Announcing our new Tow Fellows
Today is a very exciting day for us, as we’re announcing a new group of 31 Research Fellows. The fellows are based around the world and will be researching a wide-range of projects at the cutting-edge of digital journalism.
The projects will be in four main research areas: Computation, Algorithms and Automated Journalism; Data, Impact and Metrics; Audiences and Engagement; and Experimental Journalism, Models and Practice.
We were recently awarded $3 million from Knight Foundation as part of a major initiative to expand innovation in newsrooms. This has allowed us to recruit for the first time a cohort of fellows who will undertake their research simultaneously. An open call in April resulted in a high number of quality research proposals, and now we’re excited about what this new cohort is going to produce as the fellows work alongside each other, either in the space we share with the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at the Columbia Journalism School, or virtually in our Slack channel.
The chosen fellows include working journalists, Ph.D. candidates, and professors in disciplines as diverse as communications and architecture, media studies and computer science. Some projects will last just two months, some up to 16 months. Eighteen of the fellows are based in New York, but the researchers will work all over the world, including Los Angeles, Singapore, London and Melbourne, Australia.
Marguerite Holloway, a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism is working as part of a teamto devise and use novel sensor technology to travel across New York from the perspective of the City’s rat population. Andrea Wenzel and Daniela Gerson will conduct focus groups with diverse communities in Los Angeles to explore the impact of solutions-oriented local journalism. Meredith Broussard, an assistant professor at New York University, is one of the fellows who will research new ways to use artificial intelligence for investigative reporting.
In addition to the more in-depth projects, six projects will be published as shorter guides to new methods and trends in journalism, including Automated Journalism, Crowdsourcing, Chatapps, Design and Journalism, Newsroom Encryption, Podcasting Business Models.
Some of the fellows will present their work at Tow Center’s annual research conference on Nov. 12–13. We’re also going to try something new. We have asked each fellow to “take over” the Tow Center Twitter account every week and publish updates about their work. So please follow us, so you can really get a sense of the full range of the research projects.
You can also read the full list of Tow Fellows and learn more about their research projects here.
Applications for the next round of fellowships beginning in both spring 2016 and fall 2016 are due November 16, 2015. If you have any questions about the process, please get in touch with me.
