Regional broadcasters are sounding the alarm. Politicians are debating the future of public broadcasting, as governments need to cut spending left and right. News publishers can’t afford to send their reporters to every city council meeting or other local events anymore to complete their controlling and informing task as guardians of democracy. Some even have gone as far as laying off entire departments in an effort to keep their budgets in check.
As much as we love Michael Bay movies, we’re not that into doomsday theories, but we do have to admit these are uncertain times for news reporters as well as publishers worldwide.
As a technology partner to some of the world’s biggest and finest news agencies we have observed some interesting developments in reporting. Here are a couple of examples that raised more than one eyebrow around the Crowdynews office.
1 – The Robots Are Taking Over
One interesting development some news organisations are looking at, is Drone Journalism.
A novel method, drone journalism uses drone aircrafts to capture photos, video and audio. Doing so can lead to some gorgeous footage:
PHANTOM FIRST FLIGHT from Nicolas Doldinger on Vimeo.
While drone aircrafts have been widely used and have proven successful in other industries, the automation of journalism is still a relatively new concept.
According to a new Reuters Institute report, however, the use of drones for aerial photography and video is set to increase significantly in the coming years:
“Drone aircrafts will be available for small broadcasters and publishers as they are highly cost efficient.”
2 – Pass That Dutch
Another very creative idea we came across is from the Netherlands. (♥!)
WorksThatWork is a design magazine introduced recently by type foundry and design studio Typotheque. The publication lets its readers do the distribution, effectively cutting costs and simultaneously increasing reader engagement.
As Niemanlabs reports:
Fans of the magazine can ask their favorite bookstore to sell copies for a fixed price. If they agree, the reader then purchases 10 or more copies of the magazine at half the price (print copies cost $20, while the digital version costs $10), and then sell them to the bookstore at a profit but still lower than the initial cover price.
3 – Strength by numbers
It’s never been easier to participate in citizen journalism. A picture shared – whether it is of an emergency landing in the Hudson river, extreme weather, or instating a new royal leader – can reach its audience infinitely faster than any writer could wordsmith a glowing review and have it printed. The same can be said for producing a news broadcast. There’s some great video content to be found on services like Vine, Tout and of course Youtube.
What we think
In a way, our software can actually be seen as a “drone”, covering any kind of story.
Crowdynews develops tools that make it possible to cover stories by gathering reports from various social media websites and carefully curating this content to provide a real-time, ranked stream of hot items.
To Crowdynews, the biggest editorial team in the world are those who are creating and sharing content on the big social networks. Our software allows writers and editors to enrich their stories by adding relevant, real-time content.
This allows us to dramatically enhance the reading experience of both breaking and local news stories, by using the best real time content the social web has to offer. The citizen journalist reports his or her stories to the crowd, the crowd ranks it by hearting, liking, retweeting and starring items.
Investigative journalism does what it always has done: interpreting the news. We want to give editors a head start at gathering background stories, resources and opinions by allowing them to tap into the knowledge of this vast team of content creators.
We’re excited to help out both producer and consumer of news to find the content they care about. What’s your industry, and how would you use Crowdynews tools?
We want to hear your ideas, get in touch!