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The 8-step guide to approaching presentations with a journalistic mindset.

In Gabby Reed’s first post for us she outlined the 5 Dos and Don’ts of Presentation Design . Here she details how to approach a presentation with a journalistic mindset. But what does that mean? Read on to find out…

My educational background is in journalism. And throughout my career – no matter what field I am in – and my personal life, I have found that thinking like a journalist has significantly improved my writing.  Beyond the relentless pursuit of who, what, where, when, and why, various tenets of journalism have the ability to aid people in all disciplines and industries in creating compelling content.

It can include something as simple as asking clients or consumers if there is anything you didn’t ask about a particular area or topic that they believe you should know before leaving a meeting, starting a project, or conducting research. Not only does this simple journalistic tactic demonstrate your interest in the person and the project, but it also prompts the individual to reveal some aspect of their vision or desires that they may not have already divulged in previous conversations.

That’s why this detail-driven strategy is located at the top of the following list of 8 ways to present like a journalist.

1) Focus on details

In Journalism 101, the professor will tell you that one of the main qualities that will separate you from your fellow journalism peers is attention to detail. This means more than knowing an interview subject’s first and last name. It means knowing the color of their eyes, the type of shirt they were wearing, or the way they clutched a coffee cup when they talked about a certain person, place, or thing. It’s the tiny details that most people would miss that make a story unique. That makes it personal.

While I was reporting for a story during a local, downtown event in my small hometown in Indiana, I spent about an hour just observing passersby and writing notes about the environment, the people and the interactions between them. When I sat down to craft my notes into a compelling narrative, I incorporated details from my observations and produced a delayed lead with an anecdote of an interaction I witnessed. Although the story had roots in the news realm, I used these minute details to add some textual imagery.

For a presenter, focusing on the little details of your topic will not only add another level of description to enthrall your audience, but it will also enhance your credibility in the eyes of audience members. Projecting credibility is much more than touting your position status or yammering about your high-profile clients. Focus on the people-centric details of your presentation to form a stronger connection with your audience.

2) Understand your audience

Before a journalist even considers pitching a story to an editor, they identify the publication’s audience and determine what topic would be of interest to them. When working for the local paper, several story pitches came across my desk. But, I only selected those that would provide real value to our readership. That they couldn’t read about somewhere else, or that we could cover in a novel and intriguing way – standing out from competitors.

A presenter should always approach their presentation this way because if your audience isn’t going to care about it, then why should you talk about it?

3) Present timely content

In the same vein as understanding your audience is offering appropriate content to your audience. Today’s 24-hour news cycle has cultivated a culture that demands constant updates on the ever-changing social, political, environmental, national, and global landscapes. Whether you like it or not, event-goers will hold presenters to similar standards of precise and speedy distribution of content. As a weekly newspaper, cultivating timely content could prove a tricky task each week. Though challenging, this task pushed the publication staff to tackle new stories and to cover them in creative ways.

If you provide content that your audience craves, your presentation will be more effective and your audience will be more impressed.

4) Avoid jargon

The average American reads at an eighth grade level . According to a recent study, businessman turned presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks below a sixth grade level , which could explain why he continues to perform well in primary elections across the country, recently snatching another victory in New York.

Another study by Contently’s Shane Snow found that a Buzzfeed article written at a third grade reading level was shared more than more taxing reads from the Huffington Post, New York Times, and Economist.

Another component of the infamous jargon community is the abbreviation – a useful internal tool, but potentially confusing external communication device. Both the AP and APA Stylebooks – the journalism content creation bibles – discourage the frequent and abusive use of abbreviations, primarily due to their reputation for confusing audiences.

When I was writing a story about a local government or state government agency, I made sure to spell out the entire name of said organizational body and then include the abbreviation in parentheses next to it. Although it was referenced with the abbreviation for the remainder of the article, it was spelled out in its entirety in the first paragraph so readers to refer back to it.

This all goes to show that, when possible, limit the use of technical terms and abbreviations in a presentation, especially if the goal is audience comprehension.

5) Craft captivating leads

The average individual’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 in the past decade with the increasing popularity of social media sites and quick reference resources. Journalists have understood this well before this recent decrease in attention. During the Civil War era , journalists encountered issues of telegraph lines falling down. To ensure the meat of their story would make it through, they developed a method of writing the most important information first. Nowadays, however, this strategy has become less and less necessary – allowing for more creativity in story openings.

Presenters don’t have to worry about this either, but they do have to worry about audience attention spans. It is paramount that presenters craft a compelling presentation opening .

6) Incorporate supporting visuals

In nearly every newsroom, a journalist cannot simply get away with merely writing a story. Most every editor will expect a visual component – like a graph, poll, map, infographic, photo, etc. – in conjunction with the text. With approximately three out of every four people identifying as visual learners, it’s no mystery why this would be a requirement.

During my days as a reporter, I did everything from interviewing sources, taking notes, and compiling research to writing stories, shooting video, and providing photography options. A well-rounded and deep understanding of a story is a vital part of the journalism field and individuals must be capable of structuring a narrative with text and visuals.

As a presenter, simply telling your audience a piece of information will only garner 10% recall three days after your presentation. But, if you place a relevant, supporting image on your slide, your audience will remember 65% of the content a few days later. Bottom line: include visuals.

7) Embrace a storytelling narrative

If you have ever perused our blog before, you probably know that bullet points break our hearts . It also breaks the hearts of many researchers, with studies indicating that 10-15% of audience members will remember particular bullet pointed information a few minutes after a presentation, compared to the 80% who will recall story-driven, narrative elements and supporting images.

Researchers have discovered that character-focused narratives elevate empathy in listeners as a result of increased oxytocin levels , which rise when people feel like they are bonding socially. Sam Sanders of NPR asks himself how he feels about certain moments during an interview to capture the emotion in a scene so that he can accurately relay it to listeners.

8) Complete thorough research

Perhaps the most crucial lesson my journalism studies taught me was the constant pursuit of accuracy in everything you do – from writing an article to participating in an interview and even giving a presentation. Never purposely mislead your audiences. Always conduct enough research to support your insights and utilize reputable sources to increase trust between you and others. I would spend a large chunk of time just researching a topic, event, or person to inform my question-creation responsibilities and to establish my credibility as a reporter.

