Media labs in Spain as catalytic agents of journalistic innovation: key
features in the opinion of experts
Los labs de medios en España como agentes catalizadores de la innovación
periodística: rasgos centrales a juicio de los expertos
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How to cite this article:
Herrera Damas, S. and Satizábal Idarraga, C. C. (2023). Media labs in Spain as catalytic agents of journalistic innovation: key features in the
opinion of experts.
Doxa Comunicación
, 37. pp. 479-500.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n37a1836
Susana Herrera Damas.
Bachelor in Audiovisual Communication (University of Navarra, 1998) and in Sociology (UNED,
2004) and PhD in Communication (University of Navarra, 2002). Extraordinary Doctorate Award, she has edited 3 books,
is (co)author of 5 of them and has written more than 90 articles published in leading academic journals. She has been
Visiting Professor at the Universities of Ottawa (Canada), Texas in Austin (USA) and at the Missouri School of Journalism
(USA). Since February 2008, she has been working at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where she is an Associate
Journalism Professor. Currently, her research focuses on media innovation in digital environments, with special attention
to the search for best practices in specic initiatives related to digital interactive narratives and to constructive and
solutions journalism. She is head of the Innovation on Digital Media research group whose activity can be consulted on
its website
https://innovationondigitalmedia.com/
. Since 2020 she is accredited as Full Professor by ANECA.
University Carlos III, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-1755-1621
Christian Camilo Satizábal Idarraga.
Bachelor in Communication Studies and Master in Higher Education from the
Universidad Santiago de Cali in Colombia and PhD in Media Research at the Universidad Carlos III of Madrid. During
his academic career, he has been interested in case studies in audiovisual productions and in media innovation labs, a
topic to which he dedicated his doctoral thesis.
University Carlos III, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-2447-2163
Abstract:
At the current crossroads that media in general and journalism, in
particular, are going through, innovation emerges not as a “nice
to have” but as an urgent and peremptory need. In this context,
innovation labs are presented as a structured and somewhat
Resumen:
En la actual encrucijada que atraviesan los medios en general y el pe-
riodismo en particular, la innovación surge no como un “nice to have”
sino como una necesidad urgente y perentoria. En este contexto, los la-
boratorios de innovación se presentan como un espacio estructurado
Received: 29/10/2022 - Accepted: 08/02/2023 - Early access: 15/03/2023 - Published: 01/07/2023
Recibido: 29/10/2022
-
Aceptado: 08/02/2023
-
En edición: 15/03/2023
-
Published: 01/07/2023
is content is published under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License. International License
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1. Introduction
e level of disruption that the Internet has generated in our information ecosystem is so enormous, and in many ways so
unknown, that a permanent need for change is to be expected. is is what Ros Atkins, a BBC journalist, said recently. He
also pointed out that we are living in an era of extreme creativity and that journalism must be able to keep up with it by
looking far and wide for inspiration. Otherwise, he continued, we run the risk of audiences nding news to be tired and limited
compared to other products they consume. In this context, innovation therefore becomes non-negotiable, just as it is to verify
data correctly, to have good storytelling ideas or to be unbiased (Atkins, 2022).
Dened as the ability to react to changes in products, processes and services through the use of creative skills that allow
problems or needs to be identied and solved in a way that materializes in the introduction of something new that adds
value to consumers and therefore fosters the viability of the media organization (García Avilés, et al. 2019: 3-4), innovation in
the media is today revealed as a crucial asset for the survival of the media industry” (Weiss and Domingo, 2010: 1158) to the
point that, more than a task, it has become an essential attitude –perhaps the only possible one– to face a clearly disruptive
information ecosystem.
In this regard, several authors have argued that if in the new digital ecosystem traditional media want to remain relevant to
their audiences, it is not enough for them to simply adapt; they need to reinvent themselves in an essential way (Westlund
and Lewis, 2014; Küng, 2015; Paulussen, 2016; Fortunati and O’Sullivan, 2019). Logically, continue Porcu et al. (2020: 1420)
this does not happen overnight but it requires a whole new culture of innovative (Porcu, 2020) and resilient learning (Seville,
2017). And yet, in the face of this need, what has been appreciated by several researchers (Ryfe, 2012; Buijs, 2014; Usher,
2014; Tameling, 2015) is that the culture of newsrooms has been an obstacle –and not a stimulus– to change and renewal.
privileged space to do so. However, since both the academic and
professional literature and the review of the websites of the dierent
labs in the United States and Europe show that their conguration
admits highly diverse formulas, we wonder what the central feature
of these spaces in Spain is today. To the extent that their raison
d’être is clear, it will be possible to dene to what extent other bodies
can (or cannot) take over their activity. To nd this out, we have
conducted semi-structured interviews with an intentional sample of
18 authoritative voices in this eld. e results show that the main
feature of these spaces is precisely their innovative purpose. From this
point on, the emphasis is placed on dierent signs of identity which
are nevertheless complementary under the common denominator of
sharing the same mission.
Keywords:
Media labs; innovation; journalism; experts; Spain.
y en cierto modo privilegiado para hacerlo. Sin embargo, puesto que
tanto la literatura académica como la profesional y la revisión de las
webs de los distintos labs en Estados Unidos y Europa reeja que su
conguración admite muy diversas fórmulas, nos preguntamos cuál
hoy es el rasgo central propio de estos espacios en España. En la medi-
da en que quede clara cuál es su razón de ser, será posible denir hasta
qué punto su actividad puede (o no) ser asumida por otras instancias.
Para averiguarlo, hemos llevado a cabo entrevistas semiestructuradas
con una muestra intencional de 18 voces autorizadas en este ámbito.
Los resultados reejan que el rasgo capital de estos espacios es pre-
cisamente su propósito innovador. A partir de aquí, se va poniendo
el acento en señas de identidad diferentes que, no obstante, resultan
complementarias bajo ese denominador común de compartir una
misma misión.
