Journalism Program

Dan Taberski, creator of acclaimed podcasts 9/12, The Line, and Missing Richard Simmons, encouraged Brandeis students to appreciate the journey of a longform story as much as the destination. In his Nov. 10 visit to Neil Swidey’s Long-form Journalism course, Taberski said he seldom listens to his podcasts after he finishes them, but he thinks often about what he learned during his reporting.

In preparation for his visit, the students had listened to the full 9/12 podcast and came prepared with detailed questions about his process. Asked how to handle an interview with a subject who turns out to be lackluster, Taberski advised moving on to someone else. “There’s always someone who can tell the story,” he said. For 9/12, he interviewed more than 75 people, but ended up featuring “tape” from only a fraction of them in the final podcast.

Taberski began his career working as a White House economics aide and served as a producer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Even when his work focuses on serious subjects like our “War on Terror” in the post-9/11 world, Taberski said, he tries to find lighter moments. “The reason humor works for me is that’s how I see the world,” he said. “A joke is just a surprise” Taberski said. All of his stories have some sort of surprise in them.

He encouraged students to prepare extensively for interviews, doing lots of research and crafting questions that have a narrative arc built into them. “Then,” he said, “put your questions away.” Instead of reading from a list of questions, students should focus on engaging in real conversation with their subject.

—RIVER SIMARD

Foreign correspondent and best selling author Blaine Harden has been in the field for a long time, learning what it means to be a journalist. “To begin with, you should be humble, empathetic, and incredibly hard working,” he said during his visit to Ann Silvio’s Truth, Fact, and Research in Journalism class on Oct. 26.

In 2012, Harden received great acclaim for his book Escape from Camp 14, which told the story of Shin Dong-hyuk’s childhood in a North Korean camp and subsequent escape. While Shin did, in fact, escape, he lied quite a bit when telling his story. “With every trauma victim story, there will probably be something not true, so you have to make readers aware, but give them context for where they existed,” Harden told the class. "These are the stories that percolate into the human heart." Through this process, he learned how to interview people who are victims of trauma.

Harden also gave insight on his most recent book Murder at The Mission, which discusses ongoing lies of the Pacific Northwest and how it was taken from Native American tribes. “I think because Americans think so much of themselves, they are more vulnerable to self-congratulatory lies.” Harden said. He said he wrote this book so Americans could learn the truth about their history. “Explaining lies is more interesting than echoing them, not just as a reporter but as a citizen.”

While Harden now spends most of his time freelancing and writing books, he spent 28 years as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, a job that took him all over the world. He was also a national correspondent for The New York Times and a writer for The Economist and Times Magazine. As he spoke via Zoom to a classroom of eager future journalists, he advised, “if you’re interested in journalism, it is by far the most exciting, most fun, and most challenging way to make a living. You constantly have to read, pay attention, and sometimes acknowledge that you don’t know what you are doing.”

—RACHEL ROSENFIELD

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the period of racial reckoning that followed it, journalist Collier Meyerson decided to go deep into the past to try to make more sense of the present. The result was her powerful podcast Love Thy Neighbor: Four Days in Crown Heights That Changed New York. The podcast revisits what came to be known as the 1991 Crown Heights Riot, and it explores the complex roots of unrest between the Black and Jewish communities in that Brooklyn neighborhood.

In her Oct. 25 visit to Neil Swidey’s Long-form Journalism course, Meyerson said the story was deeply personal to her. “I am Black and Jewish,” she said, but stressed that “the story could stand on its own.” Meyerson served as the creator, host and narrator for the podcast, which has received wide acclaim. She has previously written for The Nation and New York Magazine and served as an Emmy Award-winning producer for MSNBC.

Meyerson encouraged Brandeis students to trust their instincts when working on a story that intersects with their background, even if that sometimes means resisting efforts by producers and editors. “You have to do what feels good for you and push back” against ideas that don’t “push the story forward.”

Still, she said, podcasting is a more personal medium than other formats so journalists need to establish “why they are the best person to tell this story.”

—SAM NEWMAN

Angel Mendoza, Reddit editor at The Washington Post, visited Adriana Lacy’s “Art of Engaging Audiences” class via Zoom on Oct. 31. Although he majored in journalism and communications at Arizona State University, he realized he didn't want to become a reporter and decided to pursue social media editing full-time. He first ran the Arizona Republic’s Twitter and Facebook and slowly became interested in Reddit. 

“Reddit is such a wild platform and moderators are always gatekeeping,” he said, itching to write a story about the community. He met and interviewed moderators on Reddit, and though his story never fully developed he built great relationships with them. 

Fast forward to 2021, Mendoza began his work with The Washington Post as a social editor working on the “core team” with Twitter and Facebook. After a while, he began to move solely into Reddit. When asked about his favorite part of Reddit, he explained that the platform is very community-based. “Twitter is a follower-based platform but Reddit is oriented toward topics, locations, and more niche communities, which allows for more meaningful, productive conversations,” he said. Mendoza explained that he tries to be intentional about audience engagement, always thinking of ways to give longer excerpts of stories usually hidden behind a paywall. His goal is to allow people to discuss and engage in stories that fit the platform.

To future journalists, Mendoza advises avoiding overthinking. “Things matter a lot less at the moment than you think they do,” he said.“It is really easy to put a lot of pressure on yourself.” He also explained how he tries to combat imposter syndrome. “When you go into your first newsroom and interact with other journalists, you realize that everyone is trying to figure out their life,” he said. “No matter what title they have or how much clout they have, they are just like you. We are all constantly learning.”

—MIRABELL ROWLAND

Matthew Shaer, writer for the New York Times Magazine and co-founder of Campside Media, joined Brandeis long-form journalism students on Oct. 11 with Texas Monthly writer Eric Benson. They discussed their co-production of the Suspect podcast and shared expertise on fact-checking and interviewing styles, trauma-informed reporting, and comparing the effectiveness of various components in written and audio form.