The more a journalist knows about a topic, the better and more comprehensive questions he or she can ask. The more a presenter knows about a topic, the better and more comprehensive content he or she can provide to any audience.

Check out this lengthy list of research resources for presenters so you can approach the stage with full confidence in your product.

Pair these tactics with an intense passion for your topic and boundless curiosity and you will have the perfect combination for a powerful presentation. To learn more about a journalist’s mindset and how presenters can harness it, read the following articles and resources:

Storytelling Tactics for Presentations: Creating the Right Villain

7 Ways to think like a journalist when creating content

NPR Editorial Training

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• The 8-Step Guide to Approaching Presentations with a Journalistic Mindset - 21st June 2016
• 5 Dos and Don’ts of Presentation Design - 12th May 2016

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Introduction to Journalism

Apr 06, 2019

1.33k likes | 3.55k Views

Introduction to Journalism. What is journalism?. It is reporting and writing the news and packaging it for an audience. Where can you find the news?. Newspapers Magazines Internet TV Others. Primary Roles of Publication (In no particular order).

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Presentation Transcript

What is journalism? • It is reporting and writing the news and packaging it for an audience.

Where can you find the news? • Newspapers • Magazines • Internet • TV • Others

Primary Roles of Publication(In no particular order) • NewsReporting—a high priority in a broadcast or newspaper, but a low priority in a magazine or yearbook. You have to decide what is news worthy. • Entertainment—questionable in any setting—do you want to entertain your readers more than inform?

Con’t • Matter of Record—a high priority in a yearbook • School Spirit—do you want to promote your school through publication? • Community Image—should you focus on adults in the community who may read your publication, or try to stay focused on the students?

Con’t • Educational Skills—should you focus on what you’re learning and perfecting your skills, or the product? • Reader Culture—what type of reader should you publish for? • Leadership—should you just report the news or use voice in your publication?

Con’t • Public Forum—should you use input from non-staff members in the forms of guest columns and letters to the editor? • Interpretation—explain the environment around you.

News Reporting Entertainment Matter of Record School Spirit Community Image Educational Skills Reader Culture Leadership Public Forum Interpretation What do we want?

Journalistic Models

Advocacy Model • Provides news from the perspective of a political party • This model defined journalism until the beginning of the 20th century, but faded out as political parties lost power and mass-circulation newspapers developed • It still exists in things such as magazines for special interest organizations, and newsletters

Market Model • Provides whatever kind of journalism the audience demands because what is newsworthy is determined by advertising • The content is selected here only to make money • Think tabloids

Trustee Model • Journalist determines what the audience needs to know and delivers • Based on the point that the reader or viewer does not have the time or skill to find out everything that is happening, so they trust in the reporter to do so.

Six types of Audiences: • Mainstream: reads local newspapers, watches local news, is interested in sports and crime, but not foreign news • Basically Broadcast: gets most news from local TV and networks such as prime-time “magazines,”; enjoys health, community, and crime news • Very Occasional: tunes in only when something big is happening, (heavily male audience)

Con’t • Constant: watches, listens to, and reads almost everything; likes all topics • Serious News: relies heavily on National Pubic Radio, NewsHour, Wall Street Journal, etc.; likes news and business magazines • Tabloid: rejects traditional broadcast news; favors the National Enquirer, tabloid TV, and tell-all talk shows

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AN INTRODUCTION TO JOURNALISM

An Introduction to Journalism is an introduction to the landscape of the journalism profession. It discusses the profession’s principles, its main tenets, its products, the products’ elements and their determinants, target consumers, and its challenges. It introduces students to the practices and rigor of gathering information, processing them into news the public can use, choosing the right channel for dissemination, and, reaching and collecting feedback from the receiver. This text book is packaged from notes prepared for ‘An introduction to journalism course’ for L200 students at African University College of Communications, complete with a glossary of commonly used industry terms and self-assessment exercises that engage the reader with the issues, and help them develop a framework for dealing with such concerns in their own reporting experience.

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Expert Commentary

The journalistic method: Five principles for blending analysis and narrative

Columbia Journalism School's Nicholas Lemann explains a series of rules that can help journalists successfully integrate research and reporting.

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by The Journalist's Resource, The Journalist's Resource April 8, 2016

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/media/journalistic-method-tip-sheet-blending-analysis-narrative/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

The intersection of knowledge and narrative, of informed journalism, is the heart of what the Journalist’s Resource project continues to explore. In the short essay below, Nicholas Lemann, a professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia Journalism School and a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker , articulates a method for journalism that integrates knowledge while preserving the art of storytelling. We reprint it here with his permission:

A central problem in the practice of journalism is that most of the time, we are trying to engage in narrative and analysis at the same time. They don’t naturally go together. Journalists more often unwittingly let the narrative distort the analysis than vice versa. What follows is an attempt at a journalistic version of the scientific method, aimed at protecting us from writing stories that are factually accurate and narratively compelling, but still fail to capture the truth of a situation.

• Awareness. On any complicated subject, beware, when you set out, of overly simple conceptions of what ‘the story’ is. Often these involve your having unwittingly accepted somebody else’s frame of reference, or having been primed to see the story in a certain way, or having mistaken correlation for causation, or having succumbed to some other form of embedded misperception. As a first step, you should always stop and ask yourself what you have bought into before you have begun.
• Forming a hypothesis. It’s healthier to admit to yourself that you have one than to go into a story with the idea that you have no presuppositions at all – that would be impossible. You should state a working hypothesis (to yourself, anyway), and then ask yourself what would prove the hypothesis false and what would be an alternate hypothesis to explain whatever it is you are investigating. As you report, you should try not just to prove but also to disprove your working hypothesis, and you should engage in a continuing process of revision of the hypothesis, if necessary. If you don’t design your reporting in such a way that if your hypothesis is flawed, you will find that out before you finish the story, then you are leaving yourself open to getting the story seriously wrong.
• Mapping the discourse. On any important issue, there is likely to be a long-running debate with a set of established compass points. Therefore the idea that you can find ‘an expert’ who can explain the issue quickly over the phone is unrealistic, and so, probably, is the idea that you can find two experts, one on each side, who between them can do justice to the subject. Instead, you should familiarize yourself with the expert discourse on the subject. You don’t need to read everything, but you need to know what the major schools of thought are, and where the debate stands at present, and you should be able to read the primary material for yourself as a way of enriching what other people tell you about it.
• Evaluating the data. Never accept a conclusion from an expert at face value. Instead, you should follow the steps that led to the conclusion, and you should make some judgment as to whether the methodology and presentation are sound. You should also find out whether somebody else has drawn a different conclusion about the same subject.
• Transparency. Journalism is not scholarship and does not generally use bibliographies or footnotes, but you should use attribution in your work in such a way that readers and colleagues can see, to the greatest extent possible, where your information came from and how you have reached your conclusions. Therefore, the use of anonymous sources should be kept to a minimum – you should always try to avoid saying something important with only the testimony of an unnamed person as proof. Even your journalistic competitors should be able to tell, from your work, how to pursue your story further.

