Idea Lab

Two Coders Head Off to 'Fix Journalism'

by Rich Gordon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

There are a lot of words I could use to describe Ryan Mark and Brian Boyer, but perhaps the first one is: fearless. About 21 months ago, they heard (Ryan through a friend, Brian on Boing Boing) about a new scholarship program offering computer programmers a chance to earn a master's degree in journalism at the Medill School. Neither of them had journalism experience, and neither of them had ever considered studying journalism. But they decided to apply anyway, and as of December they became the first "programmer-journalists" (or "hacker journalists") to graduate from Medill. The vast majority of programmers...

• January 16, 2009
• 2 comments

Journalists and Technologists: An Uneasy Courtship

by Rich Gordon
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

The first Computation + Journalism Symposium, held Friday and Saturday at Georgia Tech, is over. It's been widely covered in the blogosphere -- you'll find some of the most thoughtful reflections here and here and here and here. As I said before the panel I moderated (on "Advances in Newsgathering"), the event was truly remarkable. More than 200 people -- a mix of academics and professionals, editors and reporters, journalists and Web developers (including the two Knight Challenge journalist-programmer scholarship winners) -- came together to talk about the ways technology is changing journalism and what journalism needs to do to...

• February 25, 2008
• 4 comments