Tag Archives: innovation

Nieman: The New York Times and the kitchen table of the future

The New York Times’ top-floor Research and Development Lab has released a demo video of its latest innovation: a kitchen table. No ordinary kitchen table obviously, it uses Microsoft’s Surface technology to produce a tabletop news consumption experience that departs from the paper’s normal design and layout and has strong social features built in.

See the full demo video below, courtesy of Nieman Journalism Lab, which has a fuller write-up on the table and the New York Times R&D Lab, and transcript of the demo.

New York Times R&D Lab: The kitchen table of the Future from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

PressThink: Jay Rosen on the ‘100 per cent solution’ for news innovation

Jay Rosen on how to start innovating with news and news journalism by thinking big:

Here’s a little idea for creating innovation in news coverage: the 100 per cent solution. It works like this: first, you set a goal to cover 100 percent of… well, of something. In trying to reach the goal you immediately run into problems. To solve those problems you often have to improvise or innovate. And that’s the payoff, even if you don’t meet your goal.

Got it? Good. For that’s the whole idea.

In the rest of this post I will explain what I mean and why I think it can work. And I will give you some examples. Because the 100 per cent solution is not an entirely new idea. It has been tried. My aim is to get some of you to try it in some form.

Full post on PressThink at this link…

NYT: Inc. magazine experiments with virtual office

Many journalists must have wondered whether, in this desktop-driven publishing age, they could do their job just as easily from home. The staff of Inc. magazine have put that curiosity behind them this month after editor Jane Berentson gave the go-ahead to produce the an entire edition outside of the office.

The idea began as more of a joke than a serious suggestion, made by senior writer Max Chafkin in conjunction with an article he was researching on virtual offices. The edition hits the stands on April 6.

The production went off without a major hitch, with the staff members using nothing more than readily available technology, including Skype and instant messaging. And Ms. Berentson described Mr. Chafkin’s cover piece, “The Office Is Dead. Long Live the Office,” which is infused with first-person details, as richer and more unusual than it would have been without the experiment.

Full story at this link…