It may not be possible to force innovation in journalism, but you may be able to guide it, starting with a little speed dating.
Lightning round-style matching is the secret to creating teams that can successfully build apps for news, at least at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. (For our purposes let’s replace nervous single-ites making awkward small talk with anxious j-students, programmers, and business majors.)
This is the fourth year the Institute has held a competition to encourage journalism students to try their hand at becoming developers. In previous years students have focused on creating applications for the iPhone and Adobe AIR. In this year’s competition students will create apps on the Android platform with help from Google, Adobe, Sprint, and the Hearst Corporation.
“What we try to do is take an emerging piece of technology and challenge our students to come up with a solution for journalism or the advertising that supports it,” Keith Politte, manager of the technology testing center at the Institute, told me.
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