NewsTECHForum: Rewiring Tomorrow’s Newsroom Today

Facing unprecedented economic pressure and proliferating distribution points, newsrooms are reassessing their fundamental operations and pivoting. News and technology executives from CBS News & Stations, CBC, Avid, LiveU and Dalet will discuss how they’re doing it using all the newest tools at their disposal — including AI — in Rewiring Tomorrow’s Newsroom Today, the opening panel at TVNewsCheck’s 11^th annual NewsTECHForum conference at the New York Hilton on Dec. 17.

Panelists are Ross Dagan, EVP news operations and transformation, CBS News & Stations; Marc Lefebvre, senior director of operations, CBC News; Ray Thompson, senior director partners and alliances, Avid; and Gideon Gilboa, chief product officer and GM for the Americas, LiveU. TVNewsCheck Contributing Editor Glen Dickson will moderate the discussion.

The session will consider how a modern newsroom can be seamlessly connected to all distribution points, incorporating AI for vital efficiencies in content production and versioning. It will also unpack how people can be better organized with systemic connection points across the organization, especially when multiple platforms (e.g., broadcast or cable networks, streaming channels and digital platforms) are involved, and how duplication can be avoided in reporting efforts and production.

“News organizations are all now multiplatform in nature, and they can’t afford to languish in outdated silos if they want to remain competitive,” said Michael Depp, chief content officer of NewsCheckMedia and editor of TVNewsCheck. “This panel will take a detailed look at how major news groups are revamping their operations to get the most efficiencies — and least redundancies — out of the entire organization, streamlining positions, heightening content visibility and using the very latest technology to enable the change.”

NewsTECHForum is co-located with the Sports Video Group Summit. Its 2024 sessions include:

Keynote Interview: (Re)Introducing the BBC — As part of the BBC’s strategy to expand its reach and relevancy among digital audiences outside the U.K., BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the UK’s venerable public service broadcaster, recently re-launched its international news website and app. Jennie Baird, chief product officer of BBC Studios and board chair of the nonprofit Ethical Tech Project, was one of the key architects behind these new digital services. In this NewsTECHForum keynote interview, Baird will discuss the thinking that helped unlock the brand’s multiplatform potential, as well as broader industry challenges facing publishers and broadcasters in an increasingly digital age.

Rebooting the Digital Product Suite — Organizations are taking a top-to-bottom look and reassessment of their products across digital platforms from their homepages to news and weather apps and more. What are the major changes coming to UX and UI based on consumers’ changing habits? Who is working on the forefront of change there, and what does it look like? What technologies are involved?

Streaming and FAST News 3.0 — How are news organizations tackling challenges in content strategy, product development and news workflow on their AVOD and FAST channels? How are innovators expanding the content pipeline, fine-tuning the product and simplifying workflows?

Scenes from a Gen AI-Enabled Newsroom — News AI pioneers work through scenarios of embracing the technology from pragmatic, ethical, journalistic, technological and cybersecurity lenses in a workshop context. A technologist, newsroom leader, AI ethicist and security leader will address real-world issues like disinformation/deepfakes, versioning and AI as part of the reporting/story building process.

News Production and the Cloud — How are cloud specialists progressing at moving all or part of news production into the cloud? What are the current challenges in terms of controlling cloud computing costs and latency? Are hybrid models emerging? What about redundancy?

Technology Leaders on AI and the News — News media technologists unpack advancements, including generative AI, that will fundamentally change the newsgathering, storytelling, production and multiplatform distribution. How will “zombie processes” be eliminated and journalists, editors and producers work more efficiently and productively under growing economic pressure using new tools that will revolutionize their work?

Register here.