Studio 20 @ Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
The program seeks to draw together a diversely talented team of students who can produce excellent work that pushes the field forward and realizes some of the possibilities inherent in a multi-media, interactive and constantly evolving platform for journalism-- namely, the World Wide Web.
Studio classes provide a "hub" for organizing activity and a common space for inquiry and reflection around the program's various projects. Students are expected to be flexible and curious, generous in sharing skills, eager to pick up new knowledge and willing to adapt to what the project--and its deadlines--demand.
The curriculum has three parts: 1.) the traditional requirements of two basic reporting classes plus "the ethics of the web;" 2.) a core of three project-based classes called Studio I, II and III; and 3.) elective enrichment courses that allow students to pursue interests and work on initiatives of their own. In their third and final semester, students design their own projects with an appropriate media partner and try to create innovation--as well as a name--for themselves.
Each year Studio 20 will recruit a mix of writers, editors, videographers, audio journalists, programmers, designers and Web producers under the principle of "bring skills, share skills, learn new stuff." Recruiting will emphasize students comfortable in more than one medium and ready to tackle new challenges. One of our mottos is: "Everyone works on everything." Another: "acquire what the project requires."
In 2009-10, one of Studio 20's major partners was the New York Times. Working with editors at the Times, students and faculty designed and planned a hyperlocal news site for the East Village neighborhood in Manhattan. It launched in September, 2010: The Local East Village.
One of the innovations that came out of that project is The Virtual Assignment Desk, a WordPress plug-in. You can read more about it here.
In 2010-11 Studio20's major project was a collaboration with ProPublica, the investigative reporting non-profit. Students experimented with the genre of "the explainer," a form of journalism that provides essential background knowledge and brings clarity to complex issues in the news. Read more here and see the project site, Explainer.net.
In December of 2010, NYU announced that the renowned Internet thinker Clay Shirky would be joining the Carter Institute and Studio 20, where he will teach courses and consult on projects.
In 2011-12, Studio 20's major project will be a collaboration with The Guardian around a different approach to election coverage. You can read about it here and here.
Think you might be interested in applying? Email studio20.journalism@nyu.edu to let us know; do tell us about yourself and your background. Also: how we can find you and your work on the web.
Here is Studio's 20's official page at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism.
Here are the official instructions on how to apply. (The initial deadline is Jan. 10; we will accept applications after that but cannot guarantee space or financial aid. Please note that the GRE General Exam is required of all applicants. See our How to Apply page for more details.
Here is a map showing where we are located.
Follow professors Jay Rosen and Jason Samuels on Twitter, as well as Clay Shirky. And check back at this site for updates.
A student reflects on her time at Studio 20.
Chao Li (she’s the one on the left, seen here working at the Apple Store…) graduated in December, 2011. Shortly after, she wrote this post: My Time in Studio 20.
“With newly established programs, you can either come out of it with a type of education no one has had before, or you can have an awful experience of a program that’s not well thought out.”
Photo credit: Kevin Lim. Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
On Dec. 8, Studio 20 and The Guardian US jointly announced that they will collaborate in the development of a “citizens agenda” approach to election coverage during the 2012 campaign for president.
Jay Rosen and Amanda Michel, The Guardian’s Open Editor, explained it this way in a co-authored column that ran on The Guardian site:
The alternative to “who’s going to win in the game of getting elected?” is, we think, a “citizens agenda” approach to campaign coverage. It starts with a question: what do voters want the candidates to be discussing as they compete with each other in 2012? If we can get enough people to answer to that question, we’ll have an alternative to election coverage as usual…
Social media and the two-way nature of the Internet make it possible to ask that question of many more people than you could reach in a poll, although polling is important for reliability.
The answers that come in form the basis for the citizens agenda. It won’t be a single issue, of course, but a basket of top concerns broadly shared by respondents – six to ten, or perhaps as many as a dozen priorities that originate not with journalists or campaign managers, but with voters. Some may be different from the issues the operatives see as advantageous to their candidate, or maybe not. The point is that we won’t know until we ask.
