New community centers. Local scientists. Health scares at town beaches. These are just a few of the important topics that make the local news and the desks of young reporters who play Journalism.net. Combining the excitement of local stories with the thrill of publishing their own work to inform the public, young players in Journalism.net work as reporters publishing online newsmagazines on community-based topics.

During the game, they work with professional journalists, learning skills like interviewing and copyediting. And they use these skills right away, working on and publishing stories that matter. By participating in Journalism.net, players learn about the diversity of life around them, develop an awareness of the relevance of community happenings, discover local scientific issues, and begin to see the world as journalists.

Game History & Players

We’re very lucky to have run several different versions of the Journalism.net journalism game. In our first game, where players published under the Wisconsin Science Journal masthead, middle-school-aged players took on the role of science reporters for 12 hours during the spring of 2004. During the summer of 2004, high school-aged players investigated several local neighborhoods under the South Madison Times civic journalism masthead. During the summers of 2005 and 2006, middle-school-aged Science.net players worked the science beat by interviewing scientists, gathering research, and writing stories for 45 hours.

Online Editions

All of the Journalism.net newsmagazine editions written and published by our young reporters are available online. [UPDATE: once a technology upgrade is finished these editions will once again be available.]

The Wisconsin Science Journal and Science.net editions highlight science topics studied by researchers in the Madison area, while the South Madison Times focuses on community issues in the vibrant and diverse south side of Madison.

- Science.net (Edition 2, summer 2006)
- Science.net (Edition 1, summer 2005)
- South Madison Times (Edition 1, summer 2004)
- Wisconsin Science Journal (Edition 2, summer 2004)
- Wisconsin Science Journal (Edition 1, spring 2004)

Tools for Journalism.net: ByLine

Part internet printing press, part computational tool for thought, ByLine is the epistemic game engine used in Journalism.net, the epistemic role-playing game of professional journalism. Players use ByLine to write and publish stories – and at the same time, they learn to think like journalists about science, their communities, and society at large. To learn more about Byline, check out the ByLine project page.