Big ambitions of journalism students in the USA

Emily Bell knows pretty much everybody who has worked in the British national media in the past 15 years. As founder and editor of MediaGuardian, she went on to be editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited (where she gave this humble hack some writing space around the 2004 US election). Most recently she was head of the Guardian's whole digital content operation.

Earlier this year, a call came from perhaps the world's most famous journalism training centre at New York's Columbia University. Since July, as the newly minted Director of the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism, she's been ensconced with her family on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, faced with the strange situation of suddenly not knowing everybody - in the rather different and faster-changing New York media world.

I know from personal experience that the clarity with which you see the city is never greater than in the first few months after arrival. As a now grizzled and jaded New Yorker, I was intrigued to see what Emily's take was on her students, the new fishbowl, and the news revolution that's in full swing here.