Prof. Andrew Mendelson, chair of the department of journalism and director of the Center for Public Interest Journalism, presented “Beyond Metrics: Thinking more broadly about the measurement of journalism impact” at BarCamp NewsInnovation recently at Temple University in Philadelphia.
For the full session video: Beyond Metrics: Thinking more broadly about the measurement of journalism impact.
Since 1989, the Jessica Savitch Broadcast Journalism Scholarship has supported the education of young women at Temple who are working toward a career in front of the camera.
Named after a popular Philadelphia broadcaster who passed in a tragic accident in 1983, the scholarship is awarded to students with an interest in broadcast journalism who have a financial need.
At a May 1 lunch, some of the recent recipients of the scholarship were able to thank Savitch’s sister, Lori Savitch.
Lori, who has created a website, JessicaSavitch.com, to honor her sister’s work, described how Jessica laid the foundation for the female students to pursue their dreams.
“She was doing what she was doing at the dawn of the women’s movement,” Lori said.
In 2013, sophomore Nicole Bernier, and juniors Alexandra Keller and Samantha Kordelski, all journalism majors, earned the scholarship.
Also in attendance were former recipients Brittany Miller, JOUR ’11, an anchor/reporter at News 12 New York and Haley Kmetz, a senior journalism major.
Kmetz said Jessica Savitch epitomized “what good journalists can and should be” and that the scholarship “gave me the confidence to continue in a highly competitive field.”
photos by Daniel Pelligrine
As the digital director of the Naples (Fla.) Daily News Jigsha Desai, JOUR ’02, is at the cutting edge of journalistic technology. What she deals with every day is a far cry from her “Intro to New Media” class a little more than a decade ago.
“We met in the evening and looked at websites,” she recalls.
Desai was the featured speaker at the annual Kirsch Lecture, held in conjunction with the Journalism Department awards ceremony. She encouraged the fledgling journalists to be active in their internships (“I volunteered to do everything.”) and to study abroad.
She only recently started the job in Florida, having spent several years at the Knoxville News Sentinel. It was a scary transition for her, but one she’s already glad she took.
“Fear cannot stop me from growing,” she said. “As women, we worry about risk and failure. It’s important to take a risk.”
Desai also imparted a piece of advice that some journalists have trouble learning on their own: “Your job as a reporter is to make your editor’s life easier.”
The Kirsch Lecture is named after Dorothy Italie Kirsch, JOUR ’36. She and her husband created the lecture series in 1993 because, “hearing the insight and perspectives of leading communication specialists offers a unique chance for students to see the breadth of opportunity that awaits them.”
A photograph by senior journalism major Michelle Zei earned a “Best in Show” honor at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute’s Re-Imagining Borders Contest.
Michelle Zei’s winning image of the Tomb of the Patriarch in Hebron.
Her image of a religious site in the West Bank that shows Israelis and Palestinians entering the building on opposite sides of a security fence earned one of the top honors in the college student mobile device category.
The winners were invited to San Diego in April, where they were able to hear a lecture by photojournalist Jon Lowenstein of NOOR Images and attended a workshop that covered everything from composition to ethics.
Here’s what Zei says inspired her to capture this image with her iPhone:
“My photo was taken in Hebron in the West Bank. The old city of Hebron has been almost completely shut down by the Israeli military. What was once a vibrant marketplace is now a quiet and controlled space. However, the Tomb of the Patriarch continues to draw a large crowd of both Palestinians and Israelis, as well tourists visiting both places. In my studies over the past few years, I was both disheartened and fascinated by Hebron because Israeli settlers literally live above Palestinians in parts of the city. There is a barbed wire and metal netting covering the Palestinian section of the old city, while settlers have moved in above. The metal nets are full of trash from above which attests to the dehumanizing conditions that many Palestinians in Hebron face from settlers.
