David Nordfors, a Swedish punk
rocker-turned-molecular-physicist-turned-journalist, says a lot of journalists can’t see the big picture when it comes to technological innovation.

Nordfors is co-founder and executive director of the VINNOVA-Stanford Research Center of Innovation Journalism. The program places its fellows (mainly mid-career journalists) in newsrooms around the Bay Area to learn the new ways that reporters and bloggers were covering technology and innovation. Those newsrooms include the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, CNET and even the Technologizer blog.

Here’s a link to an interview Mark Glaser of PBS.com’s MediaShift did with Nordfors. Glaser asked Norfors why he started the program:

We aren’t able to have a public discussion [about innovation] because journalism is organized in those same darn verticals as the rest of society. So you have one part of innovation stories on the business page, another part on the tech page, one part is on the politics page, one part on the lifestyle page. 

All these editors have one part of the story and have no intention of collaborating with the other editors. You have the same stack of silos in the newsroom as out in society. If you’re into changing things and finding new solutions, the opportunity is to go across disciplines.