Idea Lab

Digital Newsroom Wireframes Available

by Anthony Pesce
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

I'm happy to announce the availability of annotated wireframes for the Digital Newsroom portion of the Populous Project. The functionality, as eloquently described by Gary Kebbel at the Center for Future Civic Media Conference, is being able to "edit from the beach." I'll never forget that description because it elegantly describes the core of what we're trying to accomplish with this software: allowing editors and reporters to get out of the office and into the communities they're covering more often. At UCLA we'll probably have to forgo the beach and just attend class more often, or after 10 hours...

• February 26, 2009
• 6 comments

It's 'Bring a Professor Night' for a Conversation About Journalism Education

by Ryan Sholin
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

This Sunday, February 22, at 8 p.m. EST, it's "Bring a Professor Night" at CollegeJourn, a weekly live online chat about student media and journalism education. I spoke with Suzanne Yada today about the chat, why it's so important to bring the faculty to the table, and what she thinks they can learn from their students. Suzanne is one of the CollegeJourn moderators, and a student at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University. (Full disclosure: I'm still finishing up my graduate degree in the same department.) (Help transcribe or translate this video at dotSub.)...

• February 18, 2009
• No comments

Not All Journalism Students Hip to Social Media

by Anthony Pesce
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

Right now I'm attending a national conference in Kansas City (Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Advisers) for student news organizations, and I must say I've been underwhelmed. There was a keynote yesterday afternoon from Rich Beckman, a professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. I think he started off strong, outlining where newspapers need to go on the Internet and mentioning the recent announcement from the Christian Science Monitor to go online only. Later in the speech (see attached YouTube video, recorded in very low light from my Flip Cam) he outlined how the Internet is changing things for...

• October 31, 2008
• 1 comment

Challenges for the Collegiate Press, Part 2

by Anthony Pesce
2008 Knight News Challenge Winner

In my opinion everything the new media people are working on equals better journalism, and more accessible content. But it's not enough. Newspapers have to find a way to become central to the exchange of information and ideas in their communities if they want to start making more money.

• September 12, 2008
• 2 comments

A Crisis in College Media?

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Anyone interested in the challenges facing college media, especially independent college media, should check out a series that ran this week in The Daily Bruin, UCLA's independent student newspaper. There are three stories posted so far, including one that features The Chronicle Duke University, and its editor David Graham: "We were seeing all of the dire predictions about the future: We have to go online, do multimedia, blog, do video," said The Chronicle's Editor-in-Chief David Graham. "Those who are interested in journalism as a career realized we had to be pragmatic and be aware of this." But: But until the...

• January 24, 2008
• 1 comment

Wanted: A Marshall Plan for Campus Media

by Chris O’Brien
2007 Knight News Challenge Winner

Over the past few months, I've had a chance to visit various campus media groups as part of our research project on newsrooms. And as I've noted before, I'm continually surprised at how dramatically behind the times many of these groups are. Rather than closing the gap, it seems to me that these student groups are falling even further behind. There are a variety of reasons why this is happening, some of which are general, and some of which might be specific to certain organizations. But I see this is a big deal. These groups play a role that's at...

• November 19, 2007
• No comments