Media labs

The 8th edition of WAN-IFRA’s Media Labs Days took place in Vienna on 9 October 2024. The event, hosted by the Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung gathered media labs, academics and startups around discussions on innovation and transformation processes, the use of generative AI and the problem with misinformation.

WAN-IFRA launched the Data Science Expert Group intending to arm practitioners with insights, feedback, and tools to grow audiences, deepen user engagement, and optimise reader revenues.

The collaborative media lab based in Nantes, France, works closely with local publishers and innovative players in their region. Direct contact with local players helps the lab stay focused on the real issues that companies in their network deal with.

The sixth WAN-IFRA Media Labs Days in Hamburg brought together media labs, academics and start-ups to talk innovation processes, Web3 and AI.

Inholland’s Sustainable Media Lab is leading the way on imagining socially, environmentally and technically sustainable infrastructure.

Last month, WANIFRA’s ‘green media’ PhD candidate Kirsty Styles joined a panel at the World Editors Forum’s Global eSummit.

GAMI Briefing #4: Media Labs session (17.02.22) Media labs, innovation networks, accelerators and start-ups from across Europe, the fourth edition of GAMI’s regular online briefings covered a diverse range of innovations and ways to innovate.   These included new approaches to broadcast technology, AI-powered podcast experiences, open innovation networks that supported media and data-journalism powered by the internet of things. [...]

Our latest media lab piece comes from Professor Paul Egglestone, Head of School of the Creative Industries in the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Egglestone is a founding member of the Global Alliance for Media Innovation and formerly founder of the Media Innovation Studio at the University of Central Lancashire. Here, he describes [...]

Hear the University of Oxford’s Meera Selva, Pierre Petillault of Alliance Presse and Schibsted’s Markus Ahlberg tackle ‘green media’.

Ahead of a discussion about what’s next for ‘green media’ at the Virtual World News Media Congress, this briefing takes a look back.

Der Tagesspiegel: interdisciplinary and audience-engaged innovation Der Tagesspiegel’s Innovation Lab is a hub for interdisciplinary collaboration - producing projects spanning sensor journalism, data visualisation and interactive, immersive storytelling. Led by Hendrik Lehmann, the Lab emerged from a series of individual data journalism projects,  and has expanded to produce a range of storytelling and platforms innovations for Der Tagesspiegel’s newsroom operations. [...]

An international network of sandboxes, innovation labs and accelerators allows its media organisation members to exchange learnings from their innovation projects and make connections with the startup ecosystem.

Alliance Presse has made a four-point commitment to tackle environmental issues – focussed on concerns about advertising.

The GAMI Briefing #1 looked at how news publishers and journalists are using AI-powered solutions to work more efficiently, what kinds of issues arise when these tools are introduced in the newsroom, and what solutions exist to deal with such challenges.

The event highlighted the need for the news media to work with other industries, but sometimes problems arise as different sectors have their own cultures and processes. How can we encourage and support collaborations across disciplines?

BBC Future Planet is calculating its digital footprint and cutting flying, which has cut costs and increased diversity in the newsroom.

Since a shake-up at the top, Head of Sustainability, Britt Nilsen, is making sure the company is leading on diversity and the environment.

The Lenfest Institute was created through a philanthropic donation from media tycoon Gerry Lenfest, gifted alongside his ownership of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Editorial and digital strategy manager Joseph Lichterman explains what that has meant.

Since 2009, the Media Archaeology Lab in at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has been welcoming students and the public to get their hands on the not-latest media technologies to help them ask different questions about innovation.

VRT is the public-service broadcaster for Belgium’s Flemish community – but it also welcomes startups and scaleups through its doors with the promise of experience, exposure and even, perhaps, becoming an international export

Altinget is building engaged communities around politics across Denmark and Sweden – and making money from it to experiment.

Media innovation methodologies are often created in well-developed media markets, but do they function equally well in different contexts around the world? We spoke to a Colombian university media lab to find out how it approaches its innovation projects.

NRKbeta has spent more than a decade developing its expertise where media, technology and society meet – to help Norway’s public service broadcaster, and now the wider Norwegian media – give the people what they need.

From Japan to Canada, startups to tech giants, many media are now thinking about and using AI. What does this mean for media workers, readers, and, who’s responsible?

The German media lab focuses on innovation at the business model level, seeking and creating products and commercial opportunities that go beyond the conventions of the news industry.

The Dutch broadcaster’s media innovation lab uses novel technologies to provide engaging narrative experiences, while also informing its audience about the technologies’ possible impact on their everyday lives.

The continued rise of Media Labs is the focus of the latest 2019 Trends in Newsrooms report. It unpacks their role, examines their organisation and offers advice on what you should do if you want to start one.

In May 2016, Radio-Canada made a strong commitment to innovation by creating Rad, a journalism laboratory that develops formats for young people who get news on the Internet. Since then, the lab has come a long way: two major digital awards, a weekly YouTube news broadcast and effective collaborations with the various teams at Radio-Canada.

Le Tank Media has become one of the leading actors in media entrepreneurship in France. Using this experience it is now expanding its ambitions, with a 1700 m² space dedicated to emerging media opening soon, as well as other new projects.

The Journal’s R&D unit works across the newsroom to develop new computational approaches to empower journalists with machine learning and artificial intelligence resources.

“La Compagnie Rotative is the media lab of proximities.” This phrase summarises well the philosophy behind the media lab of the group Centre France. Its approach to innovation is based on closeness between people, local economic actors, and citizens, as well as sharing and creating connections.

