It's All Journalism

WASHINGTON - Photojournalist Tom Kennedy got the bug for taking pictures when he was young. He became so good at it, Kennedy made eventually chose a career capturing pivotal moments in news history.

Kennedy spent his career at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post and National Geographic Magazine.

His professional life has seen sweeping changes as far as technology advancements in digital photography, photo editing capabilities and photo sharing. And with an eagerness to learn each merging tool, he understands the momentous shift multimedia storytelling has made in news presentation.

"I feel like we're very much on the front end of this kind of storytelling. I know there are examples of projects out there that reflect people's efforts to come to grips with what the technology is now affording us and how to tell a different story," Kennedy says.

While he dabbles in Instagram (he usually avoids filters,) Kennedy is more interested with how a digital format enables a different kind of visual storytelling. No longer is there only room for one photograph per article. Photographers can create a photo narrative â€" which changes the editorial approach to an assignment.

Kennedy is currently freelancing and will return to teach at American University in the spring.

WASHINGTON - Photojournalist Tom Kennedy got the bug for taking pictures when he was young. He became so good at it, Kennedy made eventually chose a career capturing pivotal moments in news history.

Kennedy spent his career at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post and National Geographic Magazine.

His professional life has seen sweeping changes as far as technology advancements in digital photography, photo editing capabilities and photo sharing. And with an eagerness to learn each merging tool, he understands the momentous shift multimedia storytelling has made in news presentation.

"I feel like we're very much on the front end of this kind of storytelling. I know there are examples of projects out there that reflect people's efforts to come to grips with what the technology is now affording us and how to tell a different story," Kennedy says.

While he dabbles in Instagram (he usually avoids filters,) Kennedy is more interested with how a digital format enables a different kind of visual storytelling. No longer is there only room for one photograph per article. Photographers can create a photo narrative â€" which changes the editorial approach to an assignment.

Kennedy is currently freelancing and will return to teach at American University in the spring.

During his 44-year career at The Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. oversaw many important investigative stories, from the Watergate break-ins to mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

When Downie stepped down after a 17-year stint as The Post's executive editor in 2006, one might think he would retire and leave journalism behind. Instead, he has continued to give back to the media industry through various foundations and journalism organizations.

With Sara Rafsky, Downie recently wrote a special report for the Committee to Protect Journalists detailing a lack of transparency within the Obama administration.

As a Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, Downie is one of the instructors at News21, an initiative started by the Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation to promote professional training at several journalism schools around the country.

A new seminar takes place each spring, in which a group of advanced students receives instructions in intestigative reporting techniques and plan a multimedia project to be posted online later in the year. Each project is built around a theme. This year it was veterans returning home from war and the services they receive.

"Next year's topic, which is gun legislation in the state legislatures around the country, another timely topic that the rest of the news media cannot cover adequately enough because they simply don't have the resources that we're going to have," Downie said. "We're probably going to have 26 reporters all across the country, a number of the them at the Cronkite School, but a number of them, at least 20, at other universities literally from coast to coast, from Florida to Oregon. They'll all participate in the spring seminar by teleconference, during which we will do research for the project."

News21's 2013 project â€" Back Home: The Enduring Battles Facing Post 9/11 Veteransâ€" contains 26 stories and more than 50 multimedia pieces, ranging from photos, videos to a 26-minute television documentary produced by the students in the program.

"We launch our own website that has everything on it and then all of our partners can use whatever they want to use, which they did last year through September and October," Downie said.

Part of the goal of News21 is to supplement the coverage of news organizations that don't have the resources to conduct such a large-scale investigative project.

"The main goal is to prepare these young journalists â€" and sometimes not so young journalists that come back to school â€" for work," Downie said. "They're already the best in the country. We're able to select the best in the country. It's a national competition. They learn an awful lot during the experience."

Char Garland, an older student with an interest in business journalism, has been a veteran since 2002. When heard about the topic of this year's News21 project, he knew he had to get involved.

"I knew when I was applying that I was one of the few people that had veteran's experience," Garland said. He used that experience to become an investigative reporter, focusing on charities that were not what they professed to be.

This type of project, where journalism education intersects with professional training, is something Downie thinks more journalism schools ought to be doing, not only to help their students but to foster the future of investigative reporting.

