By Carina Smith

It was early on in the COVID-19 pandemic when I received a call from my grandma warning me to stop taking ibuprofen because if I contracted the virus it could make the symptoms work. She emailed me a CNN article that cited a number of different sources about the possible harms of ibuprofen and the warnings from France’s health ministry.

The World Health Organization also issued a statement advising against the use of ibuprofen. Soon my social media feeds were full of people warning their loved ones to avoid using the over the counter medication, sharing articles that no one fully read and headlines that failed to mention one key fact: many doctors were saying that there is no proof ibuprofen will affect any symptoms of COVID-19.

We want to believe that science is perfect, or at least somewhere in the realm of perfection. But that is not the case. Science is trial and error, running test after test, creating hypotheses and throwing them away. Credible scientific studies are peer-reviewed and picked apart with a fine-tooth comb. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to COVID, scientists still have a long way to go before they can bring us concrete facts.

People want facts during the pandemic. But in a time when science is scrambling to find answers, it is important for journalists to spread facts instead of fear.

Right now, journalism is one of the only ways we are able to stay connected with what is going on in the world around us as we are all isolated. But journalism is also focused on reporting the facts and we cannot get lazy in our reporting. New studies are coming out every single day surrounding COVID-19 but that does not mean they are accepted as fact.

Our role as journalists is to do our homework. We owe it to our readers to provide them with all of the information when new studies are released and quoted by leaders. One study explored the possibilities of using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. The drug is typically used to treat malaria, lupus and arthritis. President Donald Trump tweeted about this study in late March, furthering the discussion around this new possible treatment.

The issue lies in the fact that this study was accepted only one day after it had been submitted. Typically, the process behind such a journal would take months or years to be written, peer-reviewed, accepted and then edited. This study was pushed through at an alarmingly fast rate and some of the outlets that reported on the study failed to mention this key fact.

The demand for studies around COVID-19 is putting the pressure on scientists worldwide, but that does not mean our job as journalists has to change. We are still responsible for fact-checking what we can and providing honest skepticism to the unknown. Now is not a time for journalists and scientists to be at odds with one another, but rather build bridges and connections to try and get the most accurate and up-to-date information out to the public.

By: Bella Michaels

Post-civil war America became less about political partisanship and more about serving citizens with news they needed to know to re-create journalism for a new nation.

Today, many journalists are focusing more on their personal agendas rather than reporting fair news to create a more civil society.

In a world that revolves around social media, public trust in journalists has decreased to 44 percent in the U.S., according to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center.

There is a lack of balance in many news stories. It has become all about demographic targeting and agenda-setting.

Males covering males, women covering feminism, liberals setting anti-President Donald Trump agendas and conservatives counter-reporting the liberals. This kind of reporting is often done in an unfair way because it stems from an underlying bias.

It’s a detrimental cycle that is destroying the integrity of journalism.

Television news played a central role in transmitting information following the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks. Social responsibility during that time was crucial, since everyone in the nation was turning to the media for information to reduce uncertainty and negative emotions.

Now, it’s not just our nation– but the entire world– that is suffering through the COVID-19 pandemic and there hasn’t been a higher time of uncertainty.

Rather than dropping partisan ties during this serious time of plague, the bias has only escalated in a divided nation.

The New York Times science and health reporter Donald McNeil Jr. gave an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in which he blamed the country’s high number of cases on President Donald Trump. “Yes, it is the President’s fault,” said McNeil Jr. “It is not China’s fault.”

It has become a trend to blame everything on President Trump. The Chinese government initially concealed the outbreak and didn’t release key information as soon as it could have.

At the epicenter of the disease, the city of Wuhan threw a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people, and millions of people began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Liberal media outlets are still focusing their stories on President Trump and finding ways to blame him, while conservative media outlets are focusing on favoring him.

It’s getting tiring, to be quite frank.

If I wasn’t an educated journalist with a bachelor’s degree and now almost a master’s, I wouldn’t have trusted the media like I do. Because I wouldn’t know any better.

Since most people aren’t taught which news mediums are objective, like the Associated Press or NPR, they assume that every journalist does their job like ones at Fox News or CNN.