Over 30 media professionals and innovation lab leaders from around the world took part in the fourth edition of the Media Labs Day on 8 April 2019, hosted by Cap Digital in Paris.

In 2015, Nice-Matin embarked on a profound digital transformation. Faced with major economic difficulties, the daily newspaper opted for a 180-degree turn to establish itself as an innovative media in its own right. Its latest initiative: MAS, the newspaper’s innovation space, launched last January.

Media Lab Days Vienna brought light on innovation experiences and challenges Over 20 media lab leaders and innovators from around the world participated in the third edition of the event, this time hosted by the Austrian Press Agency (APA) in Vienna. This edition of Media Lab Days had a different approach to past ones, with a focus on projects rather [...]

Initial results show different types of media labs within the regions researched, as well as a diversity of projects, which go from digital tools and new narratives to broader journalistic topics, while fostering innovation media culture.

Headed up by Colin Maclay, they combine nimbleness and network to be innovative both in their local community and on a national scale.

When you think of innovation labs, you probably imagine a room of people figuring out the next groundbreaking app or tool. Monday Innovation Lab is taking innovation citywide.

Working from the ground up, Stanford University is taking a new approach to innovation to provide platforms for journalists to tell stories that would otherwise go untold.

Ouest Médialab brings together a variety of actors around digital innovation projects in the French regions Pays de la Loire and Bretagne.

It’s important to have the space, the resources and the time to experiment and learn on a daily basis in the newsroom. “We don’t want the Maker Lab to be the only place where experimentation and learning take place”, says Chani Guyot.

Five questions to Clemens Prerovsky (CDO) about ongoing projects, lessons learned and best practices at the APA-medialab.

In the lab, FranceTV tests new tools and learns how to use them before introducing them to the newsroom. A way to spread the digital culture among journalists, who tend to be conservative and not always open to new ways of working.

Media organisations, academics and public institutions work together on experimental innovation and research at Lindholmen Science Park.

Media Lab Bayern in Munich hosted the second edition of GAMI’s Media Lab Days, which means two days of inspiration and brainstorming ended with a tour of a beer brewery.

NMA aims to offer media and marketing start-ups a place to succeed and provide its 190 stakeholders with strategies for managing the digital transformation at hand.

Innovation is not about impressing people with the latest technologies. For the EPFL+ECAL Lab, an innovation is successful if a user forgets about the technology and instead focuses on the content.

Joining the worlds of social sciences and emerging technologies, by applying their research to media industry practices.

DWRC brings together engineering, communication, social science, business, design and arts to work on media innovation projects that have a concrete impact on society and culture.

The Globe and Mail encourages all employees in the company to pitch as many innovative ideas as they can even if they are at the back of napkin stage.

The Associated Press is developing a worldwide hub through internal and external innovation efforts to encourage a culture of experimentation and collaboration within the organisation.

Building the future of journalism by organising journalism Hackathons where multidisciplinary teams of designers, coders and journalists work together.

Short for ‘In video veritas’ (in video, there is truth), InVID is creating a platform that allows journalists to verify video content from social networks more easily.

Exploring new forms of storytelling, with the intent of furthering both engineering research and journalistic practice.

Focused on civic journalism and media entrepreneurship, J-Lab is a US-based national incubation centre that aims to promote digital media innovation within traditional media organisations and journalism start-ups.

Through their work with Web development, virtual reality/360 video, drone journalism and multimedia storytelling, the team is looking to influence digital media disciplines.

The French Sud Ouest newspaper in Bordeaux is inviting local start-ups to share office space and resources from within the organisation to help accelerate their development.

The lab within Independent Media is training technology graduates in media, so they get can apply technology in the newsroom and innovate in the media sector.

Roularta Mediatech Accelerator is a programme initiated by the Roularta Media Group, together with Duval Union, to provide support and guidance for media technology startups.

UCLan’s Media Innovation Studio is a research centre and learning media lab which engages in a broad variety of media activities, including drone journalism, progressive media teaching, media research and product development.

Focused on digital journalism innovation, Media Lab Bayern is a co-working incubation unit for media innovation startup companies which provides journalism and entrepreneurship aid and coaching for media development.

Arizona State University New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab is a research and development unit which focuses on producing cutting-edge products for media companies and educating students from various departments to enhance the regional and national media system.

BBC News Labs is a collaborative, multi-disciplinary unit which focuses on developing digital innovation tools to solve issues within the media and improve news content.

University of Kansas Media Innovation Lab is a multi-disciplinary lab which combines academic research with digital product development and teaching in order to foster media innovation, as well as help develop new project ideas.

A small team of journalists and engineers are developing new tools for the newsroom and building innovative user experiences to valorise AFP’s content.

This collaborative project aims to understand how journalism could harness connected things to find new ways of connecting with people and conveying stories, and to create prototypes that will allow this in the near future.

The INJECT project unites 14 partners in 6 European countries in the development of new digital technologies for news organisations.

Northwestern University Knight Lab builds software that helps inform and engage the public

NYC Media Lab unites New York City-based companies, researchers and students to drive digital media development by creating an ‘open innovation ecosystem’

Inviting students and startups in to help boost creativity and innovation

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Sense-IT Lab is exploring 3DTV, augmented media, immersive experiences and whole body interaction techniques

An independent department for brainstorming and testing out new concepts using Asahi’s existing skills and assets.

Bordeaux’s Sud Ouest newspaper’ startup lab – Théophraste – invites local startups to share office space and resources to help accelerate their development.

A cross disciplinary approach to digital technology driven by users and participatory innovation.

C4CJ offers one-to-one support, hyperlocal journalism hubs and massive open online courses with global reach and thousands of participants