“In the midst of violence and separation, Palestinians continue to visit their mosque, which is also where Jews come to worship at their temple. The building is one place and shows the religious common ground that exists in the midst of an occupation that separates people. Since I entered through the Palestinian side, I went through tight turn styles and passed through a checkpoint outside of the mosque in order to enter the Tomb of the Patriarch. I imagined what it must be like to have to go through the checkpoint multiple times a day—to have your belongings and body checked—just to pray. I took this simple photo because it shows the groups of people that visit and value the building, as well as the great security and division that mark a place of such great religious and historical significance.”
For the eighth time, an alumnus from the School of Media and Communication has won journalism’s top prize.
Kurtis Lee, JOUR ’09, shares with rest of The Denver Post staff the 2013 prize for breaking news reporting for their coverage of the July 20, 2012, movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. They were cited for their use of “journalistic tools, from Twitter and Facebook to video and written reports, both to capture a breaking story and provide context.”
The paper’s Aurora beat reporter, Lee was called into action at 2:14 a.m. by one of his editors. The second Post reporter on the scene, he tweeted facts as they came to him. And once he was able to conduct a few formal interviews, Lee dictated his piece of the story over the phone to editors back in the newsroom.
Lee says he constantly uses Twitter: “It’s how I get my news and break news myself.”
The Post staff, he says, truly came together to work the Aurora story. “For this story, we all jumped on it and worked together as a team. No one reporter could cover all of this stuff.”
Proud of his and his colleagues’ accomplishment, Lee sees the Pulizter win as “bittersweet. You celebrate the journalism, but you don’t celebrate the incident that occurred.”
2012
Kristen Graham, JOUR ’00; Dylan Purcell, JOUR ’00; and Sharon Gekoski-Kimmel, COMM ’73
The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Assault on Learning”
David Wood, JOUR ’70
The Huffington Post
“Beyond the Battlefield”
1998
Clarence Williams, JOUR ’93
Los Angeles Times
Photography documenting lives of children of parents with addiction
1996
Joby Warrick, JOUR ’82
The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C.
“Boss Hog”
1994
John Dotson, JOUR ’58
Akron Beacon Journal
Stories examining racial attitudes
The Temple Association of Black Journalists (TABJ) is one of three undergraduate chapters selected as a finalist for 2013’s Student Chapter of the Year Award.
TABJ’s mission, “Learn. Network. Succeed,” is incorporated into everything it does.
“We aim to provide an opportunity for the students, making sure we put our members and our students next to the professionals who are already working in the industry,” says TABJ President Haniyyah Sharpe.
In 2012, TABJ stepped up its involvements on campus, in the community and in industry.
“We have a relationship with Chosen 300, which is a homeless ministry in Philadelphia, where we volunteer on a consistent basis,” Sharpe says. The founder of the ministry is a Temple University alum.
“We did several networking events where we tried to make sure we collaborated with the parent chapter PABJ (Philadelphia),” she recalls.
But Sharpe says her greatest joy as TABJ’s leader is success of its members. “A lot of the students will come back and say they learned something from one of our programs or they got an internship as a result of networking with someone from our program.”
The other finalists are Carolina Association of Black Journalists at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and National Association of Black Journalists Syracuse University Chapter. The winner will be announced at NABJ’s 38th Annual Convention and Career Fair in Orlando, Fla. Each student chapter has excelled in serving NABJ, their collegiate communities and their members, with unique activities and programs. Their accomplishments demonstrate strong leadership, which help set an example for other student chapters. NABJ bases its Student Chapter of the Year Award on accomplishments and activities during the eligibility period.
Matthew Albasi, JOUR ’13, and journalism senior Max Pulcini on the Kensington Tigers’ field. (Photo by Steven Reitz)
It was in the shadow of the el, next to the towering wall that reads “Kensington Football” that Max Pulcini knew he had found the story of his young career.
The senior journalism major at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication was on assignment last fall for the Spirit of the River Wards newspaper. He was to do a preview of the upcoming season for the Kensington Tigers, a team made up of kids from various high schools in and around one of the city’s roughest neighborhoods.
But what he thought was going to be a 15-minute interview and a 500-word story has grown into so much more.
