How CNET is expanding its tech coverage

Shelley Hepworth of Columbia Journalism Review writes about how tech news site CNET is expanding its definition of tech coverage by sending journalists overseas to report on how refugees using technology.

Hepworth writes, “The effort, motivated in part by an image of a dead Syrian boy that went viral last year and has come to represent the refugee crisis, is something of a departure from CNET’s usual bread-and-butter desk reporting of tech news and product reviews, a strategy that has netted them more than 30 million monthly readers. ‘Road Trip 2016: Life, Disrupted‘ is the latest and most ambitious project in a larger effort by CNET News Editor in Chief Connie Guglielmo—who joined the company from Forbes in March 2014—to incorporate more in-depth analysis about the cultural impact of technology into CNET’s coverage.

“The expansion of their editorial purview comes at a time when many traditional newsrooms, including The Los Angeles Times and Newsday, have pulled back on foreign reporting. The shift puts CNET among other digital-first media organizations, such as Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post, which have made unexpected investments in the kind of in-depth, on-the-ground journalism many feared could become a thing of the past. CNET declined to disclose how much it invested in the refugee reporting project.”

Read more here.