Open innovation in digital journalism: Examining the impact of Open APIs at four news organizations (original) (raw)
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Open Innovation and open APIs in Digital Journalism
New Media & Society
"This paper examines the relative value of open innovation principles for online journalism and its digital business strategy, exemplified by the emergence of open application programming interfaces (APIs) at four news providers: The New York Times, the Guardian, USA Today, and National Public Radio. The use of open APIs represents a shift toward an open innovation paradigm that may help address twin challenges facing the news industry: the need for improved research and development (R&D), and the need for new revenue streams. This paper contributes to the interdisciplinary study of open innovation by extending this line of research to the digital communication domain. Findings indicate that the use of open APIs has allowed news organizations to accelerate R&D through inbound-outbound knowledge sharing with web developers; develop new means of commercializing content by extending their product portfolio; and ultimately forge innovation networks that function as external R&D departments for the firms. The benefits and challenges of these first steps toward an open business model are discussed."
Open APIs and News Organizations: A study of open innovation in online journalism
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This paper examines the intersection of journalism and open-source software, in the context of the ongoing tension between professional control and open participation in digital media. Through interviews with key winners of the Knight News Challenge innovation contest, this article explores how open source, as a technological framework and a socio-cultural ethic, serves to legitimize and facilitate participation in journalism. News innovators are found to see journalism as an open-source practice to be shared, rather than a proprietary profession to be protected—and news not as a professional product alone, so much as a process of iterative, collaborative de-bugging. The implications of this shift are discussed in light of journalism’s changing occupational boundaries.
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– This paper discusses journalism innovation through experimental units known as “media labs”, addressing motivations, processes and outputs related to them. It is based on collaborative four-year research projects that mapped 123 labs within industry, civic society, and academia globally, with a focus on Latin America, North America and Europe. The data spans 45 interviews and 54 survey answers from lab leaders across 17 countries and covers 60 innovation outputs, with 30 closely related to media and journalism. The paper’s main theoretical frames incorporate open innovation and constructs from media innovation and media management. The results indicate that media labs are either within organisations or alongside them, producing projects systematically and experimentally as a reaction to digital disruption. Within an environment of scarcity, they catalyse innovation and combine technical and creative skills, unveiling solutions beyond new narratives or content-related innovations. ...
Amid growing calls for greater collaboration between journalism and computer programming, this article examines a salient case study that reveals processes of communication, exchange, and work production at the intersection of these social and occupational worlds. We focus on a key stage of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology partnership – namely, an online 'Learning Lab' through which 60 individuals sought to coordinate around a shared interest in the innovation of journalism through open-source software. Drawing on the science and technology studies concepts of trading zones and boundary objects, we explore how distinct understandings about news and technology converged, diverged, and ultimately blended around three thematic ambitions: making news more process-oriented, participatory, and socially curated. This window onto boundary negotiations in journalism provides a glimpse into the future development of news and its norms and values, as programmers and their ethics assume a greater role in the journalistic field – in the very heart of some of its leading institutions.
Structural Transformation of Journalism in The Light of Open Source Intelligence
Migration, Politics, Violence and Women’s Studies , 2017
There is a crucial relationship between technology and journalism in era we live in. One can assert that journalism practices in our time have changed to the extent that we wouldn’t expect. However, that is not biggest factor we should talk about media’s transformation. There is one another problem for today’s journalists and media experts need to overcome. That is how information about reality needs to be shaped and shared. After technology brought unforeseen developments for newsrooms and in the wake of digital media’s high-speed usage, a lot of complicated data are produced on online media platforms. Previously right to control information was in state’s power. Then, a new type of journalists has learnt to use data in the garb of open source on online environments. They asked themselves that “can you code, are you good at helping people learn about their world, and do you see how software as civic media might contribute to some sort of democratic or social good / making the world a better place?” (Lewis, & Usher, 2013, 603). Thanks to these new data users, a new type of journalism has started that we call it open source journalism. In this paper our objective is to understand and analyze components of this latest kind of journalism which mostly take place on digital environments. We aim to answer questions that “Are journalism in a structural transformation due to effects of internet and new data users? Are there any other parameters if so?”. Keywords: Empire, Multitude, Journalism, Open Source Intelligence, Structural Conversion.
Innovation Journalism: Towards Research on the Interplay of Journalism in Innovation Ecosystems
This essay suggests ‘Innovation Journalism’ as a useful theme through which to explore the interplay of journalism in innovation ecosystems. This involves investigating how journalism plays a part in connecting innovation with public interests and how innovation processes and innovation ecosystems interact with public attention, with news media as an actor. It may also be of interest to study in which ways journalists cover innovation processes and innovation ecosystems, the incentives that drive innovation journalism and how news organizations may be organized to perform the task. We outline examples of research project topics to illustrate how this approach can inform studies of innovation, studies of journalism as practice, and possible scopes for the research theme. Going forward, we propose to identify earlier relevant scholarly research and relevant researchers that can be attributed to this emerging research theme in Innovation Journalism.