Working writers swapping hard-won wisdom about the art and craft of journalism: That's what Bullpen is all about. At NYU, some of journalism's most important names drop by to discuss their work and debate the media issues of the day. To document their appearances, Professor Mark Dery and a staff of student writers launched Bullpen in fall 2004, as a resource for NYU students, department faculty, and anyone interested in journalism and the news media.

Matt Bai

Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Magazine look to campaign reporter Matt Bai to give them the latest political news. 

Backgrounder: Matt Bai

Kristina Borjesson

“‘It is both a flaw and a gift,’ Borjesson said, of her desire to dig up whatever information can be dug up. ‘It is my great passion, but it also gets me into trouble.’”

Lecture: Kristina Borjesson

Jimmie Briggs

Briggs says that the notion of objectivity in Journalism has become a fstraitjacket. Journalists are to remain neutral. But for Briggs, given the subject, this was simply impossible.

Backgrounder: Jimmie Briggs
Lecture: Jimmie Briggs

Maurice Carroll

Maurice Carroll—“Mickey,” to his friends—brings 40 years of experience as a reporter for The New York Times, The New York Post, and The New York Herald—Tribune to his present position as polling director at Quinnipiac University’s Polling Institute.

Backgrounder: Maurice Carroll

Noam Chomsky

“The coverage of the Iraq war is one of the more disgraceful periods of American journalism. It has been absolutely shocking.”

Lecture: Noam Chomsky

George Clooney

"It is certainly the responsibility [of people] to constantly question power, no matter who's in power."

Backgrounder: George Clooney

Charles Coxe

"I was always begging for work, staying until two in the morning and asking for more responsibility," said Coxe, in an interview with a staff writer from The Daily Princetonian. "I hate being thought of as someone who’s not working hard."

Backgrounder: Charles Coxe
Lecture: Charles Coxe

Philip Gourevitch

Philip Gourevitch has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1997. He often takes a political stance in his writing, covering issues of both international and domestic importance.

Backgrounder: Philip Gourevitch
Lecture: Philip Gourevitch

Peter Greenberg

“We all love to travel,” Greenberg said in September 2001 during one of his many appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. “But we hate the process of travel. It’s an ordeal. Getting there is not just half the fun—it’s no fun at all.”

Backgrounder: Peter Greenberg
Lecture: Peter Greenberg

Cornelia Grumman

“I wanted to see more of the world and to understand the connection between individuals, particularly those with faint voices, and the government institutions designed to serve them.”

Backgrounder: Cornelia Grumman
Lecture: Cornelia Grumman and James Warren

Pete Hamill

“I have been looking at that New York for decades now,” he writes in Downtown. “The place seems as fresh as it did when I was 21. On its streets, I am always a young man.”

Backgrounder: Pete Hamill
Lecture: Pete Hamill
Lecture: Pete Hamill on Boxing

Beth Harpaz

These days, Beth Harpaz, 46, is the travel editor for the Associated Press. But she’s best known for The Girls in the Van, about being a reporter on Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Backgrounder: Beth Harpaz
Lecture: Beth Harpaz

Robin Marantz Henig

Henig has written about senility, stem cell research, cloning, the best way to die, the psychological effects of adoption, the categorization of eating disorders, and the effects of erasing memory.

Backgrounder: Robin Marantz Henig
Lecture: Robin Marantz Henig

Robert Lee Hotz

“I think I always wanted to be a journalist,” Hotz says. “I liked being in the middle of things as they unfolded. I love the craft of writing.”

Backgrounder: Robert Lee Hotz
Lecture: Robert Lee Hotz

Garrison Keillor

“I really believe that if you sit in a room with people and listen to something, you feel closer to them than if you sit and look at television.”

Backgrounder: Garrison Keillor
Lecture: Garrison Keillor

Peter Klein

Klein is best known for his documentary work, winning his first Emmy Award in 1996. He is currently a producer for 60 Minutes, and teaches graduate journalism at Columbia University.

Backgrounder: Peter Klein

Bill Kovach

“We’re in a new world where the public has access to more information, enabling them to become editors and publishers,” said Kovach. “Our role becomes a way of helping them sort out the information. We give them the set of tools they need to do that.”

Lecture: Bill Kovach

Robert Kuttner

A co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, Robert Kuttner writes for the magazine regularly on a variety of issues. Mostly, however, he focuses on economic policy, both domestic and international.

Backgrounder: Robert Kuttner
Lecture: Robert Kuttner

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

A widely-published writer, LeBlanc is best known for Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, a nonfiction novel chronicling the lives of an extended Puerto Rican family from the South Bronx, caught in the inexorable cycle of poverty.

