Election ’16: Lessons for Journalism

Donald Trump poses a challenge to all media, because he, well, loathes us and also can’t live without us. In everyday terms, his badgering media for attention and simultaneously calling…

A fast-talking, prolific headline-making man from New York with a controversial record on the issue of race showed up on the political scene to run for the presidency of the…

One way to think of the job journalism does is telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s…

I come from a fading industrial town—Albion, Michigan. In 1985 I would read the Chicago Tribune on how great things were in America and wonder which America it was writing…

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent victory stunned a lot of Americans, not the least of which were members of the elite media, who couldn’t fathom the possibility that A) the so-called…

At times like this, News Literacy faculty look at each other and quip, “What have we done to deserve such riches?”The wisecrack reminds us to relish the meaningful work of…

For many mornings on my way into the Chicago Tribune newsroom, I passed by an Arthur Miller quote engraved in the lobby: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation…

Focus is one of journalism’s most important skills. It’s that separating the wheat from the chaff thing. In an age of distraction we need THAT skill now more than ever.…

There was a whole lot that went right in 2016 campaign coverage.If you were reading Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, PRRI’s Robert Jones, or New America’s Lee Drutman, you understood how race,…

I watched election-night coverage on television with acquaintances from Europe, who seemed flummoxed by what was unfolding on the screen. I spent a lot of time explaining the Electoral College…