News

We report back from our latest experiments.

Graphic squiggles

49 news articles

2020

09 December 2020

#newsHack report: Personalising news experiences with modular content

12 teams shared ideas in our first ever fully-remote hack.
07 October 2020

Graphical storytelling: Extracting and painting a fresh perspective

BBC News trials a new story format on social media.
27 August 2020

Coronavirus is changing journalism. Will its impact on newsrooms last?

News Labs speaks to a range of voices in the industry
28 July 2020

House of Lords hears latest trends from Labs

Committee inquiry on the future of journalism includes evidence on how innovation can help public service journalism.
20 May 2020

Audience questions: Could the Explainer Builder have the answers?

What we've learned so far in 2020 from a new prototype for journalists and audiences.
06 April 2020

How Skippy made it from a hack to your home

Senior Software Engineer Lei He takes us through the exciting journey of how Skippy was born.
24 February 2020

How the BBC is reinventing news for voice platforms

Zoe Murphy of BBC Voice + AI shares some of the lessons her and the team have learnt in developing BBC News for voice.
10 February 2020

Graphical Storytelling: Three things we tested

Labs software engineer Remi Oduyemi describes our recent experiments with new story formats.
29 January 2020

Journalism innovation in the 2020s

Some personal thoughts about the kind of innovation the news industry will need in the coming decade from News Labs executive product manager David Caswell.

2019

28 November 2019

Trees, machines and local journalism

Out latest experiments with Semi-Automatic Local Content (Salco).
18 November 2019

#newsHack report: Storytelling with voice

A report on how nine teams got on at our biggest hack of the year.
07 November 2019

Mozfest 2019: Multidisciplinary teams focus on collaboration and audiences

Labbers Conor Molumby and Eimi Okuno report on a day of interactive sessions.
23 October 2019

BBC Voice + AI: An insider’s perspective

BBC Voice + AI producer Tallulah Berry describes the editorial work behind a new interactive news service for smart speakers.
07 August 2019

Salco part 2: Automating our local elections coverage

BBC News Labs' Tamsin Green explains how continued experiments with semi-automated journalism helped coverage of the local elections.
03 May 2019

Investigating investigations: a #newsHACK for the cutting edge of journalism

Thom Hetherington from Connected Studio reports on ideas to improve tools to help investigative journalists.
22 March 2019

Stories by numbers: Experimenting with semi-automated journalism

BBC News Labs' Roo Hutton explains how the BBC is experimenting with semi-automated journalism to bring you even more relevant local stories.
14 February 2019

Editorial innovation in news

It is easy to assume that the future of news will be inevitably technical. That assumption is dangerous.
05 February 2019

The challenges of debunking fake news in India

Plus, four possible solutions from our latest #newsHACK.

2018

20 November 2018

Beyond 800 words: News formats for personalising and understanding

For every individual there are different needs from news at different times and places.
12 November 2018

Roundup: Hacking automated transcription technologies at Text AV

From fact-checking to scrollable video, here’s a look at seven projects from our latest language technology event.
22 October 2018

(re)building use cases for language technology in the newsroom

Five ideas from our latest #newsHACK with the Summa consortium.
17 September 2018

Experiments with AMP's new 'Stories' format for news

How we built a simple CMSfor Google's newest format — and what its future looks like at the BBC.
10 September 2018

Readers ask - but can AI answer?

The challenges of using artificial intelligence to answer questions about the news.
06 August 2018

Adventures in fuzzy matching with Match of the Day

How Google News Lab Fellow Dan Clark discovered that Gary Lineker sticks to his script.
06 July 2018

Roundup: Building the news for the next generation

12 ideas for engaging young audiences from BBC News Labs’ most recent industry hackathon.
07 June 2018

In Our Toolkit: BBC News BotBuilder

Scripting chatbots is hard. Here's how we're making it easier for BBC journalists
06 June 2018

Speeding up the BBC's speech-to-text pipeline

An apprentice tests new ways of cutting audio files to cut down on transcription time.
23 May 2018

Inside the BBC’s “innovation incubator”

What does a typical day in BBC News Labs look like?
29 March 2018

Rethinking newsroom innovation

Our Innovation Unconference invited innovation leaders to discuss the challenges facing teams within legacy media outlets.
27 February 2018

Face recognition: what use is it to newsrooms?

We built a prototype to highlight and identify the most important people in raw video footage. Here's what we learned during the process.
27 February 2018

A Brief Guide to BBC R&D’s Video Face Recognition

AI Research Engineer Fionntán O'Donnell explains how BBC Research and Development's facial recognition tool works.
29 January 2018

In-Article Chatbots

How can we help less engaged audiences understand big news stories?

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