Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has generated controversy. Here are some takes from the interview from three very different perspectives: Jon Stewart, Glen Greenwald and Ian Bremmer:
First, Jon Stewart, who is disgusted by Carlson:
Second, Greenwald, who is pro-Russian and highlights Putin’s responses to supposed Western “provocations” …
And next, Ian Bremmer, a journalist and scholar of Russian history who is not pro-Russian …
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The late Larry Gibson, the “Lorax” of Appalachia, being interviewed by RU students at a mountaintop removal mining site.
Journalism is needed like never before. At a time when the world seems perched on the ledge of self-destruction, we need people who can act independently, serve the public interest, and search for the truth.
Journalists are among the few professionals whose duty is to serve the public interest and who are guided by professional ethics and personal conscience.
There’s never been a better time to go into journalism. Sure, the field is crowded, the obvious opportunities are limited, and many publishers are in trouble. But there is still a demand for information. People need to understand the world around them, and this is, after all, the information age. There are lots of ways to make a living in the news business. Continue reading
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For the Conversation
Local news outlets across the U.S. are struggling to bring in advertising and subscription revenue, which pays for the reporting, editing and production of their articles. It’s not a new problem, but with fewer and fewer journalism jobs as a result, a growing number of local newsrooms have found a potential solution: college journalism students.
The pandemic, set on a backdrop of political and economic tumult, further injured a local news industry weakened by decades of revenue decline, ownership consolidation and cuts to production and delivery. In rural and urban communities across the country, residents have little or no access to credible or comprehensive local news and information – they live in what are called “news deserts.”
Studies show that people who live in news deserts or other locations with little local news are less likely to be actively involved in their community or participate in local elections. They are also more likely to believe false information spread online through social media and fake or fringe websites.
Through formal and informal collaborations, college journalists are helping to serve the communities where their universities are located by making sustained contributions to local media. Indeed, an estimated 10% of state capitol reporters across the nation are students. In some states, such as Missouri, students make up a little more than half of their statehouse press corps, according to a 2022 report published by the Pew Research Center.
As a researcher who studies trends in rural community journalism and a journalism professor who teaches in a region with significant elimination of local news reporters and news coverage, we decided to study these collaborations – what we call “news-academic partnerships” – often in areas that have seen local newsrooms suffer the hardest hits, as identified in the University of North Carolina’s news desert report.
For our initial research, we sent surveys to 50 people who are involved in these collaborations, either as faculty members who manage the partnership at a
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Posted in Exemplary journalism, Future of news
While Virginia’s major news organizations are content to report arrest statistics and Orwellian police doubletalk, one writer — Jeff B. Thomas — spent a week on the front lines in Richmond in late June 2020, where rioting continues nightly.
Thomas’ reporting is nothing less than a masterpiece of multimedia journalism.
In his Blue Virginia article, Thomas shows us a set of videos taken on the scene in late June 2020, accompanied by explanations of their context.
What he concludes is that we are witnessing “a horrific orgy of extralegal violence, arbitrary arrest, assault and battery on peaceful protesters, and official deceit to justify it, all recorded on video.”
Most harrowing are the screams in the background.
Thomas also objects to the way these events are being covered in the news media and perceived at the governor’s office:
How did the Richmond Times-Dispatch summarize these events? “A Dozen Arrested Early Tuesday at Richmond City Hall Protest.” And Governor Northam, whose state mansion sits a couple blocks from here and whose police were mostly responsible for the police violence? “Mostly these demonstrations have been peaceful, but here in Richmond we continue to see nightly conflicts between demonstrators and our police. After three weeks it is no longer clear what the goals are or a path to achieve them. Clearly Richmond needs a different path forward. These nightly conflicts cannot continue indefinitely.”
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Cool? Yes. Accurate? Not entirely.
The Netflix series “Stranger Things” does not do justice to the way women were moving up in journalism in the 1980s, according to Kelly McBride writing for the Poynter Institute.
She writes:
“Yes, there was plenty of sexism in both newsrooms and the broader world. (And racism, too, which isn’t acknowledged much in the series.) But The Hawkins Post looks more like 1955 than 1985, when women were making enormous strides in journalism.”
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Ralph McGill (left) and Eugene Patterson (right)
A Sept. 16, 1963 column by Atlanta newspaper editor Eugene Patterson is still remembered as one of the finest responses to racial and religious hatred in history. Along with fellow Atlanta editor Ralph McGill, Patterson won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing and was effective in turning the media away from hostility and towards compassionate coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. The genius of their writing, the depth of their human feeling, as evident in this column, helped reach hearts that had been hardened by hate-spewing politicians. Its a good lesson for the 21st century.
A Negro mother wept in the street Sunday morning in front of a Baptist Church in Birmingham. In her hand she held a shoe, one shoe, from the foot of her dead child. We hold that shoe with her.
Every one of us in the white South holds that small shoe in his hand. Continue reading
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John Cleese talks about disappointment with the UK government, the Brexit vote, and the conservative domination of UK media.
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