USC Annenberg News

Judy Woodruff: Journalism has transformed, and public broadcasting has changed for the good

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:24:38 GMT

By Gretchen Parker

Offering a perspective from the “front lines” of journalism, veteran Washington reporter Judy Woodruff gave an insider’s view of how public broadcasting has transformed to adapt to a changed news world, as she delivered the James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting at USC on Thursday.

Woodruff introduced her talk by saying she’s likely the first-ever Loper lecturer to Tweet about her speech and her arrival in Los Angeles late Wednesday. Her immersion in social media illustrates how much her job has changed since her first tour at PBS three decades ago, she said. In the meantime, she worked as an anchor and senior reporter for CNN for 12 years before returning to PBS in 2007 to work for "PBS NewsHour." She’s now co-anchor of the program.

“It’s not your father’s public broadcasting anymore,” she said. “And that’s a good thing.”

She quoted President Lyndon Johnson, who said in 1967 while signing the Public Broadcasting Act into law: “While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man’s spirit. That is the purpose of this act.”

And 45 years later, that’s still at the heart of what public broadcasting does. It aims “to educate, entertain and inform… to make us better citizens,” Woodruff said, addressing an audience of students, faculty members and leaders of Los Angeles-area media who gathered at USC’s Ronald Tutor Campus Center.

PBS remains uniquely trusted and accessible, she said.

“But we’re also changing. We come to you in more than one dimension.” As "NewsHour" adapts, “we’re better at what we do,” Woodruff added.

The legendary program has become even more accessible, through Facebook, Twitter and its iPhone app. Beyond that, "NewsHour" developed a tool that measured the amount of oil that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster last summer – a tool that was widely picked up and used by journalists worldwide.

The news program has used Skype to reach citizens in Syria and Libya who can’t safely leave their homes; it has used Google+ Hangout to join voters nationwide and hold an analysis of the State of the Union address.

It’s not just technology for technology’s sake, Woodruff said. She explained exactly how new it has advanced broadcast journalism. Instead of being held back by heavy cameras and lights – tools of the broadcasters’ trade – broadcasters are now able to gather material via these new devices.

“We can go where our sources are,” she said. “As a result, our stories are more textured and nuanced and better sourced by the people who are living them.”

At the same time, the new tools help fill the gap left by shrinking funding, when reporters can’t travel to interview every source, Woodruff said.

News organizations, she said, “are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less.” “We at 'NewsHour' are very focused on filling the funding gap we have, along with everyone else.”

And even though the challenges facing reporters have never been greater – while national and international news has never been more complicated – she remains dedicated along with her colleagues and so many other journalists.

“We don’t have the option of just disappearing, throwing our hands up in the air and saying, ‘We can’t do this. It’s too expensive. It’s too complicated. It’s changing too fast,’” she said. “Those of us who care about informing the public don’t have the option of stepping away.

“We bring an enthusiasm and determination to get the story right and to serve the American people that I can promise you is not going away.”

So even though it’s no longer “your father’s public television,” it’s much more than that, Woodruff said. “And we have never been more needed than we are today.”

During a Q&A that followed the speech, students tapped Woodruff’s perspective as a longtime political reporter.

Udeitha Srimushnam, a USC Annenberg communication management master’s candidate, said racist and sexist tones underlying the rhetoric of the current election season seem unusual and asked what could be the cause.

Woodruff responded that “politicians used to be able to get away with a lot more,” reminding the audience of the Willie Horton ads used against Democratic Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Sexism and racism “is still there, and candidates and members of Congress slip over the line all the time, but I think we’re doing better than we used to,” pointing out that now when it happens: “it gets picked up, it becomes part of the conversation, and the person who has done it has to apologize.”

Logan Heley, a broadcast journalism student, asked Woodruff about the most exciting story she’s ever covered.

