Making Journalism School More Affordable

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Brigid Bergen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Brigid Bergen, filling in for Brian today.

The latest news about the news industry is increasingly dire. In recent months, there have been layoffs and buyouts at some of the most important and venerable media institutions. The Washington Post and PR, even here at WNYC. Last week was particularly brutal after The Los Angeles Times axed 20% of its staff, more than 100 journalists. Magazines like Sports Illustrated in time cut dozens of staffers. We've even seen entire publications like The Messenger fold suddenly, and then there are vital local media institutions like the great New York Daily News where journalists staged a one-day walkout last week to fight back against more proposed cuts from its owner, Alden Capital Management. Now, it's not like there's any less news to cover. In fact, the shrinking of the journalism industry and the subsequent lack of trained reporters and editors working to hold people in power or seeking power accountable can have truly dire consequences for our communities and our democracy. We're going to get to more of that in a moment.

Now, and this is the part, listeners, where if you could see me, I'm sitting up a little bit straighter and beaming with a little bit of alumni pride, we are going to speak to two people who brought us a bright spot in the world of journalism last week. On the same day that those reporters at our hometown paper were out protesting, our hometown public journalism school made a very big announcement. The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York received a $10 million gift from Craig Newmark philanthropies. That gift is setting the school on a path to offer students free tuition starting with half of the class in 2025. With additional fundraising, the goal is to be tuition-free for all in perpetuity. Free tuition for a master's degree, folks. Full disclosure, as I hinted, I am a graduate of the inaugural class. That was then still called the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and I take great pride in it as a public institution, especially someone who proudly works in public media. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Craig Newmark himself and the Dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, Graciela Mochkofsky, to discuss what that gift means, especially now, at this very turbulent time for the industry.

Dean, Craig, welcome to WNYC.

Craig Newmark: Glad to be here.

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you for having us.

Brigid Bergen: Craig, I want to start with you. You are the founder of Craigslist, an online classified ad service that many would say disrupted the business model for newspapers. Why have you opted to invest in journalism, and specifically this journalism school now given the ongoing tumult in the industry.

Craig Newmark: Well, first, anyone who thinks Craigslist had a massive effect on newspapers needs to look at the numbers that The Economists have started producing over the last five years. It turns out the effect Craigslist had is vastly exaggerated, but why am I doing this? Well, the deal is that something I learned in high school US history is that our country's defense, our strength, relies on trustworthy journalists speaking truth to power. That's a big theme in everything I do these days. I support journalists speaking truth to power. I support people defending us when it comes to cyber conflict. I try to help active service military families and vets. I think I'm doing right now that doesn't support protecting the country is pigeon rescue, but that's a whole another thing. [chuckling] Supporting journalists is a really big deal, and frankly, I don't want journalists to leave school with heavy student debt.

Brigid Bergen: Yes. Dean, you have been in your role at what many of us alumni call in shorthand, the J-School. Since 2022, you're also a very busy working journalist writing and reporting books, writing for magazines. What attracted you to this specific institution?

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: I joined the Newmark J-School in 2016 to found the first bilingual master's program. I'm originally from Argentina. I was living here, and there was this brilliant idea by my predecessor, Sarah Bartlett, to start training bilingual reporters in Spanish and English to reframe the narrative around Latino communities, so I joined the school there. I've been here since my predecessor retired. I applied to the job. I was lucky enough to get it. We're part of CUNY. We are part of this amazing engine of social mobility and civic participation in the city.

I'm very proud of the institution. I'm incredibly proud of our alumni and our students. They really have made a difference in the industry. We have injected more talent of color, but also more imaginative and innovative journalists into the industry than probably any other school. We really are doing our part to help the industry reimagine itself and come out of the crisis that is going through now.

Brigid Bergen: Sure. Can you talk more specifically about what this gift means in terms of how you can plan for the future and meet this moment for the industry, and why is free tuition such an important part of that?

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Yes. The medium salary for reporters in the country today is about $55,000, so it's about $26 an hour. In many local communities, journalists make $20,000 a year. If you come out of graduate school with a $20,000 or $50,000 debt, you're going to probably not stick around. You will not take risks. You will be risk-averse, and you will not survive in the industry, probably, because you can't afford it. We can't allow that to happen. Journalism is public service. Our society, no matter the state of the industry, there's no doubt that journalism is still essential, and will still be essential. It's like running out of nurses or firefighters or doctors. We need journalists in a democracy.

What we're doing is trying to eliminate all the barriers of access for the people we need the most. We need journalism to really understand the communities they serve. There's has been another crisis that you didn't mention is the crisis of lack of diversity in many newsrooms across the country. The country has changed. The demographics have changed, but the newsrooms are lagging behind. That's what we have contributed so strongly, and we also need the people who are going to come up with the solutions and find the paths forward. That's the role of a journalism school. Maybe there was a time in which journalism school weren't as essential because the newsrooms had the resources to train the rookie reporter to allow them to fail and catch them until they learned and until they could do it. That is no longer the case for most newsrooms because of the lack of resources, so journalism schools have a role to play. We have a civic duty to help find the ways forward for the industry, and that's how we do it.

