INSIDESTORY
SUMMER 2012 Vol. 6, No. 3 WWW.JOURNALISM.CUNY.EDU
Interactive Reporting Program Adapts to Rapidly Changing Times The new interactive options come into play once students have completed the first semester of CUNY’s 16-month Master of Arts in Journalism program. The first-semester load is mandatory, consisting of the foundation reporting and writing course, Craft of Journalism, as well as Legal and Ethical Issues and the new Fundamentals of Multimedia Storytelling. For the spring semester, students can delve into such electives as Photojournalism, Video Storytelling for the Web, and Data-driven Interactive Journalism. There’s also a sequence of one-credit coding modules that includes HTML and CSS for Journalists, JavaScript and JQuery, and WordPress Customization. This fall, senior students can avail themselves of a
Students today know more about social media and digital technologies than did their predecessors. brand new module series that features Advanced Social Media, Presentation & Design, Photography for Reporters, Video for Web, and News Games & Quizzes. The latter “offers our students an opportunity to break new ground by introducing audiences to news developInteractive Reporting Program Director Sandeep Junnarkar, who led the redesign of the interactive curriculum, helps ments and complex policy stories by using games and students with web coding during an introductory seminar on HTML and CSS earlier this year. quizzes as a form of interactive storytelling,” Junnarkar explained. The photography and web video modules enhe interactive curriculum at the CUNY Graduate them an advantage in this competitive field,” said Sandeep hance important journalistic skills but are not as intensive School of Journalism has undergone a major transJunnarkar, director of the Interactive Reporting Program. as the full-blown courses in those two subjects. formation in a little more than a year to keep its A charter member of the core faculty, he took over as diAn independent study option will let third-semester courses at the news industry’s cutting edge. In place rector in April from Professor Jeff Jarvis, who founded the students bring together all the elements and skills they’ve of the original lineup developed when the J-School opened interactive program but is now focusing on the School’s learned along the way to create an in-depth interactive six years ago which included one all-encompassing intergrowing entrepreneurial journalism efforts. news project. active course per semester, students can now pick from a Junnarkar plans to present several smorgasbord of specialized electives and five-week skills more courses and modules to the modules. Curriculum Committee this fall that In addition, first-semester students will no longer take will cover such fields as tablet and separate introductory broadcast and interactive classes. mobile publishing and building cusInstead, the two core courses have been merged into one tom databases for interactive jourtwo-day required offering called Fundamentals of Multinalism works. If approved, they’ll be media Storytelling. available in the spring of 2013. The changes are in response to two trends: Students are “What really excites me about entering J-School today with greater knowledge of social working at this School is that we’re media and digital technologies than their predecessors had never sitting still,” Junnarkar said. a few years back, and they want to dig deeper into differ“We’re encouraged to explore emergent areas of interactive reporting. Plus, industry demand ing technologies and make sure is growing for journalists with expertise in coding, data students are getting the skills and visualization, web design, and other advanced skills. concepts they need to stand out in “I’m constantly looking out for emerging trends and Instructor Bob Sacha demonstrates recording equipment in the popular the marketplace.” elective, Video Storytelling for the Web. want to make sure our students have the skills that give
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U Dean’s Corner 4 VOL . 6 , NO . 2
Gala Honors a Journalist and Philanthropist U What’s New in Summer Internships 3
Research Center Launches Mobile App
School Notes U A Bumper Class Fills the School U Students, Alumni, and Faculty Pile Up Awards SUMMER 2012
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PHOTOS BY JOHN SMOCK
IN THIS ISSUE:
The Journalist and the Philanthropist: Matthew Winkler and Leonard Tow are Honored at 2012 Awards Gala
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he CUNY Graduate School of Journalism honored two men for their accomplishments in the fields of journalism and philanthropy at the fifth annual Awards for Excellence in Journalism gala at TheTimesCenter on May 14. Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism and Leonard Tow, a pioneer in the cable television industry, was the first recipient of the Distinguished Service to New York Award. The event also recognized three alumni from the Class of 2011: Alva French received the Dean’s Award, Nadia Sussman won the Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for Social Justice Reporting, and Patrick Clark captured the Frederic Wiegold Award for Business Journalism. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who hired Winkler from The Wall Street Journal in 1990 to start a news wire for Bloomberg’s growing business information company, introduced his longtime associate and friend. He called Winkler “someone who has reshaped the entire industry of business journalism” and “a visionary leader, a brilliant journalist, and an outstanding editor.” In his introduction to Tow, CUNY Chancellor
Matthew Goldstein named some of the organizations the philanthropist has supported with gifts of millions of dollars, including the CUNY J-School’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, the Columbia University Medical Center, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the new Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, and a performing arts center at Brooklyn College. “His giving is strategic, directed as to have the most impact,” Goldstein said. “Leonard believes, as I do, in the power of leverage. He likes to challenge others, stimulate them to aim high and drive forward, and make a difference.” Dean Stephen B. Shepard praised Winkler, who sits on the CUNY J-School Board of Advisers, for bringing “traditional journalism into the digital age.” He called Tow “one of the great unsung philanthropists in New York history.”
