Brown Institute

AI Club at CJS
2025-09-29 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-10-27 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-11-10 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-11-24 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Welcome to the Columbia Journalism School AI Club! We meet every other Monday in the Brown Institute (1st floor Pulitzer Hall).
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AI Club at CJS
2025-10-15 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Welcome to the Columbia Journalism School AI Club! For this session, we will walk through the various approaches to using NotebookLM — followed by our session in two weeks which will be focused on RAG and open source models.
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Brown Institute Showcase
2025-10-22 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Simonyi Conference Center, CoDa at Stanford University, 389 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States
Maneesh Agrawala and Mark Hansen cordially invite you to the Brown Institute for Media Innovation’s Annual Showcase!
Join us for a reception starting at 5PM on October 22, 2025 in the Simonyi Conference Center in the CoDa building at Stanford University.
Register to Attend
The event features a mix of engineers, technologists, journalists and media producers, all funded through the 2024-25 Magic Grant program.
alphaXiv, led by students at Stanford, has created a discussion platform layered directly on top of arXiv’s 2.4 million academic papers — breaking down barriers between curious students and distinguished researchers by enabling real-time Q&A and collaboration on cutting-edge research.
Another team from Columbia University, Improper Conduct, has utilized large language models to build the first-of-its-kind public database tracking prosecutorial misconduct during criminal trials. Their pilot in Ohio has already identified patterns of improper and at times illegal behavior, and they’re working to incorporate AI tools that can help watchdog journalists expose judicial abuses nationwide.
Measuring Silence on Social Media, a project led by students at Stanford, is conducting a broad census of what perspectives are systematically under- or over-represented across online communities. Using a novel human + AI pipeline that leverages large language models and survey methods, they’re quantifying the silencing effect to reveal whose voices go unheard in digital spaces.
And Justice Delayed, an investigative project from Columbia, is addressing India’s staggering backlog of nearly 50 million court cases, cataloging long-pending criminal cases across 650+ district courts to equip journalists in remote regions with tools to scrutinize every aspect of their local criminal justice systems.
Read about the entire cohort projects presenting at the 2025 showcase event.
We hope you can join us!
Established in 2012, the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute is a collaboration between Columbia University and Stanford University, designed to encourage and support new endeavors in media innovation. At Stanford, the primary focus is on media technology, and the Institute is anchored in the School of Engineering. At Columbia, the primary focus is on content, and the Institute is anchored in the Graduate School of Journalism.

Data Visualization Workshop with The Pudding
2025-11-01 10:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Graphical (or pictorial) presentations of data have become an almost essential part of journalistic practice. Data visualization helps us see patterns in data and is an important tool for finding stories. Over the past decade, major outlets including The New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters have been publishing data visualizations that push the idea of storytelling, creating new data-driven ways to inform and entertain. Alongside these graphics are newsrooms based entirely on data visualization, including the Kontinentalist and The Pudding.
In this day-long workshop co-sponsored by the Brown Institute and Barnard Vagelos Computational Science Center, members of The Pudding will immerse participants in their tried-and-true design process, segmented into four stages: story, data, design, and development.
In the week leading up to the workshop, accepted participants will be asked to embark on a creative journey to collect data about the NYC subway system. This data might be methodical and sourced from the MTA turnstile API, capturing the flow of commuters through the city. Or it could be more personal and observational—hand-documented notes from your daily treks, sketches of the subway’s unique quirks, maps of broken lights, or a visual catalog of tile murals across stations. Inspired by the work of Denis Wood, who mapped his neighborhood in surprising ways, and Giorgia Lupi, known for blending data and personal stories, we encourage you to be creative! Use whatever tools come natural to you, whether it’s pen and paper, a spreadsheet, or a snippet of code. Every one of us has a unique story shaped by these subterranean journeys, and we can’t wait to see what data you find interesting and valuable. Do not spend more than an hour or two on this effort.
The session will begin with Story, a throughline that should resonate with all participants of the program. As we’ve all experienced, the strongest visualizations are those with equally strong narratives. Diving deeper, students will be introduced to the realm of Data. Using curated datasets around key topics, students will seek to uncover the nuances of integrating specific, meaningful data with their narratives. The emphasis then shifts to the visual canvas, focusing on the core elements of Design. The goal is to ensure that every story is captivating both visually and narratively. And culminating the day is a glimpse into Development. While the intricacies of programming might remain in the backdrop, attendees will understand and appreciate the development scaffolding that turns their narratives and designs into dynamic interactive features.
Apply to Attend
This workshop will only be able to accommodate 24 students. Applications are due by midnight on Friday, October 17. Notices will be sent out on Monday, October 20.

