Editor’s note: At a recent conference at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, we spoke with David Clinch, the global news editor at Storyful, about the type of employees he looks for when building a culture of innovation. To hear other perspectives from the conference, click here.

How do media companies build a culture of innovation?

David: We try to find people, and it’s a very rare breed of journalists, who understand technology and how it works, and technologists who understand, or at least are very interested, in the way journalism and information works. And we put them together.

We don’t expect them to be experts in each other’s fields, but we expect them to be able to meet and to communicate and to translate for each other. And I think that’s a huge opportunity for some news organizations and other organizations, is to think about hiring people who don’t just have an expertise in one area, but are interested in the other area, as well.

We don’t encourage all of our journalists to learn how to code, and we don’t encourage all of our technologists to write journalism. But we do encourage them to look and to understand and to sit next to each other so that they can talk to each other about the problems that exist and find solutions.

And most importantly, translate that into a language that both can understand.

Jake Kreinberg

Jake is the text and multimedia product manager at The Associated Press and the former editor of Insights. He previously covered college sports as a reporter for AP and helped design its multi-year strategic plan. Have feedback about the blog? Contact us at insights@ap.org.