Palabras clave:
Labs de medios; innovación; periodismo; expertos; España.
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A desirable, innovative learning culture should embrace innovation in both its exploitation and exploration (March, 1991;
O’Reilly and Tushman, 2013) and should also extend to all its elements including –in the model of García Avilés, et al., 2019:
11-13– the areas and aims of innovation, the types of actors, the drivers and the outcomes, so that this minimizes the impact
of possible obstacles.
Innovation is precisely the purpose with which the rst media innovation laboratories were born, rst in the United States and
later on in Europe.
In a rst denition, labs are “units or departments dedicated to research, experimentation, development and implementation
of technological and editorial innovations” (Salaverría, 2015: 398). Following Tanaka (2011), they tend to focus on new
technologies to devise, research, experiment and innovate technologically and socially through the collaboration of several
disciplines. In this sense, they are highly innovative internal management formulas that in several cases began as spaces
for the creation of new narratives and, over time, have been transformed into product development laboratories. On other
occasions, they continue to be departments dedicated to the exploration and generation of digital narratives, taking advantage
of the possibilities generated by the evolution of the Internet itself.
At the same time, media labs are places of experimentation that emerge as a strategic response to the current situation
experienced by many media, aicted by a serious multifactorial crisis that makes it urgent to nd new narratives, products
and services that meet the information needs of a consumer who has disconnected with the traditional media system and has
chosen other ways of being informed.
In this context, it seems wise to provide independent spaces in which to think, analyze, test, but above all in which to have
enough time and perspective to design dierent solutions, a need that is impossible to achieve in the frenetic pace of day-to-
day operations. us, it is understandable that labs have been seen as a lifeline for the medium in which they are inserted,
due to their eective contribution to creating new narratives, new forms of income or even new audiences (García-Avilés,
2020; Zaragoza-Fuster and García-Avilés, 2020), something that also occurs in the so-called second-generation innovation
labs (Hogh-Janovsky and Meier, 2021).
e latter are the labs that were created between 2017 and 2021. Basically, they dier from the previous ones in that they are
more integrated into the organizational structures of the newsrooms, which allows them to more eciently meet the needs of
journalists who, in addition, work in specic phases of production (Hogh-Janovsky and Meier, 2021). Following these authors,
these second-generation labs are also characterized by the multiple eorts made by their employees to act as an engine of
innovation to transform their organization by transferring knowledge, sharing new ideas and approaches through advanced
training, thorough and transparent communication of innovation, agile project accompaniment and sta rotation. ese
labs are also more oriented towards designing new business models that are sustainable. To this end, they apply a process
of dynamic change and constant learning. From a more concrete perspective, Cools, Van Gorp and Opgenhaen (2022)
distinguish three types of ways of working:
1. static (the lab team works alone),
2. dynamic (lab members collaborate with other professionals, such as journalists or engineers from the organization) and
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3. a hybrid form between both types.
To these features, García Avilés (2023) adds that, in general, second-generation labs are also distinguished by:
1. focusing on nding creative solutions to improve narratives and formats
2. devoting greater attention to solving the needs of specic users and targets
3. favoring a network structure that may involve collaboration with external organizations and that prioritizes the transfer
of innovation to other areas of the news outlet
Precisely because of the evolution that these spaces have undergone, we ask ourselves what their central feature is today. is
is the main objective of this research: to nd out what is currently the main feature that characterizes these laboratories. More
specically, the specic objectives of this article are:
SO1: To explore the perception of experts regarding the central feature shared by these spaces.
SO2: To explore their perception regarding other complementary identity signs.
2. Media labs as catalytic agents of journalistic innovation
According to some of the main contributions on the origin of media labs (Salaverría, 2015; Donaire Pitarch, 2016; Sádaba and
Salaverría, 2016; González Alba, 2017; Sixto, 2019; Zaragoza-Fuster and García Avilés, 2022), the rst media lab was the one
developed by the North American media group Knight Ridder in Boulder, Colorado. It was directed by Roger Fidler, who had
a multidisciplinary team composed of journalists, designers, technologists and researchers. Its most outstanding project was
the tablet newspaper, a prototype that predates today’s tablets. In Spain, a similar experiment led by Mario Santinoli at El
Periódico de Catalunya, is an early example that stands out. From 2010, there was an international boom of these spaces after
reference media such as e New York Times, e Washington Post, e Boston Globe, the BBC, AFP, e Hungton Post or
e Guardian began to take a chance on developing them.
In the United States, an outstanding example was the project started by e New York Times, which began in 2006 and was
later restructured into the Research & Development Lab. With similar functions, those of PBS and e Boston Globe seek to
innovate from dierent perspectives that also include the creation of new journalistic projects and media literacy. Other labs
have ceased their activity. Buzzfeed, for example, announced in 2015 the launch of the Open Lab for Journalism Technology
and the Arts which, however, closed two years later. During its existence, they experimented with bots, drones, sensors and
spherical video, although they nally understood that it was better to integrate the lab sta into the newsroom in a more
natural way and not as a stand-alone item. For some years now, the current trend in this country seems to be to incorporate
innovation into the development teams, which are called “Research & Development” and experiment around the product and
the business model, in line with what happens with second-generation labs.
In Latin America, we nd media labs in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Peru. In Argentina, Nación Content Lab was
created in 2015 as a new marketing solution for brands interested in contacting their audiences based on relevant and quality
content. In Peru, the Ojo Lab –linked to the digital native Ojo público– has carried out dierent interactive specials. In Brazil,
the lab of the newspaper Agência Pública has experimented with dierent technologies and formats.
