More than seven years ago, when Round Earth began working in collaboration with SIT Study Abroad on a program in Morocco, journalism as a profession seemed to be in such crisis that many wondered if there would be a next generation of international journalists.  I’m less fearful of that these days.

Trey Strange is a case in point.  He had never been out of the United States when he came to Morocco for our program.  That didn’t deter Trey.  I honestly don’t know when I’ve had a student who was more enthusiastic,

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We are, according to a report in Forbes:

The United States government, traditionally one of the bastions of press freedom, is about to compile a list of professional journalists and “top media influencers,” … and monitor what they’re putting out to the public.

And that’s not all.  Forbes goes on.Last October, an Indiana lawmaker proposed that journalists be licensed. Representative Jim Lucas’s bill was mostly a publicity stunt, but could this DHS action be a way for the government to keep track of American and foreign journalists as well as “citizen journalists,”

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I arrived in Morocco more than 7 years ago, poised for a grand experiment.  Could students studying at US colleges and universities, working with Moroccan student partners, produce journalism of excellence for top global media outlets?  Before that first semester was over, our students had proved that possible by publishing a story in the New York Times.  They’ve gone on to publish and broadcast countless more.  In this time of shuttered foreign news bureaus and the chaos in Washington nudging a lot of foreign coverage off the front page,

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The New York Review of Books had the best take I’ve seen on social media’s intrusion into our lives and what we can do about it.  Here’s Madeleine Bunting, formerly a journalist at The Guardian and the author of four books, including The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre(2009).

Today, as we grapple with a pervasive new digital culture, attention has become an issue of pressing social concern. Technology provides us with new tools to grab people’s attention.

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Who’s the good cop of the Internet?

It may be Wikipedia, the non profit online encyclopedia.

Conspiracy videos posted on YouTube have come under increasing attack.  Last month the company CEO announced that Wikipedia content on conspiracy theories will be posted beside videos on those subjects. You may have also noticed that, in an effort to verify news sources, Facebook is now including descriptions of those sources taken from — you guessed it — Wikipedia.

But wait a minute!

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Hello everyone from Morocco!

Please meet reporting partners Joe Held and Soukaina Zaida – just one of our amazing student pairs.  I’ve been in Morocco this week working with Joe and Soukaina — and all of our students journalism partners  —  helping shape their next 5 weeks of reporting.  I am simply astounded at their intelligence, hard work, commitment, critical thinking, and enthusiasm.

On all of our projects and programs we partner an American with his or her in-country counterpart. 

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How do you keep bias out of stories?

That’s one question readers asked ProPublica Illinois, a regional affiliate of it’s parent non-profit, ProPublica, an acclaimed news organization producing investigative journalism.

“In what is a particularly turbulent time for the press, many of us in journalism have come to realize the public doesn’t necessarily know as much about the way we go about our jobs as we may think,”wrote ProPublica Illinois editor-in-chief Louis Kiernan,

So ProPublica Illinois is asking for readers’ questions. 

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Hello everyone,

Greetings from India where I am vacationing (OK, also working) for a few weeks and just now got strong enough Internet to send this weekly newsletter.   Next stop: Morocco where I’ll be helping our students prepare their story ideas.

As many of you know, our unique method means stories have two reporters: one from the United States and the other from the country where the story happens.  Our student partners are no exception. These young reporters, with mentoring from Round Earth’s experienced editors,

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Over the years, I’ve been inspired by many great journalists.  But my first inspiration was probably Lillian Ross, who died recently at the age of 99.  According to a piece in The New Yorker (where Ross was a staff writer since 1945), “her 1950 Profile of Ernest Hemingway was written like a short story, and her five-part article about the director John Huston and the making of “The Red Badge of Courage,” published in 1952, set a new standard in magazine writing for inventiveness and literary verve…The finest reporters,

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Hello to my friends and the friends of Round Earth:

Quick message this week. I just landed in Morocco, and am now in the Sahara on my way to meet with students on our program here.

It’s always so rewarding to work with these enthusiastic young American journalists and their Moroccan partners.  More from me next week!

With warm regards,
Mary

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