Nicholas Lemann is the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor of Journalism and Dean Emeritus at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. 

Keywords: reporting, style, writing

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55 Best Journalism-Themed Templates for PowerPoint & Google Slides

With over 6 million presentation templates available for you to choose from, crystalgraphics is the award-winning provider of the world’s largest collection of templates for powerpoint and google slides. so, take your time and look around. you’ll like what you see whether you want 1 great template or an ongoing subscription, we've got affordable purchasing options and 24/7 download access to fit your needs. thanks to our unbeatable combination of quality, selection and unique customization options, crystalgraphics is the company you can count on for your presentation enhancement needs. just ask any of our thousands of satisfied customers from virtually every leading company around the world. they love our products. we think you will, too" id="category_description">crystalgraphics creates templates designed to make even average presentations look incredible. below you’ll see thumbnail sized previews of the title slides of a few of our 55 best journalism templates for powerpoint and google slides. the text you’ll see in in those slides is just example text. the journalism-related image or video you’ll see in the background of each title slide is designed to help you set the stage for your journalism-related topics and it is included with that template. in addition to the title slides, each of our templates comes with 17 additional slide layouts that you can use to create an unlimited number of presentation slides with your own added text and images. and every template is available in both widescreen and standard formats. with over 6 million presentation templates available for you to choose from, crystalgraphics is the award-winning provider of the world’s largest collection of templates for powerpoint and google slides. so, take your time and look around. you’ll like what you see whether you want 1 great template or an ongoing subscription, we've got affordable purchasing options and 24/7 download access to fit your needs. thanks to our unbeatable combination of quality, selection and unique customization options, crystalgraphics is the company you can count on for your presentation enhancement needs. just ask any of our thousands of satisfied customers from virtually every leading company around the world. they love our products. we think you will, too.

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NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

Author Interviews

Legendary editor marty baron describes his 'collision of power' with trump and bezos.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Advancing Journalism Education in Africa: Insights from UNESCO Initiative

Following a call for proposals to enhance journalism programmes across the continent, these projects built significant capacity and expertise amongst participating staff and faculty members. Implemented by schools in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia and South Africa, they focused on diverse areas such as data journalism, environmental journalism, gender diversity and representation in news, media sustainability and improving reporting on marginalised communities. 

Moïse Bakundukize from the Department of Journalism at the Université Bilingue du Congo, which built the capacity for students and journalists to report better on the environment and climate crisis, emphasized: 

There is so much still to learn. For example, we noticed that gender plays a significant role in who is impacted by climate change, but we did not have the time to explore that properly.

The outcomes included partnership with a local community radio station on environmental reporting and a platform for engaging with experts on climate issues. “ One journalist who participated in our training was so inspired he has now started his own media NGO focusing on environmental issues ,” said Bakundukize.

Similar long-term impacts were reported across other projects, leading to new partnerships with media outlets, recognition of schools as training leaders in their focus area and the development of new curricula. Other outcomes include: a toolkit for reporting on indigenous communities, a manual for environmental journalists, a sustainability model for community radio and a research conducted into revenue generation for African newsrooms.

Nqobile Ndzinisa from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Eswatini, which trained journalists from Botswana, Eswatini and Lesotho in data journalism, emphasized:

This was the first attempt at a short course initiated by the department. It was really a pilot. It has created the experience and desire to do more, such as running a course on financial literacy for journalists.

Additionally, these projects forged closer ties with practicing journalists and  communities through field trip. “One community we visited now stays in constant touch with us via a WhatsApp group that they set up,” says Wanja Njuguna from the Department of Journalism and Media Technology at the Namibia University of Science & Technology. She led field trips to a San community in Donkerbos and an Ovahimba community in Opuwo in Namibia to enhance reporting on marginalised communities. These trips were the department’s first since Covid-19, and they proved transformative for Njuguna, both personally and academically.

“We now have a stronger curriculum based on real-life experience,” said Tamanda Kanjaye from the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences that is finalising a sustainability model for community radio in Malawi.

The current curriculum on community radio has been updated and adjusted following the field work because we realised that some things we were teaching were not accurate on the ground. 

All beneficiaries urged UNESCO to consider similar interventions in the future and emphasized the importance of ongoing discussions to share best practices in journalism education across schools in Africa.

The UNESCO project also entailed developing criteria for excellence through extensive consultations with over 100 journalism educators and trainers in Africa, providing schools a framework for self-evaluation and identifying areas of improvement.

The criteria can be downloaded  here . 

This UNESCO’s  International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) initiative, coordinated by Wits University and Rhodes University (South Africa) and supported by the Google News Initiative, underscores a commitment to  fostering excellence in journalism education in Africa .

A UNESCO initiative to set & implement standards for quality journalism education (2022-2024)

UNESCO Series on Journalism Education

Join us for an engaging panel discussion titled " Supporting the next generation of African journalists " on Thursday, April 18th, at 11:00 (CEST), at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia and online. The discussion will highlight key initiatives' achievements and feature firsthand experiences from two panellists representing projects in Ethiopia and Kenya.

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Opinion | Journalism schools must move beyond reporting to prepare graduates for modern media roles

As journalism rapidly evolves, j-schools must think critically about curriculums and equip graduates with skills for emerging roles across media..