Once synthesised, the citizens agenda can be used as an alternative starting point for the Guardian’s campaign journalism. When the candidates speak, their promises and agendas are mapped against the citizens agenda. Reporters assigned to cover the campaign can dig deep on the items that make up the citizen’s agenda. In questioning the candidates, the Guardian will ask about things that flow from that agenda. Explainers should try to clarify and demystify the problems named in the citizens agenda.
A key course in the spring 2012 curriculum, Studio Two, will be devoted to the project. That course, taught by Jay Rosen, will have a technologist and newsroom developer as part of the team, Matt Terenzio.
“Studio 20 students will work alongside the Guardian’s journalists in brainstorming, designing and managing features on guardiannews.com through early May 2012,” Michel and Rosen said. “Together, we will arrive at the picture of how people want journalists to cover the election through a number of traditional and non-traditional methods, including sampling science, internet polling, web forms, social media, old fashioned reporting, discussions and debates, experimental features, plus staff and user-generated content.”
The announcement was covered by Nieman Lab, where Megan Garber wrote:
Studio 20′s role in the project, Rosen told me, will be in part to act as an interactive team that will help with the inflow and engagement of users; students in the program will also conduct research and analysis and think through — perhaps even invent — features and tools that can foster that engagement in new ways, testing them out on The Guardian’s U.S. site. (Michel calls the students a kind of “independent brain trust.”
For more background and context on the project, see the post at Jay Rosen’s blog, PressThink.
You are cordially invited to the Studio 20 Open Studio, a presentation of innovations in journalism by the students and innovators of Studio 20. These final projects are the both the capstone project for students enrolled in the NYU Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, and a survey of cutting edge advances in journalism today.
Time: 5:30 PM, December 14th, 2011
Place: Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University 20 Cooper Square, 6th Floor New York, NY 10003
Presenters:
Chelsea Stark partnered with Forbes to explore how to make online video a better return on investment. She focused on optimizing its video content for search and social spaces and built up its online contributor network. She also created guides and repeatable work flows to allow Forbes to repeat these processes in the future. @chelseabot
‘Chao Li spent the summer prepping Future Journalism Project for the work she is doing for them this fall. Chao’s Studio III project is to create tutorials for people interested in digital journalism. A part of that includes interviewing CEOs of startups and helping them create tutorials while they are busy launching their App or service. @cli6cli6
Niel Bekker helped manage and produce social gaming content for the Huffington Post. For Studio III, he is producing an original newsgame that addresses the inefficiencies of game development in an online news environment. @nielbekker
Brittany Binowski drew inspiration from many innovative social feeds on Twitter as well as CNN’s In America documentary unit to help create a list of best practices and suggestions for investigative news organizations. The suggestions aim to better connect sources with reporters and producers in the newsroom and, therefore, create better and more informed journalism.@binowski
Blair Hickman is developing a digital toolkit to help journalists report on social change more effectively. Her partner, Dowser Media, is trying to broaden the scope of typical news coverage by pioneering thoughtful, critical coverage of social innovation—what they call Solution Journalism.@amandablair
This semester, Colin Jones worked on developing a live video chat project with the New York Daily News. These chats took user comments, submitted through Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, and had them answered live on the site by reporters and guests. @Colin_Jones
Radio ProPublica is an experimental audio project that Assia Boundaoui is developing for ProPublica. The project included producing narrative-driven investigative podcasts that seek to explain news in the public interest and engage users by soliciting UGC and crowdsourcing questions in need of explanation. @assuss
This fall, Rachel Slaff is working with GoodHousekeeping.com to solicit and showcase user-generated videos. She’s thrilled to experiment with the traditional journalistic framework of narration by allowing users to share their own stories. @rachelslaff
For Tom Chen’s Studio III project, he teamed up with Artinfo.com and designed an interactive video companion for the website. It will be a video component that largely enriches the visitors’ interactive experience with the site. And it will live on different platforms (website, mobile app, podcast). @tomstation
For Studio III, Nasry Esmat worked with Mujaz.me on creating the first social media news page in Egypt. Mujaz is an Egyptian news aggregator and the created page aims to tell news stories by curating social media posts that challenge the official narrative of traditional news sources. @nasry
