For 20 months, Reported.ly adopted a grassroots approach to telling stories by sourcing from social media to get perspectives from people around the world. But on Aug. 31, Reported.ly was shuttered after its parent company, First Look Media, pulled its funding. We spoke with Reported.ly founder and editor Andy Carvin about what the team learned along the way.

In this week's Futures Lab update, the Reynolds Journalism Institute explores how better use of analytics and data could help newsrooms improve their coverage and connect with audiences.

In this week's Futures Lab update, learn why small information websites may be the future of profitable news, how local news websites might attract more national ads, and what consumer brands can teach us about working with startups.

In this week's Futures Lab update, we present some key takeaways from the annual South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. We also visit a startup that is making it possible to add a text search function to audio and video files.

In this week's Futures Lab update, the Reynolds Journalism Institute explores ways newsrooms can serve their communities by curating social media content, and offers some advice on how to think like a tech startup.

This week we explore some emerging trends in understanding audience behavior.

This week we learn about a collaboration to build an open-source commenting and discussion platform for news organizations, and we explore how the Verification Handbook can help inform the use of citizen-generated materials.

This week we offer smart ways to alert mobile readers to new stories, and we highlight two encryption tools that can help reporters protect confidential sources.

This week we get tips on what works when delivering news via mobile devices, and we check out a new app designed for remixing content.

In this Futures Lab update, the Reynolds Journalism Institute explores technologies for combining video footage from multiple smartphones, finding and managing content from social media, and pushing notifications to readers on desktop and laptop computers.