The field of journalism is evolving. Journalism schools are a crucial part of that process, as they teach students the necessary skills to get starting jobs that hopefully turn into blossoming careers.

This task, aimed at equipping students for not just a job but a career, has grown increasingly complex.

Teaching a young journalist demands more than training them in traditional storytelling skills, and now must include, at minimum, a cursory understanding of the larger digital ecosystem, product management, audience engagement, user experiences, revenue streams, and more. If journalism schools want to succeed in their mission, they must teach students to succeed across the whole industry, not just as reporters.

Historically, the relationship between journalism education and the professional world was straightforward: Journalism schools are a part of a longstanding apprenticeship model, in which the industry outsourced the “greenest” of years to a trade school. Schools prepared students, who were then readily absorbed by the industry.

Most journalism schools focused on teaching the trade, not the academic study of journalism as an intellectual pursuit. Yes, Ph.D. programs exist, but that’s not the bread and butter of journalism education. Students sign up for these programs out of career ambitions.

Reporting and writing remain table stakes, but students now need to be equipped with skills that go beyond storytelling and lead to entirely different career paths, still within the confines of media and journalism. A great case in point is how the industry and schools adapted to social media. The growth of social media spawned entirely new entry-level job titles like “social media producer.” Whereas traditional entry-level reporting jobs led to a career path that would have ended in an editor-in-chief title, these new jobs moved onto careers that culminated in a title such as head of audience.

Perhaps because it could be understood under the “storytelling” rubric, many journalism schools were quick to adapt and adopt new courses, methodologies of teaching and a broadening of the trade they taught to prepare students for these new social media jobs. While some institutions have adeptly navigated this shift — going even further by incorporating data journalism, social media strategy, and even the basics of coding into their curriculums — others lag behind.

The next disparity that will emerge, however, will be between journalism schools that expand their charge beyond teaching “storytelling” to include teaching all the career paths upstream of product, revenue, audience, and more. A journalism school that does not prepare its students to at least understand these elements of our industry is limiting its students’ potential for success.

Too often, I come across journalism schools that only consider “storytelling” under the charge of things they are teaching students. This disparity will create gaps in the ecosystem, leaving some new graduates ill-prepared for the realities of the journalism landscape.

And yes, there are schools and programs making great progress in this vein, especially around product management . There are other schools, however, that are producing graduates only capable of stepping into the editorial space, and are ill-equipped to even recognize the important, well paid, impactful roles in media that keep the ecosystem driving forward.

The emergence of new career paths within journalism — such as audience strategy, product management, and the intertwining of editorial and revenue considerations — highlights the need for a more radical approach to journalism education. These roles are as pivotal as traditional reporting, shaping the way content is created, distributed, and monetized.

For journalism schools to truly serve their purpose, they must evolve just as the industry does.

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From Scoop to Civil War: why is it so hard to portray journalism on screen?

The character of the journalist continues to be a trusty mainstay on both the big and small screen, but noble intentions aren’t enough to overcome cliche

I f you grew up watching film and TV, you could be forgiven for believing that journalism was a popular, vaunted career. For nearly as long as writers have written movies, they have written about their jobs, and journalism – the work of chasing tips and collecting facts and creating news – is good for plot and some moral gristle. It’s also easy shorthand for a host of character traits, particularly for women – obsessive, frazzled, ambitious, independent, intelligent, perfectionist.

Media is also a famously self-obsessed industry, and for as long as there have been journalism movies, journalists like me have quibbled about their portrayals. The stereotypes nearly write themselves. In the serious journalism picture, such as Bombshell, She Said or Spotlight: female journalists doing their jobs well, confirming liberal sensibilities of the work’s importance (and of giving most of one’s life to it). In the romcom, a workaholic striver who can’t Type A their way to happiness, à la Anne Hathaway in the Devil Wears Prada or Reese Witherspoon’s frantic news anchor in Apple TV+’s the Morning Show. Sometimes the depictions are just laughably ridiculous – Anna Chlumsky’s New York mag reporter typing at her desk while going into labor , Amy Adams’s local crime reporter sleeping with the lead detective in Sharp Objects, Kate Hudson’s groundbreaking women’s magazine column titled “How to: Bring Peace to Tajikistan” in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

It’s difficult to accurately portray any career on screen, let alone one so directly tied to the immediate and highly public, and yet – journalism remains overrepresented, riddled with misrepresentations and saddled with significance. The conflicted image of the journalist in pop culture is an enduring one, with, coincidentally, three different versions on screen this spring in Alex Garland’s Civil War (the big budget big issues pic), Netflix’s Scoop (the recent history adaptation, of BBC’s infamous 2019 interview with Prince Andrew) and Max’s The Girls on the Bus (the romcom, of modern campaign journalism). All three center journalists as sympathetic, heroic protagonists; all three fall victim to classic tropes while trying to elevate an admittedly devalued, perilous profession.

Civil War, the visceral and expensive A24 thriller hitting international theaters this weekend, follows a group of freelance combat journalists, led by hard-nosed Lee (Kirsten Dunst), during a fictional internecine conflict in the near-future US. It’s working in the tradition of such films as All the President’s Men, The China Syndrome and The Insider – heroic depictions of fictional, usually male reporters and whistleblowers overcoming obstacles in the pursuit of truth. In this case, a dystopian roadtrip for an interview with the autocratic president (Nick Offerman) in DC, where journalists, we’re told, are “shot on sight”. It’s not clear why such an interview would make a difference, it’s just implied that the effort of trying is worth it, because history. (In Garland’s murky, apolitical vision, California, Texas and Florida are all on the same side.)

Civil War offers one vision of the modern journalism picture, using the reporter as the journeyman for bigger themes or concerns. Garland’s decision to center dispassionate journalists with a job to do in this studiously non-ideological conflict is a fraught one – it underscores the importance and difficulty of combat reporting, which Garland evidently respects , if draining the film of the emotional lifeblood behind the conflict necessitating it. Objectivity has long been journalism’s favorite mirage; it’s unbelievable, as a journalist, that in this group of people reporting on a war tearing apart their country, there are no sides nor bleeding hearts.

