The Cronkite School has received a $800,000 grant as part of the Edith Kinney Gaylord News Innovation Initiative, in recognition of the school’s efforts to find new ways of supporting the future of journalism.
The grant establishes the school in a teaching partnership with The University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. In addition, the Cronkite School is using the grant to bring in a professor to teach students about data analytics and audience engagement.
According to Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan, the school has worked closely with Ed Kelley, dean of the Gaylord College. Callahan projects that Cronkite professors Eric Newton, Retha Hill and Dan Gillmor will visit Gaylord next fall to teach Gaylord students, and hopes Kelley and other Gaylord professors will visit Cronkite. He also said he hopes to see joint classes between the colleges through Skype and other educational technologies.
Additionally, Cronkite students will see data analytics take a larger presence in the school’s efforts through a new course in analytics and engagement this fall. Jessica Pucci, an adjunct professor currently teaching Ethics of Journalism, will teach the class and assist in the school’s professional programs.
“(We want) to measure audiences, determine who is consuming news, when you are consuming, for how long, what format, on what platform and how to use that platform to engage and grow,” Callahan said. “Jessica’s job will be focusing those areas.”
Pucci said when she began her career as a magazine journalist, “we were forced to learn what the heck ‘performance’ meant, and we grew into that out of necessity.” This position naturally grew into content management, and she built a career analyzing brand journalism, social media and engagement.
“When you’re on an editorial budget, you need to prove ROI and measure success,” Pucci said. “You need to pivot toward what it is you see that’s working and away from what’s not.”
Pucci hopes to teach students about the variables in digital stories that can be manipulated, methods for tracing viewers’ journeys around a website and the ways reporters can use social media to help find sources. She described this ideal reporter-audience relationship as “reciprocal.”
“I think it’s important to remember that engagement is focusing on the audience,” she said. “It’s to find out who’s reading your article before you even write it. Figuring that out is a pivotal piece of the puzzle.”
One of the professional programs that Pucci will be assisting is the Public Insight Network Bureau, which focuses on audience engagement in Cronkite News.
Rebecca Blatt, PIN bureau chief, sees Pucci’s involvement as an opportunity to bring a more nuanced training to students.
“I think integrated community engagement at the Cronkite School and in Cronkite News has been coming for a while now, so that’s been unfolding over the last two years,” Blatt said. “So the next step is becoming very strategic with what we can learn with different types of analytics and how that can inform news coverage, but primarily how we can connect with audiences.”
Pucci keeps up with innovation in audience engagement and analytics, but she doesn’t intend on having students following the different metrics systems.
“I don’t care about using fancy tools,” she said. “I’m teaching the core foundations of content analysis … the basic core critical thinking that makes up the true basics.”
According to Sean Rogers, the director of client strategy at Republic Media, the divide between advertisers and journalists needs to close if local journalism is going to survive the digital shift.
“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” he said. “I had to get comfortable with data, just like a journalist would. I was taught how to look at information, big spreadsheets, and to begin to see the story that emerges. I believe that there’s a researcher in every journalist.”
Pucci explained her teaching strategy through an analogy with solving a math equation by using a calculator. If you don’t understand the methods used to find the answer, it’s harder to understand what the answer means.
“Traditionally, journalists view news analytics as competitive with core journalistic values,” she said. “But this is enhancing immediacy, accountability, truth and government watchdog-ing. Knowing analytics enhance this and don’t compete.”
Contact the reporter at kelsey.hess@asu.edu
