HOME PAGE | ABOUT US | COLLABORATORS | SEARCH GIRAFFE PROFILES | BLOG RESOURCE SITE | CONTACT US | SUPPORT US | REPORT A SIGHTING Last Updated: Oct 12th, 2007 - 21:58:21 |
A-Giraffes at Work?
NYU J-school students pen 40+ profiles of journalism's luminaries who have visited school
By New York University journalism students
Sep 11, 2005, 21:42
Every Sunday, readers of The New York Times Magazine look to campaign reporter Matt Bai to give them the latest political news.
“‘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.’”
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—“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.
“The coverage of the Iraq war is one of the more disgraceful periods of American journalism. It has been absolutely shocking.”
"It is certainly the responsibility [of people] to constantly question power, no matter who's in power."
"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 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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
“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
“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
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.
“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.”
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
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
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
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
“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
“[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.”
“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
"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 outlines some of the challenges that journalists are faced with and offers suggestions for restoring the credibility of the news media.
Technology, ideology, and the working's of the political media in our nation's capital
Backgrounder: Washington Media Insights Panel
"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
“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"
“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.”
“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
“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.”
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.
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
“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
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.
“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.”
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.
“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
This article is copyrighted material, the use of which may not have specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is made available in the The Media Giraffe Project's efforts to advance understanding of political, economic, democracy, First Amendment, technology, journalism, community and justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' any as provided by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Chapter 1, Section 107, the material above is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Media Giraffe Project has no affiliation with the originator of this article, nor is the project endorsed or sponsored by the article's originator. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.