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In Europe, Spain is one of the countries with the largest number of labs, including active ones, but also those that have been
disappearing. It is followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Finland
and the Netherlands. e rst European media lab, Medialab, of the French news agency France Press
1
, started its activity
in the 2000s. Among the European labs, we nd some prestigious media labs such as the BBC News Lab of the British public
broadcaster BBC, the French news agency AFP, e Guardian or the Italian radio and television network RAI. However, some
of them closed down shortly afterwards. Of the 28 European labs identied by Zaragoza and García Avilés (2022), 20 remain
active. RAI’s, for example, closed a year after its creation, while others have been restructured and have been trying out dierent
formulas (Nunes, 2020; Nunes and Mills, 2021; Mills and Wagemans, 2021).
Despite the boom that labs experienced in the 2010s –especially in 2012 and 2014–, this has subsequently subsided, either
because no new labs have appeared or because those that existed have been restructured and have even disappeared. Nor
has the phenomenon been alien to a certain fashion since, following Salaverría (2015: 403), it seems more avant-garde to say
that one has a lab than a traditional infographics and multimedia section. All in all, it is worth remembering with Küng how
important it is to distinguish between innovations based on business strategies from those based on technological artices,
also known as “shiny new things”. In this sense, the author criticizes the fact that many news organizations have abandoned
long-term strategic planning in favor of short-term innovation projects that are merely tactical and opportunistic and,
consequently, represent a competitive weakness (Küng, 2017: 15).
e review of the academic and professional literature on the subject leaves us with a series of similarities and dierences.
Among the former, labs are characterized by:
i) having a strong commitment to innovation,
ii) being committed to extending it to the whole environment,
iii) being made up of small but multidisciplinary teams,
iv) having a certain degree of autonomy with respect to the editorial sta, and
v) working with agile methodologies, which allows them to innovate quickly, eciently and dynamically.
e strong commitment to innovation is, in fact, one of the central features of any lab, as well as its raison d’être (Sádaba and
Salaverría, 2016: 158). is innovation extends to dierent areas, although the most common has to do with the development
of digital narratives. At the same time, this commitment to innovation also becomes a challenge since, sometimes, innovation
exceeds expectations and leads to a failure that the medium must assume. On the more positive side, media labs have driven the
development of dierent narratives such as interactive infographics, scroll narratives, interactive documentaries, interactive
specials, newsgames or immersive reports with 360º video, to name some of the most common ones in recent years. At other
times, the innovation carried out in the lab has made it possible to nd new revenue streams or new subscription systems.
As part of the lab’s commitment to innovation, it does not limit itself to generating it, but tries to disseminate it (Rogers, 2003)
and extend it to the whole environment (López Hidalgo and Ufarte Ruiz, 2016: 11), although with dierent levels of achievement
1
It is still active today. To learn more about the projects they are working on, you can check out their website at
https://www.afp.com/en/agency/medialab.
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(Zaragoza and García Avilés, 2020). e ideal point would be that its existence would become unnecessary because the culture
of innovation would have been assumed in an organic way by the entire newsroom. Following Porcu (2020) and Valero-Pastor
(2020: 213), only those companies that foster a true learning culture among their members have the opportunity to:
1. innovate (Cameron and Quinn, 2011 and Heijboer, Korenhof and Pantjes, 2013).
2. gain competitive advantages (Porter, 1985; Watkins and Marsick, 1996; Baars-Van Moorsel, 2003 and Yolles, 2009)
3. transform themselves through the creation of new knowledge (Nonaka, 1994; Wang, Su and Yang, 2011 and Schenke,
2015) and,
4. survive long-term market disruptions (March, 1991 and O’Reilly and Tushman, 2013).
At this point, the lab can lead the innovative learning culture referred to above. Following Porcu, this is dened as:
a social climate that encourages people to work and learn together, to grow as individuals and as a group (team, organization),
and that provides people with the autonomy to be exible, to experiment, to be creative and to investigate radical possibilities so
that the organization has a better chance to survive in the long run. is is facilitated by servant leadership, open communication,
mutual trust, a supportive culture, shared goals, valuing individual achievements, and training and development (Porcu, 2020)
In practice, this culture can be transmitted in dierent ways. Following Valero-Pastor and Carvajal-Prieto (2019: 1160),
these include teaching -formal, informal and mixed-, communication systems –formal, informal and mixed–, in addition to
professional resources such as employee exchange groups, interdepartmental visits or ambassadors who, as early adopters of
a particular innovation, act as “evangelists” with respect to the rest of the newsroom. On other occasions, knowledge transfer
occurs through creative formulas such as the Quartz Quest or the Condencial Lab Day (Valero-Pastor, 2020). Logically,
technology can be a great ally for this purpose through the use of IT tools such as emails, newsletters or services such as
Trello, Asana, Slack or Jira that dynamize, streamline and simplify team collaboration by optimizing workows (Valero-Pastor,
Carvajal-Prieto and García Avilés, 2019: 8-9).
Labs are formed by small but multidisciplinary teams. e size of these structures allows the generation of exible and adaptive
instances (Palomo and Palau, 2016), open to experimentation. In turn, multidisciplinary teams bring together journalists with
other professional proles such as graphic designers, video makers, programmers and computer developers with the idea of
designing more contextualized and feature-rich journalistic products and services (Küng, 2015, 2017 and Zaragoza and García
Avilés, 2022).
In turn, these teams enjoy a certain autonomy, which allows them to work at two or even three dierent speeds. In this sense,
the labs have independent dynamics from the rest of the environment. is gives them greater exibility to adapt to new market
standards and create more attractive and complete products (Valero-Pastor, 2020: 234-235). Following Mills and Wagemans
(2021: 11), this greater autonomy is also intended to ensure a certain distance from the hierarchical structures and routines of
media organizations.