"There are still a relative minority of journalism schools engaged in this kind of professional journalism with state news agencies as some schools have," he said. "The Cronkite School has a Washington bureau for all the news media in Arizona, staffed by students. American University...

During his 44-year career at The Washington Post, Leonard Downie Jr. oversaw many important investigative stories, from the Watergate break-ins to mismanagement at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

When Downie stepped down after a 17-year stint as The Post's executive editor in 2006, one might think he would retire and leave journalism behind. Instead, he has continued to give back to the media industry through various foundations and journalism organizations.

With Sara Rafsky, Downie recently wrote a special report for the Committee to Protect Journalists detailing a lack of transparency within the Obama administration.

As a Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, Downie is one of the instructors at News21, an initiative started by the Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation to promote professional training at several journalism schools around the country.

A new seminar takes place each spring, in which a group of advanced students receives instructions in intestigative reporting techniques and plan a multimedia project to be posted online later in the year. Each project is built around a theme. This year it was veterans returning home from war and the services they receive.

"Next year's topic, which is gun legislation in the state legislatures around the country, another timely topic that the rest of the news media cannot cover adequately enough because they simply don't have the resources that we're going to have," Downie said. "We're probably going to have 26 reporters all across the country, a number of the them at the Cronkite School, but a number of them, at least 20, at other universities literally from coast to coast, from Florida to Oregon. They'll all participate in the spring seminar by teleconference, during which we will do research for the project."

News21's 2013 project â€" Back Home: The Enduring Battles Facing Post 9/11 Veteransâ€" contains 26 stories and more than 50 multimedia pieces, ranging from photos, videos to a 26-minute television documentary produced by the students in the program.

"We launch our own website that has everything on it and then all of our partners can use whatever they want to use, which they did last year through September and October," Downie said.

Part of the goal of News21 is to supplement the coverage of news organizations that don't have the resources to conduct such a large-scale investigative project.

"The main goal is to prepare these young journalists â€" and sometimes not so young journalists that come back to school â€" for work," Downie said. "They're already the best in the country. We're able to select the best in the country. It's a national competition. They learn an awful lot during the experience."

Char Garland, an older student with an interest in business journalism, has been a veteran since 2002. When heard about the topic of this year's News21 project, he knew he had to get involved.

"I knew when I was applying that I was one of the few people that had veteran's experience," Garland said. He used that experience to become an investigative reporter, focusing on charities that were not what they professed to be.

This type of project, where journalism education intersects with professional training, is something Downie thinks more journalism schools ought to be doing, not only to help their students but to foster the future of investigative reporting.

"There are still a relative minority of journalism schools engaged in this kind of professional journalism with state news agencies as some schools have," he said. "The Cronkite School has a Washington bureau for all the news media in Arizona, staffed by students. American University...

Jeff Sonderman learned early in his journalism career that you have to keep teaching yourself and finding ways to learn outside the classroom: trying new tools, reading about the latest developments, listening to podcasts.

“That's on you now after you graduate," he said. "There’s less of a sense of ‘I got a degree, I know journalism, I’m good for the rest of my life.’ It’s only going to keep evolving.�

Jeff is the deputy director of the American Press Institute, an educational non-advocacy, nonprofit organization affiliated with the Newspaper Association of America. He is an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, and previously a digital media fellow there. He also teaches digital journalism at Georgetown University.

His early awareness of the limitations of formal training and willingness to experiment have taken him far, far from where he planned to end up.

When Jeff came out of journalism school in 2004, social media didn’t really exist yet. Facebook was Harvard-only. YouTube had another year until it rolled out.

“It's a lot on the fly,� he said. “You come out of j-school after going through two to four years of this really focused preparation process for the world, you think you're entering and suddenly you enter this media world that is changing, that every year or two is shifting drastically from what it was before.�

Jeff went to the Missouri School of Journalism for what was then called the news editorial program, a track that prepared students to write and edit for newspapers.

“I thought I would work my way up to a political reporter in a state capital or at the New York Times at the national desk,� he said.

Instead he landed in Scranton, Pa. He worked as a reporter, city editor and Web editor at The Times-Tribune. He created the paper’s first Twitter account. In 2010, he was recruited to work for TBD.com, a hyperlocal news site that covered the D.C. area.

