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Around Campus

Developing digital tools

Students in the Reese News Lab research, test and collaborate to create media prototypes needed to support the changing face of journalism.

John Clark’s students start with a blank wall.

Within a few weeks, it’s covered with chaos. Sheets of paper sprawling with magic-marker brainstorms hang from floor to ceiling. What are the needs of the media industry, the holes that could be filled? What kinds of products could meet those needs?

Over the course of a semester, the students in the Reese News Lab – an experimental media and research project based at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication – research, test, collaborate, change course and dig in until the most feasible ideas become the new media prototypes needed to support the changing face of journalism.

What happens in the lab is more than classwork, a certain set of tasks to build a set of skills. It’s a workshop where real products backed by research and bolstered by strategy get their start.

“We ask them to buy into this larger goal, that we’re serving not only the needs of an industry, but that as journalists we also serve the people and what it takes to be a strong democracy,” said Clark, the lab’s executive director. “It’s our responsibility, here, to figure those things out.”

Products that solve problems

To get started, students in the lab are faced with what Clark calls “the three pillars” of a good prototype:

  • Desirability – do people need it?
  • Feasibility – can it be done?
  • Viability – can it be sustained?

Take, for instance, a broad problem like transparency in government, Clark said. What can the students create to confront that issue? The brainstorming begins and the students work in teams to develop designs, marketing plans and business strategies for potential products.

“We want them to think big, and if there’s a real solution that we can provide, then let’s really do it,” he said. “Let’s teach the students to create something that is sustainable and doable, and that serves a purpose.”

The ideas are explored until the best ones win out. Students are divided into teams of four and have 12 weeks to dream, research, plan and execute a new product that solves a real problem.

But, Clark said, he doesn’t want them to worry about how to launch it by semester’s end. The pressure clouds the process.

“We do it this way because the ideas are better, bigger and more creative. That’s not to say we don’t want them to launch it eventually, but if they worry about carrying it all the way to launch in 12 weeks, the ideas get extremely safe.”

Clark – along with Sara Peach, associate director of the lab, and Meghan Horton, the lab’s programmer – help guide the process, and at the end of each semester students pitch the most viable products to journalists, faculty and media experts.

One product pitched at the end of the summer 2013 – Capitol Hound – officially launched this spring.

Capitol Hound is a service that provides alerts and searchable transcripts of the proceedings at the N.C. General Assembly, enabling journalists to cover the legislature for their readers, even if they can’t get to Raleigh.

“A news organization in eastern or western North Carolina might not have a capitol reporter, and if you’re reporting about representatives from a certain town, you can subscribe and get that audio,” Clark said. “Capitol Hound allows them to be a fly on the wall, essentially.”

Capitol Hound already has subscribers ahead of the legislative session beginning May 14. A grant from the Knight Foundation’s Prototype Fund will allow interns this summer to manage Capitol Hound and perfect the process from sales and customer support to usability.

“When people resonate and latch on to something, it gains momentum and things in people’s minds magically start shifting,” said Clark. “They start to see the path: where there’s a problem for a specific group of people, there’s a service there to provide.”

A mixture of mindsets

Though Reese News Lab is based at the journalism school, filling the lab with a diversity of educational experiences brings out the best ideas. Students in journalism, computer science, the liberal arts and entrepreneurship are all a good fit for the lab.

Georgia Ditmore is a junior environmental science student who joined the lab this year and will stay through the summer to work on Digital Forest, a creative consulting group that provides environmental marketing solutions. She saw a spot in the lab as an opportunity to step outside her major and learn something new.

“We have journalism, marketing, business and environmental science all thrown together on my team. I’ll be learning how to build a website, how to make videos, all kinds of things I never expected to learn to do,” she said.

Pooja Kodavanti said her lack of business experience meant she provided a different perspective as her team developed Bench, a product that promotes transparency in the judicial system through an online database of public records on North Carolina’s judges.

“I’m a journalism student, so there were times when my weakness on the business side of developing a product actually became the team’s strength because it made us think more deeply about it,” she said.

The takeaway skills aren’t always obvious to students when they start the semester, Clark said. They learn lessons beyond technology and media.

“They learn how to work with a team, how to pitch their ideas, how to question their assumptions. All these by-products of what they are doing that better prepare them for any work they’ll do,” he said.

Creating an entrepreneurial culture

At Carolina, Clark wants to create the kind of culture that helped him cut his teeth in entrepreneurial journalism.

He came here in 2011 after 13 years at Capitol Broadcasting Company, where he was general manager of WRAL.com. As an online news producer, he was given a long leash. With Clark at the lead, WRAL.com won a number of awards and proved to be a sustainable model for online media.

“They let me do some crazy things, because they think big there,” he said. “I really fed off that. I learned how fun that was, and how difficult that was, and how trying it could be, but also rewarding.”

As Clark continued to create new ways of using media, he sought an MBA at Campbell University, where he had received his undergraduate degree. There, he fell in love with teaching. When the job opened at Carolina, he jumped at the chance to work in an entrepreneurial media lab and be with students at the same time.

“Students are very creative, and they have a sense of optimism that I wanted to be around and hold on to. It’s been a way to keep learning.”

The wall is blank again, but not for long. Summer is one of the lab’s busiest times with 12 students working full time on how to get the ideas they’ve been researching into the hands of the people who need them. Clark will be there to help them keep going.

“The students joke that all I do is ask them questions. They ask me a question, and I put it back to them,” he said. “It causes anxiety, but it’s ultimately liberating: we’re not going to tell them what to do, but we’ll help them figure out how to do it.”