Following Valero-Pastor (2020), innovation labs are characterized by stimulating the ow of ideas and collaborative project
development, with facilities physically congured to employ ecient and agile methodologies such as design thinking, problem
solving (Moultrie et al., 2008), lean startup methodology (Ries, 2011), scrum methodology (Maximini, 2015; Schwaber and
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Sutherland, 2017), or XP, Crystal, Kanvan or Scrumban programming (Valero-Pastor; Carvajal-Prieto; García-Avilés, 2019: 4-8).
On many occasions, the starting point is the so-called “minimum viable products” with which incremental value propositions
are oered to make them grow or to “pivot” them (in the jargon), rectifying what is necessary.
On the opposite side, innovation laboratories are dierentiated by:
(i) the main focus of their activity and.
ii) specializing in one type of digital narrative or another.
Indeed, some labs are oriented towards exploring new narratives, formats and data journalism while others technologically
develop digital applications, promote projects or startups and teach citizenship in critical media consumption (Salaverría,
2015: 401).
Regarding the narratives in which they specialize, labs can be dierentiated according to whether their preferred wager is
interactive infographics (Vizoso, 2020), scroll narrative (Rojas Torrijos, 2014), podcast (Orrantia, 2019), newsgame and gamied
narratives (García-Ortega and García-Avilés, 2018), transmedia production (Scolari, 2013) or the interactive documentary
(Vázquez-Herrero, González-Neira, Quintas-Froufe, 2019 and Vázquez-Herrero, López-García and Gifreu-Castells, 2019),
which includes video and is enriched with photo galleries, infographics and scroll narratives to facilitate the assimilation of
information and thus make it more didactic, dynamic, multimedia and entertaining. To a lesser extent, some labs have also
explored the potential oered by drones and immersive reporting with 360º video (Benítez de Gracia, 2019 and Benítez de
Gracia and Herrera Damas, 2020). In Spain, the latter is the case with those of El Condencial and, above all, RTVE.
3. Situation of the labs in Spain
Indeed, in Spain, these are the two most relevant innovation laboratories in terms of longevity, but also in terms of commitment
to innovation. At the same time, they are very dierent from each other.
RTVE’s was launched in June 2011 and is considered the rst innovation lab in the country. On their website, they dene
themselves as a pioneering audiovisual lab that seeks creative and novel ways to tell stories on a wide range of topics, seeking
to innovate, entertain and, above all, inform. Although the lab began with only two people -a designer and a journalist-,
over time it has grown in number, but also in variety of proles. Today, in addition to journalists, it integrates computer
developers, graphic designers and lmmakers who work on each project from scratch and in a collaborative manner. eir
rm commitment to audiovisual and interactive innovation has earned them several awards such as the Maloej infographics
awards, the Webby Awards, the Lovie Awards and the José Manuel Porquet digital journalism award. As time has gone by, they
have been taking risks on increasingly sophisticated audiovisual genres. Some of their most outstanding wagers are immersive
features with spherical video, podcasts, newsgames, specials and interactive documentaries (López Hidalgo and Ufarte Ruiz,
2016; Sádaba and Salaverría, 2016: 160 and González Alba, 2017).
For its part, El Condencial’s lab came on to the scene in 2013 under the name “El Condencial.Lab”, as an innovation and
product laboratory. It is the area of innovation, strategy and new narratives of El Condencial, a digital native newspaper
founded in 2001. e idea was to distance itself from the turmoil of day-to-day operations in order to work in second gear
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and on product strategy, something that requires a broader perspective. More specically, the lab aimed to accelerate the
digital leap of the newspaper and began as a catalytic unit aimed at turning El Condencial into one of the most innovative,
sustainable and technologically advanced media in Spain (Laso, cited in López Hidalgo and Ufarte, 2016; Vara Miguel, 2016;
García-Avilés, 2018; Vázquez-Herrero, 2018 and Valero-Pastor, 2020).
As early as 2014, it began to produce multimedia reports with parallax eects in the style of those released by e New York
Times in 2012. Over time, the lab has increased the number and diversity of proles as it has renewed the website, developed
native apps in the Apple and Android stores, experimented with bots and launched photo stories. In 2017, with the support
of Global Editors Network and Google News Lab, they launched El Condencial Editors Network, an annual hackathon on
journalistic innovation (Boyles, 2017) that brings together teams from the most important media. Little by little, they are
moving from being a lab for new formats to becoming an innovation unit. El Condencial’s lab uses Scrum methodology and,
in general, agile and exible workows in order to constantly test projects starting from a minimum viable product that is
developed over successive deliveries with their corresponding value propositions. Each team is autonomous and independent
and is synchronized through weekly horizontal meetings in which they analyze what has been done and look for possible
solutions to any incidents that have been identied. In any case, at El Condencial they are very clear about the need to extend
the innovation generated in the lab to the rest of the newsroom to the point that its very existence could be diluted (Valero-
Pastor, 2020).
In addition, the lab has allowed them to nd dierent revenue streams, rst through branded content and, since June 2020,
through the implementation of an innovative subscription system. As for the digital narratives they have developed newsgames
and gamied narratives, interactive infographics, scroll narratives and interactive specials that combine images, music, slides
and templates to oer information in a didactic, dynamic, multimedia and attractive way.
Along with the RTVE and El Condencial labs, there are also more modest experiences in Spain, either because they have not
had continuity over time or because they have arisen more recently and are still very much in an embryonic state with respect
to their possible future development.
is is the case, for example, of Vocento, which launched its lab in 2014 as a result of a course on Data Journalism on the
occasion of the entry into force in Spain of the Transparency Law. In the words of its former director, Borja Bergareche, the lab
was aimed at serving as an accelerator of key trends for the group’s business, embracing social networks, video, new narratives,
R&D and new forms of business and monetization, while acting as an internal evangelist on digital transformation with a
strong focus on results, helping both newsrooms and teams to become eective. Like the El Condencial lab, it resorted to
agile methodologies to develop software and apply design thinking intended to analyze complex problems and to solve them
collaboratively (López Hidalgo and Ufarte, 2016; Villar Gutiérrez, 2017; Ossorio Vega, 2017; García-Avilés, 2018 and Vocento,
2019). Eventually, the lab ceased its activity in 2019.