“I really like working on podcasts,” Benson said. “Sound elements and bringing in things like music and ambient sound – it felt sort of like halfway between writing a magazine article and making a movie.”

Creativity and collaboration are a leading reason they love creating podcasts. Having grown up in Boston, Shaer first showed interest in long-form journalism during college and began producing podcasts when he considered it still a “burgeoning medium.” Benson expressed a similar interest in high school when reading long-form magazines, and the two became friends at New York Magazine.

As JOUR 113a students begin their midterm podcast production, after studying “Suspect,” Shaer and Benson gave advice on good practices for building narrative podcasts. “They need to be really rigorously reported and detail-oriented,” Shaer said. “You have to be working on the macro and micro levels at once.”

“The more we can make it a kind of conversation, where there are people who are participants in the conversation and not people who are just answering questions that journalists are barking at them, I think that's the way to go,” Benson said.

—CAMERON SAMUELS

Susan Dominus — New York Times Magazine staff writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Yale professor — favors a three-step process when interviewing subjects for her long-form journalism. In her visit to Neil Swidey’s Long-form Journalism class on Oct. 4, Dominus said her initial interviews typically focus on chit-chat and basic timelines, but the best material tends to emerge in her second and third meetings with subjects. By returning for a second interview, the reporter is “demonstrating prolonged commitment,” she said, which helps create a safe environment for the subjects.

When Dominus sits in front of her computer to write, she said, she looks for ways to step out of the story so she can craft phrasing and imagery that will stick with readers. “So much of writing is conjuring,” she said.

Dominus discussed her unforgettable New York Times Magazine piece “The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá,” which the students read in preparation for the discussion. She advised students to pay close attention and press for even the tiniest details, even at the risk of annoying subjects. “The conventions of normal conversations don’t apply,” she said.

When asked how she knows when to end a story, Dominus said she often finds herself witnessing a natural ending. There’s a reason, she said, that so many books and movies build to a climax around a wedding, birth or funeral. Other endings require more patience, she said. “Sometimes, reporting is just waiting around for something to happen.”

—Isabel Roseth

Mike Deehan and Steph Solis write a daily newsletter for the digital news outlet AXIOS BOSTON. Deehan brings his experience as a political reporter while Solis brings her community reporting background. They joined Adriana Lacy’s Social Journalism class on Sept. 19 to discuss building rapport, audience engagement, and finding stories that matter.

Founded as a national news outlet in 2017, AXIOS introduced a Boston-based newsletter earlier this year. AXIOS is anything but traditional journalism, producing news in small, digestible bites for people who do not have time to consume news. In Latin, their name means “worthy of” which is what they strive to do: make news worthy of your time.

Deehan offered advice on working on a newsletter, saying at the heart of any news is the community. Engaging an audience is extremely important, and having good copy that is well written, accurate and concise is the first step. He also suggested students ask themselves the question “what do we want to say that hasn’t already been said?”

Solis, who has built a reputation for covering stories involving immigration as well as business and technology, advised students to “carve your own image”. She commented on finding niche stories, referencinga story she wrote on Allston Christmas. “Sometimes you have to make a case for a story,” she said. Not all stories have to be political or big headlines to prove it is worth publishing.

As Solis spoke to the class, she sat in a coffee shop in East Boston, writing a story about a new ferry that brings people from East Boston to downtown. According to her, journalists should aspire to go out into the community and learn to ensure the news they create reflects the diversity of the area.

—Mina Rowland

Daniel Estrin, NPR’s international correspondent in Jerusalem, stresses the importance of complexity and progression in storytelling. “You want to ask yourself as a journalist – is this a topic or a story?" he said during his Zoom visit on Sept. 20 to Neil Swidey’s Long-Form Journalism course. "A topic is a phenomenon, but a story is a journey.”

Estrin, a 2006 graduate of Brandeis, has received wide praise for bringing humanity to heart-wrenching stories, from civilian deaths in Syria to the unsolved theft of ancient Torahs. He also co-hosted the "Hotel Corona" episode of the NPR podcast Rough Translation and this year has guest-hosted All Things Considered. His work across platforms, from broadcast radio to podcast to written features, made him a natural fit for Swidey's journalism course, which focuses on storytelling for magazines and podcasts.

Among the many questions he fielded from students who had closely studied his work was how he handles the challenge of interviewing people who have suffered. “I realize I’m perhaps doing nothing to ease them of their pain," Estrin said, "but getting these stories out there is a public service." To all of his assignments, he tries to bring an open mind and empathy, even when interviewing people who would appear to be unsympathetic. “I find that I fall in love with everyone I meet," he said, "because they’re human.”

Estrin's journalistic career began during his senior year at Brandeis, when he interned at Boston NPR affiliate WBUR. He urged any student interested in journalism to focus on the joy of the work and roll with the rejection that comes with a competitive field. “Honoring the stories of others is the privilege of being a journalist."

—Lea Zaharoni 

Lauren Katz is the Manager of Audio Operations at Vox.com, the digital news site specializing in explanatory journalism. That position did not exist until she pitched it, and Vox itself did not exist when Katz graduated from Brandeis in 2013.

In her visit to Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism course on March 29, she told students the jobs they will hold – and the companies they end up working for – may also not exist yet. That’s why it is so essential to learn how to adapt to change.

Before persuading her bosses to create her new job, Katz told the students, she first asked herself what she most liked doing – and how that could align with her employer’s priorities. She enjoyed working in audience engagement and saw the need for a position that promoted Vox’s podcasts and served as a middle person between the editorial/audio teams and the marketing/business side. “Your work has to be a mix of something you’re generally interested in doing and what the company needs you to do,” she said. After all, journalism “is a business at the end of the day.” She stressed that journalism is a rapidly changing field, specifically in the face of evolving technologies. Early on in her career, she said, she leaned heavily on the skills she learned working as a copy editor for The Justice and taking Brandeis journalism courses.

