August Academy for Class of 2015 Applicants

This special series of enrichment classes is open to any prospective student who has commenced the application process for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s Class of 2015. There is no cost to applicants for taking part in the August Academy. Candidates may select up to three courses.

If you are interested in applying to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and registering for August Academy, please email Assistant Dean Stephen Dougherty, director of admissions & student affairs, or call him at 646-758-7731.

Best of luck to members of the Class of 2013 on their summer internships.

Happy summer to all!

Facebook, YouTube, and “big data” may serve up new documentary evidence on daily life. But it still takes the hand of a skilled sculptor to cull intimacy and connection from the scattered slices of life along a timeline.

Joe Richman, founder of Radio Diaries, is a master story sculptor–and one of the finest documentary producers around. Join us for an afternoon as he offers a behind-the-scenes peek into his latest work 16 years in the making. We’ll find out why audio storytelling, the original broadcast format, is as powerful and popular as ever.

In 1996, Richman helped pioneer the genre of first-person storytelling that has become one of the hallmarks of public radio. He handed a group of teenagers microphones and recorders and asked them to document their own lives, in their own words.

The result was Teenage Diaries some of the most personal, moving, and memorable stories heard on NPR. In these portraits, we meet Josh who is struggling with Tourette’s Syndrome; Juan, an immigrant living in poverty in Texas, and Amanda who records her experience of coming out to her Catholic parents. “The tape recorder is there for all the surprises and lucky accidents of daily life,” Richman says.

This month, Richman and NPR are releasing Teenage Diaries Revisited. Five of the original teens, now in their 30s, shared personal stories once again. Richman will tell us how he edited the project, re-connected with the diarists, and how he chose what new stories to tell. “A lot of life happens in sixteen years,” as he says.

He will also discuss previous works including his historical documentaries and the use of the radio diary format to broaden media coverage of social issues, spanning life with AIDS, criminal justice, aging and more.

Joined in conversation by Alex Goldmark, visiting assistant professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and senior producer at WNYC – New York Public Radio.

FREE FOR CUNY J-SCHOOL STUDENTS AND ALUMNI
$5 + $1.27 online registration fee for everyone else
Space is limited. Register here.

Investigative journalist and CUNY J-School instructor Tom Robbins will moderate a forum focused on higher education featuring the mayoral candidates. They include Bill de Blasio, Adolfo Carrión, John Liu, Christine Quinn, and Bill Thompson.

Chances are that one of the people who participates in this forum will be the next mayor of New York City. For the first time in many years, CUNY will have a new chancellor — and the newly elected mayor will have a significant role in filling the post. Find out what positions the candidates take on the future direction of CUNY.

Come and hear, too, their positions on funding for and access to CUNY, and on retroactive raises for public workers.

Space is limited; sign up now to attend.

Ever wondered how content sites make money?

The #RevenueDay event sponsored by the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism features veterans of content sites talking about exactly that: how their sites generate revenue. Each guest will present a bit of background, explain their revenue approach, offer some tips, and respond to questions.

In addition to InsideClimateNews, which just won a Pulitzer Prize, we’ll have representatives from: DNAInfo, PolicyMic, Food+Tech Connect, The Awl, Talking Points Memo Watershed Post, Brownstoner, Brooklyn Based, Riverhead Local, and others.

CUNY J-School students and faculty are invited to attend. To RSVP, send an email to jeremy.caplan@journalism.cuny.edu to indicate you’re planning to come and sign up for the Meetup group (without paying) at bit.ly/startupmedia.

Everyone in the J-School community is invited to attend the Spring 2013 meeting of the Governance Council.

Among the items on the agenda are votes on the new strategic and diversity plans and revised international reporting curriculum.

The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism community is invited to a private screening of the documentary, 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle), written and directed by fourth-semester student Raed Rafei and his sister Rania.

The film premiered in July 2012 at the FID Marseille film festival where it received the GNRS award. It has since been screened at festivals in Paris, Montreal, Lisbon, Florence, New Delhi, Nyon, Beirut, and Tetouan, where it received the prize of best first documentary and the audience prize.

Here is a synposis: Students of the American University of Beirut demonstrate against a tuition increase. For 37 days, they occupy university offices. With the Lebanese students 1974 uprising as their starting point, filmmakers Rania and Raed Rafei direct an absorbing documentary on the core issues of revolution and democracy. Using a cast of contemporary activists, the directors combine meticulous historical research with improvisational performances to restage the student occupation. Present and past emerge as deeply entwined, collapsing the pressures of reality with imagined histories and visions of future change.

StoryCode is excited to bring you an in-depth look at some of the possibilities and challenges facing non-fiction storytellers. This event will provide insights into cross-platform and immersive projects in a completely different way from many of the fiction projects StoryCode has presented.

Presenting are James Carter, who brings a hot-off-the-presses look at his innovative location-based project NY_Hearts, and Jon Vidar, who will be presenting StoriesFrom, an immersive platform for collaborative storytelling.

Space is available for members of the CUNY J-School community. RSVP here.

On Saturday, Apr. 20, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism will host a radio show onstage in the Marlin Room of NYC’s historic Webster Hall. “Where I’m From” will mix entertainment, journalism, and commentary in a big-hearted mash-up that reflects the talents, experiences, and contributions of New York’s diaspora populations.

The program will be taped before a live audience and present a range of guests, essayists, and performers–including journalist and immigration reform advocate Jose Antonio Vargas, Kinshasa-born musician Isaac Katalay and his “Lifelong Project” band, and Annie Ling, whose photographic work of Manhattan Chinatown’s tenement housing was recently featured in The New York Times.

Tickets for “Where I’m From” are $5 online in advance, $10 at the door. Space is limited. After the broadcast, there will be an after-party in the upstairs Balcony Lounge.

“Where I’m From” is a natural extension of CUNY’s effort to develop new voices in public media. Part of doing that is developing new audiences and conscientiously serving and including them,” explains Tina Pamintuan, the J-School’s radio program director. “We’ve seen a number of live shows hit stages across New York City in the last few years, but none that serves diverse audiences, so we decided to do something about that.” Pamintuan is overseeing the project with public radio journalist Jesse Hardman, who will host the first episode.

Hardman teaches radio news and international reporting at the CUNY J-School and has worked as a media developer in 15 countries. He says this project directly addresses the need for public media to expand its reach and appeal to culturally, economically, and ethnically diverse audiences. “Public media has a mandate to provide quality information and programming that speaks to the lives and experiences of local audiences. The quality is there, but the diversity of voices isn’t,” says Hardman. “The U.S. is now a majority minority society, with 40 million immigrants living here. We should hear this reflected every morning when we turn on the radio.”

Storytelling, music, humor, and reporting will collide in this live onstage cultural exchange, which is perfectly timed to take place during NYC’s Immigrant Heritage Week.

Photo courtesy of Saira Hunjan

Mifflin is co-director of the Arts & Culture Reporting Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and an associate professor in the English Department at CUNY’s Lehman College.

Read this review of Mifflin’s book on The Atlantic site, by the well-known design critic Steven Heller.