ONA Issues

Georgia News Lab Looks to Fill A Void for Newsrooms | MediaShift

The Georgia News Lab is not a “scientific” project. Instead, it is a journalism experiment, born from an effort to address a longstanding problem in newsrooms — a lack of women and minorities, particularly in investigative reporting. The project is a partnership between four college journalism programs, including two Historically Black Colleges and Universities, plus the dominant news outlets in the region — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, which are both part of the Cox Media Group. The university partners are the University of Georgia, Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University and the highly diverse Georgia State University.

The Online News Association recently awarded the News Lab the Grand Prize of itsChallenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. Of the 23 finalists selected from nearly 200 applicants, ONA selected the News Lab as the project “most likely to change either local news gathering, journalism education or both.”

(Source: mediashift.org)

Can virtual reality improve juvenile justice reporting? - Columbia Journalism Review

Students at Kennesaw State University outside of Atlanta are set to embark on a fascinating experiment in using virtual reality technology to bring to life the stories of children caught in the juvenile justice system.
The project, which recently received a $35,000 grant from the Online News Association’s $1M Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education, aims to create mini-documentaries that give voice to children who are often marginalized in traditional coverage of juvenile justice issues by the confidentiality that is designed to protect them. Protecting confidentiality in, say, a typical broadcast story—a child is heard as a disembodied robot voice or seen as a pair of hands or a silhouette—can dilute the story’s impact.

(Source: cjr.org)

Congrats to the winners of the 2015-16 Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education!

Eleven projects from 13 U.S. universities each won $35,000 to help seed collaborative news projects in their communities and six more projects received honorable mentions. Each school is working with local news partners on innovative projects.

Projects will tackle a range of experiments, including: 

• Can virtual reality tell the stories of marginalized youth in the Georgia juvenile system?
  
• Can events journalism engage a local Hispanic community to follow government news affecting Latinos?
  
• Can a project tracking food truck lines show news organizations how to develop commercially valuable data?
  
• Can students create a digital network for fact-checking and investigating claims about the African-American community?
  

This is the second round of micro-grants awarded through the program, which encourages more U.S. journalism schools to be thought leaders, innovators and change agents. Learn more about the Challenge Fund projects. 

A Blueprint for How to Make J-School Matter (Again) by Amy Webb.

(Source: niemanreports.org)

Are you a journalism educator who is working on an innovative project? Apply for the Challenge Fund! ONA is giving away $35,000 micro-grants to support live, local news experiments.

It’s been a full year since we launched the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education, a $1 million competition encouraging universities to create teams to experiment with new ways of providing news and information to their communities.

The 2014 Challenge Fund winners are in their first six months of experimentation and we look forward to sharing what they’re learning, but it’s already time to look for the next batch of innovation happening in schools across the country.

As we welcome the next round of applications, we’ve pulled together tips to help you submit an excellent application, increasing your chances of getting one of the $35,000 grants available. Learn what 100 Challenge Fund experiments taught us about what makes an experiment we’re likely to fund.

Congratulations to the 12 winners of ONA’s Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education!

Each university will receive $35,000 for live news experiments that bridge journalism education, community engagement and local news, thanks to Knight Foundation, McCormick Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Learn more about the winning projects, the 13 honorable mentions, and and what we’re looking for so you can be ready for the next round of funding. 

(Source: journalists.org)