Guest article: Cologne School of Journalism at CeBIT - New Digital Dawn?

Smartphones are taking over. On trains, in cafés, even while watching TV, phones are our constant companions. So how come journalism has made so little progress towards using the advantages that they offer us? 14 students from the Cologne School of Journalism (Kölner Journalistenschule für Politik und Wirtschaft) are trying to show that good journalism is indeed possible using just your phone. That’s also why they have written this guest article for our CODE_n blog.

What better place to do that than that at the Code_n competition at this year´s Cebit where start-ups are presenting their new ideas in the realm of the Internet of Things. Equipped with their phones, the students are heading to the trade fair, in search of interesting businesses, people and ideas. On Tuesday and Wednesday they have been and will be recording interviews with founders of start-ups, film videos and edit them, take pictures and write articles on their phones straight from the trade-fair floor. The articles will have interesting formats such as Twitter videos, Instagram and Vine, which are more popular than newspapers especially among younger people.

The finished articles are published in cooperation with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on their website www.faz.net/code-n. During the two days, the students are getting support from Patrick Bernau and Britta Beeger of FAZ, mobile reporting expert Marcus Bösch and Journalism School coordinator Jakob Struller.

So just as the young start-up founders are advocating a new digital dawn in business and our everyday life, the question for journalists is, whether there is a new digital dawn for journalism as well. The possibilities, at least, are there.

For more information please visit:

www.faz.net/code-n