You would find those in The Girls on the Bus, Max’s new TV series focused on a group of four female political journalists, based on the New York Times reporter Amy Chozick’s memoir of Hillary Clinton’s doomed campaign. The 10-part series is, as so many journalism adaptations often are, an exercise in eye-rolling. Chozick’s 2016 recollections are updated for a fictional present in which Democratic primary voters have actual options. The four leads represent four modern journalist tropes – the legacy media reporter struggling with mandates of objectivity (Melissa Benoist), the hardbitten veteran (Carla Gugino), the gen Z influencer (Natasha Behnam) and the Fox News upstart (Christina Elmore) – with all the broad strokes that entails. TV’s version of a leftist social media influencer is as cringey as you’d expect; Elmore’s character, who is Black, is made more sympathetic by dealing with workplace racism.

In the grand tradition of journalism on screen, Benoist’s Sadie is romantically involved with a source, though escapes malpractice on a technicality (they slept together when he was between jobs!). In the grand tradition of workplace dramedies, characters’ competing ambitions and ideas about their jobs form the backbone of the series, which is as entertaining as it is contrived. The show, co-developed by Chozick and The Vampire Diaries’ Julie Plec, is a throwback to the type of unabashedly corny, emotions-driven 40-minute series on networks such as the WB; it clumsily, but often winsomely, combines references to Chuck Todd, Timothy Crouse and “scheds” with romance, bold-faced themes and voiceovers explaining that “to be a journalist is to have a calling – you don’t choose it, it chooses you”. Its journalists are, like many, self-serious career women, but the show itself is not so high-minded to be above soap, fluff and heart.

That’s in contrast to Scoop, written by Peter Moffat and directed by Philip Martin, which is a member of arguably the most vaunted, if less commercially successful, genre of journalism pictures these days: the adaptation of the real report, the prestige journalism treatment that tries to enshrine recent history through recognizable figures and accomplishments. In focusing on Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and the women at the BBC who organized the prince’s disastrous interview about him, it’s also a member of the mini-genre of so-called #MeToo movies , such as Bombshell , the superfluous film dramatizing female Fox News anchors overturning Roger Ailes and sanitizing their politics in the process, or the even more superfluous TV version in Showtime’s The Loudest Voice . Or She Said , the dutiful if limited portrayal of the Weinstein investigation by New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor. These depictions are layer cakes of signifiers and mimicry – how well famous actors can impersonate famous faces, how slickly one can telegraph procedure, purpose and legacy.

Like She Said, Scoop is a box-ticking exercise of baldly stated self-importance. “We put the time in, get the stories other shows won’t. Stories that need to be told. What people care about. Hold the powerful to account and give victims a voice,” say Romola Garai’s editor after the interview leads to Andrew’s resignation from royal duties, though in this film heavy on recreation, Andrew’s public humiliation seems just as much a feat of his own stupidity as journalistic rigor. I have no argument against the serious importance of talent bookers like Sam McAlister (Billie Piper), of deeply prepared and unflappable interviewers like Emily Maitlis (Gillian Anderson) or stoic decision makers like Esme Wren (Garai); I do wonder if it can carry a 90-minute film, one that only nominally nods at Epstein’s actual victims.

Still, if there is a throughline to these projects so distinct in tone and audience aim, it’s just that: taking this work seriously. Viewing journalism as meaningful, evolving and human, at a time when it’s increasingly lost in the post-truth void and dwindling as a career, even on-screen. There’s an edge of career doom across the board – no one trusts Sadie’s mainstream New York paper in The Girls on the Bus; Scoop opens with the announcement of massive (real) cuts at the BBC. Even Netflix’s Players , the most recent frothy romcom in which a female journalist’s ambition ensnarls her love life, includes layoffs at a local paper in Brooklyn (which, unrealistically, still has a nice office).

Reiterating journalism’s importance, when more Americans distrust the news than not , does make a point, if not always a difference. Whether that point lands is a different matter, as it doesn’t absolve a piece of art from annoying self-righteousness or frustrating tropes, no matter how grounded in truth or sympathy. That being said, I would love to know Andie Anderson’s plan for peace in Tajikistan.

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Editorials | three high school students struck by car while running in glastonbury, editorials | editorial: google shows why we need the journalism preservation act.

Google’s announcement that it will test the removal of links to news sites for some California users is a shameful attempt to fend off legislation that would force the search giant to pay for the news content that fuels its business.

Assembly Bill 886, also known as the California Journalism Preservation Act , would require Google to pay news publishers for using news content on its platform. The bill passed the Assembly last year and is currently being considered by the state Senate Judiciary Committee.

In a Friday morning blog post , Google calls the CJPA a “link tax” that would require Google to pay for “simply connecting Californians to news article.” Google also claims that over the past two decades it has “provided substantial support to help news publishers navigate the changing digital landscape and innovate.”

No one should be fooled by this.

Google made more than $300 billion last year, most of it from advertising it sells using content it did not create or pay for. In its early days, Google sent lots of traffic for news publishers, but in recent years not so much as it seeks to keep people on its site where Google makes the money.

This is why Google’s revenue keeps growing while news publishers – and not just print newspapers – can barely keep the lights on. In fact, according to data from SimilarWeb, more than half of Google searches for top news terms end without a link being clicked. In other words, more than half the time, Google doesn’t actually connect anyone to the actual source of the news.

While Google seems to believe that news should be free – at least to Google – we in the news business are painfully aware that professional news gathering is expensive. And to be clear: News is a business. Google may not want to acknowledge it, but it’s big business for Google. That’s why news was the first thing that Google launched after search and why “news” is the first tab after “all” on the search results page.

It’s why Google is testing what would happen if it removed links to news from its site for some California users. For the record, Google tested removing the news tab altogether in February but apparently didn’t like the results, announcing that it would not be removing the news tab for all users.

Maybe that’s because news is a big part of Google’s business.

According to a recent study , a fair payment from Google for its use of U.S. news content would be $10 billion to $12 billion a year.

Google obviously does not want to pay that.

In a Senate hearing in December, Google’s representative said that news publishers earn $2 billion a year in advertising revenue from traffic Google refers to those publishers. That begs the question as to whether Google itself should actually pay anything at all for the content upon which it has built its extremely lucrative advertising business.

