Critical Condition
“If you are counting full-time critic jobs at newspapers, you may as well count tombstones.” That was the response of Johanna Keller, director of the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, to a Nieman Reports query about the number of professional critics employed at dailies around the country. The figures on newspaper critics (News flash: they're not good) are one indication of the state of criticism today, but they are not the only one.
Daniel Eilemberg
Daniel EilembergFounder, editor in chief, and publisher, Animal Politico website
"Having cemented Animal Político's credibility as an influential media brand, I plan to leverage our platform, resources and know-how to build Mexico's leading digital editorial company. To complement our political offering, we plan this year to launch business, technology and lifestyle verticals and expand into the United States with a news platform aimed at the growing Mexican-American population, covering the cross-pollination of these two countries and cultures. Social networks, a powerful force in Mexico, have been key in building an activist civil society and they offer a unique opportunity for media companies that recognize and cater to this nascent digital market."
Hong Qu
Hong QuUser experience designer and part of the startup team that built YouTube
"Many journalists find Twitter intimidating because it feels like an information black hole that they nonetheless need to master. My hope is to alleviate that dilemma by building an application that will distill meaningful discourse from the noisy chatter of thousands of tweets. I intend to use wisdom-of-the-crowd heuristics (such as number of retweets, @ replies, and followers; hashtag discovery and aggregation, and sentiment analysis) to identify and highlight tweets that have the most resonance. I want to build an application that enables journalists and everyone else to effortlessly tune in to any live-tweeted event."
Kate Smith
Kate SmithJournalism professor, Edinburgh Napier University
"Literary journalism can directly communicate the emotional truth of war with a meaning and sentience that conventional reporting cannot. My research will be in the Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn archives, asking if the two of them were, in their own ways, trying to combat the compassion fatigue of the 1930s and 1940s. Although other authors have drawn on these archives, I will focus on the role moral truth and moral courage play in reporting war. In many ways Hemingway and Gellhorn were ahead of their time with their war reporting, and these issues are very relevant to contemporary war coverage."
Daniel EilembergFounder, editor in chief, and publisher, Animal Politico website
"Having cemented Animal Político's credibility as an influential media brand, I plan to leverage our platform, resources and know-how to build Mexico's leading digital editorial company. To complement our political offering, we plan this year to launch business, technology and lifestyle verticals and expand into the United States with a news platform aimed at the growing Mexican-American population, covering the cross-pollination of these two countries and cultures. Social networks, a powerful force in Mexico, have been key in building an activist civil society and they offer a unique opportunity for media companies that recognize and cater to this nascent digital market."
Hong Qu
Hong QuUser experience designer and part of the startup team that built YouTube
"Many journalists find Twitter intimidating because it feels like an information black hole that they nonetheless need to master. My hope is to alleviate that dilemma by building an application that will distill meaningful discourse from the noisy chatter of thousands of tweets. I intend to use wisdom-of-the-crowd heuristics (such as number of retweets, @ replies, and followers; hashtag discovery and aggregation, and sentiment analysis) to identify and highlight tweets that have the most resonance. I want to build an application that enables journalists and everyone else to effortlessly tune in to any live-tweeted event."
Kate Smith
Kate SmithJournalism professor, Edinburgh Napier University
"Literary journalism can directly communicate the emotional truth of war with a meaning and sentience that conventional reporting cannot. My research will be in the Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn archives, asking if the two of them were, in their own ways, trying to combat the compassion fatigue of the 1930s and 1940s. Although other authors have drawn on these archives, I will focus on the role moral truth and moral courage play in reporting war. In many ways Hemingway and Gellhorn were ahead of their time with their war reporting, and these issues are very relevant to contemporary war coverage."