Clockwise from top left: Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler; philanthropist Leonard Tow; and Class of 2011 alumni Nadia Sussman (with Mistress of Ceremonies Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News), Patrick Clark, and Alva French.
Science, Sports, and Business Beats Keep Summer Interns Busy
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his summer, the word in student internships is specialty. “It’s an especially great summer for science journalism,” noted Career Services Director Deborah Stead. Students in the Health & Science Reporting Program landed internships with public radio’s Science Friday and Radio Lab and at Popular Science, Fitness, Psychology Today, Cosmos (based in Sydney, Australia), and Oceanus (published by the Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution). Fulbright scholar Claudia Bracholdt is working at The New York Times science desk. Sports and business are two other prominent beats for the Class of ’12 during the break between the second and third semesters, Stead said. The Summer Olympic Games have helped draw students to NBC, CBS, and The Independent in London. Here in New York, members of the class will join the teams at the New York Daily News sports desk and Sports Illustrated. Business-journalism students will be covering every2
www.journalism.cuny.edu
Ian Chant, ‘11, interned for NPR’s Science Friday last summer. Seven ‘12 students are public radio interns now.
thing from economics to personal finance at Reuters in Mumbai, The Bangkok Post in Thailand, and in New York City at Crain’s New York Business, The Daily, Portfolio.com, Money, WNYC, CNNMoney.com and Quartz, a new Atlantic Media site. The international destinations are as diverse as ever,
with 18 of the 87 students interning abroad in 14 countries, including South Africa, Lebanon, and Indonesia. Meanwhile, their classmates who are staying stateside will tackle all kinds of issues in this U.S. presidential election year at media organizations including ABC Nightline and Time magazine. Four students are ensconced at various units of The New York Times and four are at the Daily News. Finally, with the J-School offering a new data-visualization course that teaches students to analyze data and create compelling stories and interactive graphics, one internship is all about the numbers. “One of our students will be working this summer at USA Today’s investigative data-analysis desk,” Stead said. “And I’m beginning to see job listings calling for this skill.” As always, the CUNY J-School’s unique summer internship program guarantees that even students in unpaid positions will receive at least a $3,000 stipend. The program was funded initially by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and now depends on private support.
Research Center Launches Mobile App for Reporters in the Field
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he Research Center at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism has introduced an app that lets users get access to databases, research guides, and other resources from their smartphones and tablets. The CUNY J-Tool is the first mobile app available through any library in the CUNY system. “It was designed to support mobile journalism by making it easier to access our resources while in the field and reporting on deadline,” said Barbara Gray, the J-School’s interim chief librarian. “When you’re about to interview someone, it’s very easy to look up a phone number or do an article search on the fly.” In addition to opening up databases such as Lexis, Factiva, Reference USA, and Social Explorer, it lets students, faculty, and alumni view their accounts online, search the Research Center catalog, and reserve books from any CUNY library. Developed and powered by Palo Alto, Calif.-based mobile service provider Boopsie, the CUNY J-Tool can be downloaded through any app store or at cunyjtool. boopsie.com.
