Case Study
Sky News
DATAMINR CASE STUDY: Sky News Faint plumes of white smoke were rising above the Île de la Cité—at first, hard to pinpoint. As the smoke turned black and began to catch people’s attention, a classical music student standing on the bank of the Seine river was one of the first to realize what was happening. “Notre Dame on fire!” she tweeted, with a photo of smoke now billowing out of one of the cathedral’s spires. Firefighters had not yet arrived. Within moments, journalists at Sky News in London interrupted their broadcast with breaking news—Notre- Dame Cathedral was on fire. It was a story that dominated news coverage for more than a week in Europe. “We didn’t see it first on the AFP news wire, we saw it first on Dataminr,” said Digital News Editor Adam Parker. “And we didn’t jus