Finland launches world's first course in Innovation Journalism

On September 9 the journalism group at the department of communication at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland launched the world’s first Innovation Journalism course for university students. It will be running intensively during September-October 2005. The pilot course has 20 participants. It includes 12 h lectures, practical work and a feed-back session. The students will get three credit points from the course. During the intensive course, September-October, every student will write one or more innovation journalistic articles. The grades of the course will be based on the quality of the articles. One aim of the course is also to publish the articles in various Finnish newspapers and magazines. The lecturer of the course is Dr. Turo Uskali, who took part in the first Finnish innovation journalism research and education program 2004–2005. The course will collaborate closely with Dr. David Nordfors at Stanford University and others interested in innovation journalism education.