She recalled election night 2000 as “exciting” and “unbelievable,” when CNN along with all the other major networks called the race for Al Gore (erroneously) and then for George W. Bush (again, erroneously). The outcome wasn’t known for another 36 days.

“No one in our business had ever seen anything like it,” said Woodruff, who was anchoring CNN that night along with Bernard Shaw. “And it really did cause some soul searching in the news media, because we were so dependent on exit polling… I hope we learned something from that. We’re all a lot more careful in calling elections now. What is the rush? I have some friends in this business who would say they want to be right, but it’s all about being first. I respect that, but to me it’s not nearly – not nearly – as important as getting it right.”

The James L. Loper Lecture in Public Service Broadcasting, inaugurated in 2005, honors Loper, a longtime USC Annenberg professor and his four decades of service to public broadcasting. Funding comes from the H. Russell Smith Foundation.

Photos

USC Annenberg U.S.-China Institute documentary goes behind the scenes of Nixon’s trip to China

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:03:28 GMT

By Jeremy Rosenberg

Forty years ago this month, President Richard Nixon took a groundbreaking and geopolitically significant visit to People's Republic of China.

The President didn't travel alone. In addition to administration officials, aids and Nixon's wife, Pat, for the first time in a generation scores of American journalists were granted permission by Chinese authorities to enter the country and cover the visit.

The behind-the-scenes story of the Fourth Estate—and others—at work and play during that historic week as well as their more recent analysis and observations are the subject of "Assignment China: The Week That Changed the World," a new documentary film by the USC Annenberg U.S.-China Institute (USCI).

The film—in English with Chinese subtitles—had its world premiere on January 17 in Washington, D.C. Approximately 200 journalists, government officials, academics, think tank staffers and other China experts gathered at the U.S. Institute of Peace for a panel discussion and showing of the film. The event was co-sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Carola Weil, director of international & strategic partnerships and a research professor at USC Annenberg, was among the attendees. "The film," Weil said, "gives you not only a fairly unvarnished insight into the sausage-making of foreign correspondents and the challenges of working in an environment that is both culturally and linguistically so different from your own, but it also provides deep insight into U.S. domestic politics."

The D.C. screening of the documentary was a further milestone in the USC Annenberg-U.S. China Institute pairing. Last October, the Institute moved under the aegis of the USC Annenberg School.

"Virtually every issue in the U.S.-China relationship has a vital communications, media and public diplomacy component," said Clayton Dube, executive director of the Institute. "And these days, many communications, media and public diplomacy discussions require attention to China and to U.S.-China interactions. The USC Annenberg-USCI combination is uniquely capable of addressing all of these needs."

The film includes period footage of and recent interviews with such broadcast and print icons as Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, Max Frankel and Stanley Karnow. The film also incorporates previously unreleased footage recorded during the China trip by a film crew Nixon brought. Dube conceived of and is the producer of the film and seven other sibling documentaries either already produced or coming soon. The series—with one episode covering each decade beginning with the 1940s—aims to both increase viewers' understanding of China as well as spotlight how journalists abroad do their jobs.

The films are reported, written and narrated by Mike Chinoy, a senior fellow at the U.S. China Institute. Chinoy first visited China in 1973 then worked in that country and elsewhere in Asia as a foreign correspondent for CBS and NBC from 1975-83 and for 24 subsequent years for CNN.

"This is a labor of love," Chinoy said of the new film, "because it's partly what I did and these are all people I knew and dealt with."

Following its Capitol Hill premiere, the film screened at USC—with an introduction by USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III—and at the Asia Society in New York City, where a distinguished panel including Frankel, former Ambassador Nicholas Platt and the Asia Society's Orville Schell discussed the work. In February, screenings will be held at UC Berkeley, Stanford and at various diplomatic, academic and other venues throughout China.

Early responses to the documentary have been enthusiastic. The China Daily wrote a report after the Capitol Hill screening, and at the USC showing an audience member suggested the film deserved an Academy Award. Chinoy understands the appeal.

