Out and About at Medill with Newton Minow and Rick Tulsky

We were honored to attend the April 29 celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Newton Minow’s monumental “Vast Wasteland” speech. The event was hosted by John Lavine, dean of the Medill School of Journalism. Minow, who delivered the 1961 stem-winder as a young director of the Federal Communications Commission, implored industry leaders to provide high quality content. “Broadcasting cannot continue to live by the numbers,” he said. “Ratings ought to be the slave of the broadcaster, not his master.” A text of the speech can be found here. Minow, now a highly respected Chicago attorney, has updated his philosophy on broadcasting and technology in the April edition of Atlantic magazine. The April Atlantic issue also includes a commentary by James Fallows on the impact of Minow.

At Medill, we also met with one of our new grantees, Rick Tulsky. The former investigations editor of the San Jose Mercury News has been hired as director of Medill’s new watchdog/accountability initiative. We expect big things from Tulsky and his team of student journalism sleuths as they identify “systemic flaws in government and public institutions and empowering citizens with the kind of knowledge that leads to change.”

Read the full story

Grantee Spotlight: Y-Press and Radio Arte Collaborate on Youth Reporting Project

Y-Press and Radio Arte kicked off a year-long collaborative investigative journalism project with an hour-long session at WBEZ this past Thursday with education reporter Linda Lutton. High school students from youth media groups Y-Press and Radio Arte interviewed Linda about covering Chicago Public Schools and learned interviewing and storytelling tips and techniques.
Lutton told the group that her, “favorite radio pieces explore a little curious piece of a bigger question.” She suggested that they focus on something they find interesting and then investigate it and get kids to talk about it.”

Her advice to the group clearly supports one of the project’s end-products – the creation of an online story content development tool that can help youth-media producers narrow a story idea and find that curious piece of a bigger question. The tool will have national distribution and be marketed by GenPRX, a group designed to support youth radio groups by sharing ideas, strategies and materials online.

In addition through the reporting done in Chicago and Indianapolis, young people from different backgrounds and youth-media experiences are coming together to strengthen each organization’s core journalism. Through topic selection and then narrowing for each city and then by reporting and producing the pieces together, they can learn each organization’s news-gathering process.

Hearing from a seasoned education reporter, Lutton’s briefing grounded the group and provided first-hand experience.

In Chicago, the group is investigating innovations in education and explored the following topics:

o How to engage students in the learning process

o How problem schools have found innovative ways to increase graduation rates

o How to improve hostile learning climates

o How a young person is involved in the choice of his or her school

The young journalists will distribute the stories locally and through PRX, a public media network.

Next week, Radio Arte students will visit their fellow Y-Press reporters in Indianapolis and explore stories about diversity and immigrant communities in the city.

Each group has its own style, but this partnership will investigate new ways to tell stories, share sound-gathering techniques and expertise and produce stories for a wider audience that amplify each others’ cultural experiences and resonate nationally.

*Thank you to Y-Press for contributing to this post.

Read the full story

Journalism Program Grantee Map

We've created a map of our current grantees to help connect them to others who may be doing similar work and to share the impact and contributions they've made. Navigate the map below for information on these projects.


View full screen map

Read the full story