AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Computation + Journalism = ? - Idea Lab

When the Knight News Challenge awarded me (and the Medill School of Journalism) a grant to offer journalism scholarships to computer programmers, I thought teaching journalism to technologists was a pretty novel idea. But it turns out some faculty at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing were thinking along similar lines.

Last spring, Prof. Irfan Essa and Ph.D. candidate Nick Diakopoulos taught an experimental course, “Computational Journalism,” for computer science students at Georgia Tech. The course is being offered again during the current (spring) semester. Through readings and guest lectures, students in the two classes have learned how journalism is practiced and developed ideas about how technology might make it better.

This week, another interesting development unfolds at Georgia Tech: the first Journalism 3G conference, billed as “A Symposium on Computation + Journalism.” The conference is bringing together journalists and computer scientists, students and professionals, to share perspectives on the intersection of journalism and technology. Speakers include Krishna Bharat, principal scientist at Google and creator of Google News; Michael Skoler, executive director of the Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media; and Elizabeth Spiers, media columnist for Fast Company and founding editor of Gawker.com. I’m moderating a panel on “Advances in News Gathering,” and Medill’s first two Knight scholarship winners (Brian Boyer and Ryan Mark) will be attending with me.

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