"It's an amazing blast from the past to see all these people you grew up watching on TV speaking very candidly of what they did and how they did it," Chinoy says. "And for people who weren't around then, it's absolutely a revelation that this happened."

"Assignment China: The Week That Changed The World" can be viewed on the U.S. China Institute website. A previous film in the series, "Assignment China: Opening Up," is posted here.

Group bike ride to Watts Towers uses USC Annenberg innovation in mapping

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:13:49 GMT

By Laura Nelson
Student Writer

Exploratory bicycle rides into South Los Angeles with CicLAvia have joined forces with a research project at USC Annenberg to use everyday cell phones for mapping.

The effort is bringing together a diverse group of partner organizations around the city with a focus on bicycle and social change advocacy, including T.R.U.S.T. South LA, C.I.C.L.E., Bikerowave, the East Side Riders Bike Club and CicLAvia.

The USC Annenberg project, called ParTour, was the basis for a real-time map created by the ride’s 60 or so cyclists, who snapped cell phone photos and uploaded them via text message as they rode from Augustus Hawkins Natural Park to the iconic Watts Towers.

ParTour is a joint effort of USC Annenberg’s new Mobile Lab -- led by communication professor François Bar -- and the Metamorphosis Project, which studies changing urban communities under professor Sandra Ball-Rokeach. It is supported in part by the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.

ParTour uses a methodology called “situated engagement”, which invites everyday people to connect to their neighborhood surroundings, use their own technology, and envision possible futures. By creating a neighborhood map with these rides, ParTour fosters civic conversations with participants who contribute a collage of photos, drawings and comments about what makes their neighborhood special, and how it can grow.

The underlying technology builds on tools previously deployed through Mobile Voices, which allow anyone with a camera phone to send photos via text message to a computer that places the photos on a map, based on either GPS data or location information entered by hand.

Bar and the rest of the team asked cyclists to take photos of anything they found interesting, which ranged from dolphin statues to scenes of the parade of bikes. The map came together in real time on Bar’s iPad, which he mounted on his handlebars during the ride for other participants to watch.

“It’s interesting to see how people behave when documenting their surroundings becomes a mission,” Bar said. “They start seeing things differently – store signs, shops, homes – that they’ve passed many times before, but just weren’t looking.”

The atmosphere of the ride was festive and excited, Bar said. Cyclists of all ages came from all over the city, from Silver Lake to Long Beach and West Los Angeles, to join South L.A. and Watts bike riders. One brought a boombox installed to the back of his bicycle. Some local residents watching from porches grabbed their bikes and joined in as the colorful mass of bicyclists went by.

“A lot of people were surprised that it was so easy and so much fun to ride in South L.A., especially for those who had not been there,” Bar said. “For those who do live in the neighborhood, it was a chance to see how biking gives a different way to engage with your city.”

Many of the people on the ride had heard of the Watts Towers, but had never been, doctoral student George Villanueva said. Even the man who gave the history of the Towers reportedly had lived in South L.A. for 40 years before visiting just a few years prior, during a ride with the East Side Riders.

“It's really great to get people outside of their cars and exploring on foot, or in other forms of transportation slower than cars,” Villanueva said. “You get out there and realize that a physical place has really cool treasures – that L.A. does have history and L.A. does have culture.”

Tafarai Bayne, the community affairs manager with T.R.U.S.T. South LA, worked with Annenberg to highlight the growing bike culture in South Los Angeles.

"We really valued the opportunity to work with the school on a project like this," Bayne said. "We hope the future rides and tools we're planning to develop will help promote more opportunities to learn about culture and communication in South Los Angeles."

Moving forward, the team hopes to continue refining and distributing the maps they’ve created, and continue to engage the community. The CicLAvia maps will be available in print and online, following the Mobile Voices model. In that project, after stories were published online, the team printed them in a newspaper that could be distributed in labor centers and on street corners for those who don’t have Internet access.