“Having just moved [to nearby Fishtown] in August and not having gone into Kensington during my time living on campus, I had assumed that Kensington football was a stable, grounded program that had been around for awhile. You think that Kensington is one of the most famous neighborhoods, for better or for worse, so I figured they would have had a public league team,” he said.
The story he learned over the next two-and-a-half hours from Coach Ellwood Erb was one of hope, of dedication, of passion.
Erb and his father hand-painted the six-foot letters on the “Kensington Football” wall themselves, camping out overnight to ensure no one stole their scaffolding. They were covering graffiti that prominently read, “Smoke dust. Kill cops.”
In the eight months that followed that first interview, Pulcini teamed up with Matthew Albasi, JOUR ’13, to create a feature-length documentary called “Rise of the Tigers,” with production support from Fox School of Business student Steven Reitz and Tyler School of Art student Jess Ruggierio. The documentary will have a “sneak peak” showing June 8 at the Wells Fargo Center before the Philadelphia Soul game. From there, Pulcini and Albasi will be submitting it to film festivals throughout North America.
The documentary follows Erb and his team through the 2012 season – its second year in existence. The story hits on life in Kensington, the turmoil of the Philadelphia School District, the players’ relationships with their families and the aspirations of the seniors on the team.
“This is not a story about football,” Pulcini said. “It is a story about human beings coming together in one of the most notorious neighborhoods in Philadelphia.”
Working the story
In order to achieve the depth they wanted in their interviews, they knew that had to build a level of trust with the students and the school staff. They did so, “just by being there and being ourselves,” Albasi said.
But even when they thought everyone was on board, they still ran into some trust issues.
Albasi was gathering some final footage of students leaving Kensington CAPA at the end of the day when a police patrol car slowly drove past and parked nearby.
Albasi nodded and waved, but knew, “he’s totally here for me.”
He had told the principal, Coach Erb and school security that we would be filming that afternoon, “but I didn’t think about the parents that were sitting out front.”
Albasi produced a business card and explained the documentary to the officers. He was soon surrounded by school officials who ensured he was supposed to be filming. He knows the cops were just doing their job — “we just got a call saying some weird guy is out front taking pictures of the kids, so we had to swing by,” they explained.
Both he and Pulcini said the change in their reception in the neighborhood was tangible as the months went on.
“Of course it’s intimidating at first. Kensington Ave. is kind of a scary place. It’s like a giant centipede over the street. It’s not sunshine and cobblestone at all,” Pulcini said. “The media paints Kensington as this pretty awful place. But it’s full of compassionate people and compassionate children.”
What’s next?
As they worked on their first documentary, the Temple duo created their own company, Downhill Productions. The heart of its mission will be documentary work, but in order to financially support their journalistic endeavors, they have also started to film more commercial fare like weddings and music videos. It was a welcome revelation for the two journalists who couldn’t find steady paid work.
“We can keep doing this,” Pulcini said. “We can use these skills that we learned in journalism school that are supposed to be applied toward journalism, but they’re also valuable, marketable skills in different areas.”
Watch the trailer for “Rise of the Tigers” here:
Read the story of the Tigers at Philadelphia Neighborhoods.
Media contact:
Jeff Cronin, Assistant Director of Communications
jcronin@temple.edu
215-204-3324
WHYY’s Chris Satullo, executive director of news and civic dialogue, hosts a panel discussion with the Weiss Award winners: David Gambacorta of the Philadelphia Daily News, Jeff Cole of FOX 29 and Isaiah Thompson of Philadelphia City Paper. (Photo by Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University)
While American newsrooms are reeling back the resources they devote to investigative reporting, there are still journalists who are committed to uncovering the stories that can change our society and our lives.
The winners of the second annual Weiss Award for Investigative Journalism discussed the work that went into their stories and the spirit of those who devote their working days to uncovering injustice. The Weiss Award was established in 2012 through the vision and generosity of local businessman Larry Weiss. A weekend proofreader for the Philadelphia Inquirer in his 20s, Weiss saw the men and women who did investigative reporting as true heroes of their time.