Of course, Google’s stranglehold on digital advertising is the subject of an antitrust case filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states, which allege Google has a monopoly on digital advertising and has used its control of the market to steer advertisers to its own services and sites while depressing the revenues of publishers by manipulating pricing.

The Friday announcement that Google will suppress news for some Californians comes from the same playbook. Here is Google using its command of search – it controls 91.5% of the global search market, according to Semrush – to intimidate publishers and the public alike by threatening to withhold news.

Make no mistake about it: Content, especially news, is the cornerstone of Google’s business model, and Google’s criticism of legislation that would force it to pay for the materials it uses is a naked attempt to preserve its revenue streams by intimidating not only the media but also the public that wants to be connected to news online.

This kind of anticompetitive behavior is exactly why legislation like the CJPA is needed.

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Microsoft Pitched OpenAI’s DALL-E as Battlefield Tool for U.S. Military

Any battlefield use of the software would be a dramatic turnaround for OpenAI, which describes its mission as developing AI that can benefit all of humanity.

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Microsoft last year proposed using OpenAI’s mega-popular image generation tool, DALL-E, to help the Department of Defense build software to execute military operations, according to internal presentation materials reviewed by The Intercept. The revelation comes just months after OpenAI silently ended its prohibition against military work.

The Microsoft presentation deck, titled “ Generative AI with DoD Data ,” provides a general breakdown of how the Pentagon can make use of OpenAI’s machine learning tools, including the immensely popular ChatGPT text generator and DALL-E image creator, for tasks ranging from document analysis to machine maintenance. (Microsoft invested $10 billion in the ascendant machine learning startup last year, and the two businesses have become tightly intertwined. In February, The Intercept and other digital news outlets  sued Microsoft and OpenAI  for using their journalism without permission or credit.)

The Microsoft document is drawn from a large cache of materials presented at an October 2023 Department of Defense “AI literacy” training seminar hosted by the U.S. Space Force in Los Angeles. The event included a variety of presentation from machine learning firms, including Microsoft and OpenAI, about what they have to offer the Pentagon.

The publicly accessible files were found on the website of Alethia Labs, a nonprofit consultancy that helps the federal government with technology acquisition, and discovered by journalist Jack Poulson . On Wednesday, Poulson published a broader investigation into the presentation materials. Alethia Labs has worked closely with the Pentagon to help it quickly integrate artificial intelligence tools into its arsenal, and since last year has contracted with the Pentagon’s main AI office. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.

One page of the Microsoft presentation highlights a variety of “common” federal uses for OpenAI, including for defense. One bullet point under “Advanced Computer Vision Training” reads: “Battle Management Systems: Using the DALL-E models to create images to train battle management systems.” Just as it sounds, a battle management system is a command-and-control software suite that provides military leaders with a situational overview of a combat scenario, allowing them to coordinate things like artillery fire, airstrike target identification, and troop movements. The reference to computer vision training suggests artificial images conjured by DALL-E could help Pentagon computers better “see” conditions on the battlefield, a particular boon for finding — and annihilating — targets.

In an emailed statement, Microsoft told The Intercept that while it had pitched the Pentagon on using DALL-E to train its battlefield software, it had not begun doing so. “This is an example of potential use cases that was informed by conversations with customers on the art of the possible with generative AI.” Microsoft, which declined to attribute the remark to anyone at the company, did not explain why a “potential” use case was labeled as a “common” use in its presentation.

OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeous said OpenAI was not involved in the Microsoft pitch and that it had not sold any tools to the Department of Defense. “OpenAI’s policies prohibit the use of our tools to develop or use weapons, injure others or destroy property,” she wrote. “We were not involved in this presentation and have not had conversations with U.S. defense agencies regarding the hypothetical use cases it describes.”

Bourgeous added, “We have no evidence that OpenAI models have been used in this capacity. OpenAI has no partnerships with defense agencies to make use of our API or ChatGPT for such purposes.”

At the time of the presentation, OpenAI’s policies seemingly would have prohibited a military use of DALL-E. Microsoft told The Intercept that if the Pentagon used DALL-E or any other OpenAI tool through a contract with Microsoft, it would be subject to the usage policies of the latter company. Still, any use of OpenAI technology to help the Pentagon more effectively kill and destroy would be a dramatic turnaround for the company, which describes its mission as developing safety-focused artificial intelligence that can benefit all of humanity.

“It’s not possible to build a battle management system in a way that doesn’t, at least indirectly, contribute to civilian harm.”

“It’s not possible to build a battle management system in a way that doesn’t, at least indirectly, contribute to civilian harm,” Brianna Rosen, a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government who focuses on technology ethics.

Rosen, who worked on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, explained that OpenAI’s technologies could just as easily be used to help people as to harm them, and their use for the latter by any government is a political choice. “Unless firms such as OpenAI have written guarantees from governments they will not use the technology to harm civilians — which still probably would not be legally-binding — I fail to see any way in which companies can state with confidence that the technology will not be used (or misused) in ways that have kinetic effects.”

The presentation document provides no further detail about how exactly battlefield management systems could use DALL-E. The reference to training these systems, however, suggests that DALL-E could be to used to furnish the Pentagon with so-called synthetic training data: artificially created scenes that closely resemble germane, real-world imagery. Military software designed to detect enemy targets on the ground, for instance, could be shown a massive quantity of fake aerial images of landing strips or tank columns generated by DALL-E in order to better recognize such targets in the real world.

Even putting aside ethical objections, the efficacy of such an approach is debatable. “It’s known that a model’s accuracy and ability to process data accurately deteriorates every time it is further trained on AI-generated content,” said Heidy Khlaaf, a machine learning safety engineer who previously contracted with OpenAI. “Dall-E images are far from accurate and do not generate images reflective even close to our physical reality, even if they were to be fine-tuned on inputs of Battlefield management system. These generative image models cannot even accurately generate a correct number of limbs or fingers, how can we rely on them to be accurate with respect to a realistic field presence?”

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In an interview last month with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Capt. M. Xavier Lugo of the U.S. Navy envisioned a military application of synthetic data exactly like the kind DALL-E can crank out, suggesting that faked images could be used to train drones to better see and recognize the world beneath them.

