This is a big moment for Montclair State, my college, my Department, and public media in New Jersey. Journalists and profs: What do you want to see us do with this opportunity? I can have the most direct effect on student engagement and curricular development, but can pass along other ideas too.

On the occasion of James Murdoch buying @nymag.com among other pieces of Vox, I’m reposting my story about the New York profile of his father that Rupert had spiked when *he* bought the magazine. A version of this story also appears in my book Provoking the Press. presscriticism.com/2011/08/05/t...

THREAD: A common claim I see is that the reason most of the photos we see from the 1960s are in black-and-white is because of some concerted effort to make events like the Civil Rights Movement seem more distant. While I understand the attraction to this idea, the reasons are simpler than that. 1/

Can any language expert explain why even the best writers in my class don’t pluralize “journalist” when they’re writing? I know that “sts” is hard to pronounce—is it just that they’re writing from the standpoint of growing up in an oral culture instead of a written one?

Nice piece on AI in journalism by @wmsc.bsky.social featuring several Montclair State journalism faculty including @brizzyc.bsky.social and yours truly: wmscradio.com/wmsc-news-fo...

Anyway student journalists have been and remain one of the best reasons to have hope for this country

The president of Cornell backed his car into a student and a recent grad after a campus debate on Israel-Palestine. Then he lied about what happened in an email claiming he'd been the victim of harassment. Then, magnificently, Cornell's student newspaper found a video of the incident

A 🧵 w/photos The #NYC contingent of @mediaanddemocracy.bsky.social joined tens of thousands of their fellow New Yorkers at the #NoKings demonstration. Demonstrating in support of our First Amendment rights- especially freedom of assembly and a #FreePress. 1/n

Media Literacy is tech literacy and critical thinking enables us to Contain, Correct or Curtail our use of GenAI for journalism. kiesow.net/tech-literac...

I think these are some of the earliest images of CBS News in existence? I screenshoted them from Ted Husing's book "Ten Years Before The Mic" (1935). They show Husing covering the 1928 political conventions. At the time, CBS was less than one year old.

Good night, and God help us all.

Literally yesterday, I was teaching my journalism history class about the beginnings of radio. This is a whimpering, ignominious end to a venerable legacy.

Thank you Afroman for being the introduction to the libel unit of my media law class this semester

Just talked about Sarnoff (and Paley) in my journalism history class today!

📢 Final Call! 📢 Apply to become a paid collaborator on the recently launched third edition of the Collaborative Investigative Journalism Initiative (CIJI). Deadline is this Friday, 20 March —> exposingtheinvisible.org/en/news/call...

The New York Times, by virtue of its survival, is *by far* the most important institution in American journalism. Its successes and failures often stand in for the success and failure of US journalism (synecdoche New York Times?). We need it, but we also need to pick at its flaws—when they're real.

Wondering now if I can get Jason Isbell to adjunct teach for our journalism program.

Margaret Sullivan notes how the Times is more likely to respond to criticism than it was during the "great journalism speaks for itself" era. margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/its-great-... Now its: "We did it right. We will acknowledge your criticism but will not admit we could have done it better."

A few weeks ago, I bought a copy of Walt Whitman's Selected Journalism edited by Noverr and Stacy. It's a 2014 book, but I thought it was not previously owned—it clearly hasn't been read. But today, while waiting for a student who was late to advising, I opened it and found this.

Generative AI will never be able to do research like a PhD student. It will never have that level of self doubt or the urge to take up unrelated hobbies.

Picked up three used journalism books at The Strand just now and the cashier told me so few people ever go to that section, and when they do they’re all looking for Hunter S. Thompson—but that there’s so much more cool stuff back there. And he’s right. Journalism is pretty cool.

They create videos "light on evidence and traditional journalistic techniques but filled with sinister-sounding claims." Slopulism "rage posting" offers followers "emotional gratification through mindless, performative gestures" that can provoke policy action. Don't fall for it. #medialiteracy

Another reason why we need strong news literacy education: these videos aren’t journalism. They aren’t really investigative. But they can sure seem that way to people who don’t know how journalism works. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I feel like I've built the right culture in my class when students email me like this: "I just wanted to let you know that I am going to be late to class today. I won’t give you any hogwash, I just woke up late." Hogwash!!