I don’t ever find myself covering politics, but if I did, I would be fair in my reporting.

If I spoke to President Trump, I wouldn’t attack him passive-aggressively in my interview questions the way that some reporters do, or the way he responds to most reporters. I also wouldn’t butter him up.

I would focus on his quotes and relay the message he is giving.

While it is important to maintain your authority and not let someone bully you, it is just as important to not stoop down to that person’s level.

Smile and nod. The less you talk back, the more you are in control of yourself and the situation.

I’m not talking about talk-show hosts or television personalities– they can talk all they want because their job isn’t to be an ethical journalist. Their job is to entertain.

As long as there are journalists around that are focused on agenda-setting that favors their station’s beliefs, the public trust in journalism will continue to decrease.

This is unfortunate because most people do not realize the significance of journalism and its impact on the world.

It is central to how we live.

Without journalism, the world would be chaotic, especially these days when social media has given ordinary people a voice to produce their own content for the world to see. There would be no regulation.

How would we differentiate accurate news from fake news?

True journalists investigate, speak to multiple sources, and find documentation to support the news they provide in their story. Without personal opinion or benefit.

In a world where most people are not educated about how journalism functions, it is important that we, as journalists, do not prove the doubters right.

The public must be educated on the integrity and excellence of journalism and there must be a change in the way many are reporting, but it’s easier said than done.

 

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By Hannah Mitchell

Earlier this month, a tweet stormed the internet when it claimed that four networks, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC, would no longer televise announcements from the White House. The tweet – which garnered more than 225,000 likes – stated the networks claim they are standing firm to protect the American public.

The twitter account belongs to Gerry Perlman, a sales manager for Office Depot, and has not provided any evidence to back the claim. However, it does open up the debate: Should media outlets censor the news?

In support of Perlman’s sentiment is Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, who sent a letter to the heads of CNN, ABC, NBC, and MSNBC asking them not to televise the president’s White House briefing which he calls a “platform for misinformation and disinformation.”

Major broadcast news networks, excluding Fox News, cut away from President Trump’s briefing in late March, after 20 minutes to network evening newscasts, the AP reports. Newsrooms across the country announced they would no longer give Trump unfiltered airtime. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow declared to viewers, “I would stop putting those briefings on live TV – not out of spite, but because it’s misinformation.”

Trump’s critics argue that airing briefings are a public safety issue. Using examples like the president’s comments about using disinfectants to treat COVID-19 and failing to clarify that it’s unsafe, was followed by multiple reports from health officials of patients drinking bleach to treat the virus.

The possibility that the president’s briefings would not be televised angered some viewers, who argue that the president’s speeches are alongside those of high-ranking health officials.

It leaves journalists debating the civic duty to broadcast the president’s remarks with the need to censor fabrications or supplement with fact-checking.

The solution is tricky. By limiting broadcasting the president’s messages, newsrooms border the highly-contested media issue of censorship. The news stations are making the decision for the American people on what information is appropriate for them to know.  It undermines the intelligence of the American people and their ability to decide for themselves what is news worth knowing. How can they decide what is factual if we never give them the opportunity?

A journalist’s responsibility is to report the news, even when they do not agree with the message. By filtering the news, they could do significant harm by disconnecting the American people to important information about what is going on in their country.

It also begs the speculation for what is next. When will the newsrooms decide that it is time to turn back cameras toward an elected official they don’t agree with? How can Americans make informed decisions on the ballot, if they no longer know what the candidates are about?

By turning the camera off when the president’s ramblings display his shortcomings, we only benefit him by making the public less informed about what the federal government is doing – or failing to do. Imagine what one could get away with if all their critics weren’t watching?

The value in his messages are not just the solutions he offers for the virus, but in knowing how he handles this. We wouldn’t know that Trump speculated the possibility of injecting disinfectants to treat COVID-19 if we couldn’t watch his briefings. We wouldn’t know that he was pushing to reopen American businesses if we didn’t hear him say it.

There is value in the opportunity to watch the president address the American people live, without the filter of White House officials. There is value in not having his messages paraphrased and restructured through the eloquent writings of journalists nationwide.

