Reflecting on the San Francisco experience
Medill media innovation students learned from courses, internships and the Bay Area scene
Medill students studying media innovation and entrepreneurship wrapped up a stimulating and challenging program in San Francisco in December before returning to Chicago for the second half of their academic program.
“Working and living in San Francisco for a quarter gave me the immersive experience I needed in order to know what it looks and feels like in the startup and tech ecosystem,” Andrew Weiler said.
The students took three courses at Northwestern University’s San Francisco campus and worked two days a week in internships at Bay Area media and tech companies. They also visited innovative businesses, networked with industry professionals and heard from guest speakers about the changing media and technology landscape.
“By studying and working in San Francisco, I could fully immerse myself in the unique Bay Area culture,” said Ju Park. “There were so many opportunities to meet people with the same interests and participate in cool events. Being surrounded by big-name tech companies, I felt I was in the right place to learn more about entrepreneurship.”
The classroom experience
Each of the three classroom courses focused on a separate aspect of media product development: audience, business and technology.
“I really enjoyed the balance of the curriculum,” Weiler said. “Each class provided me with an entire set of new information in a different area that I felt could be directly applied my professional work.”
In Design Thinking and Research for Media Products, taught by designers Anthony Jakubiak and Hannah Hudson, students used a “human-centered design” approach to understand the needs of users and to prototype a product idea to satisfy those needs.
This year’s class worked on a challenge from the San Francisco Chronicle: For the upcoming election year, develop product concepts related to politics, government and elections that can support the company’s digital-subscription strategy.
Based on extensive research and interviews with Bay Area residents (newspaper subscribers and non-subscribers), four student teams presented product prototypes to the Chronicle’s leadership team. The product ideas included:
- A regular feature attached to national news stories that explains how they affect people in the Bay Area.
- A daily service providing “casual, concise and convenient text messages” about important local politics and elections stories.
- A series of happy hour events for politically engaged young people — “because being informed doesn’t have to feel like work.”
- A newcomer’s guide to Bay Area issues for people who’ve recently moved to the region.
“Design thinking is so valuable for media companies because it puts the audience at the center of everything you do,” student Ruby Thompson said. “Understanding human-centered research and design gives companies the ability to create more valuable products for their users and, in turn, become a more successful and profitable business.”
In The Business of Innovation, taught by Uber executive Birju Shah, the students were immersed in the business realities of startups, media firms and technology companies. The students had to research a product idea and put together product requirements and marketing plans.
“After the class, I felt like I had the tools to understand what made innovation promising or not, the considerations needed to start a business, and was able to create a pitch deck for an idea I intend to bring to fruition,” said student Camille Galles. “I appreciated how Birju took the time to individually meet with us and was always enthusiastic and supportive, and never made us feel dumb.”
In Mobile Web Development for Media, taught by Marketwatch Director of Product Brian Aguilar, students learned the software development process and, in small teams, coded a functioning prototype using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The students had several opportunities to get critiques of their product ideas from professional engineers and product managers.
“I could develop my coding skills by learning JavaScript and more programming languages,” Park said. “The guests from other companies also gave us lots of insightful advice on our product.”
The internship experience
The students this fall worked in different disciplines and different kinds of organizations, for instance: content strategy (Healthline); product management (BestReviews); and product development (SmartNews and Advance Publications’ Alpha Group).
The mix of companies ranged from traditional media (KQED) to high tech (Quantcast, which uses artificial intelligence to generate ad revenue, audience insights and media measurement). The work ranged from developing a new newsletter (at Reveal, the Center for Investigative Reporting) to doing audience and business research (for Berkeleyside’s new Oakland-based publication).
Part of the value of the internships, the students said, was learning and applying new skills. But they also benefited from seeing how innovative companies work, and appreciated the chance to learn about their culture and company practices.
“I feel truly blessed to have had the opportunity at SmartNews,” Park said. “I learned so much about how teams in tech companies work and interact with each other.”
