Journalism involves selecting, prioritising, presenting, projecting, sharing and editing raw information to make it appealing and useful to readers. Journalists are trained and experienced in information verification and sense making, eyewitness recording and investigative work – capabilities even more important in this information-rich age. However, this increasing digitalization of production and distribution, associated with the emergence of new patterns of reader behaviour and fragmentation of audiences, mean that news businesses are becoming uncompetitive. The trend towards shrinking newsrooms, digital specialisation, and centralised layout and editing is recognized internationally, particularly in chain newspapers. The result is a crisis in journalism – one that requires both old and new newsrooms to operate more competitively.

This seminar will report results from new research, funded by the Google Digital News Initiative, which is seeking to increase newsroom competitiveness through the diffusion of new digital services and tools to increase the creativity and the productivity of journalists. It will describe and demonstrate one of these tools, called JUICE, which blends embedded interactive guidance with creative search algorithms to guide journalists to be both more creative and more productive in news story production. It will present planned new business eco-systems to disseminate and exploit tools such as JUICE to European news organisations, through the new EU-funded INJECT project.