Whether or not the tweet has any factual baring, it is an idea that is debated among journalists and the public alike. The public deserves the opportunity to watch the president’s briefing and the opportunity to turn off their TV when they don’t like it.

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By Marin Scott

In a matter of months, the coronavirus outbreak has taken the world by storm. By devastating communities, taking hundreds of thousands of lives and effectively shutting down entire nations, the virus is a part of every moment of every day. And whatever holds the nation’s attention, holds journalists’ attention.

This is as it should be; now more than ever, strong journalism is needed for reporting the facts, clarifying complex explanations and providing people with the proper information that will keep them safe. As a global community we are facing a rapid moving, ever-changing threat.

But in the panic that is COVID-19, we have once again overlooked our second threat—one that moves much slower but is just as dangerous, if not more: climate change.

A controversial, divisive and urgent topic to cover, climate change has never been a top priority for American news organizations. Guardian journalists Kyle Pope and Mark Hertsgaard put it plainly when they said, “Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change.”

Which is true. In a study conducted by Media Matters for America, the group found that only 0.7% of all “corporate broadcast nightly and Sunday morning shows” programming was related to climate change, and this is after the same news networks increased their climate coverage by 68% between 2018 and 2019.

In his article for Columbia Journalism Review, Hertsgaard only mentioned the Washington Post and New York Times as two newsrooms with strong reporting on climate change in print and online media. While he mentioned the spike in climate coverage across all news sources in recent years, due in large part to international protests, it does not change the fact that newsrooms have not given the climate crisis nearly as much attention as other issues.

“The press has never treated the climate story with anywhere near this level of attention or urgency,” Hertsgaard wrote in his article when discussing the coverage of climate change to that of COVID-19.

Though it may appear that climate reporters like Hertsgaard and Pope are complaining about the immense amount of reporting on COVID-19, this is not the case. Their argument is that something as deadly and disastrous as global warming should be reported on with the same fervor as its sinister equal, the coronavirus.

So why is it that the current climate crisis is practically neglected by newsrooms while the coronavirus takes center stage?

According to Hertsgaard and Pope, climate change is simply not that interesting, especially in comparison to a global pandemic. News stations and papers are having a hard time justifying the resources, time and money that it takes to cover climate issues when few care to read, watch or listen to it.

With the constant changes in policy in response to COVID-19, a rising infection and death rate and the dissemination of rumors about the virus, newsrooms are getting all hands on deck in an effort to deliver solid, factual reporting. Many climate journalists who once dedicated their entire careers to reporting on and informing the public about climate change are now finding themselves waist-deep in coronavirus news.

News organizations have decided there is simply no space for climate coverage in today’s news cycle, a choice that puts the world in danger.

“The contrast between the media’s coverage of the coronavirus and the climate crisis illuminates another core truth about the media,” Hertsgaard wrote. “Collectively, the media exercises perhaps the greatest power there is in politics: the power to define reality, to say what is—and what is not—important at any given time.”

This power will decide whether or not our politicians, our government and our audience care about climate change. If we choose to report on the devastating effects of the coronavirus without covering the effects of global warming, then we are choosing an uncertain future. Now more than ever it’s our responsibility as journalists to save the world.

How newsletters can offer enticing alternatives to traditional news consumption

By: Erica Carbajal

Before even opening your eyes for the day, your smart phone is already sparkling with news notifications. Well, maybe that’s just because I’m a journalism student, but you get the point. News never stops. From the time I wake up until it’s time for bed again, my day is constantly interrupted with intermittent news consumption. Watch a quick story here, read an article there, get back to work and repeat. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of headlines, and in the midst of a pandemic it’s even more overwhelming.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised by a Pew Research survey that found 66% of Americans, about two-thirds, feel overloaded with the amount of news there is.

Perhaps that explains why The New York Times has 14 million subscribers across 55 of its newsletters. Newsletters have become increasingly popular as they offer a concise, more personalized version of presenting the latest headlines. At a time when mental health experts are recommending that people reduce their news consumption to ease stress, newsletters might be their one stop shop throughout the day.

