of news and the future of anything
sounds a maybe a little bit big
sometimes a little bit scary but it’s
also quite exciting um and I really want
to talk about embracing changes and
being fearless um I work in news I’ve
had an interesting news from a very very
young age and I remember in 1990 in the
summer of 1990 being mesmerised by the
World Cup like the rest of the country I
was glued to the TV watching as our
football team debuted in their first
ever World Cup in initially it was a
pretty big deal and my brother tells the
story which he now classifies as my
first reporting assignment I sat and
watched these matches with a pencil and
a copy book and took notes and after the
matches were over I would go upstairs
compile my notes and come back down to
my amuse but indulgent family and as an
eight-year-old I would give them a
television stand-up report I know they
really liked us so I’m not surprised I
love stories from a young age we come
from a nation of storytellers we love
news and stories from Shanna keys to gay
burn we just love talking sharing news
and that’s backed up by fact Ireland is
some of the biggest news consumers
internationally Reuters came out last
year with a report and named Ireland as
one of the most digitally engaged to do
consumers of english-speaking nations we
consume more news on radio in Ireland
than most of our other EU counterparts
23% of Irish people classify themselves
as news lovers
that’s over index enduring
internationally and we love getting
international news from from mobile
providers I have a news habit of many
people of my generation in the 90s I
advanced from the pencil and copy book
to listening to the local radio in the
morning as I got ready for school my
parents bought the Irish Examiner or
at the time the quark examiner and every
evening
this lovely lady lady and oil would tell
me what was happening here in Ireland
and around the world maybe mine was a
little bit of an overt to find new
service but it led me to a career in
news I’ve worked here in Dublin with or
GE and Newstalk in London with the BBC
and I now work at CNN running social
media in the bureaus all over the world
think about this my job didn’t exist
when I did my masters here in DCU I did
a master’s of journalism and there were
no jobs head of social media when I did
that I might age myself a little bit but
my first mobile phone and it was a Nakia
phone I got that when I went in to do my
undergraduate at University College Cork
and that was the same time I used emails
for the first time but throughout my
career in journalism I’ve had to embrace
changing technologies embrace them love
them and not fear them I went on an
assignment for the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation to Papua New
Guinea in 2009 and at the time radio was
the king of all media in PNG radio was
king and it was the place that most
people got their news for a variety of
reasons most people in this specific
Island didn’t own a TV
low literacy level meant no low literacy
levels meant that a lot of people didn’t
buy newspapers and radio was the king of
all media there but change was about to
come because not only did an Irish
redhead arrived in 2009 but cheap
feature phones also arrived and they
flooded the market this is what a group
of editors and journalists in the
Highlands of Papua New Guinean in a
place called anger and I remember
working with them on some radio
documentaries and their editorial output
and watching one day as two young girls
in this Highland town in PNG came with a
letter and put it in a box outside the
station manager’s office I asked the
journalists what they were doing and
they explained that this is what the
community did they would write requests
or they would have comments and they
would put it in paper form and leave it
at the radio station for it to be read
out loud that nice so immediately I went
down to the local market and I bought a
SIM card it was about twenty kina which
is the equivalent of a couple of euro
and I took it back to the radio station
I asked every broadcaster that was on
air that day to put this SIM card in
their mobile phone and read out a number
that first day they got hundreds of text
messages from their community and it
changed how they talked and communicated
with their audience
it was the technology that they could
have potentially feared what they didn’t
they embraced it and they thrived I
spent a lot of time in Burma in Myanmar
between 2012 and 2014 and it was a
fascinating front-row seat to a whole
country embracing change and new
technologies when I went in 2012 I
worked with a group of a hundred young
journalist for the BBC and I remember
sitting the first time I sat down with
this big group of journalists I asked
them did anybody have the mobile phone
bear in mind I want to paint you a
picture of what Burma was like in 2012
then the country was under a cloak of
