Jan Schaffer
in
Jan Schaffer is executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland. She launched J-Lab in 2002 to spotlight new forms of digital storytelling. J-Lab now rewards novel ideas through the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. It funds cutting-edge citizen media startups through its New Voices project and it has built a web tutorial on how to launch community news sites and an e-learning portal, the Knight Citizen News Network for citizen media projects. It also spotlights interactive news exercises and digital storytelling examples that involve people in public issues.
Schaffer previously directed the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which funded more than 120 pilot news projects that worked to better engage people in public life over its 10-year existence. She is a former business editor and a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where she worked for 22 years. She joined The Inquirer after earning a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.