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Among those that remain active
2
, one of the most recent labs is that of the El País newspaper. It was born in March 2018
with four journalists, a designer, an HTML layout artist and a computer programmer. In its presentation, it claims to have
been conceived with the intention of continuing to open paths to ‘do journalism’. To this end, it brings together journalists,
designers, programmers, graphic designers, photographers, lmmakers, data and network specialists (El País, 2018). It works
in the same physical space as the newspaper and in a very coordinated way since it is the newsroom that proposes the stories
and the lab serves as a kind of narrative experimentation corner that, in each case, proposes the format that can be more
innovative. To build the stories, this lab usually starts from ephemeris of historical issues to which it dedicates installments
and special projects in the form of interactives, webdocs, animation, data, immersive displays, gamication, podcasts, 360°
video, drones, interactive visualizations, 3D graphics integrated into video or streaming television programs from the scene of
the events and narratives in the form of a thread that the director of the lab herself carries out from the newspaper’s corporate
Twitter account (El País, 2018; Mediamorfosis, 2019; Gosálvez cit. in Clases de Periodismo, 2018).
e latest media lab to appear in Spain is that of the nancial newspaper Expansión, which belongs to the Unidad Editorial
group. is lab started to be developed in 2021 as the area of new narratives and data visualization of the newspaper. e idea
was that, on the web, users would nd a greater development of the stories that have already appeared in print. e editorial
gamble is therefore based on mixing the latest trends in journalism such as statistics, data visualization, programming and the
expert analysis of the specialized journalists that the newspaper has. So far, Expansión’s lab has mainly developed interactive
infographics, scroll narratives and creative data visualizations. e latter are very frequent considering the singularity of the
economic information.
4. Methods
After this conceptual and contextual presentation of the labs, we will put these ndings face-to-face with the vision of the
experts to try to nd out what the central features and the main signs of identity that characterize these spaces in Spain are,
taking into account the various formulas that their conguration admits (Nunes, 2020; Nunes and Mills, 2021; Mills and
Wagemans, 2021). To the extent that their raison d’être is clear, it will be possible to determine to what extent their purpose can
(or cannot) be taken over by other actors. To nd out, between October 2021 and May 2022 we conducted 18 semi-structured
interviews with a purposive, non-probabilistic sample of experts made up of some of the most prominent voices in media
innovation in general and in these laboratories in particular.
Indeed, following Hernández Sampieri et al. (2010: 396) the types of samples usually used in qualitative research are non-
probabilistic or directed, whose purpose is not to generalize in terms of probability. ey are also known as “guided by one
or more purposes”, since the choice of the elements depends on reasons related to the characteristics of the research. In turn,
we opted for the semi-structured interview format (Young, 1960; Taylor and Bodgan, 1987; Wimmer and Dominick, 1996 and
Howitt, 2019) as it ensured that interviewees could express themselves freely and using their own words in response to semi-
2
On February 3, 2023, a consultation of its website shows that the last entry is dated January 2020, although there is no news of the ocial closure of this lab, at least
to date.
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open-ended questions. In this case, we also opted for a sample of experts (Hernández Sampieri et al., 2010: 397), which requires
the opinion of individuals with a qualied view on the topic. is view was conditioned by being an academic researcher, being
an expert in media innovation, or being linked to a particular lab.
To conduct the interviews, we followed the usual procedure in these cases, systematized by authors such as Young (1960)
or Howitt (2019). In order to have a more complete vision, we wanted to triangulate the academic perspective with the
professional one. To select the candidates, we took into account some of the contributions they had made to the object of
study either from a theoretical point of view or from a professional perspective by being involved –at the time of the interview
or at some previous moment– in media innovation or in some particular lab. In the following table we present a brief summary
of each of the experts interviewed. To learn more about their backgrounds and career paths, please consult the following links:
Table 1. List of interviewed experts
Full Nam
e
Position
3
University/media/labProle
Miriam Hernanz
Director
RTVE labLab Professional
Carol Espona
Journalist
RTVE labLab Professional
César Peña Martínez
Journalist
RTVE labLab Professional
Alejandro Laso
Director of strategy and
innovation
El Condencial labLab Professional
Guiomar del Ser
Editorial Product Editor-in-ChiefEl País labLab Professional
Javier García Fernández
Journalist and lab managerExpansión labLab Professional
Àlex Badia
Co-founder
Barret FilmsExpert in media innovation
José Antonio González Alba
JournalistSembramedia
Expert in media innovation
Alfredo Casares
Journalist
Instituto de Periodismo ConstructivoExpert in media innovation
Michaëla Cancela
Audio editorAgencia France PressExpert in media innovation
José Alberto García Avilés
Full ProfessorUniversidad Miguel HernándezAcademic researcher
Miguel Carvajal Prieto
Associate ProfessorUniversidad Miguel HernándezAcademic researcher
José Manuel Noguera Vivo
Associate ProfessorUniversidad Católica San AntonioAcademic researcher
Ainara Larrondo Ureta
Associate ProfessorUniversidad del País VascoAcademic researcher
3
At the time of the interview, we conducted the interview with.
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Luis Miguel Pedrero Esteban
Professor and researcherUniversidad NebrijaAcademic researcher
José Luis Rojas Torrijos
Associate ProfessorsUniversidad de SevillaAcademic researcher
Teresa Zaragoza Fuster
Journalist and ProfessorUniversidad Miguel HernándezAcademic researcher
José María Valero Pastor
Assistant PhD Professor Universidad Miguel HernándezAcademic researcher
Source: prepared by the authors
In each case, we drew up the interview guide based on a series of common questions. For reasons of space, we include here
the answers to the question on the central feature of the innovation labs according to the interviewees. e interviews lasted
an average of one hour and, due to the diculties of conducting them in person, we conducted them remotely in synchronous
online mode through Google Meet or the platform preferred by the interviewee who, in this case, sent the corresponding link.
