Looking for innovation for this year's News21 project

Besides integrating print, radio and television pieces, what kinds of things can we do that would be considered innovative?

Posted: 2007-02-27

As part of the News21 initiative, our goal is to come up with innovative ways of presenting news online. Besides integrating print, radio and television pieces, what kinds of things can we do that would be considered innovative? Blogging seems basic and not new, anyway. Discussion forums seem like a good step, but again not really ground-breaking.

I'd love any ideas about how we could be truly innovative in our coverage; especially when our topic (exploring spirituality outside mainstream religion) lends itself so well to user response.

Responses:

From Diana Day on February 28, 2007 at 5:20 PM

I was a News21 fellow last year at USC, and this issue of "innovation" irks me.

If you look at the mission overview on the NewsInitiative.org site, the focus is on "revitalizing journalism education," integrating the work of journalists more deeply into the life of the participating universities and on "preparing future media leaders to be analytic thinkers, clear writers and communicators, armed with an in-depth understanding of the context and complexity of issues facing the modern world."

Last year when the project came to a close and it was time for the media to step in and report, it seemed to me that suddenly the focus was on innovation rather than on what the fellows & their advisors had done to bring worthwhile, under-reported stories to a wide audience on the Web. No one disagreed that the fellows had produced a respectable and informative body of work and that they told stories that needed to be told.

Why is it all of a sudden so un-hip and anti-innovation to tell good stories?

I'm not at all offering anything for you to use in your coursework, Jessica. Sorry. And I'm sorry to vent last year's frustrations on you when all you're trying to do is fulfill your obligations. My bad.

So, I'll calm down now and say this: As a former fellow, I would simply advise you to look for stories that are missing in the mainstream media and to tell them as honestly as you possibly can.

But find the stories first. Then figure out the most effective (rather than innovative) way to tell that story. If you can tell it in a way that makes best use of all the Web can offer in terms of text, audio, video and interactivity, great. Looking for innovation first doesn't put the story where it belongs: first.

From Robert Niles on March 7, 2007 at 5:31 PM

FWIW, I'd love to see some sort of Venn-diagram-inspired Flash graphic -- something that maps the common beliefs that tie faiths. That way, readers could start with one faith and follow the links to see what other religions share that faith's tenets. And so forth. It'd be almost like a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" thing, but with statements of belief instead of movie actors. (And I am sure that I just violated some faith's admonition against blasphemy with this suggestion....)