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.
Check our latest attempt to put it all into words.
Studio 20 - New York University from The Local East Village on Vimeo.
Watch this first clip from Jay Rosen’s interview of Clay Shirky on the Internet and the Press and check out the entire conversation from NYU’s Primary Sources.
Studio 20 Professor Jay Rosen interviewed Clay Shirky as part of the “Primary Sources” series last night. Mediabistro.com wrote about the event below.
NYU Media Professors Discuss Future Of Media By Looking Back
By Drew Grant on Dec 04, 2009 09:30 AM
Last night, New York University hosted a panel in its continuing “Primary Sources” series focusing on journalism, featuring professors and media commenters Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky.
While the topic may have officially been “New Media’s Present and Future,” the conversation quickly moved into the past: specifically delving into five years ago, which Shirky said most people mistakenly refer to as the Golden Era of Journalism — before the Internet came and took all the money away. Five years ago, Shirky stated, newspapers were losing readership left and right, but their revenue was booming. Ironically, now most newspapers actually have more readers due to their Web sites, but the money has dried up.
While most news orgs would have liked to take that conversation in the direction of how to get that money back, Shirky and Rosen were more interested in how the Internet plays into the public’s perception of the mainstream media.
Rosen, known for his work in the movement of public journalism, sited the longitudinal study that showed that in 1976 over 75 percent of Americans had “a great deal of trust” in the press, whereas 30 years later, only 4.5 percent did. Yet journalists on the whole, Rosen asserted, have only become more educated and better informed. So where did this mistrust of the media come from?
Well, from the small groups of Internet watchdogs, which perform the important function of “after-the-fact-checking,” as the professors put it. Starting (debatably) as early as Dan Rather’s MemoGate in 2004, and up to the recent Balloon Boy incident, the Internet has offered up information that contradicts what is being fed to us by our televisions or newspapers. Compare this to 30 years ago, when we may have had a pick of only several outlets of information in which to get our news, which stood as indisputable facts of the world at the time.
So is the Internet bad for all news organizations, undermining the public’s trust in once-reputable sources? Not necessarily, said Shirky, though news publications’ latest act of going to the FTC to regulate the information disseminated on the Web is absolutely the wrong direction. It is the act of forwarding a piece of journalism these days, not the publication of the piece itself, that gets these publishers an audience, he said. And by placing a pay wall or premium on your brand or story — as Rupert Murdoch and several other publishers are trying to do — you’re directly hindering that story’s ability to gain readership.
Then again, if we’re going by the adage of The Golden Age of Journalism, an audience isn’t as important as a profit.
- Interview: Studio 20 Professor Jay Rosen interviewed Clay Shirky about new media's present and future in the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute's "Primary Sources" Series. Two Studio 20 students, Matylda Czarnecka and Anjali Mullany (@matylda and @anjalimullany) live-tweeted the talk. Tweets are in reverse-chronological order:
- Shirky: The internet is partly a lens to understand changes in media that are happening.
- Shirky: The clash and tension b/w Internet’s “middle layer” and “the” media is fueling the most interesting sections about what’s happening
- Rosen: That’s why i study the media
- Rosen: If I had the internet when I was marooned on the end of my television set (growing up), I would have been in paradise.
- Rosen: The Internet is very good at forwarding info that contradicts what you’re reporting.
- Rosen: Level of professionalism in journalism has gone up, but confidence in journalism has gone down.
- Shirky: Currently, there is almost no-one for whom the infallibility of news orgs is a background assumption.
- Rosen: People did have doubts about the info they were given, but didn’t know others had same doubts. Now those people can find each other.
- Rosen: In the age of big media, all connected to big media, but not to each other.
- Shirky: How will people who normally don’t care about the news suddenly be alarmed when something bad happens? Was role of the front page.
- Shirky: We should also attend to the needs of the general population of non-newshounds.
- Shirky: We are in paradise if what you care about is access to information, but infovores are a tiny percent.
- Shirky: Many publics assembled in a newspaper audience, but we call it “the” public.
- Shirky: The paper comes in sections not so that sports fans can learn about Honduras, but so sports fans can take the sports section out.
- Shirky: When you start looking at reporting from the demand side, you see that newspapers always served the minority class.
- Rosen: Journalists have mistaken newspaper, broadcast *production* demands for *journalism* demands.
- Shirky: Old media types act like the news industry was in a golden era before the rise of the Internet.
- Shirky: In times of crisis, one of the reflexive strategies is to declare the period that ended 5 years ago as the golden era
- Shirky: The news business is shifting. If all the former income came back tomorrow, very little of the current pressures would go away.
- Shirky: The wrong notion is “if we can just return the income every year, we can reverse the flow of time.”
- Shirky: Business issues are foreign to journos - they've never been involved with those issues before.
- Shirky: Journalists were like kept women up until the end of last year. Told not to worry about the money.
- Shirky: Journalism is actualy "daily-ism." Rosen: It's daily bookkeeping.
- Rosen: Political reporters learn how to look at politics and people "out there" though lens of people trying to win the election
- Rosen: "Political reporters are behaviorists (but they don't know they are behaviorists)."
- Rosen: People in professional media covering politics are actually not identifying much with the person at home.
- Rosen: There are very few people who know how to use the Internet to get volunteers to do something coordinated.
- Shirky: "It was only this spring that newspapers became post-inevitable." (Prior to then, assumed they would inevitably continue as-is.)
- Shirky: What I saw happen in newspapers [in 90s] is everyone who said "look what's happening outside" were treated as if they were crazy
Studio 20 Professor Jay Rosen blogs about ten key ideas for the future of journalism in the social media age:
Here are the ten key ideas I plan to share with the Media140/Sydney conference underway right now in Sydney, Australia. I will be speaking to the conference via Skype in a few hours. The theme of the event is “the future of journalism in the social media age.” These ten Twitter-able ideas are my contribution to that puzzle.
1. Audience atomization has been overcome. (Link)
2. Open systems don’t work like closed systems. (Link)
3. The sources go direct. (Dave Winer)
4. When the people formerly known as the audience use the press tools they have to inform one another— that’s citizen journalism. (Link)
5. “There’s no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure.” (Clay Shirky)
6. “Do what you do best and link to the rest.” (Jeff Jarvis)
7. “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; I just don’t know which half.” (John Wanamaker)
8. “Here’s where we’re coming from” is more likely to be trusted than the View from Nowhere. (Link)
9. The hybrid forms will be the strongest forms. (Link)
10. “My readers know more than I do.” (Dan Gillmor)
Bonus notion: You gotta grok it before you can rock it. (Link)