In all cases, and with the explicit permission of the experts, their interviews were recorded with the idea of transcribing the
content and then ordering and categorizing it following the method proposed by Taylor and Bogdan (1987).
To analyze the results more eciently, we found it very useful to work with the
Atlas.ti
software (version 22), examining
the content rst at a textual and then at a conceptual level, establishing networks and links between the visions, but also
similarities, dierences and nuances between the dierent discourses. e result of successive readings allowed us to ensure
internal consistency. Finally, we proceeded to write up the results, which we now present. It should be noted that we had
explicit permission from the interviewees to publish their statements in a non-anonymous manner and also that they had time
to be able to rene the content of their statements based on a fairly denitive version of the text
4
.
5. Results
For Rojas Torrijos, labs are innovation units whose central mission is precisely that: to innovate, understanding innovation
as a mixture of trend research, technological learning and search for solutions that are explored and implemented in the
form of new products and formats to expand the technological and narrative possibilities of journalism, adapting them to the
demands and characteristics of the new digital environments (Rojas Torrijos, 2021).
In similar terms, for García Fernández (2022), of Expansión’s lab, the central feature is the possibility of telling things in a
dierent way that allows the content that users access on paper to be enriched so that “it is not the same as always: a few
vignettes of images with an endless amount of text that in the end ends up being boring”.
Pedrero considers experimentation to be one of the hallmarks of any lab, since you can’t innovate if you don’t try it out. In this
sense, the lab is “that part of the environment or that environment integrated in the environment” which, as a “capsule”, allows
innovation based on experimentation, and that is what later gives rise to establishing (or not) that test (Pedrero, 2021). In his
opinion, this work is essential today, since the medium is still subject to routines and conditioning factors that sometimes do
not allow us to try new things, to take the work more calmly, to delve into other narrative possibilities or to explore.
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From there, that test –in a “multiplicity of formats”, adds Badía (2021)– can become a product after a phase of settlement,
adjustment and consolidation, but the initial experiment is essential. In turn, Pedrero recognizes that this experimentation
can be related to technology, but also to the narrative or the ways of working, distributing, consuming, etc.
For his part, García Avilés considers that a decisive feature in labs is the interdisciplinary nature of the proles that make them
up. is allows journalism professionals to coexist with others from dierent elds such as information technology, computing
or design with the idea that the “sum of this teamwork from dierent perspectives makes innovation possible” (García Avilés,
2021).
For Cancela this is also one of the central features of any lab: to provide “safe spaces” in which dierent proles coexist; people
who know the world of journalism in depth along with developers, designers, systems experts or data journalists: “more than
anything else it is the possibility of dierent professions working together within a medium to innovate. To be creative and
innovate” (Cancela, 2021).
According to César Peña, this is exactly what happens in the RTVE lab, which brings together journalists with video producers,
computer developers and graphic designers, something that allows “unique projects to be created” (Peña, 2021). is view is
also supported by Noguera, who considers that the journalistic prole should work hand in hand with proles specialized in
data, programming, user experience, together with other professionals such as the product manager, the audience manager,
for example. Regardless of the names, Noguera believes that it is possible for the lab to be the most multidisciplinary place in
the media in which the business model, the editorial line and audience development are aligned.
In his opinion, the evangelizing purpose should also be part of any lab because it is not a question of it being the only place
in the medium where innovation takes place, but rather that in the short, medium and long term the whole medium is
impregnated with this “culture of innovation” to the point of making the existence of the lab itself unnecessary. In this sense, he
recognizes that labs are more typical of large media and newspapers with very large structures in which dierent generations
of journalists have lived together, some of them more reluctant and resistant to change. In these newsrooms, which had to
make the transition from paper to digital based on a certain “analog legacy”, the lab can serve as a place to turn to for example
and help (Noguera, 2021).
On the contrary, the new media –which have experienced “a boom” in the last decade as a consequence of the closure of
the big media and the generation of a whole “pool of experienced journalists”– are much smaller. is, which at rst could
be a weakness, has turned out to be an advantage at least for these purposes because it allows them to be more agile and
exible in their line, in their structure, but also in their business model, especially because many of the employees have already
“internalized” this mentality and “all this philosophy of entrepreneurship, of design thinking, of Canvas, of lean start up or of
the minimum viable product” (Noguera, 2021).
In a similar sense, González Alba considers that the lab has an indispensable role in leading this new culture and that it
can become the centralizing axis that capitalizes and guides the cultural change and the assumption of innovation by the
entire newsroom. In fact, this should be their function, especially in the current context of accelerated and obligatory digital
transformation. is transformation, which, according to González Alba (2021) “has much more to do with cultural change
and less to do with technological tools than one might think”, must “undoubtedly” be led by the lab team.
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For all this, professionals must be constantly updated both in their knowledge and in terms of production techniques and
methods (Zaragoza, 2021). In addition, it is necessary for them to have a certain calmness in the face of the urgency with
which everything is lived. In this sense, Hernanz (2021) states that “laboratories think more than they do” because at RTVE, for
example, they try to ensure that their product is not so much of quantity “but of quality and dierentiation”. In this regard, she
adds that another dierential element is that they usually do not know what they are doing. “We don’t feel comfortable with the
decisions we make because we don’t know if they are going to be understood, which is what innovation requires”. “If we knew
how to tell the story”, she continues, “we would be doing a more traditional or more standardized journalism” (Hernanz, 2021).
