journalists

5Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SPORTS, VIDEO REELS

Serena Williams Forced Sports Journalists To Get Out Of The ‘Toy Box’ – And Cover Tennis As More Than A Game

Of the many outstanding components of her game, Serena Williams may best be known for her commanding serve. Those serves, unleashed over the course of a 27-year professional career, arguably heightened the power and intensity of the women’s game, forcing her opponents to game plan for each wicked volley. To those chronicling her exploits as one of the world’s best tennis players, Williams served up a different challenge. As a scholar of sports journalism, I have observed how its practitioners have struggled to find their footing when it comes to establishing consensus about what exactly constitutes good sports journalism. Williams’ presence as a Black woman in a historically white, patriarchal sport, her commitment to activism and her willingness to bare her personal challenges to the ...

Journalists Believe News And Opinion Are Separate, But Readers Can’t ’t Tell The Difference

6May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS, SOCIETY

Journalists Believe News And Opinion Are Separate, But Readers Can’t ’t Tell The Difference

The New York Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned recently after the paper published a controversial opinion essay by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton that advocated using the military to put down protests. The essay sparked outrage among the public as well as among younger reporters at the paper. Many of those staffers participated in a social media campaign aimed at the paper’s leadership, asking for factual corrections and an editor’s note explaining what was wrong with the essay. Eventually, the staff uprising forced Bennet’s departure. Cotton’s column was published on the opinion pages – not the news pages. But that’s a distinction often lost on the public, whose criticisms during the recent incident were often directed at the paper as a whole, including its news coverage. All of whic...

Black Writers And Journalists Have Wielded Punctuation In Their Activism – Here’s How

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Black Writers And Journalists Have Wielded Punctuation In Their Activism – Here’s How

Eurie Dahn, The College of Saint Rose Using punctuation and capitalization as a form of protest doesn’t exactly scream radicalism. But in debates over racial justice, punctuation can carry a lot of weight. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, mainstream news organizations grappled with whether to capitalize the first letter of “black” when referring to Black people. Of course, writing “Black” was already common practice in activist circles. Eventually The Associated Press, The New York Times, USA Today and many other outlets declared that they, too, would capitalize that first letter. It turns out the push to capitalize “black” is only the most recent way Black writers and activists have pushed back against entrenched power through ostensibly bland elements of writing. As I...

By Insisting Journalists Engage With Their Audience, News Organizations May Be Setting Them Up For Abuse

3Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

By Insisting Journalists Engage With Their Audience, News Organizations May Be Setting Them Up For Abuse

News organizations are trying to do a better job connecting with their audiences, in hopes of overcoming the profession’s credibility problems and ensuring its long-term survival. To do this, a growing number of newsrooms have for years embraced what’s called “audience engagement,” a loosely defined term that typically refers to efforts to increase the communication between journalists and the people they hope to reach. These efforts take many forms, and vary from online – for example, the use of social media to interact with readers about a story after it’s been published – to offline – for example, meetings between journalists and community members to discuss a story currently being produced. At its best, engagement shows audiences that journalists are real people, with the training a...

It’s a bad idea for journalists to censor Trump – instead, they can help the public identify what’s true or false

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, POLITICS

It’s a bad idea for journalists to censor Trump – instead, they can help the public identify what’s true or false

In times of mortal strife, humans crave information more than ever, and it’s journalists’ responsibility to deliver it. But what if that information is inaccurate, or could even kill people? That’s the quandary journalists have found themselves in as they decide whether to cover President Donald J. Trump’s press briefings live. Some television networks have started cutting away from the briefings, saying the events are no more than campaign rallies, and that the president is spreading falsehoods that endanger the public. “If Trump is going to keep lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should, all of us, stop broadcasting it,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tweeted. “Honestly, it’s going to cost lives.” News decisions and ethical dilemmas aren’t simple, but withholding in...