As I take stock of the past six months since we launched our first newsletter and the work we’ve produced on the African continent and what we still want to achieve, I can confidently say that we are advancing our mission to share knowledge with journalists and media practitioners, on the African continent and the rest of the world.

When we launched our first newsletter in May we had hoped to provide innovators within the media space with information, inspiration and networks to support more, and more successful, innovation. Over the past few months we have showcased innovations and innovators, shared experiences of using new technologies and tools and have also provided access to research. In the next coming months we hope to do more of this and do it better to best serve you.

Our goal at JAMLAB Africa is not just to publish stories though. Over the next couple of months we will continue to contribute to growing a network of innovators and to help to build a ‘community of practice’ of media makers that can support each other by sharing advice and experience. And we hope to do this better by collaborating with other media and journalism schools and research centers investigating new trends, helping to understand digital disruption and its impact. There are various English-language knowledge sharers working globally and others working in other languages as well, whom we will work with to bring you content that will help you tell stories better in the midst of the disruption of journalism models.

In this edition Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas shares some insights on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for journalists to stay abreast of trends. MOOCs will also help journalists to learn how to use new technologies to make their work better and to serve society in a more effective way. Training and professional development has never been so important for journalists. Lifelong learning is going to be the name of the game, as the digital revolution is changing the media ecosystem in a way that is becoming more and more different from what we had in the industrial era.

In our quest to track down and document innovation and innovators on the African continent, we look at the work done by OMG Digital from Ghana. They are on a mission to win over African millennials through their digital offering with content that is relatable to the continent’s young audiences.

The above story and many others all over the continent are examples of great innovation.

We will continue to bring you great insight and information as we strengthen our collaborations with other organisations disseminating knowledge about journalism innovation in the long run. These organisations include the Nieman Lab, The Splice Newsroom, the European Journalism Observatory, IJNet, the Global Investigative Journalism Network, Poynter Institute, Journalism.co.uk, Digiday, the Maharat Foundation, and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

For now, we hope you will enjoy our latest edition. Look out for more stories on innovators and innovation that will be coming out of the 10th Global Investigative Journalism Conference that is taking place in South Africa for the first time between November 16 to 19.

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