Our weekly roundup of news found at the intersection of media, politics, policy and technology, from the Shorenstein Center and from around the web.
Recently at the Shorenstein Center
In Memory of Jonathan Moore (9/10/1932-3/8/2017). The Shorenstein Center mourns the death of Jonathan Moore, a longtime friend, supporter and early architect of the Center. Also read Jonathan’s obituary in The Boston Globe and The New York Times.
Goldsmith Seminar on Investigative Reporting. A panel discussion with the winner and finalists of the 2017 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Featuring: Shane Bauer, senior reporter, Mother Jones; David Cloud, reporter, Washington bureau, Los Angeles Times; Danny Robbins, investigative reporter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Sam Roe, investigative reporter, Chicago Tribune; Josh Salman, investigative reporter, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Michael Siconolfi, editor, investigations, The Wall Street Journal; and Nicco Mele, Shorenstein Center director (moderator).
What Matters to Kids: Children & the News. A panel discussion with Jill Abramson, former New York Times executive editor; Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News; Sacha Pfeiffer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The Boston Globe; Jim Steyer, Founder & CEO of CommonSense.org; Richard Weissbourd, Faculty Director, Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate of School of Education; and Nicco Mele.
How the federal budget process works, from Journalist’s Resource.
News from Faculty, Fellows and Students
Winners & Losers. Farai Chideya, current Joan Shorenstein Fellow, discusses President Trump’s performance at about 50 days into the job on WGBH’s Greater Boston.
Jeff Sessions’ Dept. of Injustice. Derrick Z. Jackson, fall 2016 fellow, writes that “after five years of the DOJ trying to lift the cloak of voter suppression, Sessions, the former Alabama senator, is draping it back over Latinos and African-Americans.”
Jay Rosen on the hazards of journalism-as-usual under the Trump administration. Jay Rosen, spring 1994 fellow, discusses “the collapsing notion of the White House spokesperson,” how to cover the President’s tweets, and more.
A Major New Study Shows That Political Polarization Is Mainly A Right-Wing Phenomenon. Dan Kennedy, spring 2016 fellow, writes abouta recent study on the news consumption habits of Clinton and Trump supporters, and the challenges these findings pose for the news outlets.
Statistics Facts News Truth History. A recent podcast by Michael Goldfarb, spring 1999 fellow, examines journalism’s increasing reliance on data and how it failed in the 2016 presidential election, and provides a historical and global perspective on storytelling methods.
Germany’s Elections Won’t Be a Populist Takeover. HKS student Thomas Karl E. Hocks writes that “Yes, Angela Merkel may lose power this year. No, it won’t be like Brexit or the United States presidential election,” in the Kennedy School Review.
Sunshine Week
- Report: Access to government information will probably worsen in the Trump administration, from Poynter.
- Who Uses FOIA? – An Analysis of 229,000 Requests to 85 Government Agencies, from FOIA Mapper.
- How The Wall Street Journal Visualized the 500+ Conflicts of Interest of the Trumps, from Storybench.
Media Business
- Trump’s budget will probably slash public media, but the biggest losers won’t be PBS and NPR, from The Washington Post.
- Murdoch And Trump, An Alliance Of Mutual Interest, from NPR.
- Readers seem willing to pay for news sites centered around a place. What about sites built on an issue? From Nieman Lab.
- 4 questions nonprofit newsrooms and funders have about their evolving relationships, from American Press Institute.
- For Solace and Solidarity in the Trump Age, Liberals Turn the TV Back On, from The New York Times.
Filter Bubbles
- Q&A: How The Guardian is working to burst the media bubble, from Columbia Journalism Review.
- There Really Was A Liberal Media Bubble, from FiveThirtyEight.
- The Choose-Your-Own-News Adventure, from The New York Times.
- Why we click on news stories, from American Press Institute.
Fake News
- Where fake news goes to die: How Snopes battles Bigfoot rumors, Facebook fibs and other made-up news, from CNN.
- Fake News, Propaganda, and Influence Operations – a Guide to Journalism in a New, and More Chaotic Media Environment, from Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Social Media
- Facebook and Twitter Could Face Fines in Germany Over Hate Speech Posts, from The New York Times.
- How online hate infiltrates social media and politics, from The Conversation.
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