(Columbia University/Wikimedia Commons)

With the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism recently hiring a new dean, media critics have been turning their eyes on journalism schools to postulate once again about whether or not elite programs help graduates get employed. Though many major media outlets like Gannett have laid off thousands of employees in the last 10 years, an article published by Crain’s New York suggests that the people who are actually getting hired are coming out of top journalism schools.

Looking at Columbia specifically, the article says that in 2012, 74 percent of a 354-person class had some kind of internship or minimal employment lined up before graduating. In 2006, only 52 percent were in that position. Other schools, such as the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, have seen similar improvements.

“That’s in part because of happy things, like our graduates are very talented and skilled,” Nicholas Lemann, the outgoing dean at Columbia, told Craig’s, “and in part unhappy things, like a 27-year-old coming out of this school is more desirable in the labor force than a 55-year-old who doesn’t have any digital skills.”

x_jamesmorris/Flickr/Creative Commons License

With so much attention given to social media and online community engagement, it’s easy to forget about the media’s capacity to foster something a little more old-fashioned: live, in-person conversations. As it turns out, the newly popular “community engagement manager” position is one of the rare growth spots in the industry. And various mainstream to digital-only media outlets — from St. Louis Beacon’s “Beacon & Eggs” to Berkelyside’s Three Michael’s to Public Insight Network members — are focusing on in-person meet-ups and forums.

At Alhambra Source, a local news site in a predominantly immigrant community with a goal of increasing civic engagement, we’ve found that connecting with residents in person is as important as producing original stories for the site. As an extension of that process — and to give feedback to participants in our young adult training program — we wanted to lead a forum in the languages of our community.

Easier said than done.

Speaking about sensitive issues such as inter-racial relationships or immigration is hard enough when the community speaks one language. When a quarter of the residents live in households where no adult speaks English well it is almost impossible.

In Alhambra — a city of 85,000 where there are more than four languages that a significant portion of the community speaks — the local schools cope by having automatic translation at meetings and translators on call most of the time.

For our event, we wanted immigrant residents not only to be able to receive information, but to actually have the opportunity for discussion. To do this, we collaborated with Asian Pacific American Legal Center, an advocacy organization that works with immigrant families and youth. Their organizers had experience doing both direct translation and small group discussions. They provided us with U.N.-style audio devices, gave us some guidance on leading the discussion, and mobilized many of the families they work with to come to the event.

The night of the forum we set up five tables in a local church with designated Spanish and Mandarin translators, a youth reporter and a moderator at each one.

Seventy people filled the room –- arriving early and catching us not quite ready. They were as diverse as the city itself: a police sergeant, teachers affiliated with Alhambra Latino Association, a local author, a Chinese blogger, students and stay-at-home moms. Each chose one of the five tables with a designated issue to discuss.

As an introduction, the young people shared a personal issue they had experienced coming of age in an immigrant community — navigating American-style relationships when your parents had an arranged marriage in India, suffering teasing as a recent immigrant from Cuba, and eating tamales at home while getting addicted to fries at school. The non-English speakers put on their headsets for the presentation, and two volunteers translated into Spanish and Mandarin.

Next, the youth reporters led the discussions about the issue they outlined at the five tables with the help of moderators and translators. And, almost miraculously, five simultaneous discussions emerged in multiple languages.

At one table Irma Uc, a part-time community college student, lead a sprawling discussion in four languages on school nutrition. A mother shared in Mandarin how her son had to take two physical education classes back to back because he could not speak English well. At the other end of the table, another mother shared in Spanish about how her kids did not like that Chinese foods were served in the schools.

“Once it started, it was a blur for me,” Irma recalled.

It was complicated, and sometimes the conversations sidetracked, but it was not Babel. People did exchange thoughts and experiences, the conversation flowing via translators into English, and in turn into Vietnamese, Spanish, and Mandarin.

“For some bizarre reason the conversation flowed easily,” Irma said. “The parents that were there really enjoyed the conversation and they also enjoyed listening in other people’s stories. And this is where the language barrier faded.”

When the event was over, we received one overwhelming criticism: The discussions were too short. Participants said the highlight was the opportunity to address common issues from different perspectives with neighbors with whom you could not usually communicate.

Here are a few more of the lessons we learned:

• Assess your translators’ skills.

  If you are going to do instantaneous translation, then make sure the translator is up to the task. Without pauses from the presenters, this can be extremely challenging, and nothing kills a discussion faster than not understanding. For group discussions, there is more leeway.

• Document the event.

  As a media outlet, the objective was not only to engage residents in conversation, but also to identify new issues and stories. Two L.A.-based media outlets that often hold forums, Zocalo and Southern California Public Radio, record events and post them on their sites. This works for a presentation with one microphone but is hard with the simultaneous smaller group discussions. We’re still looking for a way to document those exchanges, since they provided some of the most valuable elements of the evening.

