Bright Sites’ SaaS product Storycue has announced it is partnering with the University of Lancashire’s Journalism Innovation and Leadership course to conduct a study into what happens when journalists, designers, product managers, and developers collaborate to innovate. The joint research effort aims to shed light on how combining these disciplines can lead to new forms of storytelling, better audience engagement, and more agile content strategy.
Bright Sites says Storycue is a platform that helps newsrooms monitor 20+ sources, generates smart-content recommendations, delivers instant alerts, and builds content plans — all designed to help publishers “never miss a story your audience cares about.”
The Journalism Innovation and Leadership course at the University of Lancashire focuses on training the next generation of media professionals to think beyond traditional journalism: leading teams, adopting new tools and workflows, and innovating under pressure.
According to the company, the key aims of the study are as follows:
- Explore collaboration dynamics: Examine how teams composed of journalists, designers, product managers, and developers interact, make decisions, and create.
- Identify best practices: What organisational, cultural, and technological structures best support innovation in media.
- Measure innovation outcomes: Evaluate what kinds of outputs emerge (tools, stories, workflows), and how they perform in terms of audience reach, engagement, and adaptability.
- Understand product thinking in newsrooms: How agile methodologies, user-centred design, and real-time feedback loops can be integrated into journalistic practice.
Beth Ashton, chief growth officer at Bright Sites, said: “Storycue gives us a real-time picture of what audiences want now - we’re excited to go further and see what emerges when reporters, devs, designers and PMs collaborate in new ways.”
Dr François Nel, reader in media innovation and entrepreneurship and director of the Media Innovation Studio at the University of Lancashire, said: “Innovation doesn’t happen in silos. By bringing journalists together with designers, developers, and product thinkers, we’re exploring what’s next for storytelling — not in theory, but in practice.”
The findings will be published in an open-access report, and results will be shared in public workshops and events. The project aims to contribute to conversations about newsroom transformation across the UK and beyond.
You can find out more about Bright Sites in our Publishing Services Directory.
Keep up-to-date with publishing news: sign up here for InPubWeekly, our free weekly e-newsletter.