After years of working as a journalist, Jeff was brought on board at API this year to help build a new version of the institute as a think tank, focused on conducting research, training, convening thought leaders and creating tools for journalists.

“We’re on a quest to help journalism become more sustainable and do better, more innovative projects and make money, which is what we all are into,� he said.

API’s root mission is to protect public service journalism. Jeff likes to tell people that a truly free press is a press that can afford to be sued.

“If somebody wants to sue and claim libel to stop [an organization] from publishing something that they don't want published, there's got to be an institution or some backing that can stand up and say ‘No, we're going to publish this.’�

API is focused on all forms of journalism, but works a lot with newspapers companies, often tackling how to do better work with less resources. A challenge faced by papers of all sizes.

When people think about newspapers, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal come to mind, but there are about 1,300 papers across the U.S., according to Jeff. Only three are papers with national reach.

As this period of transition continues, one of the things Jeff foresees is different markets presenting news in different ways.

“For the past several decades nearly every market looked the same,� he said. “There was one major morning newspaper that had a monopoly. There was maybe an alternative paper, a few TV stations.�

The media landscape is becoming more diverse and more accommodating to the audiences it serves.

“Now, you're starting to see home grown emerging media sources in different places," he said. "In small rural areas in the Northeast there are nonprofit...

Jeff Sonderman learned early in his journalism career that you have to keep teaching yourself and finding ways to learn outside the classroom: trying new tools, reading about the latest developments, listening to podcasts.

“That's on you now after you graduate," he said. "There’s less of a sense of ‘I got a degree, I know journalism, I’m good for the rest of my life.’ It’s only going to keep evolving.�

Jeff is the deputy director of the American Press Institute, an educational non-advocacy, nonprofit organization affiliated with the Newspaper Association of America. He is an adjunct faculty member of The Poynter Institute, and previously a digital media fellow there. He also teaches digital journalism at Georgetown University.

His early awareness of the limitations of formal training and willingness to experiment have taken him far, far from where he planned to end up.

When Jeff came out of journalism school in 2004, social media didn’t really exist yet. Facebook was Harvard-only. YouTube had another year until it rolled out.

“It's a lot on the fly,� he said. “You come out of j-school after going through two to four years of this really focused preparation process for the world, you think you're entering and suddenly you enter this media world that is changing, that every year or two is shifting drastically from what it was before.�

Jeff went to the Missouri School of Journalism for what was then called the news editorial program, a track that prepared students to write and edit for newspapers.

“I thought I would work my way up to a political reporter in a state capital or at the New York Times at the national desk,� he said.

Instead he landed in Scranton, Pa. He worked as a reporter, city editor and Web editor at The Times-Tribune. He created the paper’s first Twitter account. In 2010, he was recruited to work for TBD.com, a hyperlocal news site that covered the D.C. area.

After years of working as a journalist, Jeff was brought on board at API this year to help build a new version of the institute as a think tank, focused on conducting research, training, convening thought leaders and creating tools for journalists.

“We’re on a quest to help journalism become more sustainable and do better, more innovative projects and make money, which is what we all are into,� he said.

API’s root mission is to protect public service journalism. Jeff likes to tell people that a truly free press is a press that can afford to be sued.

“If somebody wants to sue and claim libel to stop from publishing something that they don't want published, there's got to be an institution or some backing that can stand up and say ‘No, we're going to publish this.’�

API is focused on all forms of journalism, but works a lot with newspapers companies, often tackling how to do better work with less resources. A challenge faced by papers of all sizes.

When people think about newspapers, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal come to mind, but there are about 1,300 papers across the U.S., according to Jeff. Only three are papers with national reach.

As this period of transition continues, one of the things Jeff foresees is different markets presenting news in different ways.

“For the past several decades nearly every market looked the same,� he said. “There was one major morning newspaper that had a monopoly. There was maybe an alternative paper, a few TV stations.�

The media landscape is becoming more diverse and more accommodating to the audiences it serves.

“Now, you're starting to see home grown emerging media sources in different places," he said. "In small rural areas in the Northeast there are...

WASHINGTON - Pulling up the rock and seeing what's there is the concept at the heart of investigative reporting. But finding a great funding source, a great backing, for an investigation can be difficult.

