Engagement Journalism News 03–31–23
Updates on the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY’s engagement journalism MA program and its students, faculty, and alumni, plus good reads, research and other news from the field. Bonus content (!) includes (what else?) Fred pics and a roundup of other tidbits of interest from program director Carrie Brown (that’s me; views my own). Got some engagement journalism news or good reads? Let me know!
#EngagedJ at CUNY
- Joe Amditis, ’16, talked to the World Association of News Publishers about his guide to ChatGPT for local news publishers.
- Several engagement journalism students have joined audio journalism director Kalli Anderson’s place-based audio documentary course this semester. They are partnering with Queens Library on an oral history project that will document the biographies of individuals who have a street or other public place named after them. Read about it in Patch.
- Hafeezat Bishi, ’22, wrote a piece for Prism: 8 months later, NYC vendors are still fighting for officials to fulfill their promises. Hafeezat worked with street vendors while she was in the program, and we love to see our former students continuing to find ways to serve their communities even after they graduate.
- Jake Wasserman, ’20, is closely tracking changes at Twitter in his role as engagement editor at The Forward. He wrote this important if depressing piece, Twitter Blue could hand antisemites a megaphone
- Mariel Lozada, ’21, will be one of the judges at this year’s One World Media Awards in Digital Media Award category
- We are all excited that Masha Gessen, an internationally known Russian-American journalist and educator, will be joining the school’s faculty.
- And general reasons to be grateful to be part of the CUNY system:
Engagement reads
- Thread and research from Documented, New York’s immigrant-centered newsroom. They spent over a year talking to Caribbean and Chinese immigrants about their views on local media and their information needs. Madeline Faber, ’21, is their social media and SEO manager.
Engagement Events
Accountability infrastructure for equitable journalism: On March 28, Gather hosted a chat with Jillian Bauer-Reese (Kensington Voice), Tauhid Chappell (Philly JAWN/Free Press), Letrell Crittenden (API), Andrea Wenzel (Temple University/moderator), and Venneikia Williams (Media 2070). They discussed systems, structures, and programs that facilitate a process of holding stakeholders with more power (e.g. news organizations, editors, CEOs) responsible for listening to and addressing the needs and concerns of those with less (e.g. BIPOC journalists and community members). A few takeaways:
- American Press Institute’s “Inclusion Index” — it’s not enough to just say you want to improve diversity in your newsroom or have a one-off training. The Inclusion Index will help you come up with specific solutions and plans and assess progress.
- Media 2070’s Black in the Newsroom film highlights the kinds of micro and macro aggressions that Black people face in newsrooms. It is prompting discussions of how to think about care — for both people in the newsroom and people in the communities they serve — as infrastructure and shift culture and practices
- The Journalism Accountability Watchdog Network is bringing long overdue accountability to news in Philly. The Inquirer did some deep internal work and partnered with Temple to understand pitfalls in the newsroom and conduct a DEI analysis that looked at its culture, processes, content, and decision making and how they influence coverage.
- Kensington Voice is a neighborhood news site in Philly that started as a class at Temple. Its staff are community residents, majority BIPOC, who have lived experience on the issues they write about. They host a public multimedia lab where people from the community can learn new tech, work on stories, or collaborate on story ideas, as well as Youth Voices workshops and after school and summer programs. The community advisory board of eight residents oversees the program manager and editor and has real governance power, and it uses a participatory budgeting process.
Other good reads 📚
- It’s stiff competition, but I think the most enraging investigative journalism of the week is How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them
- Since I’m from Wisconsin, I like to keep up with what’s going on in the Badger state. A huge judicial election is happening tomorrow; the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg writes about what is at stake. And very embarrassing to see this story out of Waukesha, near where I grew up, make national news: Waukesha first-graders barred from singing ‘Rainbowland’ by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
In lighter WI News haha:
Photo 📸
