Hearst Corporation’s Innovation group will partner with the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Adobe Systems to launch a student design competition to develop interactive projects that will ultimately be used by Hearst.
With guidance from Hearst Corporate Innovation and employees across Hearst’s diverse communication and technology businesses, University of Missouri students will develop three to five interactive projects using Adobe’s new product, Adobe Flash Catalyst, and Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4).
The projects could produce real possibilities for both the advertising and news reporting sides of the journalism industry, and Hearst intends to explore the possibility of incorporating the winning projects into new and existing businesses.
Journalism and computer science students at Fudan University in Shanghai, China will also conduct a similar contest. Both Fudan and RJI winners will showcase their projects in Shanghai as part of the 2010 World Expo. In May 2010, the winners will be selected and will be invited to present their ideas to Adobe and Hearst executives at Adobe’s world headquarters in San Jose.
The first RJI contest used Adobe AIR technology and last year’s focused on building apps for Apple’s iPhone. Three teams of students in last year’s contest produced applications that are currently available in the iTunes Apple Store. The projects included a news aggregator called Newsflash; a specialty entertainment guide app to serve the NBC affiliate and newspaper; and a free real estate app named NearBuy, currently the second-most downloaded real estate app in the iTunes store.
Launched in April, Hearst Corporate Innovation works to drive innovative and entrepreneurial thinking across the company’s various business units and assists employees with the development of new business concepts with the goal of turning them into profitable ventures.
“We’re excited to partner with Hearst and Adobe as we launch the third of our annual RJI Student Competitions,” says Mike McKean, Missouri School of Journalism professor and director of the RJI Futures Lab. “Together, we’ll showcase how journalists, marketers and advertisers can create more — and more cost-effective — interactive content that will strengthen the ties between media companies, audiences and citizens.”
RBR-TVBR observation: It’s good to see this still happening in broadcasting. Seems it is hard to find much of this going on in any manufacturing, media or scientific sector today. It used to be the norm. Unfortunately, when the economy is killing businesses nationwide, things like this are often the first or second thing cut from the budget.
