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, the Center 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, the Tow Center is using this flexible support grant to explore the ways in which new technologies, including artificial intelligence, 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. 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 technology-enabled media ecosystem.

Columbia Global Reports is a publishing project founded at Columbia University in 2014 that bridges the worlds of investigative, long-form journalism and trade publishing. It commissions authors to produce works of original thinking and influence on a wide range of topics through extensive in-depth interviewing, historical awareness, empathetic understanding, literary and narrative vividness, and on-site reporting from around world. The resulting books are short but ambitious and offer new ways of understanding the major issues of our time.  

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (the Dart Center) is dedicated to supporting informed, innovative, and ethical news reporting on violence, conflict, and tragedy. It conducts research, and provides fellowships, awards, newsroom training, hosts specialized reporting institutes and creates online resources to advance best practices in covering traumatic events ranging from family violence to disaster and war. This grant provides flexible support for the Dart Center, and the intended outcomes are activities, programs, and research that creates new understanding of, and mitigation and support for, journalists who experience trauma because of their work informing the public.

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.