Avery Dews worked in product management at BestReviews. Though he has a software engineering background, he had never worked as a product manager — a role whose focus is making sure that a technology-enabled product is actually needed and used. One of his major projects was internal — working on improvements to the site’s publishing technology.
“I had never worked with any type of content management system before, and so it was really interesting to see the type of systems that people use in media industries,” Dews said. “It was very useful to learn how to conduct user interviews and figure out the language that is needed to fully empathize with users while also also knowing how to get them to answer what you need them to answer.”
Mark Stenberg interned for Advance Alpha Group, a product incubator run by the Advance Local group of newspaper and digital publications. He worked on the rollout of Subtext, a texting platform for publishers. Having previously worked as editor in chief of Study Breaks, an online publication written by and for college students, Stenberg said he learned a lot from working closely with Subtext leader JulieAnn McKellogg. the value of a corporate incubator as a way of getting new ventures launched.
“JulieAnn had the support of an incubator at her back, so she was better resourced, more relaxed and more plugged in than I ever was running my magazine,” Stenberg said. “She had access to an engineering team, and she had a full book of contacts through [her supervisor], both of which allowed her to iterate and expand much more quickly than a traditional startup. As a result, the value of an incubator really made itself apparent to me.”
Sonia Singh, who came to Medill with an undergraduate degree in computer engineering, was a product management intern at Quantcast, where she was immersed in the company’s “dual-track” approach to agile software development.
“The entire process is collaborative and goes a step further than agile development by making even the interim steps within agile teams iterative as opposed to linear,” she said. “Throughout my internship, I learnt that it’s important for product managers to be curious, empathetic and tenacious. I hope to implement all my learnings in the future.”
Jack Kelly worked on search-engine optimization projects at Healthline and appreciated the chance to learn the technical aspects of SEO.
“Technical skills aside, the people of Healthline are what I have enjoyed most about my experience,” Kelly said. “It’s incredible to me that a company the size of Healthline has so successfully united its employees under a common cause: make the world a stronger and healthier place. Whether I start a company going forward, or take a job at a well established company, I know that I want to help foster a community similar to that of Healthline’s.”
Meredith Gallo interned on the content team at BestReviews, where she appreciated the chance to see how an editorial team operates.
“I got to see the full lifecycle of an article from pitch to publish and conversion tracking,” she said. “I learned a lot of valuable lessons, like being prepared to go to bat for your ideas and having things like a headline ready before pitching.”
Kerrie Vila worked on audience development initiatives at KQED, the Bay Area’s public media outlet.
“Overall, KQED was just a fun and lovely company to work for,” Vila said. I was proud to tell people in the Bay Area I worked for KQED.”
Camille Galles prototyped a new newsletter at The Center for Investigative Reporting. She also got to sit in on weekly meetings of the Reveal audio team, which develops a weekly show and podcasts devoted to investigative reporting.
“I felt like a sponge absorbing knowledge about audio storytelling,” Galles said. “Listening to the producers and editors evaluate pitches also helped me further understand the journalism mindset and what does, and doesn’t, make a good story.”
Back in Chicago for the next six months, several students are continuing to work remotely for the companies where they did their internships.
Other activities
The students participated in a wide variety of extracurricular activities during their term in San Francisco. Joining with students from Medill’s Integrated Marketing Communications master’s program, they attended the TechCrunch Disrupt and Wired25 conferences. They also visited Square, Healthline, the innovation incubator for SAP and Google San Francisco.
Guest speakers included Medill MSJ alum Ben Rogers, head of brand content and customer marketing for Qualtrics; Anna Lewandowski, product design manager for Facebook; Brittany VanPutten, head of product at Blendoor; and Ljuba Youngblom, founder of Hometown
“Our quarter in SF was exhausting, intensive and very informative,” Jack Kelly said.
About the MSJ media innovation specialization
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