When it comes to news sites, audiences are showing a growing appetite for interactivity, with quizzes and games often ranking amongst publishers' most popular stories of the year. Meanwhile, some of the most important stories of the past decade (Wikileaks, Snowden Files, and Swissleaks to name a few) have required journalists to sift through vast amounts of data to identify narratives and craft new ways to present them in all their complexity. At the intersection of both the most popular and most important stories in the media today, we find the unicorns - those few individuals that can bridge the gap between traditional reporting, and coding and interactivity.
In this panel we will hear from top digital editors at The Guardian and The WSJ about the importance of unicorns for their future, and get insight from a real life journalist + coder about her journey from developer to CTO to interactive journalist at The BBC.