ASU Professor will be inducted into NABJ Hall of Fame

Retha Hill, Executive Director of the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU, is being inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame on Aug. 2 in Chicago, Illinois.

Hill joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk about the recognition and the lab.

Hill explained the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab consists of journalism and computer science majors. The lab strives to create innovative products, including virtual, augmented and mixed reality apps and content, web applications, new game tools, social media tools and mobile apps for media clients.

It can be difficult to keep up with all of the new technology that’s being introduced for news and information with the rise of AI. 

“It is because this period with generative AI, AI  in general it makes the internet days look like just a slow, slow news day. It’s coming, it’s changing so quickly but I always keep in mind the story and how do we help people get information and how do we empower storytellers and that’s the great thing about this period is that I can do things by myself that a few years ago I had to hire four or five people to do…,” said Hill. 

It’s important to continue to use technology to tell stories in a unique way, and AI technology is one of the ways it can be done. Hill continues to always look for unique strategies to tell stories. 

“The students come into the lab and I teach them whatever the latest technology is so a few years ago…we were creating iPhone apps and then we went into game development…recently we’ve been using AI to tell the story of the American Revolution example…we can tell these stories in an interactive immersive way to get young people interested in our history…,” said Hill.