Two of our friends, former podcast producer Jolie Lee and former professor at AU, Mishi Ibrahim work at the Investigative Reporting Workshop and find themselves in this position â€" having money to do an investigation! They are working on co-creating an investigative piece for a Showtime/60 Minutes collaboration.

"Years of Living Dangerously is an 8-part, 8-hour series. It's about climate change and putting a human face on climate change and investigating some interesting things that are going on around the world," says Ibrahim.

IRW was approached 2 years ago to be involved in the project and although Ibrahim says they knew it was a big project to take on, they knew it would be worthwhile.

The project is being executive produced by legendary director James Cameron. Ibrahim talks about finding the balance between creating a beautifully shot, high production value project while still making sure it has investigative integrity.

"Our job is to do all the research and plan everything and be prepared for that to be thrown to the wind when we get out in the field," Ibrahim says she tells Lee when preparing for shoots.

The biggest challenge, they say, is finding the characters to follow for a period of time who will allow them to tell the story. In the end, it is a visual product but there has to be the content to support it. They also share their process for investigating a project of this size.

The duo are working with actors who are narrating the piece, major directors and lots of equipment â€" something Lee had little experience with before this.

"It was such an opportunity that just dropped in my lap because I don't have any film or documentary making experience and a huge part of this is production. We're working with all these gadgets I've never worked with. We use dollies, cranes, even drones. It's a whole new world. I think the key is being flexible ... but you're still bringing your journalistic eye to everything you do," Lee says.

Although Ibrahim had her choice of who she wanted as an associate producer, she thought of Lee because of her hard-working reporting background.

"I'm a big believer that you don't have know tho the technology and everything. You just have to be smart," Ibrahim says.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop is housed at American University. You can find them online and the series is expected to be completed in April.

WASHINGTON - Pulling up the rock and seeing what's there is the concept at the heart of investigative reporting. But finding a great funding source, a great backing, for an investigation can be difficult.

Two of our friends, former podcast producer Jolie Lee and former professor at AU, Mishi Ibrahim work at the Investigative Reporting Workshop and find themselves in this position â€" having money to do an investigation! They are working on co-creating an investigative piece for a Showtime/60 Minutes collaboration.

"Years of Living Dangerously is an 8-part, 8-hour series. It's about climate change and putting a human face on climate change and investigating some interesting things that are going on around the world," says Ibrahim.

IRW was approached 2 years ago to be involved in the project and although Ibrahim says they knew it was a big project to take on, they knew it would be worthwhile.

The project is being executive produced by legendary director James Cameron. Ibrahim talks about finding the balance between creating a beautifully shot, high production value project while still making sure it has investigative integrity.

"Our job is to do all the research and plan everything and be prepared for that to be thrown to the wind when we get out in the field," Ibrahim says she tells Lee when preparing for shoots.

The biggest challenge, they say, is finding the characters to follow for a period of time who will allow them to tell the story. In the end, it is a visual product but there has to be the content to support it. They also share their process for investigating a project of this size.

The duo are working with actors who are narrating the piece, major directors and lots of equipment â€" something Lee had little experience with before this.

"It was such an opportunity that just dropped in my lap because I don't have any film or documentary making experience and a huge part of this is production. We're working with all these gadgets I've never worked with. We use dollies, cranes, even drones. It's a whole new world. I think the key is being flexible ... but you're still bringing your journalistic eye to everything you do," Lee says.

Although Ibrahim had her choice of who she wanted as an associate producer, she thought of Lee because of her hard-working reporting background.

"I'm a big believer that you don't have know tho the technology and everything. You just have to be smart," Ibrahim says.

The Investigative Reporting Workshop is housed at American University. You can find them online and the series is expected to be completed in April.

This is the second part of an interview we did with Ben Wikler, a social activist and host of The Flaming Sword of Justice podcast. Wikler got his start in media working for Al Franken, a comedian who now represents Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. You can listen to the first part of this interview here.

Ben Wikler was working in a shared office space for nonprofits in Cambridge, Mass., when Aaron Swartz, a well-known Internet activist best known as the co-founder of Reddit, moved into the room next door.

The pair’s mutual interest in progressive politics and technology led them to become friends and work on launching the talk show that eventually turned into The Flaming Sword of Justice, a podcast that Wikler now runs on his own.Â

“Aaron was one of the most brilliant people in the millennial generation. He was 14 when he helped create RSS. He was one of the co-authors of the RSS specification, which is how websites talk to each other basically,� said Wikler.

