Media's online challenges revealed to Leeds Community News Hub

With shipments of smartphones set to overtake those of PCs by 2012 in world where Google stopped counting the number of document searches made when it reached one trillion (2008) just what will the media that emerges look like? Visitors to the Leeds Community News Hub were invited to consider the challenges that face journalists and readers alike during a thought-provoking talk yesterday. In his first public speaking engagement since being appointed director of digital strategy, Guardian Media Group's Matt McAlister talked about technological advances and highlighted the importance of data journalism following the comments this week by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. "Journalism will play a huge role in this future. The understanding of this data has got to come from people not machines. We need journalists to actually spot and tell the stories." The audience at the special event included local journalists, journalism students, people working in the digital media and web entrepreneurs who had travelled from as far afield as Norwich and Newcastle to take part. You can recap on what was tweeted via the hashtag #LeedsCNH . After the talk, the Leeds Community News Hub was open for networking with discussion about the projects which could be worked on during the coming months. The hub at Leeds Trinity University College was launched last week as a physical space for anyone wanting to get involved with a community journalism project for Leeds. Drop-in sessions Speaking dates and special events will resume in the new year but, in the meantime, there are free drop-in sessions every Wednesday. Next week, Guardian Leeds beatblogger John Baron will be based there and on hand to help. If you'd like to get involved in the hub, you can contact us via the comments below, by email [email protected] and on twitter @GdnLeeds or drop by on Wednesday.