The Brown Institute announces its 2022-2023 Magic Grants The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a collaboration between Stanford University’s School of Engineering and Columbia Journalism School, is proud to announce its 2022-2023 Magic Grant recipients! This year Brown awarded eight Magic Grants and three “seed” grants. Some of the winning teams are proposing tools to
CategoryProject Updates
Local Live(s) Brings Innovative Live Storytelling to More Newsrooms
People from across Mississippi gathered to hear journalists tell intimate, first-person stories about the behind-the-scenes of their reporting this past February in Jackson, Mississippi. The show was a collaboration between Mississippi Today and Local Live(s), a national storytelling series that brings important journalism back to life. Their next series, which is unified under the theme
MuckRock and the Documenting COVID-19 project are releasing new searchable CDC death data at the county level
Over the past two years, 165,000 more Americans have died of natural causes, such as diabetes and hypertensive heart disease, than historical norms would lead researchers to expect. A smaller group of deaths from specific natural causes that the CDC has identified as potentially COVID-19-related shows a similar figure: 158,212 additional deaths during the pandemic
Last Minute Resources for Magic Grant Applicants
Magic Grant applications are due April 8! Are you interested in applying but still have lingering questions about an idea or some part of the application? Meet with members of the Brown Institute to talk through your questions at one of our events – these include office hours, Magic Grant information sessions, and our cocktail hours online. Details for
Announcing ‘Points Unknown 2022’ at Columbia
News unfolds in places and every newsworthy event is shaped by the details of location. Those details might include the specifics of a neighborhood as it is today or of the history leading to its current configurations. Alongside the development of web technologies, journalistic organizations have incorporated web-based maps to enhance reader engagement with stories.
Announcing Season 2 of Local Live(s)
Fred Thys stood on stage and played an audio clip. It was a recording of a man that had been college roommates with a soldier recently killed in active duty. The crowd of over 150 people who had gathered there to listen fell silent. The friend’s portrayal of the fallen veteran wasn’t consistent with what
Documenting COVID-19 project and MuckRock join together to expand public records journalism with partner newsrooms
The Documenting COVID-19 project, started in April 2020 at Columbia and Stanford’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation, will work hand-in-hand with MuckRock to file public records requests and collaborate on accountability journalism with partnering newsrooms. Launched in April 2020 by the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the Documenting COVID-19 project has filed thousands of public
Big Local News project leads to front page stories at EdSource and the New York Times
The Big Local News project, in partnership with OpenNews, The New York Times, EdSource, the Colorado News Collaborative, and Tom Dee from the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, recently shared the fruits of their labor — the collection and analysis of school enrollment loss at the school and grade level due to Covid-19. Major
Notes from NYCML and CHANEL’s Synthetic Media Challenge
Over the Spring semester, I participated in the NYC Media Lab’s Synthetic Media challenge, in collaboration with CHANEL. This challenge brought together teams of faculty and students from a variety of schools in New York to explore how new technologies such as GANs can reimagine the future of storytelling, and unlock new ways to develop,