The top prize of $10,000 went to Barbara Laker, David Gambacorta and Dana DiFilippo at the Philadelphia Daily News for “Bad Brass,” a series of stories that unearthed a string of troubling accusations against the Philadelphia Police Department’s leadership.
Two special recognition prizes of $2,500 also were awarded:
In a panel discussion with the winners during the April 18 award ceremony at WHYY, Gambacorta said he and his team were hyper-vigilant with each fact they wrote.
“There were long nights of running back and forth, making frantic cell phone calls trying to find documents” to support the claims of some of their sources, he said. But knowing the importance of their work, the Daily News team’s mantra was “keep going until you know you’re hitting a nerve.”
Larry Weiss welcomes guests to the second annual Weiss Awards for Investigative Journalism at WHYY. (Photo by Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University)
Asked how the potential for accusations of libel impacted their work, Gambacorta said, “you have to be comfortable with your sources and you have to verify your stories. There are a lot of good stories that we didn’t run. We didn’t publish anything that we didn’t triple-check.”
The awards are presented by the Center for Public Interest Journalism, which is housed at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication.
“The Weiss Award fits perfectly with CPIJ’s mission, which is to address the national crisis in journalism through solutions carefully tailored to address local needs,” said SMC Interim Dean Thomas L. Jacobson. “Weiss’ support for this work is as visionary as it is generous, and is very much appreciated here at Temple.”
By Sarae Gdovin
Communications student
Jeffrey Robinson, JOUR ’67, has spent his career traveling the globe seeking out stories and learning how to uncover the great ones. A graduate of the first class of the School of Media and Communication (then called the School of Communications and Theater), he has since written 27 books, 700 newspaper and magazine articles, screenplays and more for publications around the world.
Last week, Jeffrey Robinson, JOUR ’67, visited Temple to share some of his secrets with students in a short master class. (Photo by Daniel Pelligrine)
Last week, Robinson visited Temple to share some of his secrets with students in a master class, “Turning Pro.” “There are stories everywhere, you just have to go out and find them,” he said.
According to Robinson, the transition from being a great college writer to a great professional writer is equivalent to the journey of college basketball player moving into the NBA. It’s a gap the size of the Grand Canyon, but it can be done, he said.
Throughout his career, Robinson discovered the secrets to making it all come together. Within hours of his first job as a station writer at KYW-TV, he learned the first one. “You have to tell good stories,” he said. “You have to make the shift from a writer to a storyteller.”
One piece of advice he offered the audience was to write out loud. “If you take one thing away from tonight, take this — it will change your life. Nothing great was ever written silently,” he said.
Junior Kandace Khor was inspired by Robinson’s words of wisdom. “I’ve always considered writing professionally as a career, but I was never confident in my abilities to make it in the very competitive field,” she said. “His tips really showed me that accessing this field is possible if you want it enough.”
And as for writer’s block, the dreaded affliction that leaves many writers at a loss for words, literally, Robinson told the students, “There is no such thing — it’s laziness,” he said.
“Just sit down at the table and start writing. No one is going to stop you.”
Journalism major Jad Sleiman is the first Temple University student to win a prestigious Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholarship. He received the $2,000 award at the foundation’s 2013 annual scholarship luncheon held at the Yale Club in New York City.
The School of Media and Communication student was among 14 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 165 applicants from 72 different colleges and universities. In his winning essay, the former Marine Corps correspondent wrote about watching a group of Marines training Ugandan soldiers to face extremism in East Africa, and the young Ugandans’ surprising resiliency.
Sleiman was the recipient of the David Schweisberg Scholarship, named for the former United Press International foreign correspondent whose dispatches from Tiananmen Square uprising in 1989 were read and heard around the world.
The scholarship winners were honored with a reception at Reuters the night before the luncheon and toured The Associated Press headquarters in New York City. They also met with the page one editor of the Wall Street Journal and the executive editor of GlobalPost.
The OPC Foundation is the nation’s largest and most visible scholarship program encouraging aspiring journalists to pursue careers as foreign correspondents. Media organizations at the luncheon included AP, Bloomberg, CBS News, Reuters and the Scripps Howard Foundation.