Katz has worked in different roles at Vox for seven years. She told the students that before she got her first job there, she was crushed when she didn’t get what she thought was her dream job, at another news organization. “I don't think we talk about rejection enough,” she said. A month after that coveted job didn’t come through, she found a better one at Vox.

She urged students to form relationships with others in their industry, but she urged them to avoid making these relationships purely transactional. Take a genuine interest in these mentors’ lives, and don’t check in with them only when you’re job-hunting. “Network with people when you do not need anything from them,” she said. 

Katz has remained at Vox for this long in part because her views align well with the company’s. She strongly supports Vox’s decision to avoid paywalls and make its journalism open to all, on the belief “everyone deserves to be informed in a smart, not-talking-down-to-you way.”

—Leah Breakstone

Alvin Chang, data and visuals lead and senior reporter for The Guardian, explained the importance and responsibility of data journalism by saying, “It sounds easy to collect data accurately, but it requires a huge amount of leadership and a huge amount of organization.” Chang spoke to Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism for the 21st Century course on March 17.

Chang went through many jobs in the journalism field before he ended up at The Guardian. He started by covering hockey for ESPN, and his lack of knowledge of the sport prompted him to use data to find interesting ways to tell stories from his beat. He worked in a number of other newsrooms, including the Boston Globe, Vox, and The Wall Street Journal. The throughline in all his work, he told the students, was his desire to learn new skills as well as his willingness to "hit a wall" and fail before figuring his way out of a jam.

Chang leads a team of journalists who use data, visuals and design -- as well as lots of shoe-leather reporting -- to present packages that make the story come alive. He has produced innovative coverage of climate change and the pandemic in addition to many other pressing issues. Chang encouraged students to work hard and take risks. “If you want to build something or you want to learn something," he said, "just do it.” More info: https://alvinschang.com/

—Rachel Rosenfield

Veteran journalist Anthony Flint is used to covering big stories, but that didn’t prepare him when he became part of the biggest story of the day. Flint, a former Boston Globe staff writer turned senior fellow for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, told students the story-behind-the-story of his Boston Globe Magazine piece headlined “I Got a Rare Condition after the Johnson & Johnson Shot. I Still Think Everyone Needs to be Vaccinated.”

After receiving the Johnson & Johnson shot last year, Flint developed Guillain-Barré Syndrome, or GBS, an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks the protective covering of our neurons. Explaining why he decided to write about his painful ordeal, he told students in Neil Swidey’s Science Journalism class, “It was fascinating to me and I really wanted to share it.” Still, he was worried that, if he wasn’t careful, his story would fuel vaccine hesitancy.

Monitoring reactions to the article after it was published, Flint was relieved to find that it generated lots of interest without fueling controversy or circulating in anti-vaccine circles. “The disinformation, anti-vaccine maelstrom never really materialized around GBS,” he said.

Flint urged journalists and scientists to not be shy about communicating the pros and cons of the vaccines, as long as they offer proper statistics and context. Transparency about the vaccines, he said, will help build public trust. If we don’t talk publicly about side effects, he said, that kind of news can fester underground.

Flint is one of about 250 people who developed the GBS side effect, out of 13 million J&J shots. His recovery has been extremely challenging and taxing, he said, but things are moving in the right direction. He shared with students the encouraging news that he had just jogged on a treadmill for the first time since the onset of his condition.

—Adam Steinberg

Jon Wertheim, the executive editor at Sports Illustrated and contributor to 60 Minutes, shared his insights in a visit to Jacob Feldman’s Sports Journalism and Innovation class on March 24.

Before speaking with Wertheim, the class watched his recent 60 Minutes piece on WNBA Star Sue Bird. Wertheim explained some of the differences of storytelling for TV versus in longform writing.

When Wertheim was just getting started in sports media there were clearly defined roles such as writer or TV personality. Now, as long as you are telling interesting stories, you can really fill any role. “All the rules are off,” Wertheim said.

Wertheim offered a warning about social media. “You want to differentiate yourself but the risk/reward of social media is perilous,” he said. “I know a lot more people who have hurt their careers than helped it.”
Wertheim’s parting advice to aspiring journalists was: “Differentiate yourself. Look for ways to say things that aren’t obvious.”

—Ariel Schultz

“If you can’t talk to people, you’re gone,” said Gina McCarthy, the federal government’s top national climate official, during a March 8 Brandeis Journalism webinar. The fate of climate change policy, if not our planet, she suggested, will rely heavily on our ability to communicate with one another.

The event featured McCarthy, the nation’s first National Climate Advisor, in a wide-ranging, spirited, hour-long conversation with Neil Swidey, the director of the Brandeis Journalism Program. Swidey drew from the hundreds of questions that Brandeis students and other webinar attendees had submitted.

After a welcome from Brandeis President Ron Liebowitz, Swidey kicked things off by asking McCarthy how she can possibly maintain her optimistic attitude even though climate change is such a bleak issue and existential threat. She cited her Irish heritage and her knowledge of what works from her many decades in public service. Using the metaphor of a Boston Marathon runner, McCarthy criticized the many climate change activists who greet signs of progress by lamenting how much more there is left to do. “Well, for Christ’s sake, don’t remind me of that when I’m going up Heartbreak Hill,” she said. “Celebrate every damn step!”

Before serving as President Biden’s chief climate advisor, McCarthy ran the EPA for President Obama. She stressed that her job isn’t to make people understand climate change – or even to care about the climate. “The goal is to get them to act in a way that’s consistent with what climate tells us,” she said.

McCarthy cautioned people not to talk down to those who disagree with them about climate change – or to try to prove how wrong they are. Instead, she suggested focusing on solutions where there can be common ground, like the shift to clean energy. “I need people’s spirits lifted right now,” she said. “I need them to be hopeful.” In the end, she said, hope – not fear – is going to drive change.

—Nashvin Kaur

Watch a recording of the webinar here

Adriana Lacy, the digital and audience engagement editor at the Nieman Foundation for journalism at Harvard University, urged Brandeis journalism students to challenge the traditional metrics of success in the field.