Stephen B. Shepard Dean Judith Watson Associate Dean
Matthew Goldstein Chancellor, The City University of New York
BOARD OF ADVISERS Dean Baquet
Howard Rubenstein
Managing Editor of The New York Times
President of Rubenstein Associates
Merrill Brown
Vivian Schiller
New Media Consultant
Chief Digital Officer of NBC News Arthur Siskind Senior Adviser to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch
David Carey
President of Hearst Magazines
Connie Chung
Television Journalist and Anchor
Richard Stengel
Jared Kushner
David Westin
Managing Editor of Time
Publisher of The New York Observer
CEO of News Licensing Group
Adam Moss
Editor-in-chief of New York Magazine
Executive Vice-President and Managing Editor of CNN Worldwide
Michael Oreskes
Matthew Winkler
Mark Whitaker
Senior Managing Editor at the Associated Press John Paton CEO of Journal Register Company
Norman Pearlstine
Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News
Mortimer Zuckerman
Chairman and Publisher of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report
Chief Content Officer at Bloomberg News
Amy Dunkin Editor VOL . 6 , NO . 2
John Smock Photographer
Nancy Novick Designer
My Turbulent Path from Print to Digital
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never thought I’d write a book. I had spent my enI have come to believe that digital technology will tire journalistic career on weekly magazines (Newsenrich journalism, creating an interactive, multimedia week and BusinessWeek) and didn’t feel the urge form of storytelling that can invite community particito write at greater length. After I left the magazine pation. It can be personalized and delivered on a vast world in 2005, I was consumed by the task of startarray of mobile phones, tablet computers, and e-readers. ing this brand new Graduate School of Journalism. But Though many mainstream media companies have been once the CUNY J-School was launched on a successhollowed out by all those layoffs, new digital outlets offer ful trajectory, I decided I ought to set down an account of what we had wrought at a critical time for the journalism profession. I didn’t imagine anything more than a report that would be filed in the library, available to the few people who might be interested. I soon realized I couldn’t write about starting a school or my thoughts about the future of journalism without writing about myself: who I am, why I became a journalist, what I did in my career, what my values are. In short order, it became a memoir, the story of a life in journalism, old and new. It takes in my time as a foreign correspondent and my Newsweek years. It chronicles my eventful 20- Dean Stephen B. Shepard year tenure at BusinessWeek, helping to build it into one of the best promising alternaand most lucrative magazines in the world – only to see tives – from Politico it succumb to the disruption of the Internet age after I and Pro Publica to the left. And it tells in detail how we created a journalism Texas Tribune and the school for a new age. Huffington Post, to Ultimately, it is a tale of transition. I initially thought say nothing of blogs, of my role as founding dean as a personal capstone, websites, and hyperlocal ventures. There is more journalism produced today by more people on more platforms than ever before. Much of it is reaching new audiences through social media, creating new communities of like-minded readers. No, the real problem is not journalism per se. The defining issue is now financial: The traditional business model that sustained journalism, based on a lucrative stream of advertising and circulation revenue, is eroding. And it is not at all clear what will take its place. the culmination of a lifetime in journalism and a I am not a futurist. I do not claim to know how the chance to pass on my experience to the next generation. public will consume media 10 years from now or what Instead, as the journalism world changed in content the next Twitter will be. Instead, in the final chapters of and delivery, I was the one who became a student. this book, I focus on the critical quest for new business Often with great reluctance, I absorbed the imperamodels, assessing the likely role of advertising and new tives of the new media, a world that sometimes seemed revenues from consumers – as well as the game-changing upside down to me, as if I were experiencing jet lag after possibilities wrought by smartphones, tablets, and apps. a flight from Australia. My instinct was to be defenThe book, to be published in September by McGrawsive – to protect the world I knew and treasured. Only Hill, is called Deadlines and Disruption: My Turbulent gradually, and sometimes with great doubt, did I accept Path From Print To Digital. You can pre-order a copy at the inevitable, finally embracing the changes necessary your favorite bookstore or from Amazon.com. It’s to create a top-notch school. available, as you’d expect, as a hardcover or an e-book. My personal passage is, in many ways, a microcosm I hope you enjoy it – and I welcome your thoughts. of the larger struggle within the journalism profession to come to terms with the digital reckoning. Will the new technologies enhance journalism or water it down for audiences with diminished attention spans nurtured by 140-character tweets? Is Google good for journalism or is it eroding its economic foundation? What role will Facebook play? How do we retain the eternal verities of traditional journalism? What new business models will Stephen B. Shepard emerge to sustain quality journalism? Dean, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
My instinct was to be defensive — to protect the world I knew and treasured. Only gradually did I accept the inevitable.
F o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t t h e C U N Y G r a d u a t e S c h o o l o f J o u r n a l i s m , g o t o o u r w e b s i t e : w w w. j o u r n a l i s m . c u n y. e d u
SUMMER 2012
JOHN SMOCK
INSIDESTORY
DEAN’SCORNER
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WILLIAM ALATRISTE
SCHOOLNOTES 2007 grads Andy Hawkins and Georgia Kral with wedding officiant Judge Mark W. Bennett.
ALUMNI NEWS Class of ’11: Alissa Ambrose is doing a post-grad, paid internship at Time magazine’s LightBox. Roxanna Asgarian and Paul DeBenedetto got engaged. Michelle Bangert is editor of Quality magazine. Jose Bayona is a part-time news writer at NY1 Noticias and freelancing for the New York Daily News. Jonathan Camhi is freelancing for the Gotham Gazette. Shannon Carlin is associate producer, CBS local radio. Ian Chant is freelancing at Psychology Today and Popular Mechanics.
March 1. Jessica Dailey is full-time associate editor at CurbedNY. Krissy Dolor is freelancing at CBSNewYork.com’s “Best of” section. Kerri MacDonald is a photo researcher in the Hong Kong bureau of the International Herald Tribune. Azriel Relph is associate producer at MSNBC long form. Bloomberg News reporter Matt Robinson married Karina Ramkalawan on May 12.
