News Impact Summit coming to Manchester for the first time

For the first time in its history, the News Impact Summit is coming to Manchester.

The event takes place next Thursday (2 November) in Manchester town hall and features guest speakers such as Jay Rosen, Mark Little and Megan Lucero.

Over 200 editors, newsroom managers, journalists, technologists and journalism students will gather at the conference to discuss the topic: The Future of News is Community.

Manchester Metropolitan University is a media partner of the summit and the university will be represented at the event by a selection of student reporters.

Megan Lucero, director of The Bureau Local at The Bureau and a former Data Journalism Editor at The Times, will be speaking on behalf of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism at the event.

She said: “I am very happy to see such a diverse group of people, experience and organisations taking part. There is a lot of great local and community journalism outside of London and I’m glad we get to celebrate it.

“I’m really looking forward to such a big event taking place in Manchester and that it will be tackling some of the most pressing issues facing the media industry.”

Mark Little, journalist and founder of Storyful, will also be delivering a guest talk at the summit.

He said: “Myself and the co-founder of my start-up, Neva Labs, Aine Kerr, will be speaking to the topic of ‘Community of One’.

“We want to talk about how we protect news as a public service in an age where individuals rely on more personalised news streams.

“I’m thrilled to see the discussion about the future of news ‘coming home’ to a city which has played such a proud role in shaping journalism.

“When it comes to be big decisions about how journalism changes, I would rather look at them through the eyes of Mancunians rather than the big lens of tech companies in Silicon Valley or news companies in London and New York.”

The summit, which is organised by the European Journalism Centre and the Google News Lab, will focus on newsrooms relationships with their communities and how local journalists are trying to find products and workflows which work better for them.

Mattia Peretti, project manager for the European Journalism Centre and organiser of the event, said: “At the European Journalism Centre we are working to build a sustainable, ethical and innovative future for journalism and the News Impact Summits are one of the key projects that we run in this regard.

“The goal is to foster journalism innovation by connecting local media communities with international experts and digital innovators.

“The summits aim to provide the participants with tools and methods they can easily implement in their daily work, as well as sources of inspiration to encourage them to assume an active and positive approach towards innovation.

“We have decided this year to visit Manchester as the city has positioned itself at the forefront of digital innovation in Europe and seemed to be for this reason a perfect fit for News Impact.

“We are looking forward to meet all the creative minds who want to build with us the future of journalism and we can’t wait to enjoy the conversations and the presentations that will light up a wonderful day.”

The Northern Quota will be reporting the News Impact Summit live on the day from the town hall.