Sobbing at my desk this morning. This business has been so absolutely cruel over much of the last decade. Gut punch after gut punch. To hear that such talented journalists - and friends - are losing their jobs is just heartbreaking. We fought together so hard for our contract ... but evil still wins

My latest for @theconversation.com: As Jeff Bezos dismantles The Washington Post, five regional papers chart a course for survival. What could Bezos learn from The Boston Globe, The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Seattle Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Salt Lake Tribune?

I guess we can finally write the last chapter of David Halberstam's great book 'The Powers that Be.' Time Magazine CBS News The Washington Post The LA Times It's hard to imagine a bigger change in what those brands mean than what has happened to them between 1979 and 2026.

Amazon spent $75 million for MELANIA, a hagiomentary that will likely incur $60 million in losses even after a robust box office. Jeff Bezos is willing to lose money on media, just a certain kind of media

Here's the tragedy: Timothy Crouse made exactly the same argument, for similar reasons, in 1972.

There are eight full-time faculty in my department. Four of us have birthdays within five days of each other.

Everyone who participates in public, civic conversation needs to learn to be a press critic at some level. It is a vital skill for media literacy—and Jay Rosen's summary of the distinctions he uses in his own criticism is a great place to start thinking about refining your own thinking.

New at Media Nation. Before Minneapolis there was the Boston Massacre. In 1983, I wrote my master's thesis on how the press of Colonial Boston covered it. dankennedy.net/2026/02/02/b...

Registration for this year's Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference at Columbia University is open! Registration is free for all graduate students. The conference will be held March 27 from 9-5 a.m. To sign up, visit ajha.wildapricot.org/event-6518450

It's easy to call out the Orwellian don't-believe-your-eyes propaganda, and we absolutely should. But the happy-talk, infantilizing, no-need-to-pay-attention-to-difficult-things propaganda of Huxley can be just as dangerous. #amusingourselvestodeath

We’re just not a free country. Any American watching this play out between regime forces and journalists overseas would recognize it for what it is.

One of the old saws of journalism—intended to make reporters appropriately skeptical of their sources—is "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." I do hope Dokoupil follows through on that advice.

"It took me a few years, one pandemic and a library science degree to realize I didn’t need to rebuild trust in journalism. I just needed to move the newsroom to where that trust already lives: the public library."

Kudos to the NYT editor who took “Appears to” out of the lead headline (finally)

Journalists in Minneapolis are working nonstop to inform us about the horrific violence being inflicted in upon their city, their state and our country — all while living through it in their communities. @mprnews.org has been invaluable. It’s a good day to support their work support.mpr.org

TIL that the gallery of newspaper front pages that used to be a part of the Newseum website still exists, under the banner of FreedomForum.org. You can look at the front pages of nearly 500 newspapers from all over the U.S. every day. frontpages.freedomforum.org/gallery

“CBS News. The place to see BS news.” — Nikki Glaser in her opening monologue at the Golden Globes airing on CBS.

If you're a film and media scholar, or work around the discipline, now is the time to research and write about "noncommercial" media industries and the role of media in democracy. It's not enough to merely describe successful business models anymore.

I curate the history series at public media's trade journal Current. We're looking for pieces on the history of NPR, PBS and its affiliates, with some space to imagine public media's future. We accept academic articles repurposed for wide readership. Plus, we pay. Please circulate!

123 years ago this month, muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens reported on "The Shame of Minneapolis" for McClure's Magazine. The story wasn't new—but he did bring it to a new audience. Here's a link to a pdf with a nice contextual intro: www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/steff...

[email protected] asked me to write about the state of CBS News after Weiss and Dokoupil. I'm honored she asked. An Expert's Analysis of Tony Dokoupil's First Week Anchoring katiecouric.com/news/opinion...

A typically excellent @joshuabenton.com piece today, on the demise of Pittsburgh’s only daily newspaper. (I also learned that the Toledo Blade had a London bureau til 1983!) Via @niemanlab.org www.niemanlab.org/2026/01/will...

I need to stage a Fox News intervention for my dad. One of my sisters, who lives in exurban Minneapolis and works in a school district with quite a few Somali families, has become increasingly despairing over what has been happening in her area. 1/

not saying it can't get worse but this week really feels like a straightforward depiction of what worst-case 'post truth' information apocalypse ppl were warning of in the late 2010s