Photos and videos from the event

Banet-Weiser co-edits new book on “Commodity Activism”

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:19:06 GMT

By Jackson DeMos

Buying a (RED) shirt from Gap raises money for AIDS research. Driving a Toyota Prius uses less gasoline than a typical car.

So does purchasing these products turn the buyer into a social activist?

A new book co-edited by communication professor Sarah Banet-Weiser and Queens College professor Roopali Mukherjee explores questions such as this.

“Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times” (NYU Press) analyzes the struggles over what social activism means, who takes shape as activists in contemporary society, and whom such activism is imagined to serve.

“How is it that more people in the United States are ‘participating’ politically by buying Starbucks, supporting fair trade products, and looking for companies that have a good green record?” Banet-Weiser asked. “How is it that more people are participating in efforts that seem to be about social justice, but we still have in 2012 an incredibly powerful movement about the 99 percent? We still have these vast inequities in wealth. We have corporate greed and domination. But more of us are supposedly acting politically. How do we make sense of that?”

The book is divided into three parts:

Brand, Culture, Action
Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship
Community, Movements, Politics.

Essays include subjects such as the Dove Real Beauty Campaign (authored by Banet-Weiser), celebrity activists Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Salma Hayek, and “blood diamonds” mined in Central and West African war zones (authored by Mukherjee). Communication professor Alison Trope wrote the piece on Jolie, and doctoral student Melissa Brough wrote a chapter on humanitarianism.

Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee argue that in Western culture, people often participate in social activism by simply buying a product.

“This book explores the range of that participation and the contradictions inherent in grafting philanthropy and social action onto merchandising practices, market incentives and corporate profits,” Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee wrote in the book’s introduction.

The idea for the book began when Banet-Weiser and Mukherjee wrote “eerily similar” calls for panels at the 2008 International Communication Association Conference in Montreal, Banet-Weiser said. The ICA connection came full circle last year in Boston when several of the book’s authors gave presentations on their essays.

“We don’t say in the book, ‘This is what you should do,’” Banet-Weiser said. “It’s more about asking people to be critically aware of both political activism and the way in which they relate to commodity, and to not easily allow one to stand in for the other.”

Nick Couldry, author of “Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism,” wrote in a review that Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser's book is “smart, empirically rich and globally wide-ranging” and that it “provides us with very welcome coordinates in this difficult terrain.”

“Commodity activism has a long history but never has its significance been more complex to unravel than today, when the boundaries and direction of political action are unclear, commercial forces mobilize consumers’ values to secure their emotional loyalty, and individual consumers hope their choices mean that ‘something is being done,’” Couldry said.

Banet-Weiser said she does not necessarily think activism has been “transformed” into a branded commodity.

“I’m careful with the word ‘transformed’ because it assumes it was one thing and now it’s different,” she said. “I do think that there are significant changes in culture, technology and how people express themselves. It doesn’t make sense to hearken back to a time of nostalgia when people thought politics were politics, and were clearly separated from consumerism. It stifles us to continue to lament for a time when consumer culture wasn’t shaping our every political move.”

She said she and Mukherjee instead wanted to give the readers examples of commodity activism and explain them in-depth. Then, readers can think about what should be done about the issues and explore how they can be shifted.

“There have always been ways that consumer culture has provided a context for political action,” Banet-Weiser said. “What we’re noticing now is that the intersections between consumer culture and political culture are increasingly blurred. We need to question what that means to us. That’s what this book is tracing.”

Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times
More on Banet-Weiser

USC Annenberg, IBM and Los Angeles Times conduct Academy Awards Social Sentiment Analysis

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:35:36 GMT

Social media users are weighing in with their Oscar picks and pans, according to the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM, and the Los Angeles Times, who are measuring social media sentiment related to the 84th Academy Awards.

The project relies on new sophisticated analytics and natural language recognition technologies to gauge positive and negative opinions shared in millions of public tweets.

