News from the Tow Center     January 15, 2015

The Tow Center is pleased to announce new support of $3 million from the Knight Foundation. We will be expanding our research in four areas: Computation, Algorithms and Automated Journalism, Data, Impact and Metrics, Audience and Engagement, and Experimental Journalism, Models and Practice. Read more from the Knight Foundation Read more from Columbia Journalism School We will be recruiting Knight News Innovation Fellows to lead our research in these four areas.  For more information about application, contact TowCenter@columbia.edu. UPCOMING EVENTS  Journalism After Snowden Join the Tow Center at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on February 5th, 2015 for National Security Reporting in the Age of Surveillance: A Conversation About Reporting Post-Snowden.  From 4:30-6:30 pm a new survey by the Pew Research Center will be released. The evening panel, from 6:30-9:30 pm, will include Dean Baquet, Executive Editor of the NYTimes, Marty Baron, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, and Susan Glasser, Editor of Politico, and will be moderated by Steve Coll, Dean of Columbia Journalism School.  Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University will give opening remarks.  A reception will follow the event. RSVP on Eventbrite  Responsive Cities Initiative with Susan Crawford Launch of a White Paper Tuesday, January 27, 2015 5:30 pm Columbia Journalism School, World Room Over the last few months, the Responsive Cities Initiative convened three workshops supported by a planning grant from the Ford Foundation and hosted by the Tow Center. The workshops gathered leading thinkers with the aim of answering the following questions: What could a university center do to advance policy making and planning for fiber optic networks connecting everyone in America to the Internet that would (a) improve local governance and (b) support civic journalism? We invited leading US fiber builders, city officials, and civic journalists to the first two sessions and hosted a large group of Danish municipal fiber companies and lawmakers for the third. We've organized our findings into a white paper, and on Tuesday, January 27 at 5:30 pm a panel of workshop attendees will convene to discuss the themes of the paper.  Susan Crawford (co-author of The Responsive City) will lead a panel that includes Elin Katz (Consumer Counsel, State of Connecticut), Jim Baller (The Baller Herbst Law Group) and Oliver Wise (Director of Office of Performance and Accountability, City of New Orleans). Reception to follow.  RSVP on Eventbrite. Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content: A Report Launch  Tuesday, February 10, 2-15 6:30-9:30 pm Columbia Journalism School Join the Tow Center for the launch of Tow Fellow Craig Silverman's report Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (and debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified claims, and Misinformation. Every working and aspiring journalist who reports on breaking news will want to read Silverman's excellent research. He'll discuss new data showing how common newsroom practices leave readers mis-informed and highlight the best ways for breaking news journalists to build a reputation for accuracy, attracting new audiences as they go. Craig will be joined by Gawker's editor-in-chief Max Read and Anna Dubenko, managing editor of Digg. RSVP on Eventbrite ON THE TOW BLOG The NewsLynx Tool For Impact Tracking – A Walkthrough Last year in May, we officially announced NewsLynx, a tool for newsrooms to keep track of their journalism’s impact.  It enables journalists to observe what happens to their work in the world after it's been published.  It's been built by Michael Keller and Brian Abelson. NewsLynx combines quantitative metrics with qualitative annotations.  This week, we published a first look at the platform and some of the design decisions that went into it on the Tow Blog.   TOW CENTER IN THE NEWS Tow Center receives new $3m funding for newsroom research Journalism.co.uk