I’ll admit it. When there are days I’m overloaded with work or just feeling burnt out from all of the news because yes, even journalists can feel weighed down by the information overload, I’ll just read my newsletter roundups. These include CNN’s 5 Things morning edition, WBEZ’s The Rundown for some local round ups and the Quartz Daily Brief for some global economic updates.

Of course, I don’t get as much depth and breadth as when I normally sit down and browse through the articles of each newspaper that I normally read, but I at least step away feeling like I know the basics of the day’s top stories. It does the job so that I don’t fall behind completely, and when I come back the next day feeling refreshed and ready for my normal news intake process, I don’t feel lost.

Specialized newsletters are particularly convenient during rare events. During the impeachment proceedings last year, I looked forward to seeing the Impeachment Briefing newsletter from The New York Times in my inbox each morning. It caught me up to speed on who would be testifying that day and what was at stake. Now with COVID-19, top tier publications across the country have started newsletters focused on virus updates.

I think newsrooms recognize that many people, especially in midst of a crisis, do try to tune out when they can, so creating specialized newsletters is a responsible way for them to cater to this anxiety filled audience who chooses to limit their news consumption. It’s an opportunity for newsrooms to grow and reach an even larger audience.

Sure, the goal for newsrooms is that readers are clicking on some of the links within newsletters to read the full stories, but even if they’re not, that audience is still getting the gist of what’s happening. It gives them a personalized way to browse through news on their own time and read deeper where they choose to.

To an extent, newsletter emails also provide personalized content that help break up some of the hard news content. Yes, it’s important to be updated if you’re relying on newsletters to subscribe to a variety so that you’re getting an array of local, national and world news, but also just something fun that speaks to your interests. Since I’ve been cooking more than I ever imagined, I’ve come close to running out of ideas. My taste buds are sick of my usual meals. So, I recently signed up for the bon appétit recipes newsletter, and every morning I find new inspiration.

Community engagement is arguably more critical now than ever, and newsletters provide yet another away for community members to connect with journalists. They often include messages at the end encouraging readers to contact them, so it’s another opportunity for a community to ask for the news they need because as much as we try to understand the needs of our audience, there are always things we miss.

Next time you check your email, don’t scroll past that newsletter you forgot you signed up for months ago. Read it. It might encourage you to sign up for more.

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By Sahi Padmanabhan

Something that my high school journalism teacher always said has stuck with me to this day: journalism is about creating an informed community.

When I first started, that meant informing the students at the school about dances and events, football wins and tennis losses. It didn’t mean much to me because I didn’t put much stock into the idea of “community” at a high school of nearly 3,000 students. I barely knew 50% of my class.

By the time I was a senior in high school, however, the tone of my teacher’s message changed. The Naperville Sun had been bought out by Tribune Publishing in a huge deal that included many suburban newspapers formerly owned by the Sun-Times.

The turnover was rough; people in my town weren’t sure where to get their news anymore. My journalism teacher encouraged us to chase this opportunity and try and fill in the gap. Even without a strong newspaper, the people in Naperville still needed news, and our high school newspaper had the chance to give it to them.

In the end, our small staff of 20 high school students wasn’t able to meet that need, but that experience of striving for more and trying to give our community what they desperately needed always stuck with me. It lingered in the back of my head. It was a regret, something I wished we pulled off.

It wasn’t until later, when I got a chance to talk to Terry Parris, Jr., Engagement Editor at The City, that I realized what we had been doing wrong. We wanted to write for the community, but we never stopped to ask what they wanted to read.

As journalists, we often talk about our audience. Who is our audience? Will they be interested in this story? How can we make them interested in this story? Parris, however, offered a reframe of this idea: the audience will always be there. They are the people who read the paper every day and have the time and privilege to be able to afford that. They aren’t going anywhere.

However, the stories should be about communities. They can be something as small as a 300-word brief on a fallen street sign to long investigations of housing insecurity in a specific neighborhood. These stories are meant to enlighten the community, to help them understand what is going on around them and make informed decisions. To be able to do this, reporters have to actually talk to the community.

The City is helping set the tone for how community engagement, especially in local journalism, will have to function moving forward. Partnering with the Brooklyn Public Library, they have a program called Open Newsroom, where they encourage community members to engage with reporters and let them know what they want to read.