“How can we redefine what engagement means?” Lacy asked during her visit in February to Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism for the 21st Century course. “Like, maybe it wasn't the most read story, but maybe we got the highest community response for it. Or maybe we wrote about an issue that hasn't been covered and that organization got more funding. That's a success.” By avoiding the trap of solely chasing eyeballs, she said, journalists can determine how to best serve the public and uplift marginalized voices. Lacy also stressed the importance of meeting people where they are, and reaching out in meaningful ways to underserved communities.

Though still in her twenties, Lacy has already had impressive experience at a host of top news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Guardian and Axios. Committed to helping those coming up behind her, she is also the founder of Journalism Mentors, a nonprofit site that connects young journalists with mentors in the industry.

—Lesedi Lerato Mataboge

Ann Scales, Director of Media Relations for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, stressed the vital importance of clarity in both journalism and health communications when she spoke in February to Neil Swidey’s Science Journalism, the Pandemic and Disinformation course. Earlier in her career, Scales worked in a variety of high profile editing and reporting jobs, including serving as a White House Correspondent for the Boston Globe.

In her Brandeis talk, Scales told students how she pushes for transparent, accurate data, particularly on the health department website.

Discussing the trends of public trust in science journalism, a prevalent theme in the class, Scales lamented how politicized the pandemic and other public health matters have become, an occupational hazard for both science journalists and science communicators. But she celebrated the growth in student interest in both fields. “They want to be a part of what we know,'' she said. She also stressed the importance of being able to pivot during a pandemic when knowledge changes rapidly. “It's not that somebody was wrong,” she said, “it's that facts change so we must adapt to that.”

Her role makes her a critical bridge between scientists and the public, and she works hard to make sure the experts speak in clear, comprehensible language, rather than falling back on scientific jargon. “If I don't understand it,” she said, “I can't communicate it.”

—Srishti ​​Nautiyal

Betsy West, one of the filmmakers behind RBG and My Name is Pauli Murray, visited Brandeis on March 7 to discuss her acclaimed documentary films and answer questions about finding stories, getting funding, and responding to criticism. “The thing about going into documentaries is that it’s not really a business, it’s a calling,” she told Ann Silvio’s Documentary Journalism class about going into documentary-making. But she’s not disillusioned by this calling of hers. She and Julie Cohen, her co-creator, are committed to objectivity and accuracy. After all, she's “not an activist.”

Mainly asked about RBG and My Name is Pauli Murray, West explained her process of telling the stories of these extremely accomplished people. Finding the narrative for both Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Pauli Murray meant deciding what to leave in and what to take out. “There was just too much,” West explained about Pauli, who was a non-binary civil rights pioneer, Brandeis professor, lawyer, and reverend. Similarly, in making RBG, West and Cohen “found that the arc of the story was women’s rights,” leaving out information about the justice’s work in procedural law.

As a professor at Columbia Journalism School, West is passionate about helping young people find their calling, be it in documentary-making or something else. “Try to work with people from whom you can learn,” she explained about taking advantage of the wealth of knowledge available in newsrooms and production companies. For those not sure about a career in journalism, her advice was to try it out. “Just go do it.”

—Jillian Brosofsky

The Brandeis Journalism Program hosted the “Quick Strike” team behind the Boston Globe’s series “Blind Spot” on Nov. 15. The reporting team won the 2021 Investigative Reporting Pulitzer Prize for uncovering systemic government failures that led to fatal consequences for drivers. They spoke to the Brandeis community along with the video producer and audience director who helped make the reader experience as complex and all-encompassing as the investigation itself. They discussed the importance of multimedia journalism and how investigative news can influence public opinion and government action.

“The form of journalism is different [than activism]. I am not yelling at people to be outraged, you're showing people the facts,” explained reporter Evan Allen. “Ultimately, people do not like to be told what to do. It doesn't move people when you tell them what to think or how to feel or how to act. But when you present them with the facts that they need to draw their own conclusions, that’s when you can move the dial a little bit. That’s why I like journalism — the facts are loud and they hurt and they should.”

—Anna Nappi

View the full recording of their panel discussion here under the “Featured Events” section. (Check out recordings of other recents talks on that same page.)

The first time Iris Adler’s boss at WBUR told her to go make a podcast, she replied simply – “what’s a podcast?” In the decade since, Adler has mastered the craft. Adler, the former executive director for programming, podcasts and special projects at Boston NPR powerhouse WBUR, led the station’s podcast division with distinction. In that capacity, she oversaw a number of acclaimed journalistic shows including Endless Thread (in collaboration with Reddit), and Modern Love (in collaboration with the New York Times). She spoke on Nov. 4 to Neil Swidey’s Longform Journalism: Storytelling for Magazines and Podcasts course, emphasizing the creativity and awareness that helped her team make its mark in the podcast world. 

Adler admitted that the initial transition from radio to podcast was tentative. Her earliest productions were essentially regular public radio stories. Before long, though, she and her team began to explore and embrace the freedom of the new format. “The engineers became sound designers – that creative space previously didn’t exist,” she said. “They made it sound brilliant.” Podcasts also pioneered a more natural, human narration style – “the insertion of self to serve the point.” Eventually, the techniques her team helped popularize became common on traditional public radio as well.

Though the journalism industry has struggled in recent years, Adler is bullish on the role that podcasts will increasingly play. “They’re here to stay,” she said. “It’s a wonderful platform.” Last year, NPR’s podcast division for the first time brought in more revenue than its broadcast shows, providing crucial funding to support the news organization’s overall journalism. NPR podcasts are also attracting a much more diverse audience than its over-the-air shows. “The smart money is on NPR,” she said, to lead the charge as podcasts help shape the future of journalism.

-Ellis Zehnder 

Catherine Elton, the senior editor for Boston Magazine and a former longtime foreign correspondent in Latin America, compared life as a freelance journalist to being an actress. “You go on an audition every day,” she said, “and you have to accept a lot of rejection.”