censorship if they only had weekly
newspapers that had to be sent to the
censorship board ahead of publication to
be approved there were no ATMs when I
arrived there in 2012 and mobile phones
were rare very rare I asked this group
of journalists did anybody have a mobile
phone and one hand shut up and this was
put on the table nice try wasn’t a
mobile phone for Tura you tried to rest
when I went back 18 months later early
2014 it was a dramatically different
country sanctions had been lifted
tourism was booming and the censorship
board had been abolished I went back to
work with daily uncensored newspapers on
their social and their digital strategy
and landing in Yangon I saw instantly
that it was a different place everybody
I met had a mobile phone and the first
thing they wanted to do when they met me
was join me on Facebook take this
gentleman this is a monk from a Buddhist
monk from the north of the country
I met him on his first day in Yangon
ever in his whole life he come from a
very remote part of Burma and the first
day he got to Yangon before he stepped
foot in what you can see in the
background there is the most famous
Buddha site in the world the Shwedagon
pagoda the first thing he did was go to
the market and buy those two mobile
phones that he’s clutching on to for
dear life it was fascinating to see a
country completely embrace change and
new technologies in every chapter of my
life in every part of my career I’ve
been fascinated at embracing the change
of technology and in particular how that
relates to news consumption and news
habits which brings me to my job today
I’m the senior director of social news
at CNN and that means running all the
social media teams around the world our
mission statement the mission statement
of social at CNN is creating a CNN news
habit for every generation on every
platform we’re invested in going to
where audiences are reaching them with
some of the best storytelling in the
world and we know to be relevant we need
to go where they are here’s just a
little look of some of the places that
we’re publishing we are telling
different types of storytelling across
all of these mediums messaging social
media emerging of platform over-the-top
broadcast because that’s where audiences
are and news habits are evolving faster
than we ever ever imagined because of
things like mobile phones we launched
our messaging apps we launched on three
messaging apps in the last six months
kik Facebook Messenger and line which is
a big global messaging app why because
we’ve noticed again news habits evolving
people are moving away from mass social
sharing to peer-to-peer small group
sharing and they’re doing that on
messaging apps it’s almost like the
modern-day version of the Shanna Keyes
but instead of walking down the road to
hear what the story is we’re getting
news and updates on whatsapp from
friends and family so I flew in this
morning from Washington DC from what’s
been a pretty terrific and historic you
president
campaign in the u.s. massively consumed
not only there in the US but here in
Ireland I remember calling my mom from
Miami during the primary season and
asking her how her birthday celebrations
in brand tree were do you want to talk
about that she wanted to ask me why Mitt
Romney had come out against Donald Trump
and who put him up to this and it’s not
only news organizations that are
embracing new types of storytelling the
candidates are – here we are backstage
and Las Vegas with Secretary Clinton we
had each and every one of these
candidates sit down for what was
originally going to be an Instagram
profile an Instagram portrait we did it
for Instagram because we wanted a
different type of storytelling those
images which you saw in the last slide
they have become the ubiquitous iconic
images of the u.s. presidential campaign
this is the story for a different day
but this is Miami just after I called my
mom and this is me interviewing
president-elect Donald Trump in a toilet
in Miami for a snapchat interview you’re
gonna see that in a video in a little
one they’ve embraced social media these
candidates in particular in 18 months we
have seen how important social media and
messaging has been in getting the story
of the election 2016 out to audiences
let me give you one example this is
again back in Vegas this is in September
at they’re one of the first Republican
debates there was a lot of them on the
stage wasn’t her this broke records
across TV 23 point 1 million people
watched this on CNN which was up until
Tuesday the most-watched ever event of
CNN’s television history but it wasn’t
just TV where people were getting this
news millions upon millions of people
live stream this on CNN go on our
desktops and on one just one Facebook
page that night we reached a hundred
million people and we had 14 million
video views of debate content the stats
from this week are quite similar we
