This year, the publisher chose to focus solely on Hong Kong, where Harris headed out as a one-man band to shoot five documentaries over the course of 12 days.

Your news organisation should know the people it is serving — its future depends on it

The european journalism centre has launched a survey to explore the challenges preventing your publication from doing a ‘more engaged form of journalism’.

Ben Whitelaw, engagement lead of the Engaged Journalism Accelerator, explained that the transactional attitude towards readers and listeners is is undermining the opportunity publishers have to be sustainable and have an impact beyond their communities.

Blockchain tech has the power to fight censorship — but it can help fake news stay forever

Although a lot of people use 'blockchain' as a synonym to bitcoin, the possibilities this tech offers go far beyond cryptocurrencies.

In its core, blockchain is a decentralised database of data where nothing can be added or modified without the consent of all the participants.

Publiq, which describes itself as a non-profit foundation, uses blockchain technology to create a new, decentralised environment for content publishing. Their aim is to bypass centralised management of the media sector and give authors the freedom to publish their content without any external intervention. As a bonus, blockchain technology helps authors retain copyright and monetise their work.

'It’s Gone Viral': can big publishers learn from an online video startup?

Image by IGV

This week’s podcast speaks to It’s Gone Viral, the latest social news and viral video online publication. Ryan Williams talks about his startup story and digital strategy as well as future plans for news and entertainment content.

Overcapture has 'so much potential' for content creators in the field

Let's face it – it is no surprise that reporters, often working as a 'one-man-band', can become overwhelmed. 

Overcapture, the process of shooting an entire scene with a 360-degree camera and then cropping the video for use in a traditional fixed-frame video, might be able to lessen the load.

Sarah Redohl, media journalist and editor at Immersive Shooter, explained that with Overcapture you can arrive at the story, start shooting with your spherical camera, and take the best bits in post production later, giving you more time to live tweet, post vertical video Stories and carry out any interviews with your smartphone or traditional camera.

App for journalists: Workflow, for optimising everyday tasks

Image by appstore

Journalists can make use of Workflow and its array of built-in sequences to process a number tasks on-the-go or tailor their own workflows for custom-made chains of command.

These workflows are assigned to the widget board or found in the Safari options, so users have a quick go-to option for the common tasks they run into every day.

The next newsrewired digital journalism conference will take place on 7 November 2018 at Reuters in Canary Wharf, London.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Journalism.co.uk team has been working on the programme for the event, and we’re pleased to announce our first session ideas we are currently developing.

The tickets (£190+VAT) give you access to the full-day conference on Wednesday 7 November 2018 and include lunch and refreshments, as well as after-event networking drinks and a delegate ‘goodie’ bag. 

Book your place here.

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