Sky News is hiring journalists to expand its data and forensics team as part of its plan to produce more premium journalism that people might pay for.
The Sky News data and forensics team aims to add a depth of understanding and analysis to the rest of the newsbrand’s output both by producing its own work and by collaborating with other members of the newsroom such as special correspondent Alex Crawford, currently in Syria, and business and economics correspondent Paul Kelso.
The team is arranged under four verticals: data forensics, investigations, OSINT (open-source intelligence) and production, with several staff members for each. They publish in a mixture of formats including video, and text with interactive elements.
Data and forensics editor Chris Howard told Press Gazette the team is “right at the vanguard of digital journalism and doing something that’s really important journalistically, both within the overall landscape of news at the moment, but also to the future of the Sky News offering”.
He said staff are being hired to support each of the four verticals with roles including assistant editors, OSINT specialists, data journalists, a content producer, and newsroom developers.
He described it as a “big recruitment round which is an extremely fortunate position to be in, in the current news media landscape”.
Press Gazette understands that once the new roles are in place, the team will have more than doubled since Howard took on the role in February 2023.
Part of Sky News 2030 ‘premium’ plan
The expansion of the data and forensics team is part of the Sky News 2030 project, which was announced earlier this year.
The plan is to build a “premium video-first newsroom built for the digital future” by 2030, with introduction of paid content being considered by Sky News for the first time as part of it.
Funding for Sky News is currently guaranteed from owner Comcast under a ten-year deal agreed when it bought Sky in 2018, meaning the undertaking ends in 2028.
The goal is to pivot from being 70% focused as a newsroom on breaking and live news towards being 70% focused on premium video journalism.
Howard told Press Gazette the data and forensics team’s output fits into two brackets: original investigations of their own, such as revelations of illegal gamblers targeting children on video game Roblox, and giving an “extra layer” to the journalism that has always been done at Sky News.
“Our tagline is ‘the full story, first’,” Howard said. “Back in its nascent days, Sky News was very attached to breaking news and getting things first, and that remains a core part of our DNA.
“I suppose going forward, depth and breadth is becoming equally important. And I think the work of the data and forensics team is really focused on the second part of our proposition, in making sure that we can provide that depth of understanding and that breadth of credibility, which in this uncertain world we live in is so important for audiences.”
The unit’s most recent project was about a far-right whites-only settlement in Arkansas, led by data and forensics correspondent Tom Cheshire who was this year shortlisted for specialist journalist of the year at the RTS Television Journalism Awards.
Press Gazette understands that investigation has received more than 2.6 million views on Tiktok, half a million on Youtube, a further 500,000 on Sky News’ website/app, and half a million page views for the written piece with a strong engagement time.
New look ‘more eye-catching and accessible’
The expansion coincides with a visual revamp launching this week of the data and forensics output.
Howard said the intention is for it to be “more eye-catching, more accessible to different audiences, and hopefully look that bit more premium too”. He described it as “very bright, very clean, very modern, very clear”.
He said OSINT reporting overall has adopted an “accepted language” visually, for example via yellow boxes superimposed on maps, that Sky News wants to break out of to help it stand out.
The new approach is “very forensic, very clinical”.
“It’s a kind of bright green and white, which really makes things stand out, and it’s supposed to cut through the noise of the disinformation and misinformation in the world so you can very obviously, hopefully, work out what to trust,” he added.
AI is providing a “fantastic opportunity” for teams like this, Howard said, meaning “jobs which have been very difficult to do previously, just because of the drudgery of it, might be made that much easier, which opens up the possibilities for the journalists on the team to then do more enterprising and exciting things with that time”.
For example AI can help journalists shift through huge amounts of data. “And if you think the amount of information available in the world is growing exponentially, so the better people that we can have and that we can attract to come and work on the team to have the greatest impact will help us also to make greater sense of all of that information,” Howard said.
“Some of it readily available, but very hard to understand unless you’ve got the skills and the experience. Some of it very hard to find and to get at, but easier if you have the skills and the experience.”
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