Author

Melissa Bell of Vox Media: "Give People the Start of Understanding"

Melissa Bell of Vox Media: “Give People the Start of Understanding”

Melissa Bell is a journalist, technologist, and co-founder in 2014 of Vox.com, a site focused on explainer journalism. In 2015, she assumed a corporate role at parent company Vox Media.…
January 6, 2016
How Newsrooms Handle Graphic Images of Violence

How Newsrooms Handle Graphic Images of Violence

Are images of violence and death too distressing to publish—or too important to ignore?
January 5, 2016
One Reporter's Lessons From Delivering His Own Newspaper

One Reporter’s Lessons From Delivering His Own Newspaper

The newly bought flashlight pierced the darkness, but the number on the house was nowhere to be seen.I hopped out of the warm car and crunched over ice covering the…
January 4, 2016
How Participatory Journalism Turns News Consumers into Collaborators

How Participatory Journalism Turns News Consumers into Collaborators

Julia Kumari Drapkin, a climate reporter, was living in Washington, D.C. in 2011 when she started noticing something odd about her lunch: Sandwich shops were being uncharacteristically stingy with their…
November 17, 2015
Ethan Zuckerman: "Journalistic organizations … need to have a civic impact"

Ethan Zuckerman: “Journalistic organizations … need to have a civic impact”

Ethan Zuckerman is the director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, where he is also a principal researcher, and he is the cofounder of the international citizen media blogging community Global Voices.…
November 12, 2015
How Cartoons Helped Define The New Yorker

How Cartoons Helped Define The New Yorker

The New Yorker’s cartoons and covers have been well-loved since its founding in 1925. It was Rea Irvin, the first employee (his title was “art editor”), who is responsible for the…
November 10, 2015
Damakant Jayshi, NF ’07, brings political and media factchecking to Nepal

Damakant Jayshi, NF ’07, brings political and media factchecking to Nepal

I have been fascinated with fact-checking ever since I first read about it during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Now I’m proud to have brought this tradition to Nepal and…
November 4, 2015
Using Network News to Tell Small Stories with Big Impacts

Using Network News to Tell Small Stories with Big Impacts

When I started out in network news, I was all about the big, lead story. There’s a sense in most newsrooms that those are the ones that are the most…
November 2, 2015

Shankar Vedantam, NF ’10, explores the frontiers of psychology in his new podcast

My NPR podcast “Hidden Brain” launched this fall, but it’s been more than a decade in the making, one that started mere blocks from Lippmann House.While reporting for The Washington Post…
October 28, 2015
To Fight Ad Blocking, Build Better Ads

To Fight Ad Blocking, Build Better Ads

The first time I installed an ad blocker on my browser was in 2006. I don’t remember how I heard about Adblock Plus, but I do remember feeling a rush…
October 26, 2015