Focused on the Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture categories, the goal is to establish a model for measuring the volume and tone of worldwide Twitter sentiment to better understand moviegoers' opinions. The results are intended to illuminate how advances in technology can help identify important consumer trends.

The Times has published information about the project including an infographic illustrating ongoing sentiment. The analysis will be updated at www.latimes.com/senti-meter as sentiment evolves during the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards on Feb. 26.

"This project is about identifying 'The People's Oscar,' which means moving beyond pundits' opinions of who the winners may be, to understanding who real moviegoers want to see receive the highest accolades of the industry," said communication professor Jonathan Taplin, director of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. "We want to illustrate how new technologies can capture valuable information and opinions derived from the voices of influential movie fans."

As social media tools become more prevalent, those participating in the online conversation become increasingly influential, especially as their opinions travel faster and to a wider group of consumers.

The work between the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and IBM is part of an ongoing collaboration to explore how technology can be used by organizations from news outlets and journalists to movie studios and retailers, in order to better understand, respond and predict public sentiment.

"The ability to apply a quantified measurement to social media chatter surrounding the top films and performances of the season, and to do so over a period of time, adds a valuable new dimension to The Times awards coverage," said Times Assistant Managing Editor Arts and Entertainment Sallie Hofmeister. "We're very interested in developing and embracing new technologies to inform our reporting and working with IBM and USC has made this early stage social sentiment tool possible."

In the case of the Oscar race, innovative analytics and language software from IBM is being used that distinguishes nuance and sarcasm in order to pinpoint relevant opinions of the nominated films, actors and actresses and show noteworthy trends. USC Annenberg and IBM have also applied similar techniques to film forecasting, sports and retailing in an effort to identify social media trends and better understand public opinions.

"Modern technology and social media platforms are changing the way consumers and organizations communicate," said Steve Canepa, General Manager of Media and Entertainment, IBM. "The collaboration between IBM, the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times demonstrates how the media industry is advancing at a pace consistent with the fast-evolving Twitterverse. By gaining insight from the growing world of social media, we can add a new layer of intelligence that will change how all industries engage with their digitally savvy consumers."

USC and IBM are also working to broaden student skills in analytics, demonstrating how Watson-inspired technologies can crunch complex data in real-time. Students are helping identify areas for research, experimenting with the software and helping to develop new technologies that mine for insights.

For more information about: The USC Annenberg Innovation Lab visit www.annenberg.usc.edu; IBM and analytics, visit www.ibm.com/analytics; or the Los Angeles Times, visit www.latimes.com/aboutus.

Senior innovation adviser Ross: Technology and communication have sparked worldwide redistribution of power

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:51:51 GMT

By Laura Nelson
Student Writer

The fight for Internet freedom will be a major sticking point in international diplomacy in the next five years, a senior adviser to the secretary of state said Wednesday at USC Annenberg.

During a forum with Dean Ernest J. Wilson III, Alec J . Ross said the development and spread of technology and communication has sparked a worldwide redistribution of power that is creating new challenges for diplomats and policy-makers.

As the senior adviser of innovation for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ross spearheads the State Department's research on technology solutions to global problems. Those efforts include “Internet in a Suitcase” and Civil Society 2.0, a program that trains grass-roots organizations to create websites, blog and build online communities.

“This is the single biggest deal in policy, period,” Ross told a standing-room-only crowd. “It’s a shift from hierarchical leadership to citizens and social networks.”

Global transparency is on the rise as governments find it increasingly difficult to restrict communication and monitor their citizens’ access to Internet. One example Ross cited was a fatal high-speed rail crash in China. In the five days after the crash, 26 million messages spread across Twitter-like social network Sina Weibo, contradicting the state’s message about what happened in the accident.

The Arab revolutions in 2011 were a prime example of how technology has shifted capabilities that “were historically reserved for institutions, or that took far more time for movements,” Ross said. He also cited the Syrian Electronic Army, whose members flooded U.S. ambassador Robert Stephen Ford’s Facebook blog posts with fake comments to discredit his diplomacy efforts. But then, Ross said, everyday people retaliated with comments that exposed the spammers.

