A Northwestern University joint initiative of Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science. Northwestern University joint initiative of Medill & McCormick School of Engineering.

Advancing news media innovation through exploration & experimentation.

Blog:Team news

What is Knight Lab? Technology, editorial content and events

Three tiers of Knight Lab: Technology, Editorial and Events

Immediately following the announcement of our new blog, my inbox was flooded with questions like these: Is Knight Lab making a content play? Are you all trying to be Nieman Lab? Reporters’ Lab? Short answer: No. As this journalism nerd lab evolves, we have found it necessary to expand the definition of our output. We are interested in building software and technology, first and foremost … Of course. And, we are primarily driven

Trying to find your place in the future of news? Find it with a Knight Lab writing fellowship

Hey, reporters, writers, and bloggers! The Knight Lab has a few fun paying reporting gigs open and we’d like all you bright Northwestern students to apply. The job will give you the opportunity to learn more about technology in journalism, make connections in the news and technology industries, and add professional clips for your portfolio. As a Knight Lab editorial contributor, you’ll help the Lab cover interesting people and cool projects from around

How I got my journalism project funded in 10 easy steps

logo for boxx magazine

International Women’s Day is always inspiring and encouraging. But this past March 8, was even more special. That’s the day I found out a project I co-founded, Boxx Magazine, had been chosen as one of the winners of the McCormick Foundation’s New Media Women Entrepreneurs (NMWE) grant! Selena Fragassi and I had talked about creating a music magazine highlighting women since our days at Venus Zine in 2010. After watching the documentary Hit

We have a new look — and strategy — for the Knight Lab’s blog

Knight Lab new blog look, responsive design

I am so excited to pull back the curtain on our brand, spankin’ new blog design and I am not sure that we could be more eager to get going. It is a pretty new toy that, in contrast to our old site, will allow us to participate more substantially in the dialogue that is already taking place within our geographically diverse community of journalism-technologists. More importantly, our new name, visual identity, redesigned and re-launched blog are all symbolic efforts of the significant shift in strategy and focus …

Aaron Salmon joins Knight Lab as professional fellow

aaron salmon headshot

It all started with Quake II. Aaron Salmon and his gaming buddies — his “clan,” in the parlance of the game — played the first-person shooter game feverishly in the mid 90s when they decided what they really needed was a website to track scores and records. Salmon built it, reverse engineering the whole thing using view source and eventually filling it with clan member profiles, achievement badges, downloads of maps, and screenshots

Scott Robbin joins Knight Lab as professional fellow

scott robin photo

What does it take to make Crain Chicago’s 40-Under-40 list? Well, for Scott Robbin it took creating a new way for millions of people to listen to music online while keeping a neighborly eye out for his fellow Chicagoans. All of which makes the Knight Lab very happy to have him as part of our inaugural class of professional fellows. Over the past six years Robbin has done great development work for Twitter,