Author

Here’s What People Want to Know: Why Do Journalists Tell These Stories?

Why is what happened then considered news today? Why stir up memories of events that were long ago put to rest? Hank Klibanoff, author of “The Race Beat” and managing…
September 12, 2011

Behold This Cliché: The Truth Shall Set You Free

Cases unheard. Justice denied. These words fit many crimes committed with racial intent a half century ago. Now reporters burrow into forgotten files, locate witnesses, track down suspects, publish what…
September 12, 2011

In Jordan, Some Threats Against a Foreign Journalist Are Realized

After the Arab Spring, media restrictions tighten in ways unprecedented in Randa Habib’s 24 years as Agence France-Press bureau chief in Amman, and her life is threatened because of what…
September 9, 2011

Revealing Sex Crimes Against Black Women

Before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, she had already been fighting for racial equality for more than a decade. She strategized with other activists,…
September 9, 2011

When Lawyers and Journalists Share Common Cause

‘Our dual approaches keep steady attention fixed on the [Frank] Morris case and they pressure local and federal law enforcement to thoroughly investigate it, with a spillover effect of bringing…
September 9, 2011

Black Journalism Takes Root in Contemporary Times

When Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and The Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham launched The Root in 2008, their ambitions were anything but modest. “We wanted to…
September 9, 2011

The Case of the Supposedly Sealed Files—And What They Revealed

‘I continue to pore through 40,000 pages of FBI records, the entire FBI case file in the Klan’s 1964 killings of [James] Chaney, [Andrew] Goodman and [Michael] Schwerner. Two suspects…
September 9, 2011

Compelled to Remember What Others Want to Forget

‘… I realize that the way forward is through doing what we do best. We tell stories. We are journalists. And if we, as journalists, don’t tell these forgotten stories,…
September 9, 2011

Fall 2011: Class Notes

Cases unheard. Justice denied. These words fit many crimes committed with racial intent a half century ago. Now reporters burrow into forgotten files, locate witnesses, track down suspects, publish what…
September 9, 2011

What Mediation Looks Like for Journalists

I am developing a framework for consensus-building journalism, what I call the C-bJ model. I believe it can be a starting point for collaboration with media outlets. For such meshing…
September 9, 2011