• Provide food if you want busy parents to come.

  Our partners at Asian Pacific American Legal Center, who have a lot of experience with community organizing, made clear that if we want people to come, then there needed to be food – and it could not just be pizza.

• Provide child care if you want busy parents to come.

  We did not anticipate parents would bring children — or how distracting those rambunctious kids would be. If we did it again, we would have a designated babysitter.

• Partner with an organization with established relationships in the community.

  If you want people who do not speak English well to be part of your discussion, you have to have established relationships with them. Our site, while it contains multilingual content, is English dominant. We turned to local organizations to help make that connection — Asian Pacific American Legal Center was a great partner in our case. Another option is to work with local ethnic press and hold the forum in partnership.

• Control in-language conversations.

  If you have multiple languages, people will tend to go into side discussions by language, which is faster and easier than waiting for translation. You need a strong moderator to bring the conversation back to a central point, if you are truly going to have a multilingual discussion.

A version of this story appeared on Good.is.

Herman Cain, former Republican presidential nominee (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)

Twitter’s rapid-fire capabilities and its character limitations often make for regrettable outbursts and narrow-minded generalities, especially when it comes to race in media and politics. Eric Deggans at Poynter suggests that the medium limits — maybe even distorts — the discussion of such topics, especially when tempers heat up.

In one Tweet, Tim Graham of Newsbusters.org and Media Research Center wrote, “MSNBC touting Karen Finney as another African-American host. Would the average viewer be able to guess that? Or is Boehner a shade more tan?” For Deggans, the comment smacked of an old school notion of diversity in the newsroom and “whether a media outlet will ‘get credit’ for a person of color who doesn’t resemble what some expect black and brown people to look like.”

In another Tweet, the deeply conservative musician Charlie Daniels wrote, “Funny how if you say something against Herman Cain you’re a genius If you say something against Barack Obama you’re a racist.” Deggans’ take was that the comment implies all black politicians are the same, regardless of political record.

The foot-in-mouth virus of Twitter is probably not surprising to many of its users, though. One commenter even responded:

“I understand your frustration at the reactions to your tweets, but that does not explain how Twitter was limited in this circumstance. The only thing I read is that you received a deluge of responses from Mr. Grahams followers. I have often seen this happen in comment sections to stories, so I don’t think it is something unique to twitter.”

The two men in charge. (Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia Commons)

James Goodale, the chief counsel to The New York Times when the paper published the Pentagon Papers, says that the Obama administration has been more restrictive of the First Amendment than any other president in history, even Richard Nixon. In his new book, Fighting for the Press, Goodale implores journalists to put pressure on Obama, who he believes gets a free pass a Republican president wouldn’t get from the press.

In a conversation with the Columbia Journalism Review, Goodale points to the administration’s use of the 1917 Espionage Act to sedate American journalism. “The biggest challenge to the press today is the threatened prosecution of WikiLeaks, and it’s absolutely frightening,” he said. During Obama’s two terms, the Espionage Act has been used to prosecute more alleged leakers than all former presidential offices combined.

Goodale said journalists don’t seem to consider this much of a problem. “They don’t believe it,” he told CJR. “I actually have talked to two investigative reporters who are household names, and I said, ‘Do you realize what’s happening to you if this goes forward?’ And I talk, I get no response, and the subject shifts to other parts of the book. No one seems to care.”

AP logo (Associated Press/Wikimedia Commons)

On Tuesday, the Associated Press announced a change to its stylebook indicating that its writers should no longer use the term “illegal immigrant” to refer to someone living in a country illegally. The change affects more than just A.P. staffers. Many journalism outlets and independent writers depend on the Associated Press Stylebook to set the standard for terminology and punctuation ethics in the craft.

According to Jim Romenesko, senior vice president and executive editor Kathleen Carroll said that the term “illegal” “should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

Carroll said the decision came after extensive discussions including people “from many walks of life,” which caused them to realize their acceptance of “illegal immigrant” was imprecise and not consistent with their standards for other topics like mental health issues, which require writers to use credibly sourced diagnoses instead of labels.

“Will the new guidance make it harder for writers?” Carroll asked. “Perhaps just a bit at first. But while labels may be more facile, they are not accurate.”

(Bluemarine/Wikimedia Commons)

As USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism looks for a new journalism director, Columbia’s Graduate Journalism School hired former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll to lead. Though some have criticized Coll for taking a job sculpting tomorrow’s journalists having never tweeted once in his life, The New York Times’ David Carr wrote a positive appraisal of Coll in which he calls the Pulitzer-winner a Dumbledore to Columbia’s Hogwarts.

