Welcome to the Reese News Lab, an experimental news and research project based at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The lab was established in 2010 with a gift from the estate of journalism school alum Reese Felts.

Mission
Our mission is to push past the boundaries of media today, refine best practices and embrace the risks of experimentation.

We do this through:

• Collaborating with researchers, students, the public and industry partners,
• Producing tested, academically grounded insights for media professionals, and
• Providing engaging content.

Projects
We pursue projects that enable us to create engaging content and to answer research questions about the digital media environment.

In the summer of 2012, the lab launched WhichWayNC, a mobile-optimized news site about political issues important to North Carolina residents. We started the project because of Americans’ increasing dependence on mobile devices for news and information. Our journalists are testing and documenting best practices for creating mobile content.

With funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the lab launched a new project during the fall of 2012: a digital news service that offers stories about the quest for more science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers in the U.S. In this project, we test and refine techniques for engaging audiences in online conversations about critical issues.

All of our projects are programmed, designed, reported, packaged and edited by a staff of undergraduate and graduate students. Meet our staff.