Journalism School Acquires Online Training Center

UM will maintain NewsLab and add new material by faculty and students

OXFORD, Miss. – The Meek School of Journalism and New Media at the University of Mississippi soon will take over operation of the online journalism training center NewsLab.

The website will be transferred officially to the journalism school on Oct. 2.

The site was launched in 1998 with a grant from the Park Foundation. NewsLab has been maintained since 2003 by founding executive director Deborah Potter as an online training center. Thousands of journalists, educators and students have benefitted from its resources on reporting, producing, ethics, photojournalism and many other topics.

“Under Deborah Potter’s leadership, NewsLab developed a reputation for supporting quality journalism across digital platforms,” said Will Norton, UM journalism dean. “As part of our school, the site will build on that foundation and expand its mission to include a broader range of communication fields in keeping with the focus of our school.”

All NewsLab resources will remain online at a new stand-alone site, hosted by Ole Miss. New material, including research projects and creative work, will be added and maintained by the school’s faculty and students.

“I’m delighted that NewsLab has found a university home,” Potter said. “One of NewsLab’s early goals was to serve as a bridge between television newsrooms and educators to help working journalists discover and apply the lessons of academic research.”

The school’s faculty members often work at the intersection of technology and content creation, she said. Sustaining NewsLab will allow the school to share more widely the work of its faculty and students and to contribute to conversations about media, communication and technology occurring around the world.

Potter said she looks forward to potential collaborations with the school on future journalism projects.

For more information on the launch or to inquire about contributing to the new site, contact Mike Tonos at jmtonos@olemiss.edu.