National Indigenous Times (NIT) Executive Chairman, Wayne Bergmann, is set to speak at Google News Initiative's Australia Summit, which is being held in Sydney today.
Alongside a series of leading Australian and international newsroom representatives, Mr Bergmann will discuss the success of a live newsroom experiment recently completed by NIT, a project designed to support innovation and trusted journalism.
The experiment, a collaboration between Google News Initiative and digital strategy firm, Bastion Transform, saw NIT focus on delivering Pacific-related content to NIT's audience.
Alongside Nine Publishing and BusinessDesk New Zealand, NIT was one of three organisations to conduct the live newsroom pilot, focusing on business growth and editorial excellence.
Throughout the experiment, Pacific content was sourced internally by NIT editorial staff, as well as through partnerships with Australian Associated Press and Papua New Guinea's PNG Courier, with multiple articles pitched from each source on a weekly basis.
The experiment resulted in a a substantial increase in NIT's newsroom output according to NIT Chief Operations Officer, Reece Harley.
"The level of content that's coming out of our newsroom has significantly increased. The experiment has resulted in our newsroom publishing about 20% more stories and we're up 179% on international content," Mr Harley said.
Mr Harley said NIT will continue to focus on delivering Pacific content to its audience after the positive experience of the experiment.
"All of us are now in the habit of using the AAP newswire service and reaching out to our PNG Post Courier Partners," he said.
"We're keeping an eye out for relevant content that we can republish on our own platform.
"We're a much better newsroom for the experiment than if we hadn't have participated."
Google News Initiative's Australia Summit 2023 coincides with the completion of NIT's newsroom experiment.
Today's event will see a raft of sector leaders discuss their respective newsroom experiments, transformative ways to engage audiences, digital sustainability for regional publishers and cultural transformations.
Mr Bergmann will today share how the National Indigenous Times prioritised, designed, ran and reviewed the experiment.
He will be joined on the 'Experiments in the Newsroom' panel by Bastion Transform's Managing Director, Gaven Morris, Executive Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today, Tory Maquire, and Google's News Lab Lead, Uma Patel.
Other notable industry leaders speaking at the Summit include ACM's Chief Technology Officer, Bruce Levine, The Guardian's Deputy Director, Growth, Paddy Wood, and News Corp Australia's General Manager - Editorial Innovation, Rod Savage.
The Summit commences at 12pm at Google's Sydney headquarters.