Traditionally, ambassadors maintained close relationships with a small number of power players in society who told them what was going on, Ross said. The development of social media has circumvented those point-people and made it easier for citizens to speak their mind to diplomats.

“Now, if your only interactions as a diplomat are all with generals, CEOs and editors-in-chief, you may have no idea what’s actually going on in a country,” Ross said. The U.S. has begun reaching out to citizens through social media, and Ross said he expects other countries will begin to reach out to Americans in the same way.

Photos

USC Annenberg researchers analyze "Tebow phenomenon" on Super Bowl pre-game show

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:18:01 GMT

By Jackson DeMos

Three USC Annenberg experts discussed the "Tim Tebow phenomenon" during an NFL Network Super Bowl XLVI pre-game show.

"When the Broncos beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to win the playoff game, he set a record for 9,420 tweets per second right at that moment, which is the biggest amount Twitter has ever had for an American-led event," said Adam Amel Rogers of the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center. Rogers earlier posted a blog entry that stated few public figures exemplify the Lear Center's work more than Tebow.

Communication professors Christopher Holmes Smith and Dan Durbin — director of the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society — also weighed in on Tebow's meteoric rise in popularity this NFL season.

"The social media phenomenon that surrounds Tim Tebow speaks volumes about why it's unprecedented," Smith said. "Even if you didn't want to pay attention to the Tim Tebow saga, there was no choice."

Durbin said the Tebow story takes on proportions that others in history could not take on because of the proliferation of media today.

"It'll have to evolve into another form," Durbin said about the current framing of the Tebow story. "Either the form of somebody who has sustained success, or develops another career in media, or the story of somebody who fails."

Smith said Tebow's religion fuels both those who want to see him fail and those who adore him.

"There's a large faction that — in the nature of reality TV show programming — wanted the 'William Hung' moment," Smith said in reference to the "American Idol" singer who became famous for his off-key singing. "They wanted the person to fall on their face glaringly and entertain them."

Rogers said the Tebow phenomenon occurred because it is the perfect storm of different elements of society coming together, including religion, entertainment and politics.

"A movie about Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees, that's not that interesting," Rogers said. "They complete all of their passes and win all the time. Where is the conflict, where is the drama? I think you can't reach or attain that level of fame without people who love you and people who hate you in almost equal measure."

Added Rogers: "We were looking for a hero. This country needs leadership right now, and he's the type of person who can provide that."

The USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society, which Durbin directs, will soon hold an event that analyzes sports in a larger context. It is hosting "USC Conference on Sports: The Olympics" Feb. 15-16 and "The State of the Games: A Discussion with IOC President Jacques Rogge" on Feb. 15 at 7 p.m.

Rogers' blog post
NFL Network Super Bowl XLVI pre-game show

Panel explores media diversity in a digital age

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:51:28 GMT

By Laura Nelson
Student Writer

Communications specialists and journalists gathered at USC's Davidson Conference Center Jan. 30 for a discussion on media diversity in the digital age, based off findings published in a recent Federal Communications Commission report.

USC Annenberg played a major role in the research, development and drafting of the report, which analyzes the changing landscape of United States media. One of the principal investigators on the FCC team was Cinny Kennard, a senior fellow at USC Annenberg's Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, whose work informed the sections on radio news, public broadcasting and local television news.

During the event, USC Annenberg Dean Ernest J. Wilson III introduced a panel of communication executives to discuss the implications of the report: Steven Waldman, the author of the report; Robert Butler, vice president for broadcast at the National Association of Black Journalists; Mark Lloyd, associate general counsel and chief diversity officer, Federal Communication Commission; and Henrik Rehbinder, editorial page editor for La Opinión.

