Oct. 21, 2009 (PR Newswire) --
NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Hearst Corporation's Innovation group announced today that it will partner with the Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Adobe Systems Inc. to launch a student design competition to develop interactive projects that will ultimately be used by the Corporation.
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With guidance from Hearst Corporate Innovation and employees across Hearst's diverse communication and technology businesses, University of Missouri students will develop three to five interactive projects using Adobe's new product, Adobe® Flash® Catalyst, and Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 (CS4). Hearst is the first media partner to participate in the Reynolds Journalism Institute competition, which is now in its third year. The projects could produce real possibilities for both the advertising and news reporting sides of the journalism industry, and Hearst intends to explore the possibility of incorporating the winning projects into new and existing businesses.
Journalism and computer science students at Fudan University in Shanghai, China will also conduct a similar contest. Both Fudan and RJI winners will showcase their projects in Shanghai as part of the 2010 World Expo. In May 2010, the winners will be selected and will be invited to present their ideas to Adobe and Hearst executives at Adobe's world headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
The first RJI contest used Adobe® AIR® technology and last year's focused on building applications (apps) for Apple's iPhone. Three teams of students in last year's contest produced applications that are currently available in the iTunes Apple Store. The projects included a news aggregator called Newsflash; a specialty entertainment guide app to serve the NBC affiliate and newspaper; and a free real estate app named NearBuy, currently the second-most downloaded real estate app in the iTunes store.
"Hearst is committed to fostering innovation and entrepreneurial thinking both internally and across the communications technology industry," said Beth Polish, director of Corporate Innovation and senior vice president of Hearst Interactive Media.
