Stanford, Columbia in media innovation partnership

Stanford University engineers and Columbia University journalists revealed a first-of-its-kind partnership between the two schools that supporters say could change the future of journalism, San Francisco Chronicle writes.

A $30 million gift from long-time Cosmopolitan magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown will fund a new institute for media innovation that is split between the Stanford School of Engineering and Columbia Journalism School, the schools say.

The institute will unite journalists in New York, who produce news with engineers in Stanford who are developing the next Google or Yahoo, adds Bernd Girod, Stanford engineering professor, who will head the institute.

According to a joint statement from the two schools, the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation will encourage new media, promote innovation and prototypes and "recognise the increasingly important connection between journalism and technology”, Reuters reveals.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times says each school will receive $12 million for "Institute activities" - enough to endow a professorship holder and to support graduate and post-graduate fellowships at both schools. Columbia will receive an additional $6 million for construction of a building that will feature a high-tech newsroom.

“The Brown Institute will bring together creative innovators skilled in production and delivery of news and entertainment with the entrepreneurial researchers at Stanford working in multimedia technology”, Girod notes.