Assoc prof of journalism at Montclair State U. Former CUNY prof. WI native, Packers enthusiast. Author, Transforming Newsrooms w/
@grovesprof
Views mine.
Looking for something to read?
📚 This is
@risj_oxford
selection of readings on journalism, carefully curated by our research team. It's organised into 22 topics including polarisation, misinformation and the business of news
❓Anything we should add?
A NYT article about two (2) health workers in Alaska who had a bad reaction to the vaccine has been their most popular article on Facebook for two days now....we really need to think about headlines and how much we play up a small number of bad reactions or more ppl will die.
I gave up tenure to come to
@newmarkjschool
at CUNY because I believed the world needed an engagement journalism MA program, and because we were grant funded, there was no open associate professor line. Today I officially got tenure and promotion again 🎉
It takes a blizzard of tedious paperwork to authorize buying a pizza for a student event but CUNY can spend $600,000 on security just like that. I see.
The CUNY Board of Trustees bypassed normal procedures to okay a $4m contract for a security company that describes student protesters as “engaged in guerrilla warfare.”
@cityascanvass
and I are back at it again, this time for
@HellGateNY
!
I mean…if this continues, I think all of us journalists/journalism profs join a parallel press freedom protest. This is unacceptable. Full stop. Private school, sure. But this is a leading journalism school. This is not how this works.
Columbia Journalism School is no longer allowed to sign in credentialed media, as they were yesterday.
Instead, press were allowed to enter campus during a 2-hour window, but for the first ~30 minutes, Public Safety was refusing us entry even though Columbia admin was there.
I lost my best friend today. It was time, but my heart is broken 💔. I’ll have more to say about this guy, but hug your fur babies tight for me tonight.
All of this may be true, but I really wish the NYT would run one column about not-elite colleges where the big issues aren't perfectionism, they are students coping w/financial stress and other issues that prevent them from focusing on school
@BlairBraverman
I call Sam “Bunsen Burner” and I have no idea why, as he does not resemble lab equipment, other than I just love that word and it just seems like something warm and cute.
“When the story is finally written,” he said on Sunday, “we’ll come to understand that tens of thousands of lives were placed at risk because of a political decision made by the president.”
"Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid."
USAID gave Blinken a 17-page memo describing instances of Israeli interference with aid, including killing aid workers, bombing ambulances and hospitals, and holding up or turning away trucks full of supplies.
New DeSantis bill in Florida is “almost an apocalyptic bill for higher education,” one that is “orders of magnitude worse than anything we’ve seen, either in the recent or the distant past.” Unlocked article
Multiple sources within the postal service told Motherboard they have personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.
"USPS management is undertaking a broad reduction of the agency’s ability to sort and process all types of mail, except for packages which have been steadily increasing in recent years before booming during the pandemic"
Wow. 650+ law professors write to the Senate telling them not to confirm Kavanaugh. Friends, it ain't easy to get that many professors to agree to anything.
"women’s time at work was interrupted & fragmented, chopped up with more service work, mentoring and teaching. The men spent more of their work days in long stretches of uninterrupted time to think, research, write, create and publish to make their names."
This is also a live, breaking news situation in which students are under a lot of stress, so I think we need some additional confirmation to ensure this information is correct. But I am certainly paying attention.
I am…floored. Just learned that the book I wrote with
@grovesprof
, Transforming Newsrooms, will be required in
@jayrosen_nyu
class at NYU this semester. 😮 Jay has been a huge influence on my work since I first started as a graduate student in 1999, so this is pretty wild!
So, an old white man running for president blathers some deranged nonsense about his opponent’s race, and it becomes a pivotal moment…for her? To what? Come on
@washingtonpost
Also I admit I’m a little surprised at how many people thought the Democrats were apparently just going to win this in a blowout. Sorry to be cynical but have you been to America lately? Profoundly racist and dumb shit is happening all the time. This is an ongoing fight.
Also, there are decades! Of research documenting the effects of journalism agenda setting and framing. This stuff does matter, even in the fragmented social media era, and journalists who shrug and act like it doesn’t are, imo, willfully ignorant.
People I respect are saying that jumping on the NYT for getting headlines wrong is counterproductive. Fair enough. Let’s not overdo it. But an institution that justifiably positions itself as top of the international news food chain should have crisp and precise headlines.
"my latest research shows journalists still think they’re doing a good job, even when it comes to coverage of racial justice protests, and even though studies that I and others have done repeatedly show that mainstream media tend to delegitimize protesters"
This is, imho, an important point. When you live in a very dense area like NYC where you can’t just avoid exposure to weather/smoke by driving everywhere, it’s just a different game.