Class of ’09: Amber Benham, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn, welcomed her first child, son Dante, on Dec. 24, 2011. Geneva Alva French is a video producer for the Associated Press in Sands-Sadowitz is a reporter for The Hill in Washington D.C. Mary Washington D.C. Celia Gorman is doing a post-grad, paid Stachyra, of Centreville Patch, married Mauricio Lopez in June. internship at IEEE Spectrum magazine. Elizabeth Hagen is a Maureen Sullivan moved back to NYC from Ireland. Kate Zhaoying researcher, writer for Fuel & Oil Feedstock Trader. Channon welcomed her second child, Katharine, on April 24. Channon Hodge is working for the New York Times Video Unit. Hodge is a freelance video journalist for the New York Times video unit. Frans Koster is general markets reporter for EnerClass of ’08: Loren Bonner is radio producer for Martha Stewart gy Intelligence Group (EIG). Annais Morales is a staff writer for NY1 News. Nida Najar Living. Lakshmi Gandhi is a freelance writer for NY1. Tiffani Garlic is staff development is freelancing in New Delhi for the International Herald Tribune and other publications. coordinator for Easter Seals New Jersey. Francesca Levy is editor of LinkedIn’s customSherrina Navani is a police reporter at The Trentonian. Brooks Newkirk is editor and digital strategist with Pace Communications in Greensboro, N.C. Tuan Nguyen is freelancing at DNAinfo.com. Erica Robinson is a freelance reporter at BCAT-TV in Brooklyn. Chase Rosen is social media editor at EverydayHealth.com. Daniel Rosenblum is a regular contributor to Capital New York. Monica Rozenfeld is an editorial consultant at Scholastic classroom magazines. Kevin Sheehan is freelancing at the New York Post. Ashley Welch is part-time weekend news editor at NBCnewyork.com. Stuart White is a reporter/copy editor at the Phnom Penh Post.
Class of ’10: Carla Candia de Zamora welcomed her first child, daughter Alana, on
ized business news website, LinkedIn Today. Emily Mayer got engaged to Chris Dicke in April. Stephen Pacer is public affairs specialist at AAA Western and Central NY. Djenny Passe-Rodriguez is segment producer for MSNBC’s “Politics Nation with Al Sharpton.” Class of ’07: Andy Hawkins, a reporter for Crain’s New York Business, and Georgia Kral, multimedia web editor for WNET/Metrofocus, were married on May 26 (above). Annika Harris is editorial assistant at UPTOWNMagazine.com (Vibe Media). Emily Keller is editorial associate, corporate philanthropy at The Foundation Center. Chika Osaka, of TV Asahi, married Andrew Arzberger on June 2. Samantha Stark is a video journalist at The New York Times.
2013 Class Puts J-School at Full Capacity in the Fall
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ince the inception of the CUNY J-School in 2006, the goal has been to admit 100 students per class. The Class of 2013 that starts its studies this August is expected to be the first to meet that target. Some 105 students, including a Fulbright Scholar from Austria, have accepted the offer of admission to the entering class. If this group follows the norm, a few prospective students will withdraw or defer their enrollment before the academic year begins, in what the Admissions Office refers to as the “summer melt.” Also arriving for the first semester are two French exchange students from the Sorbonne’s CELSA graduate journalism school.
INSIDESTORY
AT A GLANCE: THE CLASS OF 2013 Total Admitted Students: Male:
105 36%
Female: Average Age: Students of Color:
64% 26 34%
Out of State: CUNY/SUNY Grads:
42% 23%
The new students will join the 87 third-semester students returning from their summer internships, putting the J-School at full capacity in the fall. Among the ’13 students are graduates of Connecticut, Kenyon, and Skidmore Colleges, and the Universities of Berkeley, Binghamton, Brigham Young, Brown, Cornell, Wesleyan, Chelyabinsk State (Russia), Los Andes (Colombia), and the Philippines. The 2013 profile, as shown at left, is consistent with previous classes. Two notable differences: The average age went up slightly and 20 students are foreign nationals, a higher number than in past years.
CUNY J-SCHOOLERS CLEAN UP IN AWARDS SEASON
CUNY Graduate School of Journalism 219 W. 40th Street, Third Floor New York, NY 10018
ALISTAIR WALLACE
Hannah Rappleye, left, and Lisa Riordan Seville were among the many alumni, students, and faculty who were showered with journalism accolades over the past few months. The two ‘10 grads will share a $57,000 Soros Justice Fellowship. Others won a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Reporting Award from NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; and top prizes from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, National Press Photographers Association, Investigative Reporters & Editors, the New York Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Society of the Silurians.