Lugo, mission commander of the Pentagon’s generative AI task force and member of the Department of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, is listed as a contact at the end of the Microsoft presentation document. The presentation was made by Microsoft employee Nehemiah Kuhns, a “technology specialist” working on the Space Force and Air Force.

The Air Force is currently building the Advanced Battle Management System, its portion of a broader multibillion-dollar Pentagon project called the Joint All-Domain Command and Control, which aims to network together the entire U.S. military for expanded communication across branches, AI-powered data analysis, and, ultimately, an improved capacity to kill. Through JADC2, as the project is known, the Pentagon envisions a near-future in which Air Force drone cameras, Navy warship radar, Army tanks, and Marines on the ground all seamlessly exchange data about the enemy in order to better destroy them.

On April 3, U.S. Central Command revealed it had already begun using elements of JADC2 in the Middle East.

The Department of Defense didn’t answer specific questions about the Microsoft presentation, but spokesperson Tim Gorman told The Intercept that “the [Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s] mission is to accelerate the adoption of data, analytics, and AI across DoD. As part of that mission, we lead activities to educate the workforce on data and AI literacy, and how to apply existing and emerging commercial technologies to DoD mission areas.”

While Microsoft has long reaped billions from defense contracts, OpenAI only recently acknowledged it would begin working with the Department of Defense. In response to The Intercept’s January report on OpenAI’s military-industrial about face, the company’s spokesperson Niko Felix said that even under the loosened language, “Our policy does not allow our tools to be used to harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”

“The point is you’re contributing to preparation for warfighting.”

Whether the Pentagon’s use of OpenAI software would entail harm or not might depend on a literal view of how these technologies work, akin to arguments that the company that helps build the gun or trains the shooter is not responsible for where it’s aimed or pulling the trigger. “They may be threading a needle between the use of [generative AI] to create synthetic training data and its use in actual warfighting,” said Lucy Suchman, professor emerita of anthropology of science and technology at Lancaster University. “But that would be a spurious distinction in my view, because the point is you’re contributing to preparation for warfighting.”

Unlike OpenAI, Microsoft has little pretense about forgoing harm in its “responsible AI” document and openly promotes the military use of its machine learning tools .

OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare”

Following its policy reversal, OpenAI was also quick to emphasize to the public and business press that its collaboration with the military was of a defensive, peaceful nature. In a January interview at Davos responding to The Intercept’s reporting, OpenAI vice president of global affairs Anna Makanju assured panel attendees that the company’s military work was focused on applications like cybersecurity initiatives and veteran suicide prevention, and that the company’s groundbreaking machine learning tools were still forbidden from causing harm or destruction.

Contributing to the development of a battle management system, however, would place OpenAI’s military work far closer to warfare itself. While OpenAI’s claim of avoiding direct harm could be technically true if its software does not directly operate weapons systems, Khlaaf, the machine learning safety engineer, said, its “use in other systems, such as military operation planning or battlefield assessments” would ultimately impact “where weapons are deployed or missions are carried out.”

Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a battle whose primary purpose isn’t causing bodily harm and property damage. An Air Force press release from March, for example, describes a recent battle management system exercise as delivering “lethality at the speed of data.”

Other materials from the AI literacy seminar series make clear that “harm” is, ultimately, the point. A slide from a welcome presentation given the day before Microsoft’s asks the question, “Why should we care?” The answer: “We have to kill bad guys.” In a nod to the “literacy” aspect of the seminar, the slide adds, “We need to know what we’re talking about… and we don’t yet.”

Update: April 11, 2024 This article was updated to clarify Microsoft’s promotion of its work with the Department of Defense.

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Alpha Scholars Fall/Winter 2023-2024 Medal Winners

Alpha Scholars is a rigorous social science research program that teaches college-level research, writing and presentation skills to high school students in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Students work one-on-one with Harvard student mentors in advanced study and research of a topic related to their chosen SDG, culminating in a 15-page research paper and 15-minute presentation.

Congratulations to all Fall/Winter 2023-2024 medal winners on the quality of your research papers!

Aguirre, Kiara. Innova Schools Bertello, Peru . “ Unveiling the Peruvian Coca Leaf Trade: A Comparative Study of the Impact of the National Coca Enterprise in the VRAEM vs La Convencion ”

Laanait, Tristan. Fulton Science Academy, USA . “ An Analysis of the Barriers Facing the Implementation of Duckweed Wastewater Phytoremediation Systems in Low-Income Developing Countries ”

Wu, Jasmine. Taipei Wego Private Senior High School, Taiwan . “ Examining the Impacts of Debt-for-Nature Swaps: Insights from Peru, Indonesia, and Brazil ”

Silver Medal

Chun, Kaylee. La Canada High School, USA . “ Variation of Involuntary Hospitalization Rates in America: A Florida Case Study ”

Cruz, Valentina Vale Farias. Colégio Militar de Fortaleza, Brazil . “ Promoting Quality Education: Introducing Academic Olympiads as a Mechanism for Accomplishing Global Citizenship in Brazil ”

Malinović, Desanka. Barry Goldwater High School, USA . “ Post-war Posts: An Exploration Into How Instagram May Aid in Relearning the History of the Yugoslavian Civil War ”

Pereira, Yasmim Gabriel. Colégio Militar de Campo Grande, Brazil . “ Future Political Agenda: An Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s Implications on Teenage Students’ Mental Health in Brazil ”

Bronze Medal

Bobbala, Aadhya. Keystone School, USA . “Education is a Need, Not a Want: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis of Obstacles to Girls’ Education in India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan”

Fernández, Martina. 4-004 Mercedes A. de Segura, Argentina . “From Tango to Capoeira: Unmasking the Rhythms of Diverse Socio-cultural Factors of Domestic Violence in Brazil and Argentina”

Levine, William. University High School, USA . “Agriculture in Haiti: An Analysis on the Impact of Colonial History and Foreign Intervention on Agricultural Systems”

Loyola, Angelo. C.T.E Jesus Obrero, Peru. “Extracurricular Activities: An Ally for Education and Socioemotional Development”

Stover, Joshlyn. James Madison High School, USA . “Agroforestry in Brazil: The Possibility of Agroforestry Systems to Mitigate the Adverse Effects of Cattle Ranching in the Amazon While Preserving Brazil's Economy”

To learn more about the Alpha Scholars program and apply, please visit alphascholars.org , or follow us on Instagram @alpha_scholars_research .

