Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms Now Taking Applications for 2022-2023 Cohorts
The intensive training by the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the News Product Alliance, developed in partnership with Google News Initiative, is back.
We will run three new cohorts of the Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms program in 2022-2023. This training is once again tuition-free thanks to continued support from the Google News Initiative. We encourage journalists from diverse backgrounds to apply.
The program is intended for journalists and staff inside small to midsize news organizations who have little to no experience with product development and management. It consists of two months of weekly online classes taught by leaders in product design and development from newsrooms around the world, and small-group coaching along the way.
Each cohort will focus on a different region of the world: Europe/Africa/Middle East (GMT 0 to +4), Asia Pacific (GMT+5.5 to +10), and Americas (GMT-8 to -3). Instruction will be in English.
Applications are open for the Europe/Middle East/Africa cohort until July 15 for classes starting in September. Applications for the other regions will open later this year. Sign up for our mailing list for updates.
Since its pilot in 2020, the program has served 100 journalists across the globe, helping them transition into product development and management roles in their newsrooms, launch news products, improve team communication and collaboration, adopt an audience-first ethos, prioritize data, and explore new revenue streams.
“The success of our prior cohorts have shown that there is a central place for product thinking in the news industry. More than ever, there is a growing need to equip journalists with those tools to ensure that they can continue to innovate, bring in new audiences, and respond to the next global crisis that reshapes the industry,” said Marco Túlio Pires, News Lab Lead for GNI.
GNI’s partners in the Product Immersion program, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the News Product Alliance, also believe strongly that product thinking provides a path to sustainability for the news industry.
Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms
An intensive training by News Catalyst and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Developed in partnership with Google News Initiative.
Product thinking is key to digital transformation in news. It provides a systematic way to test new ideas, find new audiences and bring the innovation that people want to pay for, to the news industry.
Small and midsize newsrooms should not be left behind! With this challenge in mind, we are piloting an ambitious new training program next year called Product Immersion for Small Newsrooms. Thanks to support from the Google News Initiative, we are not charging tuition for this pilot and we are offering travel scholarships to those who need it, but participants need to apply and be accepted. We encourage journalists from diverse backgrounds to apply.
This training is designed for journalists and staff inside small to midsize local news organizations who have little or no experience with product development and management. All that is required is an interest in taking a product approach to better serving the needs of their audiences and finding new paths toward sustainability.
The program will combine the best of in-person and online learning, led by a variety of talented newsroom product leaders. It begins with an intense, two-day bootcamp that would lead 25 participants through an introduction to the product process, techniques and practice in news.
Over the next six weeks, participants work through online learning modules and complete hands-on tasks in their home news organizations that, together, model the product process. And finally, they will come together as a cohort for one last in-person meeting to learn about next steps and report back about what worked and what didn’t.
News Catalyst is a just-launched $2 million project to help news organizations transform themselves into sustainable digital businesses. We accomplish this by providing tools, fostering collaboration, and promoting experimentation within the news industry. We focus on areas in which news organizations have traditionally underinvested, like product development, data, analytics, digital storytelling, mobile and engagement. Where there are gaps in capability, News Catalyst will fill them by providing tools, technology, training, hands-on support and expertise.
The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY is the only publicly-funded graduate school of journalism in the Northeast. Our mission is to serve the public interest – by training new journalists who will bring much-needed diversity to newsrooms, by helping mid-career journalists retool their skills, and by partnering with other media organizations to find new paths to excellence.
The Google News Initiative brings together work across Google products, partnerships and programs to tackle the largest challenges facing the news industry. The GNI is our effort to help journalism thrive in the digital age through evolving business models to drive sustainable growth, elevating quality journalism and empowering news organisations with new technology.