This wasn’t my most productive week ever overall, BUT! In the wee hours of Tuesday
@grovesprof
and I FINALLY finished a project that was almost SIX YEARS in the making. It almost killed us (we both got new jobs within weeks of contract) but we *officially* delivered ALL of it.
The public is being kept out of government meetings, denied responses to record requests, and prevented from learning important facts about COVID-19 response. NOT ACCEPTABLE
"What is it going to take, somebody to die in the building before they take it seriously?” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation."
Postal worker COVID-19 cases tripled over the summer.
One of the problems: USPS has little staff doing contact tracing. In Atlanta, the ratio is one nurse for about 12,500 employees.
We lost my grandma today, one day shy of her 96th birthday. She was ready to go and it happened peacefully & without pain, but she will be missed heartily. I like to think that she is where I got my spunk. Toast your family and your friends with a highball tonight. She'd approve.
Some news!
@newmarkjschool
is hiring an engagement journalism director to work with me I will be assuming a founding director role and also work on engagement throughout our school curriculum
"It’s easy to see why the marriage solution is so appealing. ... it off-loads the responsibility for broad and systemic reform by tsk-tskingly placing it on individuals and their intimate behaviors."
A building wave of social scientists, pundits, and politicians is solemnly advising American women and men—but especially women—that the answer to their assorted ills is marriage. It is not.
@rtraister
writes
I would also add that hundreds of journalists from a coalition of almost 150 newsrooms across the country monitored the election as part of ProPublica’s Electionland project and found no major problems.
"In a world where good old boys’ clubs prevail and victim-blaming persists, the way a woman decides to adorn her body can alter the course of her life." ICYMI by
@laurenduca
I just crunched the most recent data and fully 76 percent of our engagement journalism grads are working in journalism. 15 percent are working in fields that aren't journalism but are using skills relevant to the degree. That's 91 percent. 52 percent are ppl of color. Wow.
One thing that is particularly satisfying about having an engagement journalism alumna win a Pulitzer is the number of times, particularly when we first started the program, that people tried to tell me or imply that we weren't teaching "real journalism"
Yes, the president’s statements at a campaign rally may be newsworthy. They should be reported on, fact-checked and put in context — not aired in their self-serving entirety as though he were a dictator with control over the state airwaves. by
@Sulliview
A BuzzFeed News investigation has uncovered at least 100 sites that have been plagiarizing stories from major news outlets and masquerading as local news and financial outlets. by
@CraigSilverman
I am always honored to be asked by the good people at Nieman Lab to write an annual prediction about the future of news, but I have never in my career been less certain than I am now about what is going to happen in journalism.
Happy 14th birthday, Sammy! I love you so much and am so very grateful that you have lived so long. When you turned 13, I really wasn’t sure you’d make it to this birthday, but here you are, still a happy boy. ❤️❤️❤️
I am riveted and so anxious my heart is quite literally pounding watching what is going on at CUNY and Columbia with the NYPD. I am very worried about the safety of ALL students, and student journalists have the RIGHT to REPORT safely.
Embarrassing photo, but I swear if you would have told me 20 years ago that I’d be visiting NYU to talk to Jay Rosen’s class about a book I co-wrote, I would have 100 percent told you that you were full of shit. So I decided to commemorate a little W.
I'm not finished reading, but I feel physically ill, more embarrassed in my profession than ever before in my career. This is not what I was taught about how we hold up the highest standards in journalism and I believed in Marty Baron and The Post. Shame.
Had it not be for the Columbia Journalism School, we could not have ensured the safety of our staff, WKCR student radio says. Solidarity to my colleagues to the north.
One thing I stand by as a journalist and an educator, to be clear: A "bias" against racism is not only justified in journalism but vital to our humanity and our mission to serve the public. Being against police brutalizing and killing citizens w/impunity is also essential "bias."
"As people trickled through the court, a pattern emerged: People arrested at Columbia were being charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor, while those arrested at City College were being charged with burglary, a felony.”
3,000+ people were arrested or detained at campus protests for Palestine.
Now students are dealing w/suspensions, trying to sort out whether they can still graduate amid disciplinary hearings, and facing potential criminal charges.
More from
@GantzTori
GOT IT 💉 Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the scientists, nurses, volunteers, everyone who made this possible. ☺️ Almost exactly one year from the last time I went in to work in NYC!