“The question of how to engender civic engagement across all platforms of society and across all dimensions of diverse populations is a critical issue for society as a whole,” Wilson said, before introducing Waldman.

The changes in media over the last half-dozen years have thrown experts for a loop, Waldman said: even as newspapers folded across the country, innovative forms of new media popped up and thrived. Newsrooms have seen an increase in hyperlocal coverage, but have lost much of the traditional “accountability reporting” and beat coverage as staffs shrank to pre-Watergate levels. Similar problems have affected the diversity of newsrooms.

“There have been so many innovations that have been very positive, that have advanced the bar to where it never used to be,” Waldman said. “But by some of the traditional measures, things are going backwards.”

The FCC’s study of diversity is nascent and faces challenges, Lloyd said, including ensuring diversity in public broadcasting without breaking court rulings that prohibit employment reports detailing demographic information. He encouraged the public to embrace a more complex definition of the term.

“There is a confusion between diversity and variety,” Lloyd said. “Even if you get a lot of diversity in a newsroom, that doesn’t mean you have antagonistic sources competing for different versions of the story.”

In 2011, the National Association of Black Journalists surveyed 228 stations owned by 15 companies, Butler said. Eleven percent of managers were people of color. Stations are often reluctant to release that information, he said, and stressed that disclosure is the only way to improve the situation.

“Companies themselves don’t know how much diversity they don’t have,” Butler said. “If I know what your diversity is, I can help you. If I don’t, I can’t.”

Butler recommended that HR employees take a newsroom hiring manager to recruiting events and job fairs, so newsroom leadership can point out which traits they find most important in prospective candidates.

The complexity of diversity is one that’s not easily solved, Rehbinder said. In some communities, where a demographic group in one city differs completely from the same group in another city, it’s hard to know what to cover and how to engage a diverse audience.

“We have this challenge,” Rehbinder said. “How can we fulfill this mission of civic engagement, to bring information, to bring accountability to public officials?”

The report and discussion included few recommendations, but Waldman said the committee thought the problems were significant enough to warrant addressing, even without solutions the FCC could take on due to legal restrictions. He suggested that other entities—journalism schools, non-profits, professionals—assume the onus for increasing diversity and building foundations.

Read the report
Photos from the event

USC-Wiley rematch showcases a "Great Debate"

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:21:39 GMT

By Neftalie Williams
Student Writer

Nearly 80 years after Wiley College students traveled to Los Angeles to debate their peers from USC, the roles were reversed, but the result was the same. A standing-room only crowd of approximately 700 people was captivated by a debate of the necessity of civil disobedience.

Marshall Mayor Chris D. Paddie recognized the special evening with a proclamation recognizing the day as “University of Southern California and Wiley College Debate Teams Day.”

The original debate was groundbreaking because it was rare for students from a historically black college to compete against other programs.

The 1935 debate was the foundation for the 2007 Harpo Films production, “The Great Debaters,” starring Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker. The success of the film played an important role in making this reunion possible. Washington’s $1 million donation to Wiley College made it possible to revive its debate program. Today, both Wiley’s The Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensics Society and USC’s Trojan Debate Squad are nationally recognized debate programs.

Faculty and students of the Trojan Debate Squad traveled to Marshall, Texas at the invitation of Wiley President Haywood L. Strickland and Director of Forensics Chris Medina. Medina noted that “77 years ago these two teams left the building as equals. Tonight, that is how they enter.”

Anticipation had been building for days about the event, as Wiley alumni and guests traveled from around the country to attend. Guests included the Wiley Board of Trustees, Mayor Paddie, and Kansas State Senator David Haley.

Interest was so great that the crowd filled the Julius S. Scott Sr. Chapel and an overflow auditorium. Audiences from around the world also listened to the audio broadcast.