Erin Evans worked with the New York Times’ education site, SchoolBook, on an experiment in community outreach. She produced a case study based on her findings at a school in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. @heyerinevans
David Holmes is working with the New York Daily News to implement automated news quizzes while developing a workflow model for algorithmic journalism. @David_M_Holmes
This past summer, Matt Diaz interned with the User Experience and Product Research Team at the New York Times doing both qualitative and quantitative user research. This fall Matt is continuing his work with The Times. His Studio III project is an original research effort centered on the digital identities and behaviors of young adults with a focus on how they produce and consume news on mobile devices. @mgdiaz
This fall, Ruth Spencer explored how data literacy is emerging as a necessary journalistic skill. She created The Datamaster for Jim Brady, Editor in Chief of Journal Register Company. The Datamaster is a comprehensive plan for how Journal Register Company can integrate data resources across its network; it includes a corporate strategy and staff training guide. @onthewag
Din Clarke ’s project, Sight and Sound, has both a video and audio component. She built a prototype for a portable video recording booth to collect stories from residents who have limited or no internet access and taught audio recording/editing to young adults at Reel Works. The pieces will air on local radio station WBAI. @dinclarke
Todd Olmstead collaborated with Mashable to grow engagement through their comments. Mashable already has a highly active commenting community, and Todd’s goal was to optimize the quality contributions that these readers make on the site. @toddjolmstead
Studio 20 has been hosting an “Open Workspace” every Monday night at 20 Cooper Square from 6pm - 12am. We want to encourage the journalism school here to adopt more of a collaborative vibe and we’re off to a good start. Tonight we hosted the first co-working session with Studio 20 and ITP (Interaction Technology Program at Tisch, where many of us take electives). Pizza, wine, chocolate, beer and were served. Success!
Check our latest attempt to put it all into words.
Studio 20 - New York University from The Local East Village on Vimeo.
Since September 2010, Zoe has worked with Studio 20 as we try and solve the big puzzles in journalism. In Studio II, She introduced us to the skills and tactics we need to execute our long-term project with ProPublica. Zoe taught us the value of iterative project management and agile development, and also lead weekly workshops on everything from photoshop to public speaking. This semester in Studio III, Zoe is working with each of us to make sure we’re on track and prepared to deliver our final projects on time and with confidence.
Zoe has been a resource (even a life saver) for the last year and it’s about time that we give her a proper introduction.
When she’s not at Studio 20, Zoe is either at ITP (where she teaches a class on interaction design) or at General Assembly, where she manages Squishables, one of her many companies. (And yes, I am talking about these giant stuffed balls of fuzz).
Zoe is not the typical journalism prof and that suits us just fine; Studio 20 is far from your average journalism program. We asked Zoe to tell us herself about what it’s been like to transition from working with programs and code to stuffed animals and journalists.
S20: How do you see your role in Studio 20?
My job is to make sure everyone involved in Studio 20 has the skills and connections to do any kind of innovation they can dream up, without regard for technical issues or inexperience. Journalists stereotypically run the risk of fearing change - I can’t fix that but I can prove to them that change is a lot easier than they thought (and also a giggle).
S20: What did you do before joining Studio 20?
Most recently I was at ITP, NYU, and these days on top of the teaching I do a lot of consulting work for existing Media Outlets, news startups, and nonprofits involved with freedom of speech. Usually they’re projects involved in Data Visualization or Meme-Tracking (in one instance, both). And of course I also run the ecommerce startup Squishable (Snurfle us on Facebook).
Before then I was doing web architecture at a large financial regulatory institution, and before then I was consulting for a company involved with running free elections in unusual places. Prior to that….the US Department of Labor, and also did a stint for the US Postal Service. Going way back in time, I was a briefly a researcher in Human Computer Interaction at Brunel University, a Runner at the BBC, and before that I worked for a nonprofit on creating eBay’s Giving Works Tool. Before that, like everyone else in the early 00’s, an internet startup that went under. And before that I worked for the Hubble Space Telescope.
And at one point in 2005 I worked for a couple weeks on a kangaroo farm in Australia. So there’s that.
S20: What attracts you to working with journalists/journalism students?
Folks involved in startups often come at life from this POV: I have a cool idea and if I develop it a bit I bet I can get some people who want to use it. But journalists have this amazing situation going on right now: A lot of people want to use my product, if only I could think up a cool idea how to let them. It’s just a more powerful, more rewarding way to think about the world. More fun too.