During her visit to Neil Swidey’s Long-form Journalism course on Nov. 16, Elton spoke about the joys and challenges of covering other nations. She spent many years living in, and reporting from, Peru and Guatemala. She encouraged students interested in global affairs to consider moving to a new country and seeing it as a journalist, rather than as a tourist. But she also cautioned them against seeing only the negatives.

At Boston Magazine, Elton edits and writes long-form journalism on a wide range of subjects. She encouraged students to do their reporting in person whenever possible. If they can’t do that, she advised them to pick up the phone and call rather than emailing or texting. “Use the ‘phone function’ on your phone.”

Elton will be joining the Brandeis Journalism team this spring, teaching JOUR 132B Covering the World: International Reporting and Global Affairs. She will be team-teaching this course (which is cross-listed with IGS) with Romesh Ratnesar, who has reported extensively from Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A member of the editorial board of Bloomberg Opinion, he is also a former senior editor at Time magazine and State Department official during the Obama administration.

Astead Herdon, national political reporter for the New York Times and fill-in host for the Times’ popular podcast The Daily, urged students interested in political reporting to write for real people, not insiders. In his visit to Neil Swidey’s Long-form Journalism course on Oct. 19, Herndon said, “The reason I work at a newspaper, and not some bougie-ass magazine, is I want to write for everyone.“ He stressed that this approach is so much more meaningful than “assuming that 30 people in DC are the only ones who matter.”

Before moving to the Times, Herndon started his career in Boston, as an intern with the Boston Globe. From there, he immediately transitioned to a full-time job on the Globe’s Metro staff, covering cops and courts and a wide range of daily stories such as county fairs. Herndon credits his rapid rise in journalism both to saying yes to new opportunities and knowing when to stick around. He described how important it is in internships to know — and do — what you were hired for, rather than getting starry-eyed — but also to make time to pursue more ambitious projects that demonstrate your full talent. For him, this meant sticking to the beats he was assigned to at the Globe — crime stories and then the Boston City Council — but also volunteering on weekends for the beats he was more passionate about and paying attention at opportune moments. His career took off after Donald Trump’s surprise win in 2016, when he was sent to the Globe’s DC bureau to report on the transition. Herndon, who is also an analyst for CNN, moved to the New York Times in 2018 and has been covering politics nationally since then.

—Gavi Klein

Lovia Gyarkye may be Arts and Culture critic at the Hollywood Reporter, but she approaches her job like a reporter. When visiting Josh Wolk’s “Arts Journalism, Pop Culture, and Digital Innovation” class on Oct. 26, Gyarkye spoke about how her time as a reporter and fact-checker for the New Republic made her extremely conscious of learning everything about her subject before evaluating it. “A good review takes a lot of reporting and research,” she explained, noting thorough background research helps make a critique “rock solid.”

Like a growing vine, Gyarkye said she still continues to collect knowledge and grow as a critic, while exploring spaces that women of color have not always been welcome into. “As a dark skinned woman, I’ll be ripped apart for any criticism I make,” she said, adding that the prejudice that critics, who are women of color, receive is a symptom of a larger systemic issue. And that finding support systems to commiserate with is vital.

For aspiring critics, Gyarkye advised: Reading is fundamental -- and those interested in the field should read as much as possible from all forms of writing (non-fiction, fiction, poetry) to learn the different ways language can be molded to create a robust and vivid idea of the media being reviewed. She also believes the best criticism is very specific about the reasons they loved or hated what they reviewed.

“Criticism takes time, practice, and consideration,” Gyarkye said. And in the age of social media and the internet, where everyone's a critic, she added, “Now is the time, more than ever, for good critics.”

—Tibria Brown

Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalists, urged students interested in journalism to “go there” and get started.

In a visit to Fred Barbash's journalism internship course on Nov. 17, the married couple discussed their varied careers, from local reporting to foreign correspondent postings in Mexico City, Tokyo and London. “Figure out a place in the world that you’re interested in, hopefully one that isn’t flooded with a million other journalists,” Sullivan said.

Although the couple has reported from around the world, Jordan encouraged students to consider working as a journalist to fill a need in one of this nation’s many “news deserts” that lack quality outlets. There’s lots of opportunity, she said, adding, “I’m excited for you.”

Her husband echoed that. “This is still an incredibly interesting way to make a living,” Sullivan said. “People who say journalism is dead are idiots.”

Alumnus and associate producer of PRI's Living on Earth Jay Feinstein '17 spoke with journalism students at the Meet the Minor event on Sept. 30. Feinstein discussed his roots in environmental advocacy during his years at Brandeis — he was the founder of the campus rooftop garden — and how that translated to his career as a journalist. While activism and journalism have a storied history of contention, Feinstein stressed that students could ethically forge this path. "It's a tricky line between activism and journalism," he said. "But at Living On Earth, we don't do activism. We tell the truth about climate change."

Feinstein said audio journalism is enjoying “a renaissance” in part because "it's personal. You're talking right into somebody's ear." He urged students to engage with the medium, producing their own audio work. As a Brandeis undergrad, Feinstein was a Living on Earth intern. After graduating, he went to graduate school in business and started a corporate career but shifted gears to try to find more meaning in his life. He was able to become a producer for Living on Earth because of the professional connections he had developed and nurtured. He encouraged students to prioritize relationship-building as they move through their careers.

Veronica Chao, the Boston Globe's deputy managing editor, offered this advice to students hoping to pitch a story idea and get the green light to write it as a freelancer. "Ask yourself: Will readers care about this?" said Chao, who oversees Living Arts coverage as well as the Sunday Magazine. During her visit to Neil Swidey's Long-form Journalism class on Sept. 30, Chao said she did not always know she would work in media. After editorial roles with D.C. and Boston-based publications, the Globe recruited Chao, where she edited City Weekly before joining the Boston Globe Magazine.