About the Presenters
Caitlyn Ralph is the Studio Director at The Pudding’s in-house data journalism agency called Polygraph, where we do the same type of visual storytelling work with the same team for different brands and organizations. Her BA is in Computer Science, her MS is in Data Viz, and her prior professional experience is in magazine journalism. She spends her working days explaining this practice as clearly as possible to clients with varying backgrounds, managing projects and the team, and crafting future strategy for both Polygraph and its sister publication The Pudding. She spends her non-working days running, taking film pictures, and on a K-pop group called Stray Kids.
Alvin Chang is an assistant professor of Journalism and Design at the New School. He’s a data and visual journalist who has worked in several newsrooms, most recently as Head of Visuals and Data at Guardian US. His work as a journalist often combines deep reporting with data analysis to help readers clearly understand the world around them. His stories often show how small decisions accrue into invisible problems like discrimination, segregation, and ultimately dehumanization. And he makes those things visible using data viz, interactives, cartoons, and videos.

Decentralized Futures Hackathon
2025-11-08 10:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
What might creative infrastructure look like if it were designed not by centralized, algorithmic platforms, but by the communities who use it?
The Decentralized Futures Hackathon is part of an art-driven series of experiments to reimagine creative infrastructure. Over the course of one day, participants will prototype new ways of working that expand both self-reliance and community reliance:

Self-reliance → the ability of individuals (artists, technologists, participants) to create, share, and sustain their work without being fully dependent on centralized platforms, institutions, or gatekeepers. It points toward empowerment: learning the skills, building the tools, and developing the practices to stand on your own.
Community reliance → the recognition that creative work is not done in isolation, but thrives through networks of mutual support. It means designing systems where communities can depend on one another – sharing resources, knowledge, and care – rather than relying on opaque algorithms or extractive platforms.

Fields of creative practice are being reshaped by advances in artificial intelligence, specifically – from generative tools that alter how art is produced and distributed, to algorithmic systems that structure visibility and value. The hackathon will be a space to confront these transformations directly.
Artists, technologists, storytellers, designers, and community builders will come together to imagine and build experimental projects that reconfigure how we connect, collaborate, and sustain creative practice.
Decentralized Futures is an ongoing initiative of hackathons, salons, and dinners presented in collaboration with the Solana Foundation. Learn more at https://dfutures.xyz.
All are welcome — no matter your background or skill set. Bring your curiosity, your ideas, and your willingness to co-create.
Apply to Attend
This event is a collaboration with Columbia University School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab, the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and Columbia Engineering

Video Podcasting Essentials with Nick Michael, NPR
2025-11-14 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Brown Institute at Columbia, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Video podcasts are everywhere, but making one that looks sharp, sounds great, and actually connects with an audience takes more than just hitting record. Join Nick Michael, Supervising Producer of Visuals for NPR to learn the building blocks for a professional approach. He’ll discuss principles for a full production workflow: setup/prep, gear recs, recording, editing full episodes, editing vertical clips for social and more. Pizza and drinks will be provided. Nick will be virtual but we will be gathering in person.
Register to Attend

Mito Habe-Evans/NPR
Nick Michael is a supervising editor for the Visuals team, where he leads the design and delivery of complex editorial projects. Those projects include NPR-in-a-Minute, which in the span of 18 months piloted over a dozen shortform video series and garnered 1 billion views across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. He also serves as editorial lead for NPR’s foray publishing podcasts to YouTube.
He has co-managed the growth of NPR’s award-winning video team, highlights of which include co-crafting the look of NPR’s signature interviews with President Obama, supervising two seasons of NPR Music’s The Formula and coordinating 22 filmmakers across the country to document 2017’s solar eclipse.
Michael joined NPR in 2014 as the lead video producer for Jazz Night in America, NPR’s first program with companion radio and video content. Jazz Night‘s 2017 portfolio earned a Peabody nomination.
Before NPR, Michael co-founded 1504, a video studio based in Birmingham, Ala. He earned an M.A. in photojournalism from the University of Missouri.