broke records across TV and digital we
also had a lot of
I can screen Facebook experiences where
we we projected Instagram portraits on
the Empire State Building that Facebook
live was seen by 25 million people and
we reached 5 million new people on
messaging apps on election night and I’m
going back to the messaging apps and I’m
going to show you something this was
cake kik is a us-centric messaging app
that’s used by 13 to 17 year-olds in the
in the US and again it’s all back to
that creating a new CNN news habit for
the next generation we launched on cake
for the conventions in Cleveland and
Philadelphia and we went all in on
election night on this platform but we
didn’t do TV on cake that just wouldn’t
work we didn’t do what we would do on
desktop or for a mobile apps on cake
because again it wouldn’t work for this
platform and for this audience we told
the story of election 2016 using the
language that these teenagers use in the
u.s. we launched an election sticker set
there’s Wolf Blitzer we launched emojis
and we updated a gift tray in real time
as the night progressed why it was
important for us to do that there’s no
point in playing around on these
platforms and looking at evolving news
habits unless you’re gonna change the
way you tell stories on them we also
have played around with VR this year we
have streamed a number of our debates in
virtual reality and they’ve been seen by
72 by people in 73 countries around the
world this is a new type of storytelling
but we again embraced new types of
storytelling the story
election 2016 stayed the same but we
embraced new types of storytelling and
evolving news habits across all of these
different platforms here’s a little look
at all of the different generations
devices and people that we reached using
our different types of storytelling for
I have a whole young person’s agenda we
ran abolish the IRS public colleges and
universities tuition-free pain we’re
going to make a trade
I’m glad the elections over though to be
honest so what does the future of news
look like in Ireland I don’t know what’s
what are those news habits those
evolving news habits gonna look like in
5 or 10 or 15 years time or a hundred
years I can’t even imagine but what will
what needs to happen is that news
organizations here in Ireland embrace
change and new technologies today in
Ireland TV is still the most popular way
that people consume news but that’s
about to change
websites digital websites are a close
second and I have seen from over in the
u.s. how good some of the social
strategies of newer news organizations
are here in Ireland I get most of my
Irish news from Facebook I love what the
journal da e and Joe da really do and my
favorite my absolute favorite is what
the satirical news site Waterford
whispers if you haven’t read it it’s
bloody brilliant I love it
so what does News look like in Ireland
in the next 100 years well what I know
needs to happen is news organizations
here have to be fearless and embracing
change they really really need to know
who their audiences are and those
evolving news habits are getting quicker
and quicker and they’re evolving at a
pace that we never imagined they’re
going to have to embrace platforms the
platforms that people are getting news
from messaging apps to social media to
VR are changing dramatically at a much
faster pace than our older institutions
think about it TV yes it’s got glass
here and now we’re in HD but the format
of TV hasn’t changed that dramatically
newspapers are essentially what they
wore decades ago but if you look at what
Instagram and Facebook and snapchat are
doing and how it’s changing every month
every year from live streaming to
messaging that those platforms are
evolving faster than news organizations
can keep up and they need to embrace new
technologies and really not to be afraid
to fail or fail fast some things we do
at CNN don’t work and we just stop doing
them I think I don’t know if anybody saw
what CNN did in 2002 with a hologram of
will.i.am it didn’t go down well but we
tried something new
so what does the future of News look
like audience behavior an evolving news
habits going to be a massive part of it
I knew it was an eight year old doing a
TV report for my family that that’s how
they were going to consume my story this
is my little nephew Oliver he’s two he
swipes faster on a smartphone and an
iPad than anybody I’ve ever seen in my
life and he also loves because I
introduced him to it it VR he loves
consuming things on VR and the future of
news in Ireland has to include fearless
embracing of new types of storytelling
the story can stay the same
pure journalism can stay the same but
the two ways that we tell those stories
has to evolve and media organizations
and journalists here in Ireland need to
be thinking about this the next
generation of Irish news consumers thank
you [Applause]