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 2011-12, Studio 20's major project was a collaboration with The Guardian around a different approach to election coverage. You can read a summary from the Nieman Lab. Then see the project in action on the Guardian: here and here.
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.
Think you might be interested in applying? Email studio20.journalism@nyu.edu to let us know. Tell us about yourself and your background and 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.
Studio 20 Director Jay Rosen describes more details in a PressThink post:
Look: Not everyone is going to be thrilled that NYU is doing this with the New York Times. We’ll have to take those problems on, not as classroom abstractions but civil transactions with the people who live and work here. You know what? It’s going to be messy and hard, which is to say real.
Rosen outlines 16 points about the site and its goals, including Studio 20’s instrumental role:
6. Whereas CUNY took over the production of an existing site, LEV is more of a start-up. The Local: East Village doesn’t exist yet. The Journalism faculty and students at NYU are to give form to it, and we are presently hard at work on that, assisted by the editors and blogging team at the New York Times.
7. Deciding how to launch the site, how it should operate, and how to make it effective in the East Village community are ideal tasks for students in NYU’s Studio 20 program, which I direct, assisted by my colleague, Jason Samuels, formerly of ABCNews.com. The students in Studio 20 are immersed in the innovation puzzle in journalism; they learn by doing projects with media partners who are struggling with the same puzzle. We’ve devoted their spring seminar—a class called Studio 2, which I teach—to this collaboration with the New York Times. They are working on every aspect of the project: from the design of the site to relationships with the community, from work flows to topic pages, data apps to user participation, social media to beat reporting.
The project also includes collaboration with Visiting Scholar Dave Winer, NYU’s business school and computer science department, as well as with fwix.com:
11. There are other parties collaborating in this project. Dave Winer, a visiting scholar at NYU and a technical adviser to Studio 20, has already contributed east-village.org, a river of news-style feed that will help us curate the blogosphere and wider web. He will advise us on other parts of the project, as well. Avi Fein and Natalie Marchant, students from the Stern School of Business Consulting Corps, are working with Studio 20 on the sustainability puzzle. I’ve asked them to figure out what the most likely sources of revenue are and recommend a strategy we can follow over the next year or two. Anuj Bajaj, Erik Froese and SungHyun Bang, students in Professor Evan Korth’s Information Technology Projects class in the computer science program at NYU are collaborating with Studio 20 on an open source assignment desk system that we can use for LEV. (This is one of the holy grails of citizen journalism.) Darian Shirazi, founder and head geek at fwix.com, is building us an aggregation tool based on his system for isolating new web content about particular places.
Read the full post for more.
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