‘Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,’ Leonardo Da Vinci is assumed to have said. And he supposedly continued: ‘for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.’

Drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) surely have people turn their eyes to the sky, if not for longing, then out of fear. Drones have a violent history in the military.
Yet drone technology is also a fantastic tool for news gathering, analysing and publishing. Many of my colleagues started experimenting with it in war reporting, during natural disasters, for investigative journalism and even to spice up filming the anchorman at news presentations.

In 2014, the Dutch journalism fund Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten (FBJP) provided me with a grant to research the possibilities of drone journalism in the Netherlands.

In The Drone Journalism Logs, the Dutch research project is continued. The logs aim to provide global journalists with new insights in this fascinating reporting tool.

A number of articles published here can also be read in Dutch on Nieuwejournalistiek.nl/dronejournalistiek.