Life of a Fellow
Dispatches from current fellows about their Stanford experience.
Using Data for the Culture Beat
Political, business, finance, health reporters and others use data for their beats, how can culture editors and reporters use data techniques to help us do our jobs better?
My partner got a fellowship at Stanford, and so did I
All the benefits that open to fellows are also open to us, their affiliates!
Fellow finds microfunding can have macro impact
Now that my JSK fellowship is almost over, the funder I’ll remember most is the first one I found. His check for $317.96 helped students attend the first production day for my project.
What I learned about digital news archives
I interviewed dozens of historians, archivists, librarians, journalists and executives, who care about preserving the news, but no one has it quite figured out.
Waiting for serendipity? As JSK Fellows, we look for it
Serendipity lead me to an unexpected new approach: to look at things differently. To search for collaboration with unimaginable partners. To think otherwise … work otherwise, talk to otherwise people. And it is marvelously unsettling.
5 Tools to make government (or any) data attractive and engaging
For my JSK Fellowship at Stanford I decided to work on a topic that has fascinated me for as long as I can remember: the future of cities.
Ads are killing the news industry; Facebook offers a way out
News organizations should take a long hard look in the mirror and realize that they need to get out of a fast commodifying business and into one that will grow with them for years to come.
What’s so special about walking meetings?
I stressed over that first walking meeting … stuffing my jacket pockets with small bottles of juice, unsure if I was supposed to bring one for my host as well.
Falling in love with writing — all over again
The data I have is worthless if I can’t tie it to human experience. Characters and narrative are as central to fiction writing as to journalistic writing.
International JSK Fellows share their experiences, hopes
The biggest challenge, I think, was the culture shock. Western culture is very different from Eastern culture. It took us time to understand some social conventions.
I learned how to embrace failure — as the surest path to success
“All these activities, feedback, suggestions and ideas opened a whole new world to me and helped me to pursue my challenge in a more effective way.”
Newspaper economics in the digital age
The ability of Apple and Google to collect unique information from their users — and keep it exclusively — gives them a great advertising advantage over smaller players in the market, like regional newspapers.
A case for constructive news: a passion finally defined
Lack of in-depth analysis means the media is inclined to go for confrontational journalism, which provides for great entertainment but adds little value to the lives of people and alienates many.
11 ways to cure bad meetings – and be more creative and productive
When I heard a piece on NPR about how bad meetings are taking up more of our workdays, I tweeted the story and learned that I’m not the only one in our field who feels this way.
Journalists’ love-hate relationship with social media
Many journalists used very negative terms – “I got dragged in” or “I gave in” – when describing how they first signed up to sites like Facebook or Twitter.”
What millennials want: ‘To show the world our world’
“It’s just easy to assume that millennials don’t care about real news … The news should be the same for each generation.”
Journalism has much to gain from empathy research
One of the techniques of doing empathy research is to identify places facing problems similar to the one you are addressing. We explored healthy eating habits and regular exercise at the gym in rethinking the news ecosystem.
Listening as a designer, not a journalist, helped me look deeper
Instead of tackling something people are fighting against (not enough time in the day), perhaps we should be helping them see journalism as something they’re working toward.
It’s a better time than ever to be a journalist
Getting into journalism is more exciting than ever before. There are new challenges, more opportunities for a wider group of voices than ever before, and the chance to build a media career that is uniquely yours.
Fellow helping to start local news site learns to step aside
While I am not superfluous to the process, I am of necessity secondary. Ego has to be set aside to achieve the mission — my role is not even to guide, it is to pitch in and help.
On the frontline of media’s future with a trip down virtual reality lane
Going to this year’s Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier exhibition hall on virtual reality, you cannot help but feel as if you are seated at the front row of the future of journalism.