Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism (Tow Center), housed within the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, explores the ways in which technology is changing journalism, its practice and consumption. Established in 2010, it commissions research and develops teaching methods and courses to help advance practice in the field and to influence policy debate. With an interdisciplinary group of academics and researchers, this flexible support grant enables the Tow Center to continue its efforts to explore the ways in which the large technology platforms are influencing the quality of news, the public’s trust of news institutions, and the impact of policy interventions on the free flow of quality news and information. It is also launching two new areas of research to examine the impact of closed technology platforms on news gathering, reporting and consumption at the local level, and a reimagining of public media for today’s world. The goal of this work is to create a new future for journalism – one that is based on a new set of ethics, norms, and institutions designed to support a free and independent press in a platform-based media ecosystem.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism (Tow Center), housed at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, explores the ways in which technology is changing journalism, its practice and consumption. Established in 2010, it commissions research and develops teaching methods and courses to help advance practice in the field. This grant provides flexible support to the Tow Center to research and monitor the impact of large scale technology on journalism across four broad areas of inquiry: 1) local journalism, 2) artificial intelligence, 3) digital forensics, and 4) alternative approaches to innovation in the newsroom outside of the confines of large technology platforms. The goal of this work is to create a new future for journalism – one that is based on a new set of ethics, norms, and institutions designed to support a free and independent press in a platform-based media ecosystem.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University explores the ways in which technology is changing journalism, its practice and consumption. Established in 2010, it commissions research and develops teaching methods and courses to help advance practice in the field. This grant supports the Tow Center to study how journalism and independent publishing are affected by the distribution of content via social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, and how technology companies are responding to their new role as part of the free press. Grant funds are enabling the Tow Center to carry out empirical research about the nature, research and impact of news content published online and to hold a series of consultations with stakeholders from both the journalism industry and Silicon Valley to surface issues that directly relate to the health of an independent press. This work is helping to expand the understanding of journalism in a multi-platform world, making online publishing platforms more transparent about the role they play in disseminating news, and identifying a set of stakeholders from media, technology and academia who can work together to shape future policies.