“There is an enormous part of the economy hungry for graduates with skills in analysis and communication — skills students are honing as they conduct close readings of texts, persuade their classmates in seminars and hone the style and structure of papers,” Sentz said. That might not be clear to students, however, or to college…
This is story is from May, but it’s very relevant. Standing in front of the classroom at Espoo Adult Education Centre, Jussi Toivanen worked his way through his PowerPoint presentation. A slide titled “Have you been hit by the Russian troll army?” included a checklist of methods used to deceive readers on social media: image…
How do you tell a story that people know, or maybe just think they know? Each of the newsrooms featured here this week took on that question in different ways. In Los Angeles, the LA Times made a game to go with project on sea level rise. The Chico (California) Enterprise-Record made a podcast to…
The Society of Professional Journalists has compiled the following resources in light of the increasing sexual misconduct allegations against high-profile male journalists. These are for journalists everywhere, but especially for those being harassed, those whose employers don’t provide employee training or those colleagues who know harassment is taking place but aren’t sure what to do…
It’s a logical fallacy to suggest that where two sides disagree, the truth must lie in the center. It doesn’t matter how many people believe in Bigfoot or essential oils or the city of Boston — popular opinion won’t make something factually true. (Though of course, well-meaning people can disagree over values, such as whether…
The president of the US bonds with Vladimir Putin over journalists: “Get rid of them.” This is not normal. This is not right. Donald Trump joked with Vladimir Putin about getting rid of journalists and Russian meddling in US elections when the two leaders met at the G20 summit in Japan. As they sat for…
THREE HOURS BEFORE A SHOOTING WAS FIRST REPORTED on University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s campus, Alexandria Sands tweeted that she was “officially a retired college newspaper editor. Thank you for letting me tell your stories, #UNCC.” At around 5:42 p.m., as she was sitting in the last class of her college career, she saw a message in…
Trump spent the morning insulting the news media on Twitter, calling MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough a “Psycho” and musing about New York Times reporters getting “down on their knees” to apologize to him after his 2020 re-election victory. Around the same time the president was tapping out those tweets, White House Cabinet Secretary Bill McGinley, who…
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For Alden and its subsidiary, the Gannett empire’s newspapers are clearly an attractive feature. But by purchasing the Memphis building and others like it, Alden has already begun coming for what it may consider a bigger prize: Gannett’s real estate. […] The tactics employed by Alden and Digital First Media are well-chronicled: They buy newspapers…
An important reminder that “objective” journalism is a recent innovation. In the past, even a small town would have a liberal paper and a conservative paper. If you wanted to be truly informed, you’d subscribe to both. Out-of-town publishing chains with more interest in profits and less investment in the communities started buying up both…
Facebook seems to have made changes that mean it is less involved in the spread of fake news. Overall, and for reasons that extend beyond whatever unknown changes Facebook may have made to its algorithm, fake news seems less prevalent now than it was in 2016. “[T]he role of Facebook in the spread of fake…
Social media platforms are full of people who complain “the media is biased” against whatever side they support. When my students repeat this claim, I ask them to supply an example. They usually point to a meme that supplies a biased headline to a real news story. The story itself is fine, but the text…
The unavoidable truth is that first draft of history is no longer written in tomorrow’s newspaper. Instead, it’s tapped out on new and social media, which is thick with rumor and conspiracy. There’s little journalists can do about crap on the internet; taking aim at disinformation is like firing a machine-gun at an unruly flock…
Another of the many, many reflections on the big story of the weekend. In 1984, George Orwell famously described a totalitarian political order in which people were kept as docile subjects in part by a daily ritual called “Two Minutes Hate” in which the population directs all of its pent up fury at “Goldstein,” a possibly…
My social media network includes people who fully supported the narrative voiced by Phillips and magnified by social media outrage, who now feel the shifting narrative proves how hard “the media” work to excuse the misbehavior of smirking, entitled, racist bullies. (But they might agree the Hebrew Israelites went too far.) My social feed also…
Once upon a time, local newspapers could depend upon a steady stream of local classified ads — people advertising looking to hire a handyman, or to sell their old sofa or used car. The income from local ads in locally-owned newspapers would go back to the communities, in the form of the paychecks for the…
From Buzzfeed: Sitting before the Stars and Stripes, another flag pinned to his lapel, former president Barack Obama appears to be delivering an important message about fake news — but something seems slightly…off. Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up …Things Past #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch…
Sometimes people get the name of my school wrong. On a whim, I searched Google for “dennis jerz seton hall” and found a recent letter to the editor that referenced one of my handouts: Verify or Duck: Good Journalists Confirm Details They Didn’t Witness Dennis Jerz of Seton Hall University writes “Good journalists confirm details they…
Do you have a regular news-consumption routine? Facebook doesn’t want you to leave Facebook, so it’s algorithm favors posts that will keep you on Facebook, rather than links that will send you elsewhere. I listen to a 5-minute podcast from NPR News Now about once a day, usually while I am doing my morning exercises.…