At the start of the spring semester, the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University added a line to its student code prohibiting students from using “automated tools or assisted processes, such as machine learning or artificial intelligence” without citing the source. Any assignments found to have represented the work of others in this way…
The success of election-deniers in the Midterm Elections shows just how much work confronts us in our efforts to increase media literacy in the US. As happened in primary contests in August, candidates who promoted the Republican Party’s so-called “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen did well again, although the anticipated red wave did…
A few years ago, while preparing to teach a copy editing course for the first time, I stumbled across a hidden gem in The New York Times digital edition: Copy Edit This!, an interactive quiz that tests readers on grammar and word usage errors from recent Times articles. The Times’s standards editor catches the errors…
For a decade now, I have been teaching journalism without officially having left the business. I keep one foot in journalism because I cannot imagine life without it, which sounds admittedly old-fashioned and also is something I cannot teach. Nor is it necessarily practical. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts journalism jobs will decline by…
The Associated Press recently announced that it was creating a new position for a “democracy editor.” It tapped a long-time AP veteran and state government editor for the position. When Tom Verdin, who is in Sacramento, steps into the new role, he will oversee coverage of stories about voting rights and election processes. In making…