Annenberg Innovator in Residence speaks at dinner

The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism hosted a meet and greet dinner Wednesday night for journalism students to get acquainted with this year’s Annenberg Innovator in Residence, Alexis Lloyd.

Lloyd is the Creative Director of The New York Times Research and Development Lab. She investigates various types of technologies and multimedia approaches that aim to advance the field of journalism within the next five years.

“Technology and innovation around technology [have] pretty radically transformed a lot about journalism and news, but the vast majority of that information has happened around the readers’ experience of the news — how to make news on different platforms, such as Twitter and news apps,” Lloyd said.

Her main focus of this week is on improving the efficiency of reporting itself. During her tenure at The New York Times, she has studied technologies and databases that are trying to improve the speed of article production and ensure that data is synthesized for a multitude of media outlets.

“There hasn’t been as much attention paid to the reporting process, to everything that happens before everyone sees that material,” Lloyd said. “There are a lot of challenges that we can really innovate around.”

The event was presented by the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab as part of a weeklong agenda featuring Lloyd’s expertise on technology in the media. Students in attendance at the event were mainly master’s students and Ph.D. candidates in journalism or communication.

“I think it’s really incredible to have someone like Alexis Lloyd come in here to tie in technological advancements to journalism,” said Alex Gold, a second year master’s student in strategic public relations. “She’s really leading the charge in journalism’s future, and I think that’s really important here in a school like Annenberg: to have her share her knowledge and wealth of experience with us and help guide us,”

During the meet and greet, students had the opportunity to collaborate in groups to discuss possible reporting innovations and pitch their ideas to Lloyd at the conclusion of the event.

“It’s been really nice to have Alexis [Lloyd] here to expedite our process as journalists and having these circles to come together and brainstorm ideas,” said Stephanie Monte, a second year master’s student in journalism.

The Annenberg Innovator in Residence Program began in 2009 as the result of a generous gift by USC alumni and Annenberg parents Dr. Mitchell and Deena Lew. Since its conception, the program has hosted various innovators such as author and computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who in 2010 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and Aaron Koblin, the leader of the Data Arts Team in Google’s Creative Lab.

“This week has been great. It’s really nice to switch contexts and get different perspectives from people who are coming out of the programs here,” Lloyd said.

Gabriel Kahn, a professor of professional practice at Annenberg and Director of the Future of Journalism at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, said that Lloyd quickly rose to the top among the candidates for this year’s program.

“Particularly with journalism, one of the big struggles is to think in a time frame that’s more than just six months to a year out,” Kahn said. “It was really refreshing to see her thinking about stuff for, well she says three to five years out, but to me it sounds more like ten years out. She’s really projecting a different future for journalism in a business that’s so constrained by tradition.”

The schedule of events over the past several days included an interactive panel entitled  the Future of Journalism, a class visit called Social and Economic Implications of Communication Tech and a public talk named Human in the Loop: Conversations Between People and Machines.

“This week has been really rewarding so far,” said Sophie Madej, program coordinator of USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. “It’s nice to have Lloyd in the classroom so students can get that one-on-one time, which has more of a lasting impact than just lots of lectures.”