House of Lords hears latest trends from Labs

Jamie Angus, director of BBC World Service, described some of our recent work applying automation technology to challenges faced by news teams at the BBC. A particular highlight is our speech-to-text and automated translation on projects like Gourmet.

Watch the video of Jamie explaining how Labs works on research and development and gets prototypes that can become full production tools into the newsroom.

"Is there success in bridging the gap between journalists and those who work in research and development?"

Jamie Angus (@grvlx001), Director of BBC World Service Group, shows how our work in News Labs answers this @LordsCommsCom question. pic.twitter.com/ABFaQRD8ae

— BBC News Labs (@BBC_News_Labs) July 27, 2020

Other highlights from the committee’s hearings include evidence of the impact our executive production manager, David Caswell, had with a blogpost at the start of the year. David wrote about the challenges facing the industry and how we must look for major leaps forward that incorporate both technical and editorial innovation to make news consumption highly relevant for audiences.

Dr Seth Lewis, University of Oregon, mentioned the importance of this "existential innovation", when he spoke to the committee.

Dr @SethCLewis argued that journalism needs “existential innovations” to reclaim value in people's everyday lives pic.twitter.com/1hEQ3do5yf

— Lords Communications and Digital Committee (@LordsCommsCom) March 6, 2020

Labbers are constantly thinking about fundamental ways to reimagine news while focusing on near-term innovations for the newsroom. We will continue to share our understanding of where the industry is headed while we adapt to rapid changes in 2020.