Stories are breaking at every instant, and journalists are fighting to keep ahead. It’s a very different game when news breaks instantaneously and content spins out across 24/7 news channels, radio stations, online outlets and myriad social media platforms. When faced with these challenges, how are the people who are meant to cultivate, produce, create and fact-check these stories able to get their work done most effectively?
Although journalists are faced with unrealistic and unsustainable expectations in terms of output, at present, the industry has done very little to address this issue for meaningful change. Instead, journalists remain pressured to keep up with the never-ending onslaught of information, tasked to push out as much content as possible, as quickly as possible.
The result? Journalists feel like they are over-communicating and inundated.
Dataminr recognizes that journalists are drowning in data and feeling overworked. An important part of that path to change entails filtering out the noise on social media by tapping into advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered solutions that read large datasets. Approximately 500 million Tweets chirp out into the world each day, reaching more than 320 million Twitter users.
In an effort to help cut through the noise, Dataminr, a real-time information discovery platform, provides a vital tool to help journalists sort through enormous volumes of information on social media, allowing them to be the first to surface top stories that matter most to their audiences. Through the use of proprietary algorithms that incorporate AI and machine learning technologies, Dataminr filters through millions of tweets and issues custom alerts set by geography, topic, or source, allowing a journalist to program their alert feed to only receive news tips that they and their readers would care about most.
“Dataminr acts as a really fast, really important tip sheet for us,” said Mary Nahorniak, Deputy Managing Editor for USA TODAY. “It's an essential tool that helps us make sense of half a billion Tweets a day, filtering what’s very likely to be important to our newsroom.”
Journalists have realized that they must come together to find new, innovative ways to change the process, and a big part of that is tools that offer more efficient ways to vet and source information.
Dataminr has answered the call and is addressing the need for change by giving power back to the journalist and providing them with resources to quiet the noise and filter out unnecessary or irrelevant information. In order to provide the best reporting, journalists need to differentiate between what’s really important and what’s not.
Now, they don’t have to fight that battle alone.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Mary Nahorniak.
