First Draft coalition reports live from RNC in Cleveland with Live Blog
As the latest breaking news events have confirmed, 2016 has been an incredible year for news reporting so far. The pace of reporting when news unfolds so quickly has put even more pressure on newsrooms to find new, innovative ways to cover events live without losing accuracy.
After the first round of winners of our media development initiative, we’re proud to announce that FWD:media is now supporting the First Draft coalition.
The First Draft coalition was established to raise awareness and standards in all aspects of social newsgathering and verification. The coalition comprises nine organisations, including Storyful, Eyewitness Media Hub and Reported.ly. Each organisation dedicates knowledge and time to produce regular case studies and resources for the site, in addition to collaborating on other relevant projects and events.
In the coming week, starting today, the news verification site Bellingcat will provide live coverage of the events from the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, US from 18 to 21 July using Live Blog. We have spoken to journalist Aric Toler, the leader editor for the project.
“We want to provide live verification and open source research into the events surrounding the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, including ongoing protests and flashpoints,” says Aric. “This will be our first live blog on Bellingcat!”
Multimedia reporting made easy
Bellingcat's live blog will be experimenting with reporting fast-paced, live news from the events in Cleveland, while at the same time verifying the materials and providing open source research around the news.
As a liveblogging platform, Live Blog will allow Bellingcat reporters to embed the materials that they are researching and verifying, including live video, photographs, tweets, etc. “The thing that makes me excited to work with Live Blog,” told us Aric, “is that it allows for embedding media and adding commentary, while also enabling reporters to combine resources such as Google My Maps along with live video.”
Map of geolocated materials in Cleveland from EchoSec (a geolocated video/photo finding service).
Additionally, the verification process will happen in transparency, and will be open to the readers to contribute, thanks to the commenting functionality. “Live Blog will expand our capabilities of showing the verification and research process to our audience,” continues Aric, “and help our audience keep track of the ongoing events in Cleveland throughout the week in a much simpler and more intuitive manner than just following Twitter lists or watching CNN.”
We are very happy to start this cooperation and are looking forward to read Aric and his team’s live blog from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. You can follow the live blog on Bellingcat, starting today 9am EST, clicking here.