Studio 20 @ Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute

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 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.

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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 summer 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.