Laura Byrne

About

Experienced journalist and broadcaster working as Assistant News Editor with TheJournal.ie. As a news editor, I manage a team of reporters and determine the daily news agenda. As a column editor, I track the latest newsworthy discussions, liaising with contributors, developing article ideas and guiding them through the publication process. My journalism and tech merged when I joined Storyful, working as a senior journalist, podcaster and online literacy teacher. As part of a global team of journalists (many of us working remotely) we pioneered a form of online journalism that is now standard in many newsrooms. We harnessed the power of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook and developed new ways of documenting news events, verifying the content and packaging it for large global clients like CNN, ABC News, Fox News, The New York Times and The Washington Post. While at Storyful, I developed, edited and presented The Storyful Podcast, which analysed the effects of social media on journalism and democracy. I also project managed training programs for large clients including Facebook and Google. This involved preparing and presenting media literacy seminars at conferences and festivals, including a series on online literacy for children.During my time in a busy national newsroom at Today FM, I worked as a reporter and news anchor. I researched, edited and presented extended lunchtime bulletins and anchored the evening news. As a reporter, I attended press conferences and covered general elections, interviewing heads of state and other politicians. I also managed a team of reporters as a duty editor, compiling the news output for evening bulletins. Before journalism, I worked as a software engineer for start-up and large tech companies. The experience I gained here has proven to be an invaluable grounding in project management, client relationships and a general understanding of the tech and new media industry.