Journalism 3G: The Future of Technology in the Field

a symposium on computation + journalism

New computation and Internet technologies are revolutionizing the world—and the world of journalism is no exception. That was the subject and conclusion of “Journalism 3G: The Future of Technology in the Field,” a two-day symposium held Feb. 22-23 at Georgia Tech.

Symposium Quick Links
Download the Report Visit the Website Event Photos Panel Videos Talk About It Meet Attendees CompJrl – the Class
Media Contacts
Irfan Essa Associate Professor Email | 404.894.6856
Stefany Wilson Dir. of Communications Email | 404.894.7253

Sponsored by the College of Computing and hosted by the GVU Center, the symposium drew some 230 participants from across the country. Computational media have transformed journalism, participants agreed, and these innovations must be expanded and new business models created to accommodate shifting consumer realities. Rather than resist these changes, journalists should embrace them and use their professional talents to improve and capitalize on them.

In addition to the three keynote speakers below, 30 presenters grouped into nine panels shared their expertise. The symposium’s key issues and action items are summarized below, or you can read the full report.

Keynotes

	Krishna Bharat Principal scientist at Google and creator of Google News "Innovation happens when you put people together." Watch | Listen
	Michael Skoler Executive director, Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media "Journalism has become expert driven. The voices of direct experience and the questions that matter most to the audience, are often ignored." Watch | Listen
	Elizabeth Spiers Media columnist for Fast Company and founding editor of Gawker.com "I think there is something to be said for the sort of newness of people … the very young people who come in because they wanted to be reporters or maybe they wanted to be writers. They do it the way they think it should be done, and not necessarily the way that we’re all told it should be done." Watch | Listen

Key Issues and Action Items

Among the major points and ideas presented in the discussions:

1. Journalists and computationalists can better serve the public interest through dialog, learning from each other and then working together to create the robust news reporting essential to the maintenance of a democracy.
2. The aim of technology is not to replace journalists, but to empower them with new computational tools that bring depth and context to news coverage.
3. Innovations in computation and the Internet are re-defining news itself, transforming it from a top-down, elitist model to more of a grassroots, user-driven model.
4. Visualization tools can help journalists tell their stories more clearly and powerfully.
5. Social networks, blogs and user-moderated Web sites are significant sources of article ideas as well as providing a means for receiving and posting news.
6. Sophisticated algorithms can perform as arbiters of what's news not only on a macro level, but in the delivery of online news pages tailored to an individual's interests.
7. Electronic interaction between journalists and the public serves several mutually beneficial purposes. It expands a reporter's "eyes and ears on the ground" to a tremendous degree while providing feedback that leads to more relevant news coverage for the public.
8. While readership numbers for traditional print media are rapidly falling, the potential audience for online and computer-mediated news is soaring, which poses new opportunities for computation-savvy journalists.
9. Computational media is not simply an electronic and digital rendition of print. It draws a demographically different audience than print and requires collaboration among journalists and computational specialists to maximize technology's advantages and the readers' expectations.
10. The combination of journalism and computation will require new business models.

Further development of the issues outlined above may begin with addressing specific needs identified at the symposium. Among them:

1. Continue expanding the interactivity of news
   The involvement of readers -- by whatever means possible or practical -- will help define journalism in the coming years and ultimately improve the value of the craft. Reporting that incorporates many diverse elements into the story, including graphics, visualization, video and interactive components, will succeed by further engaging readers who are faced with an ever growing number of options for news.
   
2. Explore methods of verifying the accuracy and currency of online information
   The ability to verify and authenticate Internet-based and other freely available information would support journalism's twin directives of fostering trust and imparting truth. That also means journalists need a way of knowing if information on a certain subject is the most current available.
   
3. Leverage the growth of social networking to support better news information
   Networking of information and its consumers and the growth of social connections on the Internet is showing a path to new forms of how news is shared, consumed, and interpreted.
   
4. Support open source software development
   Open Source code should be the norm for computational technologies because a single, common standard facilitates collaboration efficiently.