S20: What has surprised you about Studio 20?
Surprises on working with Studio 20 - hmm. I didn’t necessarily expect the level of dedication I found here. Because of the three-semester layout it seems like the students are incredibly involved and supportive of each other. It’s amazing the advertising agencies aren’t banging in their door demanding to know how they do it.
S20: How do you compare your work at ITP with your work at Studio 20
ITP and Studio 20, they have very different institutional feels, but it’s interesting to notice how convergent evolution has kicked in here. From originally coming from such divergent POV’s, the drive for innovation and experimentation has linked them up in a way I’m not sure anyone expected. It would be as if Birds and Butterfly’s suddenly realized they were both good at the same thing. And decided to help each other modify some wing structure. And hold races. I can keep going with this metaphor if you want.
The Studio 20 singer/songwriter in residence Dave Holmes, the man behind The Euro Debt Crisis Disco Song and The Fracking Song, is back with another hit.
The Redistricting Song is Dave’s third music video explainer and the second he’s created in partnership with ProPublica. As he’s done before, Dave has combined clever lyrics with a catchy beat and awesome animation to bring users into a highly complicated subject: redistricting.
ProPublica’s most recent investigation, “Redistricting: How Powerful Interests Are Drawing You Out of a Vote” examines the opaque methodology behind the process and how its effects can hurt voters. ProPublica has created a “Devil’s Dictionary” to break down the complex jargon and a primer, “The Story so Far” along with the song, to bring users into the investigation itself.
“The song isn’t going to tell you everything you need to know about redistricting. But it is a gateway. It’s catchy; it has the potential to go viral. Because of all that, it has the potential to draw people in,” Dave recently told The Nieman Lab.
As we learned last year, the best explainers give users what they need to understand the latest news. The Redistricting Song definitely does that, with a backbeat.
Last spring we were thrilled to announce that Clay Shirky joined the Studio 20 faculty. This Fall, seven third-semester Studio 20 students elected to take his Designing Conversational Spaces class at ITP.
The class addresses a very specific problem: how to design online environments that support or encourage good conversation? Through studying the trade-offs and dynamics present in existing web communities and reconfiguring them as we build our own, the Conversational Spaces class aims to figure it out.
In Clay’s own words,
“The ITP student population is split between technologists who care about aesthetics and artists who aren’t afraid of machines”.
We like to think that Studio 20 adds a third ingredient to the mix, journalists who live and breathe the web, and we can’t wait to see what we build together.
We’re nearly half-way through the semester and work on our final projects is in full swing. Our assignment was to create a conversational environment built around a single piece of content. Check back in a few weeks to see our progress. This week we’ll be testing our project’s in class but we will soon be launching them online.
Check out omgimg.us - a final project from last year’s Conversational Spaces class for an example of what we’re hoping to achieve.
We’re in the middle of the make-it-or-break-it period for our Studio 3 projects. According to Jay, October should be our biggest month in terms of productivity. Each week we meet to discuss four projects as they progress and each one is as different as the next.
Here’s a look at what the 16 of us are working on this year:
Assia Boundaoui began this summer freelancing radio reports for the BBC and PRI in Chicago and New York, she moved on to working as producer for NPR’s On The Media at WNYC, and ended the summer working in Bahrain.
Assia’s Studio III project is developing, producing and distributing content for “Radio ProPublica” a new audio platform for the investigative journalism newsrtoom. Radio Propublica audio stories will address issues in the public interest and explain news in the current news-cycle, stories will be distributed via radio broadcast and online podcast. Crowd-sourced questions generated from users, via a Soundcloud app, will serve as both ideas for the creation of new audio stories and will be featured within the audio stories themselves.
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Ruth Spencer was hired as an Editorial Strategist at Postmedia Network this summer, where she worked to implement creative editorial concepts throughout the company’s online properties.
This fall, Ruth is working for Jim Brady, Editor-in-Chief of Journal Register Company on a plan for how JRC can integrate data resources in its newsrooms to drive editorial and strategic decision making.
