10 ideas for shaping the future of journalism, courtesy of Penn students

Can a bunch of Penn kids save journalism?

OK, let’s not get too crazy over here. But they do have some ideas about shaping its future.

For the past four years, University of Pennsylvania adjunct professor and journalist Sam Apple has led an undergraduate Entrepreneurial Journalism class in which students develop ideas for new journalism platforms. The class culminates in a Pitch Night. It’s a chance for the students to get feedback on the viability of their ideas, but it’s also a competition — $7,500 is up for grabs.

This year, the winning pitch was for Soundcheck by Nico Carrino. Soundcheck is an app that crowdsources concert experiences and reviews for the sake of new music discovery — like a Yelp or TripAdvisor for music, Carrino said.

In addition to Carrino’s, nine projects were pitched during the event:

• Thrifty (Anissa Lee): part student finance blog, part delivery service that hooks up students already going to, say, Chipotle with students who want Chipotle brought to them
• The 6Ws (Carly Roman): an app that would present succinct summaries of topical issues, bullet point-style, as well as right- and left-wing perspectives. Swiping left shows how liberals view the issue; swiping right shows how conservatives do
• WriterFlow (Jason Choi): a platform for students to critique each other’s writing and possibly earn money for it
• DressMe (Marie Delcarson): for “The Indecisive Dresser,” an app that crowdsources feedback on outfits shown in users’ selfies
• VoteFor (Virginia Walcott): a nonpartisan platform for information about upcoming elections and their significance. Local entities could enter details about candidates and instruct citizens how to go about voting
• Campus Beats (Maria Biery): a HerCampus or The Odyssey for musical taste on college campuses
• TARE (Evan Bayless): a podcast-discovery app based on listening history
• PrevYou (Julian Mazaira): a site where movie fans could interact and give feedback about trailers to the industry
• Spectator (Lucy Hovanisyan): a crowdsourced platform for citizens to upload their videos of political uprisings, shootings, etc. so they can be accessed by journalists. Users would receive credit and pay for use of their videos

Do any of these projects have a chance at being made? Well, maybe: Apple says that out of 10 to 12 students in each year’s class, maybe one or two will follow through in making their apps. (To be fair, several members of the class aren’t in tech- or writing-focused majors; the creator of one of the judges’ favorite projects, DressMe, is studying to be a nurse.)

But those that have gotten made haven’t necessarily been created by Pitch Night winners. Taylor Culliver, a 2015 Penn grad and one of this year’s judges, conceived of the content curation company he now runs, Vyrtex, in this class.

The other judges were Laura Huang, an assistant professor of management at Wharton; Nick Mustazza, a Penn Ph.D candidate in English literature; and this reporter.

The class’s beloved teacher — and that’s a fair assessment, because his students presented him with a thank-you gift (alcohol), kind words and a round of applause at the end of the event — won’t be leading the class next year. Apple is moving on to teach a course about science journalism. He says that he hopes to return to teach Entrepreneurial Journalism eventually.