Marie K. Shanahan

Courageous professional journalists of color and their allies have for years called out news organizations for their workforce homogeneity and prevalent culture that ignores, undervalues, and/or stereotypes marginalized communities. Journalism students have joined this fight. In 2020, we saw numerous examples of students taking a stand. Forty-three student journalists quit the NYU student newspaper after a racially charged clash with their academic adviser. At Arizona State University’s journal

Journalism’s public trust problem isn’t going away. As the war on truth escalates, news organizations are going to have to counterattack on multiple fronts to win back audience trust. In 2019, journalists will need to to be the aggressor in three areas. News literacy. Journalists’ and the public’s naiveté about online information warfare has to end. News literacy in the digital age requires an understanding of how misinformers and propagandists are using our open communication networks to manip

Digital discourse needs a course correction. It’s stuck in a spiral of negativity. The press itself should take a more active role in the conversation.

The ability to say offensive things online on a daily basis without consequences has led to a new, and more toxic set of norms for civic behavior. News websites with unmoderated forums gave disgruntled commenters (and trolls) both a wider audience and a fig leaf of legitimacy.

The cry of college students demanding "safe spaces" to protect themselves from speech that could harm their sensitivities doesn’t confound me. I secretly wished for a safe space myself during my first year of teaching. The expression I wanted to be shielded from wasn’t being shouted at me on the campus quad or discussed in my classroom. It was on Twitter.

In the era of status updates, Instagram filters and 140-character news alerts on Twitter, awareness in our current technological age orbits around our mobile devices. We check our screens more than 150 times a day, on average, motivated by the never-ending, Internet-powered stream of personalized information discovery. It may be the only way we can fit all the media that's out there into our daily lives.

Journalistic credibility is a recipe with five ingredients: Your published body of work, the organization you work for, the company you keep (friends, colleagues, followers, fans), what others may say about you, and, lastly, how you conduct yourself in public.

Audience participation hasn’t been an easy undertaking for online news publishers. Thanks to the unruly culture of online commenting and the “sadistic” actions of Internet trolls, every few weeks another news site announces modifications to its online commenting policy. What’s clear is that no online news site has found the perfect formula for meaningful audience participation.

Unlike other communities around the country, the suburban towns comprising the Fairfield County, CT “Gold Coast” aren’t suffering a void in local news coverage. It’s quite the opposite. More than 100 media outlets currently deliver local news and information to the area’s residents and businesses, almost all supported by local advertising.

ESPN this week becomes the latest major news organization to rely upon social media to help civilize its online comments. Starting Wednesday, ESPN.com's 25 million active users will have to log in through a Facebook account if they want to participate in online conversations on ESPN.com stories. Patrick Stiegman, editor-in-chief of ESPN.com, said by phone that three factors drove the company’s decision to switch to Facebook for commenting.