For the former head of the RTVE lab, it is also essential that the people who make up a lab are very open to technology and
understand that the new way of doing journalism must be based on the traditional accuracy but, at the same time, must be
open to trying new things, including the possibility of citizens being a source (Hernanz, 2021).
Valero-Pastor adds two other requirements that, in his opinion, constitute important features in a lab:
(i) adaptability, being willing to change any of its structures, its professional proles, its workows or any of its congurations
in order to be always attentive and willing to introduce modications in the products and in the rest of the company, and.
ii) the collaborative culture, understanding that, nowadays, a product is no longer journalistic content as such, but it must also
integrate requirements related to format, interactivity or user experience. “In the end, it is almost impossible to approach
this from the perspective of a single person and, in addition, the product is enriched if it is approached from dierent
points of view” (Valero-Pastor, 2021).
In addition, it is also pointed out that it is necessary for the members of the lab to be able to work with a certain degree of
autonomy and freedom. is is the vision of the former director of the Diario de Navarra lab, for whom it is essential that the
management provides a space in which professionals can have a certain degree of autonomy, understood as the ability to
experiment without necessarily having to generate specic results for production, “especially at the beginning”.
For Cancela, freedom is necessary to be creative which, in turn, constitutes “the basis of innovation”. is freedom, in addition
to the conguration of the teams, also extends to “imagining new formats and testing them on a small scale or even openly”, at
least to demonstrate that these formats can be created and that they can exist (Cancela, 2021).
Along with autonomy, Casares adds that it is important for the lab to be useful: “the organization has to see that there is a
transfer and that it is useful”. is usefulness sometimes consists of a specic transfer of results, but other times it is of a more
intangible nature, since it refers to the learning that is generated and that will have an impact on the internal culture of the
environment. “is”, Casares (2021) continues, “is modied by the labs as they incorporate uncertainty, trial and error and
experimentation, attitudes and attributes that are not always present in the newsrooms as they focus on meeting very clear
production objectives that are often “incompatible” with innovation.
In order to be useful, it is important for the lab to have contact with the newsroom because it must help it to solve journalistic
challenges of dierent types: sometimes related to new narratives, others to new ways of approaching communities or
experimenting with new models to generate revenue. In this regard, Casares recognizes that there are many types of lab and
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that each medium uses it for what it considers most relevant, including that it can help the medium to ask itself questions that
perhaps it would not ask itself and to discover needs that it does not yet have (Casares, 2021).
Laso expresses himself in similar terms, claiming that the members of the lab should be able to “do things”. For the director of
strategy and innovation of El Condencial, it is very important that the structure of the company trusts these proles and their
capabilities and does not condition them, so as to get the best out of themselves. is, which for Laso is “super important”
today in any company, is essential in the case of laboratories (Laso, 2021).
Larrondo considers the “human factor” to be essential: that the lab should have a team and leaders with a clear strategy, who
are very committed to innovation, who know what it is, who have a lot of contact with other media, with other companies, with
the university environment and who have creative people who also share this interest, since “(...) in the end, a lab aims to be
the avant-garde of the media” (Larrondo, 2021).
From the RTVE lab, Espona also claims the convenience of combining a rm commitment on the part of the management with
the will of a group of restless professionals willing to go further: “To innovate you have to have the means and be committed,
and that also requires investment. And all of this is accompanied, of course, by those who make it possible. Young, open people
who dare to try new things” (Espona, 2021).
In the case of El País, its manager says that for them it is very important “not to take anything for granted”, to be able to open
the mind and think in less conventional terms in the public service that their newspaper can oer. “e question is that we
know how to get it right in the way we transmit a story, an idea, a coverage without being subjected to a certain pattern,
but that we look for a lane in which to get it right and reach the environment” (Del Ser, 2021). is, Del Ser continues, does
not mean “doing more or less crazy things systematically”, but trying new formulas and formats when it is considered that
the information to be transmitted requires an experiment. To this end, it is advisable to be exible, but also balanced when
choosing narrative resources, since it is not just a matter of “trying for the sake of trying, innovating for the sake of innovating,
adding more or less color to things, more or fewer special eects”. It is a matter, she continues, of nding the balance between
the journalistic service provided by the newspaper and the best way of providing that service to the user.
In a similar vein, Carvajal points out that it is essential for the newspaper to know its public, including the audience, the
employees and the company. In his opinion, it is this knowledge that will allow the lab to identify problems, empathize with
the way they consume, know how the media works, what the needs of the sta are, etc. Otherwise, if there is no real data, none
of the experiments, tests or products born in the lab will be successful. “ey will simply be the creativity of a genius locked in
his world” (Carvajal, 2021).
6. Discussion and conclusions
Labs are highly innovative internal management formulas that began, rst in the United States and then in dierent European
countries, as spaces for the creation of new narratives and that, over time, have been transformed into product development
laboratories. On other occasions, they continue to be departments dedicated to the exploration and generation of digital
narratives, taking advantage of the possibilities generated by the evolution of the Internet itself.
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At the same time, they are places of experimentation that emerge as a strategic response to the current situation experienced
by many media today, aicted by a serious multifactorial crisis that makes it urgent to nd new narratives, products and
services that meet the information needs of a consumer who has disconnected from the traditional media system and has
chosen other ways of being informed.
In this context, it seems wise to provide independent spaces in which to think, analyze, test, but above all, in which to have
enough time, resources and perspective to design dierent solutions, a need that is impossible to achieve in the frenetic pace
of day-to-day operations. In this regard, all interviewees align with the discourse that news organizations are not very good at
achieving exploratory innovation (O’Reilly and Tushman, 2004; Storsul and Krumsvik, 2013; Westlund and Lewis, 2014 and
Tameling, 2015) perhaps not for lack of will but because the daily production of news, focused on short-term demand and
ecient production, usually absorbs most of the creative energies of professionals (Porcu et. al, 2020: 1423).