Last fall, Swartz committed suicide at the age of 26 while facing criminal charges for hacking into MIT’s network and taking academic articles from a database called JSTOR. He intended to make the articles, which were stored behind a pay wall, free and available to the public online.Â

According to Wikler, Swartz had met academics from other countries who couldn’t afford to pay the subscription fees to JSTOR and had their own academic research hindered because of it. He thought this was an outrage and wanted to make the material more readily available.Â

“He thought if they were making things worse for everybody and he could change them, then he just should,â€? Wikler said.Â

But Swartz was caught downloading millions of academic articles illegally on the MIT campus, a breech that lead to multiple felony charges for him. At the time of his death, Swartz was facing the possibility of 50 years in prison because of his JSTOR hacking, consequences he had never imagined would be on the table.Â

“They set up a security camera and did a whole stakeout. … They chased him down in the middle of the street and arrested him. He was strip searched, and they, like, ransacked his apartment,â€? Wikler said. Â

In spite of the legal charges he was facing, Swartz pushed forward with the show with Wikler. The pair moved to New York City and started working out the activist organization Avaaz’s headquarters.Â

Wikler and Swartz eventually landed a spot on a new radio station broadcasting in Washington, D.C. For five months, they recorded the show every Sunday morning at 8 am in Wikler’s Brooklyn apartment. Unfortunately, as the show progressed, it seemed unclear whether Swartz â€" still facing criminal charges â€" would be able to stay involved moving forward.Â

“The first day that I saw down to start planning out the new show, Aaron committed suicide. So this year has been really hard,â€? said Wikler.Â

“Everything I do that is related to the show, he’s still in the room,â€? he said.Â

This is the second part of an interview we did with Ben Wikler, a social activist and host of The Flaming Sword of Justice podcast. Wikler got his start in media working for Al Franken, a comedian who now represents Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. You can listen to the first part of this interview here.

Ben Wikler was working in a shared office space for nonprofits in Cambridge, Mass., when Aaron Swartz, a well-known Internet activist best known as the co-founder of Reddit, moved into the room next door.

The pair’s mutual interest in progressive politics and technology led them to become friends and work on launching the talk show that eventually turned into The Flaming Sword of Justice, a podcast that Wikler now runs on his own.Â

“Aaron was one of the most brilliant people in the millennial generation. He was 14 when he helped create RSS. He was one of the co-authors of the RSS specification, which is how websites talk to each other basically,� said Wikler.

Last fall, Swartz committed suicide at the age of 26 while facing criminal charges for hacking into MIT’s network and taking academic articles from a database called JSTOR. He intended to make the articles, which were stored behind a pay wall, free and available to the public online.Â

According to Wikler, Swartz had met academics from other countries who couldn’t afford to pay the subscription fees to JSTOR and had their own academic research hindered because of it. He thought this was an outrage and wanted to make the material more readily available.Â

“He thought if they were making things worse for everybody and he could change them, then he just should,â€? Wikler said.Â

But Swartz was caught downloading millions of academic articles illegally on the MIT campus, a breech that lead to multiple felony charges for him. At the time of his death, Swartz was facing the possibility of 50 years in prison because of his JSTOR hacking, consequences he had never imagined would be on the table.Â

“They set up a security camera and did a whole stakeout. … They chased him down in the middle of the street and arrested him. He was strip searched, and they, like, ransacked his apartment,â€? Wikler said. Â

In spite of the legal charges he was facing, Swartz pushed forward with the show with Wikler. The pair moved to New York City and started working out the activist organization Avaaz’s headquarters.Â

Wikler and Swartz eventually landed a spot on a new radio station broadcasting in Washington, D.C. For five months, they recorded the show every Sunday morning at 8 am in Wikler’s Brooklyn apartment. Unfortunately, as the show progressed, it seemed unclear whether Swartz â€" still facing criminal charges â€" would be able to stay involved moving forward.Â

“The first day that I saw down to start planning out the new show, Aaron committed suicide. So this year has been really hard,â€? said Wikler.Â

“Everything I do that is related to the show, he’s still in the room,â€? he said.Â