Dr. Joseph L. Morale, Wiley College’s Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Services, presided over the event and opened the affair with an account from the 1935 USC Daily Trojan student newspaper article that chronicled the original debate. He then recognized a special guest in the audience, Dr. Arthur Tolson, the son of the legendary Wiley professor and debate coach Dr. Melvin B. Tolson. Dr. Tolson and USC Director of Forensics Dr. Alan Nichols agreed to the original groundbreaking debate.

The debate began with Cary Chavis, Wiley’s Debate Captain (Class of ’13, Education Major) offering a strong debate of the role of civil obedience throughout history, including most notably as an essential tactic of the Civil Rights Movement. USC offered an initial reply by Maria Mohammad (Class of ’12, Engineering major) cataloging the problems between modern efforts to utilize civil disobedience to achieve social change, from the Occupy Wall Street protests to efforts to block recent health care reform.

Wiley’s Chad Mossman (Class of ’12, Business Major) provided a strong response and emphasized the importance of strong civil responses to injustices in modern times. USC’s Clara Purk (Class of ’14, International Relations and & Communication major) might have been the youngest student on stage, but captivated the crowd with a stirring defense of legal forms of civic dissent, such as those that stopped the recent internet privacy legislation and emphatic reminder that the successes of past struggles for social justice made it possible for all Americans to utilize institutional forms of dissent. Mohammad and Chavis returned to the stage for powerful rebuttals that left the crowd buzzing.

USC Director of Debate and Forensics Dr. Gordon Stables captured the spirit of the night when he noted that everyone in attendance “won the debate” because they were treated to such a fantastic display of argumentation.

Before the evening concluded, the audience had one more reason to cheer when Dr. Stables invited the Wiley team back to Los Angeles for a future debate and Dr. Morale quickly accepted.

Read the preview story
Associate Press article

Trojan Debate Squad set for "Great Debaters" rematch

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:39:53 GMT

By Jackson DeMos

The Trojan Debate Squad will travel to Texas this week for a rematch of a famous 1935 debate between USC and Wiley College that inspired the 2007 movie “The Great Debaters,” starring Denzel Washington.

Held during an era of segregation, Wiley College beat defending national champion USC to become the first historically black college to win the national championship. (Read the Daily Trojan article from 1935 announcing the debate. In the movie, Wiley College debates against Harvard instead of USC.)

"Long before education was desegregated, USC and Wiley demonstrated that the best educational environment is when all students have the ability to learn together," said Gordon Stables, USC's director of Debate & Forensics.

Wiley College President and CEO Dr. Haywood L. Strickland said in a school announcement that Wiley College and USC first met in a country divided by a color line.

"I am proud that all these years later, these schools will meet in a country that celebrates differences, knows that skin color is no determinant of intelligence, and recognizes that we share a common humanity," Strickland said.

USC students Clara Purk (International Relations, Global Communication minor '14) and Maria Mohammad (Civil Engineering '12) will compete against Wiley College debaters Chad Mossiman and Cary Chavis.

"I'm really excited to be involved in this debate," Purk said. "I remember the first time I learned about this debate was when I saw ‘The Great Debaters' movie with my high school debate team, and it fascinated me to see the history behind debate teams across the country, and how much both our country and the debate community has evolved. It is going to be an amazing experience to be part of such a unique and historical debate."

Chavis told the Longview News-Journal that it is an honor for the students involved in the 2012 version of the debate.

"I look back at the movie in 1935, and these two schools that participated in this debate that lasted no longer than 30 minutes, before Dr. King and Rosa Parks, these two schools came together and united,” Chavis said. “As Wiley students, to know the shoulders we stand on, it is really humbling to be a part of this.”

Stables said the Trojan Debate Squad is proud to have the opportunity to share the stage with Wiley College once again.

"Debate provides a fantastic opportunity for students, as we can see from the original debate," Stables said. "Students in that debate went on to become significant features in the Civil Rights Movement as well as major figures in the Los Angeles legal community."

The exhibition debate will be held Friday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. in Wiley College’s Julius S. Scott Sr. Chapel.

Daily Trojan article from 1935 announcing debate