In our own city, City Bureau is striving for the same things through their Public Newsroom events. These events are meant to build trust between the newsroom and the community and help shape the way they report on issues that community members and stakeholders say are important.

Being able to tell the difference between audience and community is important. Focusing too heavily on the audience has ended up privileging those who have the means and access to read the newspaper every day and buy a subscription. These people are often wealthier, white and have the time to spend on reading the paper.

According to a 2019 study by the Pew Research Center, only 64% of adults who consume local news in the Chicago area said that local news was in touch with the community. Only 17% said they had spoken with a local journalist.

This reflects a necessary way for local news to grow in the Chicago area, according to another study by Pew. The issue with the changing media landscape is not video and multimedia, or the transition to digital media. Most Americans are fine with digital media to get their news, and will remain engaged with it. However, what they desire is a strong community connection.

If I could go back to high school and redo that senior year when I was on our managing staff, I would have done things differently. I would have invited the community in and asked them what they wanted to read. I would have created a discursive process that would allow journalists and community stakeholders to discuss what people need to know more about. I would have focused on the stories that would make the greatest impact for the people reading, rather than just the stories I was interested in.

It’s too late now for me to go back to that high school newspaper. All I can do is carry these lessons forward.

By Jonathan Aguilar

Journalism suffers when visuals are not taken seriously, or they are seen as secondary to written reporting. The Chicago Sun-Times a major publication in the third largest media market laid off their entire photojournalism staff in 2013, and their visual journalism has suffered ever since. The staff that they laid off included over 20 photographers and a Pulitzer prize winning photojournalist. After these layoffs occurred reporters were tasked with not only conducting interviews on the scene but were also told to shoot photos for their stories. This led to a decrease in quality of photographs produced by the Sun-Times. If a major publication felt that photojournalists were so unimportant to their work, then there must be a misunderstanding of what these journalists actually do.

In newsrooms across the country photojournalism is seen as a service instead of a type of reporting. While talking to a visual journalist from a major Chicago publication she opened up about how even at top media outlets they are seen as a service desk. She has to try every day to ensure that her team is treated as journalists and not just as accessory pieces to written reporting. Professional visual journalists are struggling to get the type of respect they deserve as storytellers.

Even at smaller publication visual journalists are still seen as secondary to reporters. In certain newsrooms, there are systems in place that allow reporters or editors to fill out a request form for a visual element to be created for an article. In the system, the reporter is supposed to describe what a story is about so that a photojournalist can go out and shoot whatever the story is. But often times the form is overlooked and visual journalist are left scrambling trying to figure out what angle they should focus on for their photo. If visual journalists are given the opportunity to create unique photos, then they will be able to add more depth to stories. It will also help media outlets get away from superficial images that so often plague newspapers. The problem is that in smaller publications where young journalists go to learn they are not being taught about the importance of photographs and the value they add to articles. By not teaching young journalists the value of good visuals they end up not having a deep appreciation for the power that strong visuals can bring.

As important as photographs and other visuals are to journalism, they are not focused on that heavily in journalism school. At DePaul, there is one professor who teaches photojournalism. While Robin Hoecker is an amazing professor who has elevated the visual journalism students at DePaul she should not have to be doing so alone. In a school that is putting out such great work in many different facets of journalism the importance of visuals needs to be emphasized. As great as written reporting can be standing on its own combing it with good visuals will make a piece unbelievably stronger.

In age where everyone is constantly scrolling through their phones something needs to catch a reader’s attention. By allowing visual journalist to tell stories through photos and not using them as accessories for other journalist’s articles it will lead to more well-rounded reporting and more intriguing articles.

For whatever reason, visual journalists were seen as expendable and many papers have lost great photo teams because of that fact. But now media outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times after suffering for so long with terrible visuals are starting to hire photojournalists once again. This shows that journalism and visuals go hand in hand.