She emphasized the importance of good timing and skill — two factors young reporters should leverage as they break into the industry. Pitching, Chao said, relies on timing. "It can be an exciting idea, but not timely," she said, describing why an editor might say no to an otherwise good pitch. "Being a journalist at this time, there is an unprecedented amount of news." Pitching is the chance to show you have the voice to tell a story distinctively, Chao said. "We get a sense of your style."

—Autumn Bellan

"Every section needs to end with a disclosure or a new piece of information," Matthew Shaer told students during Neil Swidey's Long-form Journalism class on Oct. 7. Shaer, a writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine, explained that, for a long-form magazine story to engage the reader, each part "needs something that leaves people wanting to know what happens next." Or as he puts it: "It's all about buying yourself space to jam broccoli down someone's throat."

In contrast, Shaer, who is also the co-founder of podcast studio Campside Media, said that, with audio journalism, it's the delivery that makes the difference. "It does not matter what someone says, it matters how they say it," he explained. "That's the opposite of the truth for magazine writing." Currently, Shaer — who was an English Literature major at the University of Maine, discovering journalism as "a way into fiction writing" — is exploring a different form of storytelling. He’s writing a book based on his 2019 New York Times Magazine story about the criminalization of poverty.

—Elliot Bachrach

Dave Jorgenson, better known by millions as The Washington Post's "TikTok guy," gave Brandeis journalism students a glimpse of his approach to the wildly popular platform that makes news accessible to a younger audience -- and how he does that while working for one of the nation's most established news organizations. Speaking via Zoom to Fred Barbash's Contemporary Media course on Oct. 6, Jorgenson said he was producing "goofy" videos for the Post's official YouTube channel in the spring of 2019 when he convinced his managers to let him launch a stand-alone TikTok account. He focuses on a single, discrete element of a Post news story and brings it alive through the use of fast-paced comic skits, like dressing up as a cicada, to explain otherwise complicated concepts, like the cicada's life cycle. He attributes the popularity of his TikTok (which has more than 1 million followers) in part to his team's ability to keep up with TikTok trends such as viral sounds and hashtags. It also helps, he joked, that he was "so cool." After answering student questions, Jorgenson offered the advice to be a team player in any journalism newsroom setting because when people understand your capabilities, they trust you with creating the "next big thing."

—Noah Zeitlin

Journalists and married couple Taffy and Claude Brodesser-Akner visited via Zoom on Sept. 27 to share their wisdom with the students in Josh Wolk's Arts Journalism course. Taffy is an award-winning journalist and author, who has worked for GQ and The New York Times and is known for her celebrity profiles. Her husband, Claude, is a multimedia journalist, who has experience as a podcaster and politics writer.

They advised journalism students to prioritize listening during interviews, especially when asking tough questions. Sitting in silence and waiting for your interviewee to respond might feel awkward, they said, but it's worth it in the end. Taffy is known for maintaining a strong voice in her writing, but she noted the importance of restraint and not being gratuitous when showing personality in your prose. They both agreed that journalism is not a place for ego.

—Anna Nappi

“Try to figure out why you’re doing what you’re doing,” Swati Sharma told the students in Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism for the 21st Century course on March 16. “If you figure that out, it’ll guide you in all of the hurdles and decisions you have to make.” This was the life-changing career advice that Sharma, the new editor-in-chief of Vox, discovered for herself years ago. That advice has shaped her career ever since. Sharma began her journey studying politics, not intending to go into journalism at all. But a couple of college internships changed that, she began to pursue work as a journalist in full force. She quickly climbed the ladder, moving from The Boston Globe to The Washington Post to The Atlantic, where she served as managing editor, before being named editor-in-chief of Vox, a leading network of explanatory journalism. Sharma described her “why” as the belief that ignorance is the cause for most of society’s evils. Her work in journalism, accordingly, aims to shed light on issues many are ignorant of and thus reach a wide range of people in a powerful, lasting way.

—Gavi Klein

Dr. Allissa Richardson — author of Bearing Witness While Black: Smartphones, African Americans, and the New Protest #Journalism —gave her advice for forging a successful but balanced journalism career. During her talk with students in the Reinventing Journalism course on April 8, Richardson advised students to find purpose in their writing, and to lean into it even in the face of racial violence and other trauma. “Never stop writing,” she said. It can be extremely therapeutic. “If you write it down,” she said, “you only have to say it once.” She also recommended checking in “on your strong friends.” Even if they appear to be doing fine, they may well be hurting and in need of support. She said the burdens of trauma can be especially heavy for journalists of color, and she encouraged journalists to pay attention to their own mental health. Richardson, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is writing a new book called, Canceled: How Smartphones and Social Media Democratized Public Shaming.

—Noah Zeitlin

“I was really interested in helping communicate how really complicated things work” Alvin Chang, The Guardian’s senior data reporter, told students in the Reinventing Journalism course. Chang found his speciality in data visualization through a long, winding path in journalism, beginning with a job writing about hockey for ESPN. Although he didn’t come into the job knowing much about hockey, he learned how to use data to distinguish his work. Through his stints in various newsrooms, a passion emerged: communicating complicated ideas simply. Chang, who previously worked at Vox producing viral explainer videos, constructs his work by imagining his audience. “I often think about my mom … what can I do to get her to understand things that are relatively complex?” Chang said. He said he wants to make information accessible, and he knows it can be.

—Dara Goldfein

Growing up, Akilah Johnson thought she wanted to study STEM but discovered relatively late her aptitude for writing. While her journey to becoming a respected journalist might seem natural, she explained to Professor Neil Swidey’s Science Journalism and the Pandemic course, she has actually traveled a nonlinear path. Johnson is now a national reporter at The Washington Post, covering health disparities at the intersection of race, medicine, politics and immigration. Johnson said she hopes readers walk away from her articles feeling challenged and having learned something new. She advises future journalists to know their “superpower,” and she recounted how she used her knowledge of hip-hop music and the Miami club scene to make herself invaluable to more experienced colleagues in her first newsroom job as a low-ranking editorial assistant. She encouraged students to avoid limiting themselves to one specific beat or title, urging them to explore diverse topics and uncover truths about under-explored issues. “Everyone should feel comfortable making a left turn in their path,” she said, “because they will end up at the right place eventually.”