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Tom Chen worked with Artinfo.com and created an original video series called “Artinfo Goes To China”, for which he traveled to China and interviewed Chinese contemporary artists, gallerists and designers.
For Tom’s Studio III project, he’s teaming up with Artinfo.com and design a video companion for its Gallery Guide section. It will be a video component that lives on different platforms (website, mobile app, podcast) and largely enriches the visitors’ interactive experience with the site.
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Chelsea Stark spent the summer working at Mashable as a Community Management Intern, where she interacted with Mashable’s exploding community in all areas, including over social media, traditional written posts, and by assisting in organizing the annual Social Media Day meetup.
Chelsea is working with Forbes to explore how to make online video a better return on investment for companies that are traditionally focused on print media, both with working internally to better optimize content for search and social spaces, and by helping Forbes build its online contributor network.
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This past summer, Matt Diaz interned with the User Experience Team at The New York Times doing both qualitative and quantitative user research.
This fall Matt is continuing my work with The Times. His Studio III project is an original research effort centered on the digital identities and behaviors of young adults with a focus on how they produce and consume news.
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Dave Holmes was a Social Media Production Assistant at the New York Daily News and a Web Intern at the New Yorker. He also worked on “The Euro Crisis Song” for the Guardian.
For his Studio III project, Dave is working with the New York Daily News to reinvent quizzes for the news room. The NYDN is looking to build a stronger community around the Daily News’ content while simplifying the work-flow for news quiz production.
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This Niel Bekker helped manage and produce social gaming content for the Huffington Post.
For Studio III, he is producing an original newsgame that addresses the inefficiencies of game development in an online news environment.
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Erin Evans was the weekend editor for TheRoot.com, where she produced daily e-mail newsletters, managed the site’s Facebook and Twitter feeds and completed other web production duties. She also freelanced for Howard University Magazine. As for the fun stuff? She ate at really great restaurants all over Brooklyn and re-joined a running group so she wouldn’t pack on the pounds.
For her Studio III project, Erin is working with the New York Times’ new education site, SchoolBook. She is helping to develop community outreach strategies to ensure that parents, teachers, principals and education advocates contribute to their questions, comments and perspectives to the site. By the end of the semester, she hopes to have produced and facilitated a series of contributions and also to provide what she’s calling a guidebook for community outreach.
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This summer, Blair Hickman worked as a Senior Editor for Dowser Media, a news site that reports on social innovation and change, ie “Solution Journalism.” It’s a startup, so she got her hands in a little bit of everything: management, product development, e-mail marketing, social media strategy and execution, nitty-gritty tech work, partnerships, and business development and strategy.
The media focuses disproportionately on problems, often leaving the users to ask “Well, then what?” In an attempt to tackle this problem, Blair is researching, developing and prototyping a digital toolkit to help working professionals and journalism schools integrate solution journalism into their workflows. It will have several product components, and is being constructed in the spirit of open-source - suggestions and tweaks welcome.
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Din Clarke worked with Picture Projects on a kiosk that will provide consumers with detailed information on the content of their food purchases. Din also started working at WBAI radio as a producer. Two audio pieces she recorded and edited aired on WBAI as part of a special program commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Attica.
Din’s project, Sight and Sound, has both a video and audio component. She’s building a prototype for a portable video recording booth to be used to collect stories/complaints/suggestions from residents who have limited or no internet access. For the audio component, Din is teaching audio recording/editing to young adults at Reel Works so that they can create pieces for Reel to Reel radio and WBAI.
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This summer, Todd Olmstead worked as Assistant Editor of Digital and Community Outreach at the Local East Village. He spent the summer managing and growing the Local’s social media presence as well as developing relationships with members of the community. An East Village resident himself, Todd loves the neighborhood and recommends you get a cup of coffee at Abraço.
For his Studio 3 project, he’ll be working with Mashable to grow engagement through their comments. Mashable already has a highly active commenting community, and through this project Todd will look to acknowledge the quality contributions that these readers make. He will oversee this project with Mashable’s community and development teams.
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Nasry Esmat lead six workshops at the “Investing in The Future” foundation in Cairo, Egypt. He trained journalists and civil society workers on new media skills including social media tools and creating content creatively.
For Studio III, Nasry is creating the first social media news page in Egypt.