By Mackenzie Murtaugh

When the Washington Post joined the video-sharing app Tik Tok last fall, many journalists, including myself, were confused. The 142-year-old established newspaper found an interesting, progressive niche that no other paper, at least for their caliber, thought of. The videos can be comical, informative and cringey — the triple-shot concoction that makes Tik Tok so addictive. The content of the videos usually intend to put a funny spin on the latest news, but the most bewildering, if not amazing, videos feature different WP journalists and editors trying to bridge the gap between their Tik Tok audience, most of which have probably never picked up a newspaper, and the news-making process. This content is the most cringe-inducing to journalists because of the desperation of increasing interest in the work exuding off of them. Or maybe I’m just cynical?

The account’s face, Dave Jorgensen, was hired as a member of the paper’s new creative video team, with his title being the head of the “Department of Satire.” According to an article from The Atlantic, Jorgensen found out about the app and immediately pitched it to his editors. Now, the account has 370,600 followers as of Feb. 6, and over 19 million likes. The only two accounts it follows are two fake accounts, one under the name “nytimes” and the other “ashtonkutcher.” This fact did make me laugh out loud because I know that Jorgensen or someone on his team thought “you know what would be funny?” And it worked. I did laugh.

Somehow, Jorgensen and his team have infiltrated this niche-comedy app and made a pretty good name for themselves amongst the app’s majority 16-to-24-year-old demographic, according to statistics from December 2019. The question on my mind is: is it ethical? Is it just marketing? Obviously, yes. It’s a great marketing strategy. From those same statistics, only four percent of the United States’ social media marketers use the app. WP is ahead of the curve because, soon, most media outlets and public figures will attempt to replicate what the paper is doing. I doubt they will be as successful.

Jorgensen is a funny, probably talented journalist, but his job has now evolved into social media marketing manager. At the moment, he still produces content for the paper’s video team, but let’s be honest — now everyone knows him as the Tik Tok guy. Now, I understand that Tik Tok is not the platform for hard-hitting, breaking news (though with its reliance on virality, that might actually work one day), the WP account serves the simple purpose of entertaining young people. This demographic is obsessed with fast, bite-sized bits of content, and WP is serving them up a perfect dish.

The account’s content has made a huge change since its inception. It used to give little glimpses into newsroom life, reporting how-tos and self-aware funny clips. Now, Jorgensen and his team have realized their unique position on this app. They don’t have to report on mass shootings or family annihilators — they can get lost in making a 20-second clip about a popular dog and receive more clicks than the hard news. This is a sad reality of the news today.

It has and will always be difficult to reach the younger generation for news outlets. The old-school producers probably don’t understand why Jorgensen’s Tik Tok makes headlines or gets clicks. Maybe, young people are easily amused? No, that isn’t true in the slightest. Hillary Clinton failed to bridge the gap between her generation and the young ones now — “Pokemon Go to the polls” still haunts me. Jorgensen must spend hours on the app and analyze what trends consumers want to perfectly cultivate his content. It’s hard to say if I’m impressed or saddened by this. I think I feel both simultaneously. I’m very impressed from a marketing standpoint, but that’s just the problem. Instead of creating groundbreaking videos, Jorgensen and his team spend their days making fun of themselves on an app. The only respect I can give to them is that they have expertly bridged the gap between the media and the younger generation. I just hoped it would have been through different multimedia tools than a viral-video app.

Okay, fine. I am cynical.

By Nikki Roberts

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

Blog Post

February 6, 2020

 

The Best Stories Find the Journalist, and Journalism Found Me

By Nikki Roberts

 

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

 

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

 

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

 

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

 

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

 

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

 

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

 

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

 

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

 

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

 

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

 

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

 

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

 

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

 

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

By Michael Abraham

Picture this. You’re flipping TV channels at night, trying to catch up on the events of the day. You land on a channel with two talking heads, discussing the previously ongoing impeachment proceedings of President Trump. When the commercial break arrives, you flip to the next channel and find two more – perhaps whiter, more chromosomally diverse – talking heads discussing the same topic. It takes you a moment, though, to realize that the topics are the same because this news station is framing the same stories in completely opposing ways.

Your palms grow clammy. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. With every goosebump the realization becomes clearer. You have entered the Twilight Zone.

Or, on the other hand, you might have just flipped from CNN or MSNBC to Fox News.

