Plans for a one-of-a-kind joint journalism-engineering laboratory were officially announced at the McCormick Tribune Center forum in a news conference Thursday.
Approximately 30 students, faculty and staff members attended the announcement hosted by the Medill/McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism. More than 60 people from across the nation joined the conference via webcast.
The Knight News Innovation Laboratory is the result of collaboration between Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Medill School of Journalism and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a national organization that funds projects aiming to advance journalistic ideals. The lab, funded by a grant of $4.2 million distributed over four years from the Knight Foundation, will combine journalistic editorial judgment with computer science skills to develop innovations in media consumption, said McCormick professor and Center director Kristian Hammond.
Specifically, it will aid students in developing software that will help move journalism into the 21st century, he said.
“Right now, we are amazingly grateful,” Hammond said. “We think we can do astounding things.”
The partnership was first reported by The Daily on Thursday.
The lab will allow undergraduate and graduate students to work both inside and outside of class, with opportunities for research during the summer, McCormick professor Larry Birnbaum said.
The announcement was followed by a question-and-answer session with a panel of the project’s leaders: McCormick Dean Julio Ottino, professors Hammond and Birnbaum, and Medill Dean John Lavine and professors Owen Youngman and Rich Gordon.
Eric Newton, vice president of the Knight Foundation’s journalism programs, joined the discussion via speakerphone.
Medill-McCormick interdisciplinary classes have been taught at NU for several quarters. These classes have yielded online projects such as Congressional Closeup and Patchwork Tweets.
McCormick senior David Kanarek is a student in one of these interdisciplinary classes, Collaborative Innovation in Journalism and Technology, taught by Birnbaum, Hammond and Medill Prof. Jeremy Gilbert.
The lab is relevant, as journalists constantly need developing technology, Kanarek said.
“It’s a great opportunity to create an exciting new tool once in a while,” he said. “Software developers will need to have that journalistic experience to create these.”
Medill sophomore Hilary Fung said the concept of the lab is intriguing.
“The (journalism) school has always stayed ahead in the journalism world, and this will keep that going,” she said. “Some people say journalism is a dying field, but I don’t think that’s true. It’s just changing a lot, and in the past we haven’t figured out how to monetize the online thing.”
NU is the “perfect host” for the Knight News Innovation Laboratory, which is the first lab of its kind in the country, because of this existing relationship between Medill and McCormick, Newton said.
“This unique partnership between a journalism school and an engineering school will show us whether a major university can accelerate media innovation to benefit its surrounding community,” Newton said.
The research and software done in the lab will be used in professional journalism application by local media outlets, Youngman said.
“We’re building tools for journalists, we’re building apps for story building,” he said. “We intend to do this in partnership with one another, with other parts of the University, but crucially in partnership with local media practitioners in the Chicago market.”
