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The Medill Journalism School and the Cook County District Attorney in Chicago are locked in a legal battle over a murder investigation conducted by Medill students as part of the Innocence Project. The DA has subpoenaed the students' academic records. Medill Dean John Lavine says the students are journalists, protected under the Illinois Shield Law.
Pete Shellem, a reporter for the Central Pennsylvania paper, the Patriot-News, died last week. Shellem was best known for his investigative journalism, which directly led to the freeing of four prisoners serving life sentences for murder. Mike Feeley, Shellem's editor at the paper, recalls Shellem's accomplished career.
A recent report from the Columbia School of Journalism included a half dozen ideas for how to salvage the Fourth Estate. One in particular – that local news outlets be allowed to apply for government-funded grants – prompted many skeptical responses. Leonard Downie, former executive editor of The Washington Post and co-author of the report, reacts to the reaction.
Online content provider Demand Media has found a formula, literally, for generating its many, often instructional, articles and videos. Think of it as a cut-rate Associated Press, except instead of human beings thinking up story ideas an algorithm does. Wired magazine’s Daniel Roth explains.
The story of 16 year-old Chicago student Derrion Albert being beaten to death outside his high school became a national story after video surfaced of the beating. The video is horrifying even in today’s violence-soaked media landscape. Fox Chicago was the first outlet to acquire the footage and news director Carol Fowler explains why it was their journalistic duty to air it.
Is our fear of biotechnology impeding the scientific progress we once revered? Michael Specter thinks so. In his new book Denialism, Specter says irrational thinking has led the opposition of vaccines and genetically modified food. The internet and the news media aren’t helping either.
When Vladimir Nabokov died he left explicit instructions to burn his unfinished novel. But The Original of Laura will be published this month. Slate's Ron Rosenbaum, a huge Nabokov fan (and perhaps one of the reasons why the book will be published), says he's conflicted about whether publishing is the right decision.
Highlights from Past Shows
For 10 years, music execs have waged a war against digital file sharing -- and software like Napster and websites like The Pirate Bay -- which have decimated the industry’s profits. But recently, there are signs from Europe that the battle over free music may be changing.
That the war in Afghanistan is getting attention at all right now from the media is downright surprising. Forgotten, undercovered and just plain ignored, coverage of the war there filled only about one percent of the news hole in 2008. But, as PEJ associate director Mark Jurkowitz explains, there’s been a sea change.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
