How journalism innovation can start in the classroom

Wearables and immersive technologies are becoming the focus of more digital media experiments, but not all of them are happening in newsrooms.

Journalism schools have started their own courses to experiment, often in the style of a research and development labs.

Journalism and computer science students, among others, are tasked with exploring the potential of new technologies when it comes to their uses in the media industry.

"I think the [projects] that have the most promise are the things where we're encouraging students to try different methods of storytelling, but still paying attention to the stories that need to be told," Kathleen Bartzen Culver, education curator for PBS MediaShift, told Journalism.co.uk in a recent podcast.

Culver, also assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said she is suspicious of "tool chasing".

"Technologies are all well and good but they have to be suited to the stories that we're telling, and we can't lose sight of the need for that foundational reporting."

Wearables and virtual reality are two technologies universities have been exploring in terms of looking at their practical applications in news and storytelling.

"You see sort of incubator attempts in different universities that then can feed out into newsrooms," Culver explained.

Immersive storytelling

One such project is the virtual reality storytelling course running at the Newhouse School of Syracuse University in New York.

The technology was first explored as part of a "digital media three-pack" course, which enables Newhouse to explore innovative storytelling methods or new technologies as they emerge.

The three components on the course can be dropped as new subjects come along.

Newhouse currently teaches interactive data visualization, product management for journalists, and new technologies for new media as part of the pack, said chair in journalism innovation Dan Pacheco.

The 'new tech for new media', for example, is a collaborative process between students and staff.

"Because everything is so new... nobody can stand up on a pedestal and tell them here's how you use this for journalism because we don't know," he explained.

"I also learn so much from what they go out there and explore, they find new technologies, new products and services that I didn't know about.

If you want to be relevant in a media field in particular you have to constantly re-educate yourself.Dan Pacheco, Syracuse University

"It's almost like a research and development for media course."

Working with media outlets

At Northeastern University, a graduate programme in media innovation was developed with a three step approach, in partnership with Esquire.

Northeastern set up Storybench, a site covering the latest digital media projects; StoryLab, a semester-long course where students work with Esquire editors and writers to rethink archive stories for the digital age, which started this month; and StoryChallenge, a storytelling competition launching in October.

"The traditional method of working with media outlets was really to try to place your students in internships, have them in as guest speakers, and I was looking for much deeper integration," said assistant professor Jeff Howe.

StoryLab was created as an R&D lab and the aim is to give archive Esquire stories the "21st century treatment" as well as coming up with storytelling ideas for new content that the magazine's designers can then explore.

"[It] is an interdisciplinary course that's populated by everyone from computer scientists, to information designers, to journalists," he said.

While classes such as 'new tech for new media' are designed to be flexible and open, one of the challenges of running such courses is getting students on the same wavelength.

"A lot of it is really designed to teach the students how they can teach themselves, so being open about everything you're working on, and not being afraid to ask for help," said Pacheco.

"If you want to be relevant in a media field in particular, you have to constantly re-educate yourself."

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