Carr, the Times’ media columnist, suggests that Twitter isn’t central to journalism (“my boss likes to point out that I tweet constantly but Twitter never sends me a check”). He also argues that Coll definitely has a knack for thinking ahead, evidenced by an early plan to equip reporters with portable cameras, which Carr made fun of at the time.

“I think the great digital journalism of our age has yet to be created,” Coll told Carr. “The cohort that is at Columbia now is the one that will be making the journalism that is going to shape our democracy; working on mining data sets, creating video that is not 2012, coming up with much more powerful ways of accruing and displaying information.”

“We just would look at the board and say, ‘We already have too many white men. We can’t have more.’ Really that was it,” Hayes said. “Always, constantly just counting. Monitoring the diversity of the guests along gender lines, and along race and ethnicity lines. A general rule is if there are four people sitting at table, only two of them can be white men.”

They also make up for shows when they can’t book fewer than three white men. Hayes also said that the increased diversity of the guests inevitably increases the diversity of the subject matter discussed on the show, pushing him further away from the television news status quo.

While diversity remains a passive-aggressive issue with the media, Hayes’ primetime show keeps it simple by realizing there’s no difficult secret to avoiding a monopoly of white dudes.

(daodeqing/Flickr Creative Commons)

These are the glory days of American journalism. Never before have we had access to the variety and depth of information we have now, and never with such immediate availability. So says Matthew Yglesias of Slate in a post debunking any notion that the struggles of print media reflect a larger cancer growing in the heart of the field.

His piece comes in the wake of Pew’s latest State of the Media Report, which he says “makes no mention of the Web’s speed, range, and depth, or indeed any mention at all of audience access to information as an important indicator of the health of journalism.”

He writes: “[The Pew results are] a blinkered outlook that confuses the interests of producers with those of consumers, confuses inputs with outputs, and neglects the single most important driver of human welfare—productivity. Just as a tiny number of farmers now produce an agricultural bounty that would have amazed our ancestors, today’s readers have access to far more high-quality coverage than they have time to read.”

Yglesias takes us through his rich process of reading up on current events, showing how readers can build on breaking news by following links and recommendations towards in-depth features and even books written on the subject. Digital media also allows journalists more tools for crafting stories and presenting complex information at a much quicker pace.

“In other words, any individual journalist working today can produce much more than our predecessors could in 1978. And the audience can essentially read all of our output. Not just today’s output either. Yesterday’s and last week’s and last month’s and last year’s and so forth. To the extent that the industry is suffering, it’s suffering from a crisis of productivity.”

A newsroom on Sunday. Are more newsrooms starting to look like this on weekdays? (Credit: Alan Cleaver/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Newsroom staffs have dipped to their lowest levels since 1978, while audiences abandon once-trusted media outlets, which are no longer providing the news and information they want, according to the latest doom-and-gloom report on the journalism industry.

Newsroom cutbacks in 2012 reduced the industry by 30 percent since its peak in 2000, leaving fewer than 40,000 full-time professional employees, according to the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media report for 2013.

The effects of these cutbacks on the news product are similarly dramatic. Sports, weather, and traffic now equal 40 percent of the content on local television news, and stories are getting shorter. Cable outlets have reduced their live coverage by 30 percent because of diminished crews, while live interview time has increased to fill the gap.

Meanwhile, more news outlets are turning to computer-generated journalism using algorithms from Narrative Science to transform data into stories.

Read the full report»

(Time Warner/Wikimedia Commons)

The widespread criticism of CNN’s coverage of the Steubenville rape convictions highlights the deeply problematic ways most mainstream American media outlets approached the story, according to Mallary Jean Tenore at Poynter. On Monday, a petition asking CNN to apologize for its coverage of the Steubenville convictions–which many saw as apologetic for the rapists–gained more than 30,000 signatures on Change.org.

(SEE MORE: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC Air Name Of Steubenville Rape Victim)

Tenore’s post shows how, given the limited access the media had to information about the victim, the narrative surrounding the suspects became increasingly warped. She argues that many journalists lost sight of the important complexities of the story and its implications on “rape culture.”

“There’s no doubt that covering rape is difficult,” Tenore says. “[I]t takes time and resources to report on the nuances of the crime, offer context about how common rape is, and explore both sides of the story. But that’s exactly the kind of reporting we need more of.”

Many have said that if it hadn’t been for the efforts of bloggers and the hacker activist group Anonymous, it’s possible the rape allegations may have never been investigated. The New York Times profiled the efforts of blogger Alexandria Goddard, who grew up in Steubenville and helped piece together much of the social media constellation that became crucial in identifying suspects.

Tenore’s Poynter post also showcases Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel, who analyzed the football team’s influence in the town where “a culture of extreme arrogance collapse[d] in two tearful rape convictions.”

(SEE MORE: Gawker’s post railing against CNN’s interest in the “promising futures” of the rapists.)