Department of Journalism

The News Lab

The News Lab at Penn State, housed in the Department of Journalism and led by Maggie Messitt, the Norman Eberly Professor of Practice, facilitates partnerships between professional news organizations and student journalists — regularly collaborating on long-form and special projects.

Recent Collaborations and Special Projects

Man in sweatshirt jeans standing in a cornfield

Thad Wakefield stands in his family’s field. The Wakefields have farmed for six generations, but it’s becoming more difficult to continue. (Photo by Cade Miller.)

  • "The Wakefields — Two Brothers, Six Generations" — An audio documentary produced by Cade Miller that tells the story of a family of Pennsylvania dairy farmers. The 22-minute piece, which aired on "Inside Appalachia," produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting, offers a deep, nuanced look at the economy, family dynamics, societal pressures and what people value. For Miller, who graduated from Penn State in May 2024, what was initially envisioned as a multi-part podcast about agriculture in Pennsylvania became more focused as he conducted his research. His grandparents operated a dairy farm in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, where his mother grew up. Miller said his familiarity of and fondness for family farms helped him focus on a farm operated by some Penn State alumni not far from his grandparents.
Train on tracks

A six-month-long reporting effort by Penn State journalism students that included three separate site visits, dozens of interviews and hundreds of hours of preparation has produced “East Palestine: One Year Later,” an in-depth, immersive look at the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment in February 2023 and its ongoing impact. Photo: Jackson Ranger

  • East Palestine: One Year Later — A six-month-long reporting effort by Penn State journalism students that included three separate site visits, dozens of interviews and hundreds of hours of preparation produced an in-depth, immersive look at the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment in February 2023 and its ongoing impact. The students translated their reporting into an immersive experience using the app Gesso, which is typically a platform for self-guided walking tours in cities and for self-guided museum tours, allowing visitors to engage with an exhibit on their own. For these purposes, the Gesso platform allows listeners and readers to find themselves more intimately inside the story, traveling alongside the train, walking inside someone’s home, stepping into Sulphur Run and experiencing the trauma of displacement.
Tyrone Pa. skyline
  • Navigating Inflation — A collaboration between the News Lab  and WPSU. Between October 2022 and March 2023, a team of student journalists visited Tyrone in Blair County several times with the aim of listening to residents and workers talk about the impact of inflation on their businesses, households and day-to-day lives.

The News Lab also ...

  1. conducts badging programs for students to help hone their journalism and storytelling skills and
  2. operates Centre County Documenters as part of the nationwide City Bureau's Documenters Network. The network officially added Centre County Documenters, powered by the News Lab at Penn State, as its first rural site in October 2024. As part of the effort, student reporters and community members will team up to monitor local government meetings in six townships. The Centre County Documenters effort initially launchd a pilot project as part of a partnership with SpotlightPA. Since that launch, the News Lab has expanded the note-taking service to share information with media outlets that serve Centre County.