Media labs in Spain as catalytic agents of journalistic innovation: key features in the opinion of experts

At the current crossroads that the 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, media labs are presented as a structured and somewhat privileged space to do so. However, since both the academic and professional literature and the review of the websites of the different labs in the United States and Europe show that their configuration admits very diverse formulas, we wonder what is today the central feature of these spaces in Spain. To the extent that their raison d'etre is clear, it will be possible to define to what extent their activity can (or cannot) be taken over by other realities. To find this out, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 18 prominent voices in the field. lhe results show that the main feature of these spaces is precisely their innovative purpose. From this point on, the emphasis is placed on different signs of identity which, nevertheless, are complementary under the common denominator of sharing the same mission.