Praise to you all. Strikingly, everyone was a good student. I enjoyed meeting you all, and I especially appreciated your questions to the faculty. They enjoyed you, too. The critiques of your articles I’ll begin soon. I took a couple of days off with Adam and some other family members, and now I’m digging out from accumulated email. I’ll send my comments to you individually at your email address.
Enjoy the summer.
Lance Tapley
By: Jacqueline Guzman
“The schedule is very tight, there is not much time between sessions, but I knew this was to going to be something intense when I applied,” says Thomas Hedges, student at Colgate University in NJ and one of the twenty five-scholars who participated in the Investigative Journalism Workshop “Take-a-Stand” in memory of journalist David Halberstam. Read the rest of this entry »
By Keith Schumann
At Camp Take A Stand, mention of the corporatization of media can be enough to visibly stir the ire of students and faculty alike. The topic of changes in the business wrought by new technology is more likely to evoke expressions of bafflement, at least among the industry veterans. As Shana Sureck, a photographer at the Hartford Courant remarked during the student journalists’ visit to the paper’s headquarters, “I don’t think newspapers know what they are anymore.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Chris Hebdon
Even as I walk in the shade between the tall red-brick buildings of Wesleyan University with Amy Goodman, host of “Democracy Now!” the air is almost prohibitively hot and humid. A heat wave peculiar for Connecticut in June makes it a bit difficult to concentrate as we talk, but I continue asking Amy Goodman about the essentials of journalism. As we walk she explains how an investigative journalist needs schooling and self-education to do the job well. Read the rest of this entry »
By Alison Cies
Witnessing a district’s school board members doing cocaine at a party is not a daily sight. For journalist Wayne Barrett, however, this incident is just one example of the importance of undercover journalism as a method for uncovering and validating illegality.
“I don’t have an ethical problem with undercover reporting,” said Barrett. “If you think someone will deny something, then videotape them. I’ve been in plenty of circumstances where individuals did deny their actions, and I wished I’d taped them.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Simone Pathe
On any given stretch of any U.S. interstate it is likely that at least several vehicles will have a yellow ribbon-shaped magnet printed with the words, “Support Our Troops.” This message may spark questions in the minds of other motorists: Does the driver proclaim support for “the troops” as a way of showing support for U.S. foreign policy in Iraq or does the driver support the individual men and women serving multiple tours in Iraq?
These ribbons, along with other symbols flaunted as patriotism that have become so pervasive in post 9/11 America, oversimplify the complex differences and nuances separating the plan for war developed in Washington, the way the war is waged by soldiers and the way the war is covered by journalists in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
By Ben Fornell
Writer’s note: My essay is about war correspondence, and I had initially attempted one of the first-person “Hemmingway-style,” to quote Chris Hedges, ledes. I wanted to subvert that notion of the heroic reporter, but it didn’t really work so I deleted it. If you saw it before, please delete it in your memory.
For my essay, I chose to focus on truth-telling in war coverage. Before this workshop, my main exposure to this kind of journalism had been the Hemingway-style, self-aggrandizing first-person coverage Chris Hedges discussed in his talks on war and foreign correspondence. I’ve never planned to be a war correspondent, but in the moments my mind has wandered to a fantasy of reporting from the battle field, I have always seen myself in the heroic role. Read the rest of this entry »
By Matt Byrne
The class was already in session when he strode into the room, troupe in tow. His suit hung from a thin frame, eyes heavy and sunken, hidden by heavy lids. He was taller than I expected. With arms extended onto the corners of the podium he focused far past us disarmingly, not quite to a thousand yards.
Eyes around the room widened. There may be hope yet.
The swelling of the pupil’s diameter is uncontrollable, one of the many responses to stimuli that is buried below the upper levels of brain function, located in the same neighborhood of neurons responsible for breathing and heart beat. The dilation was appropriate. Ralph Nader has a formidable reputation. Read the rest of this entry »
By Mariana Stebbins
So you are fresh out of journalism school. Full of energy to save the world while trying to pay the student loans that mysteriously piled up through the last four years. And you are thirsty. Very thirsty for advice and encouragement at a time when journalism has all but a foot tag hanging. And then what do you hear?
“If you spent $30,000 in a journalism school you are crazy, if you ask me.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Chelsea Krisanda
Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter for Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi, has investigated murders committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Chris Hedges, New York Times war correspondent, has spent time on the battlefield among soldiers. What is the difference between the mind of a murderer and the mind of a soldier? Both are killers but how do each view their actions? What is the difference between the psychological effects of killing when one is driven by hate and when one is trained by his country? Read the rest of this entry »