—Nicolas St Cloud

For a group of journalism students, Lisa Tuite offers the ultimate insight into finding the facts that blossom into important news stories. Tuite worked at The Boston Globe library for nearly four decades, heading the department for 25 of those years. In her talk with Brandeis students in both of Neil Swidey’s courses on Feb. 23, Tuite discussed the importance of research in journalism and how to implement different research tools. While a Google search may be a great jumping-off point to a story, Tuite recommends premium databases like Nexis Uni, which Brandeis students have free access to. She walked students through the process of conducting productive database searches, and she reminded them that, even in our digital age, there is still great value in real-world archives. She put her research prowess to work on many of the Globe’s highest-profile projects over the years, most notably the Spotlight investigation into clergy sex abuse. And she discussed the surreal nature of seeing an actress play her in the Academy Award-winning movie Spotlight.

—Claire Kiewra

In life and in the field of journalism, listening is essential to learning, Ann Scales told Brandeis journalism students in the Science Journalism and the Pandemic course on Feb. 18. Scales is a former Boston Globe editor and Washington correspondent who is now the Director of Media Relations for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. She has served as the director for several years, but her role shifted tremendously in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic as the messages she gave the public became more urgent than ever. Scales told students, whether you are a journalist or a scientist, you must make things comprehensible, and you must be interested in what people have to say. In all aspects of life, you will benefit from caring about other human beings and the stories they have to tell you. “You listen,” she said, “and you tell the truth.”

—Emerson White

In March, Emmy-award winning news producer Gabrielle Schonder led a discussion with students in Ann Silvio’s course Truth, Fact and Research in Journalism. Schonder discussed her recent Frontline documentary “American Carnage,” the inside story of how Trump's presidency laid the groundwork for an insurrection at the US Capitol. Students also studied Schonder's raw interviews with political figures like Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon to understand her strategies for finding the truth in political interviews with public figures. The class considered the merits of Frontline's transparency project, an effort to provide viewers with interactive raw transcripts (such as Schonder's interview with Central Park Five defendant Yusef Salaam). Students engaged in a discussion of adversarial broadcast interviews with a focus on Schonder's groundbreaking report “Insiders,” a 60 Minutes investigation of members of Congress who trade on insider information. The story was referenced by President Obama in his 2012 State of the Union speech and resulted in a bipartisan bill called The STOCK Act.

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, countries around the world have implemented different measures to combat the spread of the virus. Swedish journalist Amina Manzoor spoke to students in the Science Journalism and the Pandemic class about Sweden’s seemingly more relaxed response to the pandemic, referred to as “the Swedish Experiment.” Manzoor discussed both the fallout from Sweden’s approach and the distorted reporting about it. Mostly lost in the coverage, she pointed out, was the fact that Swedish public health authorities worked to protect older, more vulnerable residents. If the government’s main goal truly had been to achieve herd immunity, she said, they wouldn’t have enacted protections for the elderly. She also discussed how the spread of disinformation through a private Swedish Facebook group called the Mewas decreased public confidence in the government’s public health advice. From her experience in science reporting and her expertise on pandemics, Manzoor stressed that “in every story, [one] has to explain what is uncertain...People want information.” Manzoor, who is now a medical columnist for the Swedish newspaper Expressen, is working on a book that synthesizes her insights about the pandemic.

—Roshni Ray

In March, New York Times correspondent Anne Barnard visited the Truth, Fact and Research in Journalism course. Barnard led coverage of the war in Syria for six years as the Beirut bureau chief before moving onto coverage of the environment and the impact of climate change. At Brandeis, she discussed the best practices for accuracy as a foreign correspondent based on her decades of reporting from Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Syria. Students prepared by reading Barnard's work as well as stories by her colleague, the late Anthony Shadid, who was known for his compassionate and diligent reporting practices. Examples of her work include her articles, “From Syrian Rubble to German Concert Halls With a Piano, a Mission and Survivor’s Guilt” and “Inside Syria’s Secret Torture Prisons: How Bashar al-Assad Crushed Dissent.”

Whether working in old media or new media, Anne Korblut told students, let curiosity be your guide. Kornblut, the Vice President of Global Curation for Facebook, spoke to Neil Swidey’s Reinventing Journalism class on March 23. After getting to know the students a bit and polling them about their media consumption, Kornblut described her journey, from a breaking news reporter at the New York Daily News covering tragedy and mayhem, to the deputy national editor for The Washington Post working on high-profile investigations, to her current position at Facebook. She emphasized the importance of local news as the lifeblood of communities, and she described her work at Facebook to help support small news outlets. She also discussed the challenges of trying to root out misinformation. Kornblut advised students interested in journalism to familiarize themselves with the business and technological sides of the profession. They don’t have to become expert coders, she said, but they should try to learn enough about coding so they can talk intelligently with the techies they’ll be working with. Because the media world is changing so rapidly, it will be essential for journalists to have the multifaceted skills to adapt.

—Maddy DuLong

“Look for the gaps. Find the things your friends don’t want you to talk about – then write about that.” That was the advice of sports journalist, longform newsletter editor and podcaster Jacob Feldman, who spoke in April to the Reinventing Journalism class. Feldman began his journalism career as a fact-checker at Sports Illustrated, though he quickly moved into a full writing role. Then, when the magazine started a weekly NFL newsletter, Feldman leveraged his experience running newsletters in college into taking charge. Feldman, who covers the intersection of sports, tech and media for Sportico, says he’s still a passionate sports fan. It’s just that now it’s mostly for sports he doesn’t cover – for example, he recently fell deep into the world of curling. Much of the talk focused on Feldman’s other role as editor and cofounder of the weekly newsletter the Sunday Long Read. That all came about when he was still a senior in college and connected with noted journalist Don Van Natta Jr. over Twitter, answering Van Natta’s call for someone who had experience producing newsletters. Since then, the Sunday Long Read has become an important aggregator and curator of long-form journalism, but Feldman says that persuading people to want to read long form isn’t his goal. Instead, he said he focuses on helping those who already want to read long pieces but are blocked by the barrier to entry. “The internet’s a big place” he said, “you don’t need to convince a million people.” In the Sunday Long Read, he helped Van Natta find a gap and they filled it, and turned that into success. He encouraged students to find their own niche. “What do you wish you could read more of?” he asked. That’s where you should start.

