Fake news and trust in the media take front row

Good morning, afternoon, evening or night, hacks and hackers. After a year of news events like Brexit, the European refugee crisis and the U.S. election, journalists are getting more concerned about the spread of fake news and an apparent lack of trust from the public. Organizations and private companies are starting to take action, but it’s going to be a long road ahead.

The week ahead:

• Brisbane is socialising at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• London is holding its November meetup
• Zurich is talking about storytelling
• Miami and IRE are holding their regular weekly open labs

Group spotlight:

Helsinki met last month to share info about the Uutisraivaaja media innovation contest in Finland. Event organizer Rosa Lampela learned something that may be counterintuitive: sometimes you can have too many speakers.

“Even though the speeches in H/H are supposed to be quite short, a lot of time goes into the questions and discussion. That’s a good thing as they are the whole point of the meetings. Now I know not to crowd the schedule.”

Worth a read:

• Matt Carroll, who runs H/H Boston, shared some tips for creating a growing a creative, innovative community (Medium)
• A group of prestigious journalism organizations in the U.S. shared their letter to Donald Trump asking for transparency (National Press Club)
• A professor’s list of fake news sites is becoming extremely popular in the U.S. (LATimes)
• Google and Facebook announced they will prevent fake news sites from using their ad services, in an attempt to stem the spreading of false information (Reuters)
• Media outlets in Latin America are increasingly funding projects through crowdfunding (Knight Center)

Job postings:

• North America:
• The Marshall Project is looking for a social media editor (via INN)
• The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is accepting fellowship applications
• American City Business Journals has an opening for a product designer
• Washington Post has an opening for a news designer
• Demograf, a news startup in New York, is looking for a visual editor
• Dow Jones is hiring someone to develop tools for journalists
• The Texas Tribune is offering data internships
• VICE is hiring a data engineer
• Europe:
• BBC is looking for a digital editor

Upcoming events:

• November:
• Nov 11-13 – Dublin, Ireland – Hacks/Hackers Dublin’s Investigative Journalism on the Digital Frontier Conference
• Nov 18-19 – Leuven, Belgium – VVOJ conference, a gathering of the Dutch-Flemish Association of Investigative Journalists
• Nov 19-20 – London, UK – the Parliament Accountability Hack, aka ParlyHack
• Nov 22 – Birmingham, UK – a one-day data journalism conference
• Nov 22-23 – Covilha, Portugal – the Journalism and Mobile Devices Congress
• Nov 23-24 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – European Women in Technology Conference
• December:
• Dec 1-4 – Panama City, Panama – the International Anti-Corruption Conference
• Dec 2-3 – Dead Sea, Jordan – the Arab Investigative Journalism Conference
• Dec 3 – Mexico City, Mexico – Periodista de a Pie is offering a one-day workshop on Google tools training
• Dec 5-6 – San Francisco, USA – Mobile Innovation Summit