Backgrounder: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Charles Lewis

Lewis founded the Center for Public Integrity in 1989. “I was frustrated [not only] with the state of broadcast journalism, but actually national journalism in general.”

Backgrounder: Charles Lewis
Lecture: Charles Lewis

Errol Louis

To some, “politics” may be a dirty word. To Errol Louis, a political columnist for The New York Daily News, sifting through the dirty business of politics is a way to make a living.

Backgrounder: Errol Louis
Lecture: Errol Louis

Rush & Malloy

“Gossip hasn’t changed since I started doing it,” she said. “People love to hear stories and, thank God, tell them. That is eternal.”

Backgrounder: Rush & Malloy
Lecture: Joanna Molloy

Andrew Marshall

“[We are] used to swimming in the ocean,” said Marshall, of the growing restrictions on Western journalists operating in Iraq. “Now we’re swimming in a fish bowl.”

Lecture: Andrew Marshall

David Mindich

“Students who don’t pay attention to politics cede their political power to their elders and their more-involved peers. And without political power, they are screwed.”

Backgrounder: David Mindich
Lecture: David Mindich

Paul Mirengoff

"We’re not out to destroy anybody. We try to be about ideas, and we call [things] as we see them. And because we’re not funded we have the freedom to do that."

Backgrounder: Paul Mirengoff
Lecture: Paul Mirengoff

Andrea Mitchell

Andrea Mitchell outlines some of the challenges that journalists are faced with and offers suggestions for restoring the credibility of the news media.

Lecture: Andrea Mitchell

Washington Media Insights Panel

Technology, ideology, and the working's of the political media in our nation's capital

Backgrounder: Washington Media Insights Panel

Frank J. Prial

"You don't have to be a baseball fanatic to read a story about a great player or a particularly exciting game," he explains. "You should not have to be a budding enologist to enjoy reading about wine."

Backgrounder: Frank J. Prial
Lecture: Frank J. Prial

Hip-Hop Journalism Roundtable

“The role of a journalist is to write with a sense of the vernacular and the willingness to be provocative, but it’s also to think.” - Robert Christgau

Hip-Hop Journalism Roundtable: Raquel Cepeda’s "And It Don’t Stop"

Erik Schechter

“Here I am, this suicide-bombing victim, [talking with] a would-be suicide bomber, and we’re joking. We’re talking about the Koran, I’m asking him what his favorite verse is. You wouldn’t know I’m a victim. We’re just having a blast. I’m trying to get him to talk.”

Lecture: Erik Schechter

Anya Schiffrin

“Reporters are now being asked not only to cover major events, such as the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the periodic meetings of the World Trade Organization, but also to interpret what happens at those meetings within the broader debate on globalization.”

Backgrounder: Anya Schiffrin
Lecture: Anya Schiffrin

David Seideman

“I’ve come full circle from reading this magazine as a kid,” he said. “To cover a subject I’ve been passionate about, day in and day out, is a real thrill.”

Backgrounder: David Seideman

Robert Sietsema

Have you ever eaten Uzbek lamb fat on a stick? Or ram testicles? How about grasshoppers served atop tacos? Robert Sietsema has tried all of these ethnic delicacies and more.

Backgrounder: Robert Sietsema

Lynn Povich and George Solomon

Groundbreaking journalist Lynn Povich, Newsweek'sfirst woman senior editor, and longtime Washington Post sportswriter George Solomon.

Backgrounder: Lynn Povich and George Solomon
Lecture: Lynn Povich and George Solomon

Matt Taibbi

“I thought that covering the election was going to be more interesting,” Taibbi said. “Nobody says anything risky ever.”

Backgrounder: Matt Taibbi
Lecture: Matt Taibbi

Elinor Tatum

When the paper started, the voice of black New York — well, there was none. And as long as there’s racism and as long as there’s inequality, there’s gonna be a need for the black press.

Lecture: Elinor Tatum

Helen Thomas

“President Ford said that if God had created the world in six days, on the seventh day he could not have rested—he would have had to have explained it to Helen Thomas.”

Lecture: Helen Thomas

Marco Trbovich

A campaign adviser and union organizer as well as a journalist, Trbovich, 62, has unimpeachable credentials when it comes to commenting on the media, unions, and politics.

Backgrounder: Marco Trbovich

James Warren

“To the extent I had any overarching desire in going to Washington, it was that our then 16-person contingent should inspect the town more as if we were foreign correspondents, reporting back to folks in the Midwest on an important place with a particular, even peculiar, culture and set of mores,”

Backgrounder: James Warren
Lecture: Cornelia Grumman and James Warren