—Ellis Zehnder

Patricia Wen, editor for the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team, joined Neil Swidey’s Science Journalism and the Pandemic class in April to discuss how to cover complex medical stories with care, rigor and humanity. “You don’t just write a story because it’s titillating or fascinating or whatever, it’s for the public good,” Wen told the class. She and Swidey discussed a series they wrote together about what can happen when doctors working at the frontier of medicine disagree about a diagnosis. The story, about a teenager named Justina Pelletier, revealed how dramatically these medical disagreements can escalate, in this case leading to a custody battle pitting the girl’s parents against Boston Children’s Hospital and the state child welfare system. As an editor for the Spotlight Team, Wen offered much of her advice to students from the vantage point of investigative journalism. And yet, she said, “The truth is all journalists are investigative reporters.” She stressed the importance of balancing aggressive curiosity with the forethought to check one’s own biases. “At the end of the day, your goal is to tell the truth as best you can see it.”

—Addison Antanoff

“My best advice to you is delete all your tweets,” Kate Nocera, news desk editor for Axios and former Washington Bureau chief for Buzzfeed News, told students in the Reinventing Journalism course on April 1. Asked whether social media has had a positive or negative impact on journalism, Nocera said that while she initially thought that social media had a positive impact, years of working in the field convinced her of the latter. “Normally humans make mistakes, and if you make a mistake on the internet, it’s forever and people won’t let you forget,” Nocera said. When Nocera spoke about journalism trends, she mentioned the power of the Trump phenomenon in attracting attention for journalists. With Trump gone, she said, journalism sites are seeing a dramatic decrease in traffic. “Journalists were riding high for four years,” Nocera said. “That’s not a joke when Donald Trump said ‘I’m really good for you.’ It was true; he was good for a lot of individual journalists, and he was good for the industry.” But, she said, that's not the same as being good for our democracy.

—Jolie Newman

Science isn’t absolute, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrustworthy. Dr. Richard Young discussed the challenges underlying such uncertainty with the Science Journalism and the Pandemic class on April 22. Young is a noted geneticist, a professor of biology at MIT, and a member of the Whitehead Institute. He has served as an advisor to the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health. Young said that questions in science are continually being reframed to produce more complex answers, which has taught him to be wary of making definitive statements prematurely. He said there is often a “neglected point of view” or alternative hypothesis that can call previous conclusions into question. “One of the things you discover as you get older and more experienced is that things you passionately believed were true are called into question with more data -- more often than you wish,” he said. This dynamism excites Young; it shows the scientific method at work.

—Nikki Dagen

JP Olsen, most recently the Director of Original Programming at HBO, discussed innovation in journalism with the Reinventing Journalism class on April 22. With an eclectic career as an award-winning documentary filmmaker, reporter, composer and journalism instructor, Olsen advised students to first focus on their ability to tell a story well, using the tools at their disposal. But he stressed that journalists really distinguish themselves with their sensibility. He encouraged the students to hone their taste, reading widely, consuming a variety of sources, and being invested in the world. (Or as he put it: “Be part of the I Care Club.”) Asked if people respond to documentaries differently from written news stories, Olsen pointed out that “visual mediums run hotter than print.” A documentary showing the melting of the polar ice caps, he said, would typically be more effective than a written story, because you can show them melting. That said, he added, “print is the superior medium for nuanced thinking.” That’s why he is a fan, consumer and producer of both forms.

After years of reporting on the dystopian North Korea regime, journalist Blaine Harden published Escape from Camp 14. To his surprise, the book became a global sensation. It was the gripping story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person born in a North Korean prison camp to escape to the West. Shin shot to fame, and his testimony helped launch a United Nations inquiry of North Korea's crimes against humanity. Then, in 2015, Shin recanted parts of his story, admitting to Harden in a tense phone call that he'd lied. "As his biographer, it was a stomach-wrenching revelation," Harden wrote at the time. The whole ordeal changed him, Harden told students during an April visit to Ann Silvio's Truth, Fact, and Research in Journalism class -- both as a journalist and as a human being. What he came to understand is that the field of journalism needs a more informed perspective on the psychological impacts of profound trauma, and how best to report on the often-disjointed accounts of victims.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the President, stressed that knowledgeable reporting allows people to “self-correct” when they are going down the “wrong path,” as it gives readers a new way of seeing the truth. He was joined by Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal for a Brandeis virtual discussion in March moderated by the journalism program director, Neil Swidey. Dr. Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer, spoke about all the good that science journalism has done during the pandemic but said he regretted that the field had been largely “impotent” in stopping the spread of misinformation and disinformation. He shared with the audience a multi-part test for how news consumers can detect pseudoscience. Dr. Rosenthal, the editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, described the dangers to the pandemic response (and our democracy) posed by news deserts — vast swaths of the country that now lack reputable local news outlets. She said Kaiser Health News is working to help bolster local news through its pandemic coverage partnerships. Dr. Fauci emotionally described the sting of seeing anti-science advocates use the government’s shift in guidance on face masks as a way to discredit public guidance overall — he called it “one of the most painful things that I have gone through this past year.” Fauci described the battle between science and anti-science this way: “It’s kind of like a tug of war. Who’s going to win that tug of war?” In addition to drawing a record audience, the webinar attracted a good deal of media coverage. For the full recording of the webinar, go to the Brandeis Journalism events page. For a sampling of media coverage see the Boston Globe as well as Brandeis Now and the Justice.

—Anna Nappi