Liz Schwartz

Platform Accountability: An Interim Measure

Download the PDF of this paper here. Introduction The major digital platform companies present a large, complicated array of benefits and problems for the country and the world. The companies increasingly have the attention of both average citizens and senior-most public officials as befit entities that have achieved great—perhaps even paramount—influence in political, social, and […]

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Garrett Graff

Garrett Graff: Decoding the Mueller Investigation

Garrett Graff is a journalist, historian, director of the Aspen Institute’s Cybersecurity and Technology Program, and author of The Threat Matrix, the definitive account of Robert Mueller’s time as head of the FBI. In this episode of the Shorenstein Center’s podcast, he talks about the Mueller Investigation: what we know, what we still don’t know,

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Can Cities Save the Census? A Local Framework for Our Nation’s First Digital Count

With trust in federal government and institutions at historic lows, local governments, including cities and counties, must play a critical role in the 2020 Census. If we don’t get the census right, there is so much we are at risk of getting wrong – the implications of which will last for years.

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Estimating the Effect of Asking About Citizenship on the U.S. Census

The 2020 U.S. Census will, for the first time since 1950, ask about residents’ citizenship status. The effect of doing so on census completion across different racial/ethnic groups is, however, unknown. Leveraging a survey experiment, we are the first to assess the causal effect of this question change.

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The Goldsmith Awards: Finalists Panel

On March 12th, just before the 2019 Goldsmith Awards ceremony, representatives of the 7 reporting teams who were finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting sat down with Nicco Mele, Shorenstein Center Director, for a candid conversation about their prize-nominated reporting, the struggles of being an investigative journalist reporting on some of the most

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Broadband Everywhere

Internet access is coming to the other half of the planet through rapid expansion of broadband technologies. Media organizations that recognize the speed and reach of this expansion will enjoy major new and positive opportunities. In this paper, Shorenstein Fellow Jim Cashel reviews the expanding network of broadband access, and makes recommendations for media companies adapting to this new global reality.

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Behind the Reporting: The Goldsmith Award Finalists

The Shorenstein Center’s podcast is dedicated this week to a series of interviews with the finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. Shorenstein Center Special Projects Director Heidi Legg, an accomplished journalist herself, spoke with each of the reporting teams to learn how they found, investigated, and reported their stories, and about the

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Social Activism Through Pop Culture: Justin Tinsley

Justin Tinsley is a culture and sports writer for The Undefeated, a sports and pop culture website owned and operated by ESPN. He spoke at the Shorenstein Center on February 12, 2019. He and Center Director Nicco Mele had a wide-ranging conversation about covering sports and pop culture through the lens of celebrity activism. Watch the

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Reinventing Local TV News

The growing crisis in U.S. local news is making it increasingly urgent that local television outlets both improve the quality of news produced and chart a path toward a sustainable future in which new audiences are recruited. In this research report, John Wihbey and Mike Beaudet show how local broadcasters might rethink story segments to create a more engaging news product for younger audiences, particularly with regard to hard news stories.

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2019 Goldsmith Prize Finalists

Shorenstein Center Announces Seven Finalists for 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting; Marty Baron to Receive Career Award Finalists include: Alabama Media Group; The Dallas Morning News; The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism with FRONTLINE; The Philadelphia Inquirer; ProPublica; The South Bend Tribune with ProPublica; and The Wall Street

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Email for Newsrooms: A Research Summary

After nearly a decade of decrying email as a rusty old relic of the early internet days, journalists and media outlets are coming to rely more and more on the email newsletter as the backbone of their audience engagement and growth strategies. Over the last year, the Single Subject News Project, part of the News Business Models team at the Shorenstein Center, has been looking at how small nonprofit newsrooms are using email, and specifically email newsletters.

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Nabiha Syed: 2018 Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press

Nabiha Syed, Vice President and Associate General Counsel at BuzzFeed, gave the 11th Annual Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, November 14, 2018. Ms. Syed, a well respected lawyer who has spent her career specializing in free speech law, laid

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Shorenstein Center Announces Spring 2019 Fellows

CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, based at Harvard Kennedy School, is pleased to announce its Spring 2019 class of fellows. “This group of journalists, media executives, and government officials brings an incredible depth of intellectual and professional experience to the Shorenstein Center at a time when the future of journalism

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The Brain Trust Initiative

The Brain Trust Initiative is a vision to unleash the power of digital media as a force for change across sub-saharan Africa. Abstract: Media in sub-Saharan Africa is at a crossroads. Journalism as a change agent within sub-Saharan Africa has lagged, due primarily to the lack of commercially vibrant media and editorially independent media institutions.

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Misinformation Speaker Series: Will Stevens

Will Stevens is Director of the Public Diplomacy Division at the Foreign Service Institute. He spoke about “Adversarial Narratives” and their use by states, non-state actors, and domestic political parties. He also discussed his work training U.S. diplomats to represent the United States in challenging times, American influence around the world, and how public diplomacy

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Lina Yu illustration for the NY Times publication

NYT Opinions: Kids Shouldn’t Have to Sacrifice Privacy for Education

Shorenstein Center Pozen Fellow Dipayan Ghosh, an expert in data privacy and digital platforms, and Jim Steyer, founder and chief executive of Common Sense Media, which advocates for improving media and entertainment for families, authored an op-ed published today in the New York Times. They argue that technology companies have been given nearly free rein

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