Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern to announce major Medill-McCormick project

Professors in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Medill School of Journalism will announce a new partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on Thursday afternoon that will invest $4.2 million in innovative technology and journalism at Northwestern over the next four years.

The investment will fund the creation of a joint laboratory combining journalism and engineering to develop new digital tools to bring news to 21st century audiences, according to sources involved with the project. The specifics of the announcement had not been released even to Medill faculty members by Wednesday.

The partnership will allow a full-time faculty member and undergraduate and graduate students in both McCormick and Medill the opportunity to bring the new technology to Chicago-area news organizations via media partnerships. They will also work to improve dozens of existing open-source media tools developed through annual Knight News Challenge innovation grants.

The Knight Foundation is a national organization that invests in journalism projects, with an emphasis on digital innovation. The NU grant is one of its largest to date.

“If this works, the people of Chicago will benefit through better flows of news and information, Chicago media will benefit from accelerated adoption of new digital tools and universities will benefit from a demonstration of a new kind of partnership between journalism and engineering schools,” said Eric Newton, the vice president for the Knight Foundation’s journalism program.

Chicago will be the “guinea pig” of the project, and technologies successful here will be spread to other cities.

A news conference detailing the investment will take place at 4 p.m. in the McCormick Tribune Center. The lab’s accompanying website will also be unveiled at the event.

NU was invited to apply for the grant because of existing ties between its journalism and engineering schools, said McCormick Prof. Larry Birnbaum.

For the past few quarters, Medill and McCormick professors have co-taught an interdisciplinary class for journalism and engineering students focused on developing tools for journalists. In addition, in 2007 NU was the recipient of a Knight News Challenge grant to offer master’s degrees in journalism to students with backgrounds in computer programming.

The investment will be part of the Medill/McCormick Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism, which has existed for the past two years without any real showcase project.

The new media innovation lab will be that project.

“There aren’t many places in the world where computer scientists and journalists are working side by side,” Birnbaum said. “We’re really unique in that regard, and that makes us a neat place to do this kind of project.”

The idea for an innovation lab has been in development over the past two years by four professors: Birnbaum and Kristian Hammond in McCormick and Rich Gordon and Owen Youngman in Medill.

The lab will attempt to create projects that will assist both journalists and their audiences.

For example, the interdisciplinary class developed a tool for reporters writing articles to post questions and receive instant answers from a network of fellow journalists. They’ve also devised a system that scans users’ Twitter posts and creates a personalized newspaper based on their interests.

“It’s incredibly exciting for us ,and it’s incredibly exciting for Northwestern, for both the journalism school and the engineering school,” Birnbaum said. “It’s fabulous that Knight is investing in Northwestern.”

The lab will begin hiring a staff of software developers, business developers and audience analysts by Spring Quarter. Undergraduate and graduate students can work for the lab through in-class or independent projects guided by faculty members.

The location for the lab has not been set, though Birnbaum said it will be in the McCormick Tribune Center or Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center.

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Northwestern to announce major Medill-McCormick project