Blog
Create an innovation culture: How to just do it
- By: ASNE staff
- On: 09/16/2014 23:44:50
- In: Convention
By Kyra Senese
Columbia College Chicago
Create an Innovation Culture: How to Just Do It, a session held from 11–11:45 a.m.
Sept. 16, featured professional insight from Gerould Kern, editor at the Chicago
Tribune; S. Mitra Kalita, ideas editor for Quartz; Miranda Mulligan, executive director
at Northwestern University's Knight Lab; and Chuck Peters, CEO of The Gazette
Company. Mizell Stewart III, vice president/content of The E.W. Scripps Co., moderated the session.
Create an Innovation Culture: How to Just Do It, a session held from 11–11:45 a.m.
Sept. 16, featured professional insight from Gerould Kern, editor at the Chicago
Tribune; S. Mitra Kalita, ideas editor for Quartz; Miranda Mulligan, executive director
at Northwestern University's Knight Lab; and Chuck Peters, CEO of The Gazette
Company. Mizell Stewart III, vice president/content of The E.W. Scripps Co., moderated the session.
Stewart began the session by asking the group, “What does innovation mean to you?” Kern said he thinks it is important to provide a relevant service and that editors at news organizations need to ask themselves how they can deliver services better. Kern also emphasized that editors need to understand what their readers want.
Kalita said that while innovation is crucial, it is important to first ask, “Is this innovation creative?” followed by “Is this innovation necessary?”
The group seemed to agree that although innovation in the news industry is important, the details of those innovations matter, and time and money should not go into miscellaneous innovations but rather innovations that “do something.” Kalita said that at her own office, one of the innovations that occurred was when they abandoned the beat model and focused on reporting on obsessions and phenomenon that kept appearing in society.
Mulligan said that although she works with technology to develop new methods of
storytelling, such as timelines and interactive narratives, journalists must use technology as a problem-solver but refrain from relying on it as the sole tool to tell a story.
Kern said he thinks that when trying to create an innovation culture, journalists and editors must be careful not to try to restrict or control the innovation.
“[Innovation] must come from wherever it will come from,” Kern said. “Every one of us
is a member of multiple audiences.”