Yet, as March (1991) and O’Reilly and Tushman (2013) remind us, if organizations seek to survive in the long term, they
need the “organizational ambidexterity” (Maijanen and Virta, 2017) that allows the two types of innovation –the exploitative
and the explorative– to be reconciled because, although the focus on exploitation seems attractive in the short term, it can
become “self-defeating” in the long run (Porcu et al., 2022). Moreover, without exploration, the organization cannot embrace
and develop new ideas that are creative, which can result in organizations that, far from taking risks, become “trapped in
suboptimal stable equilibria” (March, 1991: 71). Understandably, this danger seriously compromises the potential of the lab as
a privileged space in which to promote exploratory innovation.
Otherwise, the results reect few substantial dierences between the experts’ discourses, depending on whether they are
academics or professionals. Both agree that labs are innovation units and that this is, therefore, their mission, their purpose
and their only “central feature”. From this point on, the interviewees emphasize dierent signs of identity which, nevertheless,
are complementary and never contradictory. Nor do the professionals’ discourses vary substantially according to the lab in
which they work.
ey stress, for example, the importance of experimentation, since innovation cannot be achieved without testing. From there,
this test can be converted into a product. is will be followed by a phase of settling, adjustment and consolidation, but the
initial experimentation is key. Moreover, this experimentation can take many dierent forms, since innovation can come from
technology but also from narrative, ways of working, distributing, consuming, etc.
at experimentation –other experts point out in line with the ndings of the academic literature (Küng, 2015, 2017 and
Zaragoza and García Avilés, 2022)– is best approached from interdisciplinary teams in which, in addition to conventional
journalists, one can nd data journalists, computer developers, graphic designers, video makers, experts in systems, user
experience and usability, audience managers, etc. us, labs are congured as “safe spaces” when it comes to hosting this
diversity of proles that cohabit to work together, dialogue and generate unique projects in which the business model, editorial
line and audience development are aligned.
It is also mentioned that every lab should have an evangelizing purpose to avoid being the only place in the media where
innovation takes place, a greater risk in the case of large newspapers with bulky structures in which dierent generations of
journalists have coexisted, some of them more reluctant and resistant to change. In these cases, it is up to the lab to lead the
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transition to the new culture. To this end, it is essential to be open to technology, to constantly update both knowledge and
production techniques and methods, and to be able to work with adaptability and agility but also with a certain degree of calm.
e readiness of the labs to change any of their structures, proles, workows and various congurations in order to introduce
improvements in the products and in the rest of the company is also essential. In addition, a certain collaborative culture is
required since the journalistic product has to combine content design with good formatting, adequate interactivity and an
optimal user experience, a requirement that cannot be addressed from the perspective of a single person.
It also points to the need for lab professionals to be able to work with a certain degree of autonomy and freedom, since creativity
is “the basis of innovation”. In addition to the conguration of teams, this freedom extends to the possibility of imagining new
formats and testing them on a small scale or even openly. Working autonomously also includes being able to experiment
without having to reach specic production targets, especially when the lab is taking its rst steps. Learning itself should also
serve as an indicator or output of the work being carried out.
Another interviewee emphasizes that it is important for the lab to maintain close contact with the newsroom because that is
what will help solve journalistic challenges, whether they refer to interactive narratives, new ways of approaching communities
or revenue generation. In this sense, the responses of the interviewees conrm that, despite the fact that Spanish laboratories
have been in existence for more than a decade, their conguration -that of those that survive- is elastic and, in many aspects,
is still under construction today. In any case, the greater sustainability of the second-generation labs (Hogh-Janovsky and
Meier, 2021 and García Avilés, 2023) compared to those of the rst generation is also noted, precisely because of this greater
integration with the newsroom.
It also seems key that the laboratory should be the result of a rm commitment on the part of the management to design a
clear strategy and place a leader who is highly committed to innovation at the helm, so that the lab becomes an outpost of the
medium. is view is in line with that of Küng (2017) when she recalls the importance of planning innovation in a strategic way,
beyond those wagers on technological artices that only turn out to be tactical and opportunistic.
e main limitation of our study is that it examines only the views of some of the most prominent experts in innovation
laboratories in Spain. Although the ndings oer interesting insights by systematizing the discourse of a set of qualied voices,
the results cannot be generalized. Nor can it be ignored that the research is framed in an unusually complex context, marked
by the worldwide impact of the covid-19 crisis which, as is understood, has not helped the progressive consolidation of these
spaces either.
As future lines of research, it would be interesting to broaden the focus from here to include the vision of other experts in
the eld of Spanish –such as those linked to the labs of the aforementioned media in Peru and Argentina– but also those
responsible for some of the labs that are most active in Europe and the United States. It would also be useful to keep an eye on
how the second-generation labs evolve in their integration with the newsroom and in their use of agile methodologies in order
to nd out what diculties they are experiencing, but also what strategies have proved to be the most ecient in overcoming
them. It also seems interesting to nd out why they decided to close those labs that have not continued their activity in order
to extract lessons learned on how to reverse these possible causes. In order to continue to build knowledge, it could be useful
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to further conceptualize the interactive narratives generated in the labs and to examine user preferences in order to carry out
exploratory innovation to design products and services that are better suited to their needs.
7. Acknowledgements
Article translated into English by Harvey Holtom.
is work has been supported by the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement
with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3MXX), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional
Programme of Research and Technological Innovation).
8. Specic contributions of each author
Name and surname
Conception and design of the workSusana Herrera Damas
Methodology
Susana Herrera Damas
Data collection and analysisChristian Camilo Satizábal Idárraga and Susana Herrera Damas
Discussion and conclusionsSusana Herrera Damas and Christian Camilo Satizábal Idárraga
Drafting, formatting, version review and approvalSusana Herrera Damas and Christian Camilo Satizábal Idárraga
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