Carlson to lead UF’s new “Media Farm”
A veteran online journalist and educator has been selected as executive director of the new Center for Media Innovation and Research at the University of Florida.
Professor David Carlson has been a pioneer in the development of interactive newspapers since the 1980s. He spent 20 years at newspapers large and small and founded an online newspaper at The Albuquerque Tribune that was one of just two in the world at the time.
Carlson said he is thrilled to be chosen to lead the new initiative.
“The Center for Media Innovation and Research will be a kind of farm,” Carlson said.
“We won’t raise vegetables. We will be a farm for new forms of journalism and strategic communication.
“We will germinate the seeds of future media and propagate innovative ways of disseminating news and information. Then we will nurse those tiny seedlings to maturity in the market of ideas.”
The Center for Media Innovation and Research will provide a roadmap to the future for troubled media companies, Carlson said. “We intend to establish the College of Journalism and Communications as the global leader in the field and UF students as the best in the business,” he added,
The CMIR, which so far has amassed funding of more than $1 million, is the centerpiece of programs initiated by John W. Wright II, appointed dean of the college Jan. 1.
The center, also dubbed “The Media Farm,” will be built in three stages, Wright said.
The first will be a “21st Century Newsroom” constructed in existing space on the ground floor of Weimer Hall on UF’s Gainesville campus. The futuristic newsroom, which should open in 2009, will provide a place for students and faculty of all forms of journalism – newspaper, television, magazine, radio, online and more – to collaborate on new storytelling forms and then research the effectiveness of those new ways of disseminating information.
Stage two will create a Strategic Communications Laboratory, a space in which students and faculty of advertising and public relations will collaborate to explore the digital future of strategic communications and test the results.
The third stage will be a think tank in which all of the college’s students and researchers will collaborate to envision and build the future of digital communication.
“This is the right idea at the right time,” Carlson said. “Media companies need our help and guidance. I can’t think of a more exciting opportunity, or a greater challenge.”
Carlson, 57, is recognized as a pioneer in the field and has been called the “father of the modern interactive newspaper.” He joined the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in the fall of 1993 and within just a few months, he and two graduate students created the first Web site in the world devoted to journalism.
He is an internationally known speaker and has given more than 120 presentations at conventions and symposia on five continents. He was the first educator ever to serve as president of the Society of Professional Journalists, the oldest and largest journalism organization in the United States.
“I am gratified – and humbled – by Dean Wright’s confidence in me, and by the excitement exhibited by my colleagues on the faculty of the College of Journalism and Communications,” Carlson said. “We can’t wait to get started.”
Contacts:
- Executive Director David Carlson, 352-846-0171, dcarlson@jou.ufl.edu
- Dean John W. Wright II, 352-392-0466, jwright@jou.ufl.edu
Posted: August 18, 2008
Category: College News
