Research
The Tow Center produces new research on the practice of digital journalism. We are currently accepting proposals for research projects. For further information see our Request for Proposals page, or write us at towresearch@columbia.edu.
Current Reports
Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present (November 2012)
There’s no such thing as the news industry anymore. Sounds pretty damning, right? Well, it’s actually not as bad as it might seems. Journalism is a very different place now–its skills, processes and practice have fragmented so much that newsrooms aren’t the information factories they used to be. That’s what the Tow Center’s latest report, “Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present”, has found. Co-authored by Emily Bell, Clay Shirky and C.W. Anderson, the report discusses the skills, structures and systems now needed to give us the best chance of creating good journalism.
Download the report
About the authors
Emily Bell, is the director of the Tow Center and former director of digital content for Guardian News and Media; Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, and C.W. Anderson is an assistant professor at CUNY.
The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism
May 2011—How can digital journalism turn a profit? In the Tow Center’s second report, the financial state of digital journalism is put under the microscope. The authors rigorously analyze and assess business models of online media to understand what’s making money, what’s not and, more crucially: why. The report provides comprehensive analysis of the business challenges that for-profit news organizations face with their digital venues.
Download the report from CJR (PDF)
About the authors
Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave, and Lucas Graves are the co-authors of “The Story so Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism.” Grueskin is dean of academic affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Seave is a principal of Quantum Media, a NYC-based consulting firm. Graves is a PhD candidate in communications at Columbia University.
Confusion Online: Faulty Metrics and the Future of Digital Journalism
October 2010—This report explores the industry of Internet measurement and its impact on news organizations working online. It investigates this landscape through a combination of documentary research and interviews with measurement companies, trade groups, advertising agencies, media scholars, and journalists from national newspapers, regional papers, and online‐only news ventures.
Download the report from Columbia Journalism School (PDF)
About the authors
Lucas Graves is a PhD candidate in Communications at Columbia University, where his dissertation studies the fact-checking movement in American journalism, he is also a research fellow at the New America Foundation. John Kelly is a graduate of the PhD program in Communications at Columbia University and has studied communications at Stanford and at Oxford’s Internet Institute.