February 16th, 2023 • Quill Archives
Women at war and the lessons learned
Among the first female war correspondents was Martha Gellhorn, who wrote for Collier’s magazine. Gellhorn faced challenges when covering World War II, including from her husband, Ernest Hemingway, whose telegram to her shortly after their marriage made clear the sexism she endured.
February 3rd, 2023 • Quill Archives, Ethics Toolbox
Wrestling with trust vs. attention when breaking news
In June 2022, new CNN CEO Chris Licht issued a memo to staffers to reduce the network’s usage of the “breaking news” graphic on air. “Something I have heard from both people inside and outside the organization is complaints we overuse the ‘Breaking News’ banner,” Licht wrote in a copy of the memo obtained by Variety.
May 31st, 2022 • Quill Archives
Keeping an eye on hurricanes this season
On May 24, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its outlook for the forthcoming Atlantic hurricane season. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center predict that this hurricane season, which starts on June 1 and ends November 30, will have 14 to 21 named storms – with 6-10 of them becoming hurricanes and 3-5 of them becoming major hurricanes.
May 27th, 2022 • Quill Archives
Texas shooting renews debate about trauma journalism practices
“How can it be that nothing has changed?” That’s how Kai Ryssdal began the May 25 edition of the public radio program “Marketplace.” The story he referred to that prompted the question was not a classic “Marketplace” story, he acknowledged. But the big story of the week could not be ignored — that of 19 students and two teachers killed by a shooter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
February 4th, 2022 • Featured, Quill Archives
Accident brings attention to safety of lone journalists in the field
On the night of Jan. 19, Tori Yorgey was in the field doing a live report for the 11 p.m. news on NBC affiliate WSAZ in Huntington, West Virginia. Yorgey was covering the significant winter storm that hit the area, which resulted in a water main break in Dunbar, a town roughly 7 miles west of the state capital Charleston.
January 7th, 2022 • Featured, Quill Archives
UN warns of ‘a significant number’ of risks toward journalists
The United Nations has warned that journalists still face a significant number of risks, even as newly released figures show the lowest death toll of journalists and media workers in over a decade. The Observatory of Killed Journalists at UNESCO, the UN’s educational, scientific and cultural agency, reported that 55 journalists and media workers lost their lives in the past year.
April 27th, 2018 • Quill Blog, Ethics Toolbox
Transparency on full display in Garrison Keillor case
As Minnesota prepared for an early April storm that would dump over a foot of snow in the Twin Cities, Minnesota Public Radio and Garrison Keillor struck a deal. Nearly five months after MPR and its parent company, American Public Media Group, severed ties with Keillor over accusations of sexual harassment, Keillor and MPR reached an agreement where the archives of the two programs for which he worked, The Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion, would be restored.
February 26th, 2018 • Net Worked
Championing women every day
Next Thursday, International Women’s Day is observed – the day where women’s contributions to society, including in journalism, are celebrated. Much of the conversation has been on the role of women in journalism in light of the #MeToo movement on social media and the sexual harassment allegations against prominent male media figures, including Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, Michael Oreskes, Garrison Keillor, Harvey Weinstein, and most recently, Tom Ashbrook.
February 25th, 2018 • Net Worked
Obsessions over beats
It is a piece of guidance which is as established as the institution of journalism itself – as you work your way through school to get a degree, you form a specialism along the way. This specialism would guide much of the work that you would do during the course of your career. Yet, the evolution of the landscape in the digital age has challenged the convention of that thinking. As social media and the culture of the internet impacts how one consumes news and how one disseminates it, the idea of a specialism or beat can appear rather outdated.
February 18th, 2018 • Net Worked
Lessons over coffee
At first, stepping through the side entrance located in a busy mall located in the Minneapolis Skyway, life appears to come to a screeching halt. In the middle of a Saturday morning, as a multitude of conferences, exhibitions and other events were taking place across the city, and the line of people stretched to near the door, there was still an element of life pausing.
January 16th, 2018 • Code Words
The Power of Words
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?,” President Donald Trump reportedly asked Thursday at a White House meeting discussing immigration policies and protections for people from Haiti, El Salvador and the African continent.
January 15th, 2018 • Net Worked
The same old Facebook
“Nobody knows exactly what impact it’ll have, but in a lot of ways, it looks like the end of the social news era.” That is how Jacob Weisberg, the chairman and editor-in-chief of The Slate Group, summed up Facebook’s planned changes to its News Feed last week.
January 8th, 2018 • Net Worked
I stand with Carrie
As the Golden Globes prepared to get underway in Los Angeles, news came regarding a letter written by Carrie Gracie, a prominent journalist at the BBC. Gracie had stood down from her post as China Editor after it emerged that she was being paid 50 percent less than that of her male colleagues.
December 31st, 2017 • Net Worked
Passion in uncertainty
This past week, a column appeared in the Business section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, encouraging students to find a vocation that they would find themselves useful in, instead of following their passion. The observations of columnist Lee Schafer, intertwined with a conversation with a career counselor at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, argues that finding a job that one will be useful in should be prioritized over doing something that will make one happy.
December 26th, 2017 • Net Worked
Keeping journalism honest
It is said that the things that are the simplest are often the most important. This can be said in the case of honesty, for an honest journalist is a credible journalist. Whether its a breaking news story, a recap of the day’s events or an enterprise story, journalists owe it to their audiences to be honest in their reporting.
December 20th, 2017 • Net Worked
Raney Aronson-Rath on transparency
One of the biggest questions that journalism has faced over the course of the past year is how to maintain trust, in an era where the criticism “fake news” has become a norm. It is a conversation that is likely to continue over the course of the next year, as journalists and news organizations try to maintain trust with audiences.
April 13th, 2017 • Quill Archives
Get Professional Perspective From Online Connections
Journalism is in a quandary. From questions of trust to how the business model can survive in the digital age, the conversation about keeping the industry afloat is ongoing. News of layoffs, lost advertising revenue and the blunt, uneasy criticism of the press from the Trump administration have become ever-present norms in the media world.
December 15th, 2015 • Quill Archives, Digital Media Toolbox
Digital Media Toolbox
The English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote that the pen is mightier than the sword. For journalism in the digital age, it’s Twitter that has become mighty. Once known for its unique way to connect with celebrities and friends through bite-size 140-character posts, Twitter has become a tool central to the idea of speech and expression, and one of journalism’s essential social media tools.
