Small and local newsrooms are proving that product methodologies aren’t just for big organizations. In this panel, Ariel Zirulnick, Aron Pilhofer, and Aldana Vales will share their experiences as th...
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Aron Pilhofer
chief product officer Star Tribune Media Company
Aron Pilhofer is Chief Product Officer at Star Tribune Media Company, Minnesota’s largest media company. He is also co-founder and co-chair of the Sigma Awards, a competition to celebrate the best data journalism from around the world.
Previously, he was the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University. Before joining Temple, Pilhofer was Executive Editor, Digital, and interim Chief Digital Officer at the Guardian in London. Prior to joining the Guardian, Aron was Associate Managing Editor for Digital Strategy and editor of Interactive News at The New York Times and prior to that he was database editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.
Aron also co-founded two news-related startups: DocumentCloud.org and Hacks & Hackers. Launched in 2009, DocumentCloud.org improves journalism by making source documents easier to find, search, analyse and share online. Hacks & Hackers, also created in 2009, is an informal organisation that brings journalists and technologists together.
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#IJF25 /
10 april 2025
At the cutting edge of local news: hear from the innovators making things work
We hear a lot that local news is dying. However, there are local news entrepreneurs in different countries who are experimenting - and succeeding! Come and hear from them as they discuss what works, w...
While traditional publishers are shrinking, nonprofit newsrooms are on the rise. For a while now, especially investigative reporting is successfully nourished with charity due to its crucial role to a...
#IJF23 /
22 april 2023
How journalism’s growing infrastructure support system is catalyzing digital newsrooms
As more and more corporate-owned news outlets lay-off reporters and dramatically slash coverage, there’s a growing movement in the US to provide a stronger infrastructure support system to accelerat...
With traditional local news organizations in decline, more and more journalists are looking to startups as a way to fill gaps in the local news ecosystem. However, launching a local news site from scr...
Now in its third year, the Sigma Awards is the largest award celebrating data journalism from around the world. This year, there were more than 600 entries from across the globe. At this panel, we wil...
More and more journalists are being asked to step into roles that previously were the sole domain of the business side. The Guardian's membership scheme is run by a journalist. More and more newsrooms...
Whether it is their ownership structure, business model or editorial focus, more and more news organizations are moving away from the well-worn paths of the past. This panel will feature three news or...
First lessons from the Journalism Innovation Project: how to innovate under fire and avoid ‘shiny things syndrome’. This panel will mark the publication of the second Journalism Innovation Projec...
Video, 360, AR, VR, Podcasts, Blockchain, Instant Articles, Newsletters, Snow Fall, Native Ads. Can we escape the innovation binge/purge cycle? It seems like there's always something new promising to...
Print is dying, and we all know digital is our future. Yet, year after year, at newspaper after newspaper, we keep putting print people in charge. We see the same phenomenon in broadcast as well. Yes,...
Trust in journalism is the problem it seems everyone’s talking about right now. This panel isn’t about talk; it’s about doing. Practical solutions you can take back do your newsrooms today to he...
It does appear that Facebook has fallen completely out of love with the news business. Is it us? Is it them? Is it something we said? Does it matter? This panel will explore our troubled romance with ...
Digital transformation is driving huge changes in our industry, including newsrooms themselves. A decade ago, it would have been surprising to find developers, digital designers, audience specialists ...
Advertising has been an important source of funding for journalism for more than a century. But news media organizations are increasingly losing market share to other actors, especially large technolo...
What if news organizations optimized every part of the operation for trust rather than speed? How would that change our products, our processes -- what, when and how we publish? How would optimizing f...
In this session two open web innovators and thinkers will discuss the potential for news flows outside the silos, and how that can work to make the news industry and independent bloggers more free and...
Facebook has received a lot of criticism from publishers in recent years. But like it or not, Facebook is increasingly the place people turn for news. This panel is a deliberately provocative, one-si...
In newsrooms around the world, “product” teams are bringing together digital thinkers from both the newsroom and the business side. Together, they’re working to invent new ways of delivering t...
How can newsrooms use audience analytics to empower journalism rather than fall victim to a tyranny of metrics? A diverse range of quality news organizations including the Guardian, the BBC, and o...
#IJF15 /
18 april 2015
Radical data: from activism to journalism, the power of data-based visual narratives
Quality journalism and activism seem to converge on the horizon of the current mediascape. The NSA, HSBC and Wikileaks files are few but bold examples of outstanding journalism deeply rooted in da...
Challenged by a radically new scenario and undermined by nimble new competitors, mainstream media is hard at it trying to weather the digital revolution. Put bluntly, is there any place in the futur...
This session will unveil new findings about the use of user generated content by eight online newspapers, including the New York Times and the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Sydney Morning Herald...
Rebooting a 200-year-old Startup. How the Guardian is making the transition to a digitally led newsroom. Introduction by Andrea Iannuzzi.
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...
What would happen if tomorrow Facebook, Twitter and all other social networks relevant to the world of journalism today were - for some apocalyptic reason - unavailable. For quite some time ie. months...
Data journalism is evolving at a rapid pace. Since last year’s International Journalism Festival we have seen many data stories breaking and data projects appearing around the world. We’ve seen co...
The rapidly changing field of data journalism is one of the best practices for making complex information understandable for the general public and therefore is critical to the future of news. Come ...
In the age of big data, journalists are confronted with both opportunities and challenges. Particularly in humanitarian crises where people's lives are in danger, we require fast, accurate and respo...
Live coverage of breaking news is now common for media organisations, with many of them running several live blogs simultaneously which is changing classical storytelling. New live blogging tools ar...
There is intense pressure for journalists and editors to produce lots and lots of content these days. But, frankly, much of that content is dull and terrible. There's a lot of noise, and not much me...
Data journalism is evolving at a rapid pace. Since last year’s International Journalism Festival we have seen many data stories breaking and data projects appearing around the world. We’ve seen ...
A consideration of how the the spread of the internet, technological innovation and a multiplicity of web tools have transformed the ways in which politicians and political parties communicate, buil...