Column: L.A.’s ultimate heartbreak industry isn’t Hollywood. It’s local journalism

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Whenever I think of the perilous state of local news, I think of Delicious Pizza in West Adams.

Great pizza! Small space, cool atmosphere. In the fall of 2017, I found myself there along with other journalism castoffs cursing the news gods.

I had just resigned as editor of OC Weekly after I refused to lay off half the staff. Daniel Hernandez was out of a job at VICE News after nearly four years there. Julia Wick had led the original LAist until its owner shut down the website because he claimed it wasn’t economically successful. Former LA Weekly editor-in-chief Mara Shalhoup was axed alongside most of her writers and editors after a new owner acquired the venerable alt-weekly.

Over beers and slices, we laughed and shared stories and fretted about the eternal erosion that is American journalism. None of us were about to give up on our beloved profession, though. There was talk of creating our own publication, but nothing serious. Instead, we hugged and went on to the rest of our lives.

Today, Mara is ProPublica’s South editor . Daniel edits The Times’ food section . Julia is on The Times’ 2024 election team . I’m a Times columnista , of course, frequently using Southern California’s past as a prism to understand what’s happening now and what might occur in the future.

And boy, does it not look good for local journalism — again.

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Last month, the nonprofit Long Beach Post, which expertly covered the port city while the Press-Telegram atrophied, laid off nearly everyone. The publication’s board of directors maintained the move was necessary to save it from financial ruin — but former staffers insist it was retribution for their attempt to form a union.

Reporters for Knock LA, which focuses on social justice issues and law enforcement corruption , accused the publication’s fiscal sponsors, the leftist group Ground Game LA, of exiling them after they asked to spin off Knock into its own standalone entity.

In the for-profit world, L.A. Taco, which centers food coverage while covering working class communities across Southern California , furloughed nearly everyone on its small team. Editor-in-chief Javier Cabral said they would be laid off if the publication isn’t able to hit 5,000 members by the end of April. (They were at 2,800 as of Monday). This follows the shuttering of one of California’s oldest continuously operating newspapers, the Santa Barbara News-Press , last year.

And, of course, there’s this paper. More than 100 of my colleagues were laid off last summer and earlier this year . Others took buyouts, and it seems recently that farewell emails from colleagues moving on to other jobs or retiring hit my mailbox daily.

It’s easy to portray what’s going on in local media as unprecedented and catastrophic, especially in the face of similar layoffs nationwide during an election year where accurate facts and nuanced coverage matter more than ever. But Southern California has always been an ossuary of failed publications done in by apathetic readership, clueless owners or a combination of both.

Every generation in L.A. seems to suffer a journalism mass extinction event. In addition to what’s happening right now and what happened in 2017, there was the shuttering of two alt-weeklies, Los Angeles CityBeat and the Long Beach-based The District Weekly, at the turn of the aughts. I remember the demise of La Banda Elastica and Al Borde, two Spanish-language publications that focused on rock en español through the late 1990s and 2000s. Older folks will remember the end of the L.A. Herald Examiner in 1989 , whose grandiose downtown headquarters are now used as a satellite campus by Arizona State University.

L.A.’s heartbreak industry isn’t Hollywood; it’s journalism. To paraphrase what the late A. Bartlett Giamatti said about baseball, it’s designed to break the hearts of those who work it.

You join the profession knowing that long hours, low pay and no respect from the public is the norm, yet you jump in anyway. You revel in your colleagues, your shared sense of mission and the stories you do — but then the reality of economics sets in, and you realize the good times won’t last. You wonder why readers don’t subscribe, why editors and publishers don’t innovate. You see co-workers lose their jobs or leave the profession — and then it’s your turn, one way or another.

It’s easy to armchair quarterback why publications fail. Blame technology, fragmented audiences, a lack of trust in news — it’s all of that, and more. But these conditions existed before photos appeared in newspapers, and will persist long after whatever Elon Musk inserts in our brains so we can’t quit X.

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What’s going on in Southern California journalism is sadly familiar — yet not hopeless. There is something new with this generation of journalism orphans. In the past, we downed shots and mourned as our publications died. Now, to paraphrase another literary luminary, Dylan Thomas, reporters are not going gentle into that good night.

Long Beach Post and Times staffers have publicly protested against their bosses. Knock L.A.’s banished writers and editors are shaming their former benefactors online. L.A. Taco is asking for money like an NPR host during a fund drive pounding nitro cold brew.

“We went public with our dire situation, because how can you expect help if you don’t ask for it?” said Cabral, 35, who I’ve known since he was a teenager with his own food blog . “Journalism for me has always been a fleeting career in flux that pulls the rug right under you when you start to get comfortable.”

I wish all of these folks well as they try to make it, including my colleagues at The Times, which has been unionized since 2018 and where we’ve worked for almost a year and a half without a contract. But even if we all fail, the dream to do good journalism in Los Angeles will never die. More publications are already rising.

The Los Angeles Public Press is barely a year old but is already making an impact with its coverage of the San Fernando Valley and Southeast L.A. County. Caló News , which focuses on Latino issues, will launch its own initiative to cover southeast L.A. County this summer. Newsletters run by individuals are filling in news holes and getting subscribers in the process. Hyperlocal publications like The Eastsider and This Side of Hoover are still informing readers about their communities.

Last month, I attended a forum at City Club LA hosted by the nonprofit Latino Media Collaborative, which sponsors Caló News, about what it deemed a “crisis” in Southern California journalism. Among the speakers were former La Opinión publisher Monica C. Lozano and California Community Foundation Chief Executive Miguel A. Santana . The conference room was packed with reporters young and old hoping to plug into the millions of dollars that local and national philanthropic organizations are planning to spend on L.A.-focused news operations in the coming years.

I wish them well, too — because someone has to succeed in this cursed industry, right? Right?

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Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.

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