The University of Maryland is launching a new journalism center designed to help news organizations use innovative computer technologies to develop new ways for people to engage in critical public policy issues.
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism will provide seed money to news organizations that propose interactive news ideas and team them with computer scientists to help build software and easy-to-navigate news experiences. The institute also will spotlight the best cutting-edge news innovations through the Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
"J-Lab will help address a critical need in today's journalism," said Thomas Kunkel, dean of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. "We desperately need to develop new ideas on how to excite and engage news consumers about serious issues, or risk losing them to the frivolity of sensationalism, sound bites and infotainment."
The new institute is a spin-off of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which completes its work next year. Over the past decade, the center has supported hundreds of civic news experiments that invited public interaction through town hall meetings, focus groups and other methods new to journalism organizations. "Civic journalism taught us that a lot of people accept information when they own some of it," said J-Lab Executive Director Jan Schaffer. "And they own it -- not when it's spoon fed -- but when they help gather it, discuss it, examine trade-offs and envision solutions."
"Now is the time to capitalize on new technology that can help make people smarter about public issues and advance civic participation in the digital arena," said Schaffer, who was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer before directing the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.
J-Lab will also give $15,000 awards each year to journalists who build the best interactive news models that foster public participation. The Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism honor the late James K. Batten, former chairman and CEO of Knight Ridder, who championed the idea that journalism can both build citizenship and tell hard truths.
A $230,000 Knight Foundation grant will fund an annual awards competition and educational symposium in 2003 and 2004.
"Batten's vision helped launch the Pew Center, which partnered, from the start, with Knight Ridder Newspapers to create civic news templates," said Hodding Carter III, Knight Foundation president and CEO. "The Batten Awards honor both Jim and his spirit of innovation in service of community."
The Knight Foundation has made grants to a series of projects nationwide that hope to further the goals of journalism in the public interest.
Information on J-Lab and the Batten Awards is available at http://www.j-lab.org. To get J-Lab news and updates, subscribe to the J-Flash electronic newsletter by emailing [email protected]. Pew Center subscribers will continue to receive J-Flash.
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