News organizations have had partisan leanings since the chisel met the tablet. That’s nothing new. However, with the introduction of cable news in the 1980’s and the accompanying 24-hour news cycle, networks were forced to fill more time than incoming national news provided. The result paved the way for programming based on political commentary and analysis both of which are significantly more susceptible to bias than traditional news reporting.

Thus, we find ourselves today in a media landscape that is virtually split down party lines. Ask anyone not living under a rock and they’ll tell you, in a variety of ways: Fox News is for conservatives and MSNBC or CNN, liberals. Add arguably the most polarizing president in American history into the mix and it seems that these networks are sprinting in opposite directions at times.

Data from Real Clear Politics suggests that, while outlets are generally talking about the same topics, their takes are quite different. Further, it shows “that there are very real systematic differences in the coverage we see across the media landscape and that there has been a genuine fracturing of the media since Donald Trump’s election. At the same time, that divide is still small, meaning that rather than entirely disjointed pictures, news outlets present different takes on the same shared universe of stories.”

This didn’t start with Trump, though. The schism began with the cable news network founders. Take media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for example. Murdoch sat at the helm of Fox Corporation for many years. Politico reported that during his leadership, then Fox parent company News Corp, contributed millions of dollars to GOP-aligned groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governors Association.

If that wasn’t enough to make consumers and competitors question the network’s objectivity, Murdoch was also very outspoken in his support for Republican politicians and criticism of Democrats. In 2012, he came out in support of Mitt Romney, saying, “Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc.” Several years later, in 2015, he tweeted: “Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide?”

Even today, with Murdoch having passed control on to his son, conflicts of interest exist. How about the fact that former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan sits on Fox Corporation’s Board of Directors?

A similar narrative can be told about Murdoch’s main rival, CNN founder Ted Turner, who was often outspoken about his support for Democratic initiatives and candidates. Although these figures have moved on, the culture they created survives and perhaps even grows. Current CNN chief Jeff Zucker reportedly previously hosted private events for both Obama and, more recently, Kamala Harris. He also hasn’t been secretive about his own political beliefs.

It is generally accepted that an organization’s culture trickles down from its leadership. As a young journalist, I find it odd that, while journalism preaches the importance of objectivity, ethics and avoiding conflicts of interest, the organizations that employ journalists throw caution to the wind regarding the same set of standards. If Pete Rose can’t bet on baseball, why can news executives be in bed with parties and candidates? There is an increasingly fine line drawn between what is and isn’t a conflict of interest for the media and it is becoming grayer by the day.

Accomplished journalist Katy Tur mentions in her book “Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History,” that she doesn’t even vote so as to remain an unattached observer. Many high-profile journalists, even when their affiliations are obvious, avoid officially declaring a political party in order to maintain the illusion of a balanced opinion.

Nevertheless, each network’s TV line-ups, themselves, emphasize how partisan bias might exist and how echo chambers are created as a result. For example, Fox News features a nightly primetime program called “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” They describe the show as an “hour of spirited debate and powerful reporting.” Rather than focusing on the hard news, Fox allows Carlson to insert his own subjective views on the topics of the day. His opinions become conflated with actual facts and the entire primetime viewing audience is left to find the truth.

The same can be said for CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” or MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”. Because ratings drive success in television, the most popular personalities are able to put their own, sometimes hyperbolic, spin on the news. Therefore, the news that many Americans consume isn’t necessarily news at all; but, instead, the news as viewed through Tucker Carlson – or another show host’s – lenses. Have you ever tried on someone else’s glasses? Sometimes they distort the way you see things.

This has a significant effect on the way each networks’ audience views the state of the country. Months ago, as Newsweek pointed out, NBC and Wall Street Journal poll data found that 73% of Fox News viewers approve of Trump’s presidency. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC viewers responded with approval ratings of 34% and 30% respectively.

Viewers consume the content generated by their parties’ unofficial news sources and continue to seek out information that aligns with the beliefs they’ve been fed. Repeat this process on a nightly basis and viewers become fat with their own confirmation bias. All the while, network executives continue the spin with one watchful eye on the ratings and the other on the party-supporting opinion buffet.

Or maybe we’re in the Twilight Zone.