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Brittany Binowski worked as a Social Media Intern for Code and Theory, an upcoming interactive agency with clients such as Vogue.com and The Daily Beast, to help manage and evolve their social media strategy for the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.
This semester, Brittany plans to use her experiences at Code and Theory to make the social media presence of CNN more two-way. She will be working with CNN In America, the documentary unit, to help their Twitter feeds (@BlackInAmerica and @CNNLIA) better connect sources with reporters and producers in the newsroom and, therefore, create better and more informed journalism.
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Colin Jones worked at both the New York Daily News as a Social Media Production Assistant and at Rolling Stone as an Online Intern. At Rolling Stone, Colin was tasked with assisting Assistant Editor of RollingStone.com Erica Futterman with general tasks on the website including CMS work, Tumblr management and writing for the site.
This semester, Colin is working on developing a live video chat project for the New York Daily News. These chats will find user comments, submitted through Twitter, Facebook and other outlets, being answered live on the site by reporters and guests. Another prong of the project includes developing a program that will help reporters use mobile live video from the scene of stories.
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Rachel Slaff spent the summer as a web intern for GoodHousekeeping.com. Her job included building content for the site, writing and editing web copy, and editing the Good Housekeeping Research Institute blog. She also assisted in the site’s redesign — check out the new and improved HTML5 edition of GoodHousekeeping.com!
This fall, Rachel is working with GoodHousekeeping.com to solicit and showcase user-generated videos. She’s thrilled to experiment with the traditional journalistic framework of narration by allowing users to share their own stories.
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Chao Li spent the summer prepping Future Journalism Project for the work she is doing for them this fall. Chao’s Studio III project is to create tutorials for people interested in digital journalism. A part of that includes interviewing CEOs of startups and helping them create tutorials while they are busy launching their App or service.
A big part of the Studio 20 experience is the speakers series.
Every second week in Studio I, we invite industry leaders and innovators to join us for a conversation over wine and cheese. Last year, we hosted Gaby Darbyshire, COO, Gawker; Burt Herman Co-Founder and CEO, Storify; Megan McCarthy Founding Editor, MediaGazer and News Editor, The Observer and Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Ideas, among others.
This year’s schedule is set. Here it is:
September 13: Jim Kennedy, VP/Director Strategic Planning, The Associated Press
September 27: Brian Stelter, media reporter, New York Times
October 18: David Bornstein, Founder, Dowser
October 25: Amanda Michel, Engagement Editor, ProPublica
November 7: Elizabeth Spiers, Editor-in-Chief, New York Observer
November 22: Emily Bell, Director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism
December 14: Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Ideas, among others.
The discussions are totally off the record (most of what we talk about never leaves the room) and Powerpoint presentations are forbidden. In fact, we ask our speakers not to bring any notes at all, unless they’re written on a napkin.
Last spring, we presented the findings of our project “Building A Better Explainer”, to a live audience at the Varick Street Incubator. We showcased the explainers we created for ProPublica and other partners to a room full of journalists, editors and entrepreneurs.
One of the highlights of the night was the debut of our music video explainer, “My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)”. For months, we’d been trying to find the balance between creating a stimulating, engaging, factually correct and journalistically sound video to accompany ProPublica’s Hydraulic Fracturing investigation. We were proud of our work (especially of Dave Holmes who wrote and produced the song) and we were looking forward to showing it to the world. Within minutes of its release, the song went viral. We tracked the coverage across the web and gathered the best of the links below.
My Water’s On Fire Tonight was also slected as a Notable Entry in the Knight-Batten Awards and won an Honourable Mention at the EthicMark awards.
The wave of attention inspired The Guardian to reach out to Studio 20 and commission their own music video explainer on the European sovereign debt crisis. In early July, we released The Euro Crisis Song.
Look out for another music video explainer coming soon!
My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song) has been featured in:
More on ExplainerNet:
We tracked our progress and posted our research and results of our project, “Building A Better Explainer” on our blog, ExplainerNet. We’ve also uploaded examples of our work to the site for you to see and/or download. The site is a great resource for anyone looking to know more about how to create explainers for the web.
The Euro Crisis Song, brought to you by The Guardian and Studio 20.
