J-Lab

Nick Martin of Sky News was one of the first journalists to report the coronavirus crisis inside care homes. His reporting was eventually praised by health secretary Matt Hancock, who promised to increase access to testing and send more PPE to care homes. In this episode of the J-Lab podcast, Nick – who began his career on the Whitley Bay Guardan, Newcastle Chronicle, Journal and Sunderland Echo –...

It was one of the biggest news stories of the year: an important insight into our country’s handling of the coronavirus and a slightly bizarre tale of politics and power in a pandemic. The flouting of lockdown rules had already cost a government scientist and Scotland's chief medical officer their jobs. So when the prime minister’s controversial chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, drove his family th...

In this episode, we focus on how journalists are meeting the challenges of reporting the coronavirus crisis. We talk to Nico Piro, a foreign correspondent for Italian TV station TG3, about how he is using mobile journalism skills — learned while reporting conflicts in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, the ebola epidemic of 2015 and refugee crises in Greece and in France — to now report the impact of C...

Official Secrets is the name of a film released at the end of last year, which tells the true story of Katharine Gun, a GCHQ whistleblower who leaked information to the Observer newspaper about a dirty tricks campaign by US and UK intelligence agencies as they tried to justify invading Iraq. On this episode, we speak with Yvonne Ridley, the journalist who received those secret documents. The J-Lab...

Unlike broadcasters, the UK press – in print or online – has no state regulator like Ofcom requiring it to be impartial. There are many implications to this – and the press must balance this freedom to probe, investigate and criticize with a responsibility to report accurately, ethically, fairly and sensitively. In some people's eyes, there is little to distinguish fake news from flawed journalism...

Duncan Campbell was the crime correspondent of the Guardian and chairman of the Crime Reporters’ Association. He has written four books on crime, including his latest, We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds, the Shocking History of Crime Reporting in Britain. Most recently, he acted as consultant on King of Thieves, the 2018 film starring Michael Caine and Ray Winstone about the Hatton Garden heist, wh...

HuffPost UK executive editor Jess Brammar, who’s a former deputy editor of Newsnight, gives us her thoughts on investigative reporting in a digital age. And HuffPost UK special correspondent Emma Youle — who is a previous winner of the Paul Foot award — describes how she and colleagues discovered that Kensington and Chelsea council made £129 million from selling property in the years leading up to...

In this episode, we hear from someone who has probably done more than anyone else in the last couple of years to highlight pay discrimination. As the BBC’s China editor, Carrie Gracie clashed with the broadcaster over gender-pay inequality and left her role after learning she was being paid much less than her male counterparts. But she continued to fight and was eventually given an apology and bac...

In this episode on the persona of journalists on social media, we'll hear the thoughts and experiences of Ash Sarkar, senior editor at Novara Media, contributor to the Guardian and Independent and regular commentator on politics and society on BBC Question Time, Newsnight and Have I Got News For You; Susie Boniface, journalist and author who uses the pseudonym Fleet Street Fox in her Daily Mirror...

In this episode on the reporting of Brexit, we'll hear the thoughts and experiences of LEWIS GOODALL, political correspondent for Sky News; LISA O'CARROLL, Brexit correspondent for The Guardian; FERGUS HEWISON, political correspondent for BBC North East; and DR DARREN KELSEY, author of Media and Affective Mythologies Has the media done a better job on Brexit than our politicians? Have voters from...

The focus of this podcast episode is artificial intelligence and how it might shape the future of journalism. Taken from our Can Technology Reboot Journalism? event, we hear the thoughts and experiences of PETE DAYKIN, CEO of Wordnerds, whose career has taken him from writing for football fanzines to teaching computers to understand humans. (If you want to watch a version of this podcast and see P...

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been a huge disrupter for news organisations – and it’s where millions of people now get their fix of daily news. In this podcast episode - taken from our Can Technology Reboot Journalism? event – we hear the thoughts and experiences of KATIE CARROLL, managing editor of the US and UK Daily News function at LinkedIn, which has has buil...

As part of our Can Technology Reboot Journalism? event, we hear the thoughts and experiences of Paul Gallagher, who is digital innovations editor at Reach plc, formerly Trinity Mirror, which is the UK’s largest news publisher. (If you want to watch a version of this podcast and see Paul's slides, visit https://youtu.be/3oj4hX_EoQM) For much of the last 20 years, technology has been viewed with sus...

In this episode we hear the thoughts and experiences of ADAM CANTWELL-CORN, one of the co-founders of The Bristol Cable, on the opportunities and challenges for community-based journalism. (If you want to watch a version of this podcast and see Adam's slides, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9m41rcgaEw) The crisis in the news industry has in many ways been felt most acutely at the local leve...

Jo-Anne McArthur, award-winning Canadian photojournalist, campaigner and author In this podcast episode, Newcastle University's Civic Journalism Lab meets Jo-Anne McArthur, best known for her We Animals initiative, a photography project documenting human relationships with animals. Jo-Anne was herself the subject of a 2013 documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine, and is the founder of the Unbound P...

In this episode, Guardian reporter Amelia Gentleman describes how she uncovered the so-called Windrush scandal – the wrongful detention and deportation of scores of British citizens whose families came to the UK from the Caribbean in the late 1940s and 50s to help rebuild post-war Britain. Amelia’s reporting led ultimately to the resignation of the Home Secretary, but more importantly, forced the...

In this episode you’ll hear highlights from a May 2018 panel discussion which we titled Comedy + Journalism = ?? We’re all familiar with satirical magazines, websites and TV shows like Private Eye, The Daily Mash and Have I Got News For You that deal with national and global news, but what are the opportunities for mixing comedy with local journalism – particularly in these times when many people...

In this episode you’ll hear highlights from an April 2018 panel discussion which we titled Tuning In, or Turning Off: What Next For Local TV News? Where does local TV news fit in the digital age? How can local TV news be reinvented for the Millennial generation? What are the opportunities for collaboration and innovation? Our panellists: MICHAELA BYRNE, head of news, ITV Tyne Tees ANDREW ROBSON, e...

Podcasting is having a major impact on the way we “do” journalism, whether we work in radio or other types of media. In this episode we hear from Lina Prestwood, a former commissioning editor of documentaries at Channel 4 and producer of Fathers and Sons, winner of "Podcast of The Year 2017; Peter Jukes, investigative journalist and co-creator of podcast Untold, about the unsolved murder of London...

How do we bring new voices and new experiences into journalism? In this episode we talk to Joshi Hermann, editor-in-chief at The Tab, Jamie Clifton, editor of Vice UK, Helen Amess, who is outreach manager at BBC North and Michael Segalov, news editor at Huck, about how they each seek to satisfy audiences that other media organisations struggle to reach

What are the challenges and opportunities for local journalism in the north east...and elsewhere? In this episode we hear the views of Helen Dalby, editor of ChronicleLive, and regional head of digital for Trinity Mirror; Gavin Foster, managing editor of the Sunderland Echo, Shields Gazette and Hartlepool Mail; Megan Lucero, head of Google-funded The Bureau Local; Ted Ditchburn, managing director...