Finished Community-Centered Journalism by
@andreawenzel
yesterday and I highly, highly recommend to all journalists and especially engagement journalists
"But what we think of as independence is still dependence on luck and gifts: the ability to rely on your own health and strength and mind, rather than leaning on the strength of those around you." by
@BlairBraverman
Not about COVID-19, but relevant. (May)
This is going viral, so - I mean, I'm not responding to or acknowledging people who are just screaming nonsense. This is an evolving story, and it is important for all of us to verify everything.
Friends getting university emails saying that all diversity, equity and inclusion trainings be suspended this semester due to Trump’s executive order, which threatens federal funding.... the darkness of these times cannot be exaggerated, y’all.
I support college students who decide it is best to save tuition $ and decide not to start school in the fall because there’s a good chance many will be remote. It might make sense for you. I do think you should be aware tho that there may be no school for you to come to later.
Y'all who are just flooding the zone with doom and gloom before it's over...you realize you are also making it easier for him to later dispute results, right? Especially if you are a high profile journalist. So...can we slow our roll a bit on the dire takes? There will be time.
Student media who are actually reporting from campus are not showing this happening. So many politicians are referencing things that there is no evidence for.
I am horrified and disgusted with the antisemitism being spewed at and around the Columbia University campus. Hate has no place in our city, and I have instructed the NYPD to investigate any violation of law they receive a report about and will arrest anyone found to be breaking
"Though there was virtually no chance her fetus would survive and the pregnancy was putting her at high risk for life-threatening complications, there was nothing they could do for her."
"Real Clear became one of the most prominent platforms for elevating unverified and reckless stories about the president’s political opponents, through a mix of its own content and articles from across conservative media."
Happy to see journalism educators now widely using social media in their courses, but friends let’s remember engagement is more than using Twitter etc in class. It’s listening, it’s serving audiences in new ways, it’s broad participation in the news process.
#AEJMC18
I am forever in Jeff Jarvis's debt for taking a chance on the school’s first nerdy PhD and bringing me from Memphis to launch the engagement journalism program. We have so many wonderful and successful alumni that are the pride and joy of my life.
Some personal news: I'm moving on from CUNY's Newmark J-school, officially retiring (but not really) at the end of the term. I am proud of so much accomplished there, which I recount with much thanks here:
Can't two things be true at the same time? a)Colleges are not ready to deliver a fantastic online learning experience in all courses immediately, because online instruction is hard and b)It is fine if things are *just okay* for a short period of time when there is a pandemic?
Yesterday my students and I
@newmarkjschool
got to meet the staff of
@vozdacomunidade
, a community journal in Rio de Janeiro.
@eurenesilva
told us how he founded it when he was 11 because issues in his favela community were ignored by mainstream media.
NEW: Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) just said he will grant clemency to anyone charged for performing an abortion because of the state’s 1849 abortion ban trigger law that just went into effect.
Well. It’s been real friends. Pretty sure I’ll be rounded up with all the other journalists/academics/people who broadly believe in human rights and human dignity after Nov. Won’t give up though! But yeah things are real bad
This is really disturbing. Fox News intensifying campaign to discredit Robert Mueller, calling the investigation "illegitimate and corrupt" by
@brianstelter
At this point climbing Everest doesn't make you seem brave or a risk-taker, it makes you seem like an asshole. Who wants to climb over dead people to stand in a long line like you are at a tourist attraction while trampling over a beautiful mountain?
I really want to read more news from local/metro dailies but I actively cringe on clicking most of their links because the user experience on most is so much worse than that of the big nationals like NYT. It is a serious bummer when even news nerds are that turned off.
Well, here we go. The first day of our remote semester
@newmarkjschool
at CUNY begins. Fingers crossed for Zoom. Really excited for the new class of 16 (!) social journalism students joining us for the first time.
It was the best night of my professional life, seeing our social journalism students crush it and make such a powerful case for engaged journalism. Read
@jeffjarvis
's excellent post, and we will have videos of the presentations online soon
People like video. People like news. People do not necessarily like news video. Even the youngs,
@jbenton
reports. I love every one of my friends and colleagues who do news video dearly and respect the quality of their work to no end, but...I too extremely prefer text for news 😏
one thing about getting older, you learn: a)Leadership is so, so, SO much harder than you thought, at least if you hope to do it with kindness and integrity and b) there are leaders who will literally take your breath away with the extent of their incompetence and cruelty
Thank you to all my colleagues and alumni and friends who joined me to say goodbye to my time at
@newmarkjschool
at CUNY last night.I am just feeling so warm and thankful today, my heart could burst. I am very, very lucky and I wish you all the best. And I’ll still see ya around!