Tag Archives: Harvard University

US journalism groups join forces on global health reporting

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Two US journalism organisations – the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting – are partnering in an attempt to support greater coverage of international news.

The collaboration, which will have a focus on worldwide health news, is part of the Nieman Foundation’s fellowship in global health reporting, which was launched in 2006 and includes a four-month reporting project at the end of the academic year, an announcement on the Nieman Foundation’s website explains.

Journalists in the program travel to the developing world to learn and report about health issues firsthand and recent participants have produced important, groundbreaking international health stories. However, due to the many recent changes affecting journalism, and international reporting in particular, placing those stories in mainstream media outlets is becoming increasingly difficult

(…) In collaboration with the Nieman Foundation, the [Pulitzer] Center’s staff will help Nieman Global Health Fellows with story planning and placement.

The partnership will also see Pulitzer Center journalists invited to Harvard University for events on underreported international stories and an annual workshop for Nieman fellows.

See the full announcement here…

Nieman Journalism Lab: Clay Shirky – Let a thousand flowers bloom to replace newspapers; don’t build a paywall around a public good

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The Nieman Journalism Lab has helpfully supplied the audio and a transcript for a talk by Clay Shirky, NYU professor and internet theorist, at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University this week. Shirky looked at social accountability in the context of shifting business models for news.

“I think we are headed into a long trough of decline in accountability journalism, because the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place.”

Full post at this link…

Newswatch: Q&A with Bill Kovach, founder of the Committee for Concerned Journalists

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Newswatch, the weekly Nigerian news magazine, has interviewed Bill Kovach, the former curator of the Nieman Journalism Foundation at Harvard University, and the founder of the Committee for Concerned Journalists, CCJ. Earlier in his career Kovach was chief of the New York Times Washington bureau, and executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Kovach answers questions about his (54 year long) career to date. Some of the best answers come near the end – on African news coverage, for example:

“[I] think the western world, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the western world has always thought of Africa as something they had to interprete through their eyes and I always thought that was wrong.

(…)

“One of the things I love about the Nieman programme is that back in the 1960s, the Nieman programme refused to take people from South Africa because South African authorities only wanted white. But Harvard told the South African government and owners of the press that whites would be taken only if every other year, we got a black South African. And so, we began to bring into the Nieman programme white South Africans. Every other year, and soon it was every year, more whites and blacks got their chances.”

Full Q&A at this link…

Tribune resorts to ‘joke’ press release for latest appointment

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Those guys at Tribune know how to have a laugh don’t they? Take this ‘hilarious’ press release I received today about the US media group’s latest appointment:

Surely You Can’t Be Serious? Marc Chase – President Of Tribune Interactive!

Randy Michaels’ run of acquiring radio-management stars
came to a screeching halt today with Chase’s appointment

CHICAGO, April 7, 2008 — Another freaking Clear Channel
Communications executive on the payroll and this one’s been
named President of Tribune Interactive.

Tribune Broadcasting’s Randy Michaels’ past finally caught
up with him when Marc Chase obviously blackmailed his way
into a position he is not remotely qualified to hold.
Insiders are irate. Chase is a fraud. A source inside
Tribune HR, who wished to remain anonymous, pointed out that
Marc Chase’s resume (below) was obviously fabricated. First
of all, his name isn’t even Marc Chase–it’s Mark Thompson.
The whole thing is a sham.

MARC CHASE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500 202-456-1111

PROFESSINAL EXPERIENCE

Vocabulary Advisorist for George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
Washington DC, 2004-present

eBay
President of Buying Crap
San Jose, California 2003-2004

Google
Executive Vice President of Finding Crap Anywhere
Mountain View, California 2001-2002

Microsoft
Senior Executive Vice President of Technology and Stuff
Seattle, Washington, 2000-2001

CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX Television
Vice President of Watching TV A Lot
Los Angeles, California 1999-2000

Harvard University
Dean of School of Internetology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998

EDUCASHION

Nearly Graduated with Honers
School of Alabama in Atlanta Georgia 1985

COMMUNITY SERVICE

400 Hours (reduced from 600)
Judge gave time off for good behavior

Chase was quoted as saying, “Timing and infrared photography
are everything. I couldn’t be happier! I know Randy is
relieved to finally have me on Sam’s payroll.”

Tribune has undergone major changes in the past year, with
billionaire Sam Zell acquiring the company last April in a
complex deal that left it with $13 billion in debt. Since
then, Zell has brought in new executives to fill key roles.
This one takes the cake.

Last December, Zell hired Michaels — who helped Zell to
build Clear Channel into a radio behemoth that he could then
sell — to oversee Tribune’s broadcast and Internet
divisions. It is obvious Michaels has lost his mind with
this hire.

–By Hugh Jass – A Reputable Media Source

© 2008, Bogus Information, a division of Dewey, Cheatum, and
Howe. All Rights Reserved.

While you’re sewing you sides back together (and trying to make sense of the whole thing), you have to ask why? As Gawker points out Marc Chase has been hired – that’s about all you can determine from the message – but is it appropriate to send out a spoof release as the Tribune company faces mass redundancies?