Free tuition, it's to me the most significant way beyond an excellent education and training, and really prepare people for this industry, but just to get any barrier to access out of the way.

Brigid Bergen: Listeners, do you have questions about the future of journalism for my guests, Craig Newmark and Graciela Mochkofsky, Dean at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY? Any suggestions for the kinds of reporting you want to see more of in the world of journalism now? Any J-School grads out there who want to talk about the value of getting this kind of training whether you're still working in journalism or not? Give us a call. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number or tweet @BrianLehrer. Much

of the time, my time normally, is dedicated to covering local politics and elections, institutions of power. We know that a lot can happen when there are fewer reporters covering those local stories. I want to play about a minute from an interview that Brian did earlier this week with Paul Farhi about his latest essay in The Atlantic with a very ominous headline, Is American Journalism Headed Toward Extinction-Level Event? Here's what he said about the consequences of fewer journalists specific to a very notorious local elected official.

Paul Farhi: There was some local coverage of George Santos's 2022 campaign, a little bit in the Long Island Weekly newspaper. Beyond that, it didn't get constant coverage. It was assumed that, I guess, he had been a candidate before, and he had been vetted. No one paid any much attention to him until the New York Times after the election discovered all of these fabrications and serial lies that George Santos told, and then what do you do about that? Well, we know what you do about that. He became this [unintelligible 00:09:58] celeb. He was driven out of congress.

He's been indicted, but the question raised within the news media is where were the reporters before the election that could have warned off voters in his district to point out what a liar this guy was. The press, the watchdog failed in this case. That's the nightmare scenario around the country, that if we keep cutting back reporters, we keep cutting back newsroom resources, we won't have the means to cover the George Santos's of the future.

Brigid Bergin: Now, a quick reminder to our listeners that early voting starts in a special election to fill the seat held by George Santos in Eastern Queens in Northern Nassau County tomorrow. Dean Craig, I'm curious about your reaction to that clip. Craig, if you want to start.

Craig Newmark: There's a lot of good journalists across the country doing a lot of good reporting, and sometimes we don't notice it. I'm guessing it means that they have to alert people who are friendly to the press, like myself, to help get the word out, and I do follow through with that.

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: I want to say, so that's totally true, and there's a lot of recent research that shows that when a community lacks reliable news from local events, they tend to vote less and there's less civic engagement, and it tends to be more corruption among public officials. I think it's clear, and we can show research now to show about the impact of lacking reliable source of news, particularly for local communities.

I wanted to reframe a little bit what you mentioned at the beginning about the state of the industry. What I see, actually, if you look at the big picture, the industry, the traditional news industry is now in a moment of deep, profound transformation, but there's also a moment of emergence that I think we as journalists, because we're trained to look at what's not working in our society, are missing a side of. We are in the middle of an unprecedented effort by philanthropic funders, and organizations, and donors. To create a new culture of philanthropy, to support journalism and local news, and to connect the idea of a health journalism industry with a healthy democracy, that is unprecedented.

There's this press forward effort that is trying to raise a billion dollars to support local news, and the most important part beyond the number and the figure, which is, of course, is not enough to sustain everything, but the most important part is that they are really creating a new culture of philanthropic giving that will go towards journalism.

We're also seeing an unprecedented movement, national movement, trying to engage public officials and government in funding journalism with public funds. The argument behind this movement is that if journalism is public service, then it has to be seen as public service by government and by people in positions of authority, and it needs to be protected.

We are also seeing, to me, fantastic, still small outlets, but a proliferation of news, a new type of newsrooms. Most of them led by people of color across the country that are changing the way in which newsrooms come up with a news agenda. They go to the communities to understand what their information needs are before they decide what to cover. That has been really exciting, and that is working.

There are also mostly local media and traditional media, the business model is not working, and that's why we're seeing all these layoffs, and it's terrible. We're also seeing some organizations, some large organizations and smaller that are thriving financially, and that are doing better than they did in the past. I really see this as a moment of transformation. I think we're going to see this moment in the future, like my colleague, Sarabeth Berman, who runs the American Journalism Project, has put it. She says that it took a generation to unravel the news industry, and it's going to take another generation to rebuild it. I think part of our mission at the school is to train that generation that's going to rebuild it.

Brigid Bergin: Do you have something to add, Craig?

Craig Newmark: Well, I'm particularly interested in supporting the City University of New York because for a couple of hundred years, it's been about helping people get good jobs. People who would grow up with little or no money, they could get good jobs, get into the middle class, maybe do even better than that, and that's a pretty fine expression, I think of New York City values. The deal is, you give the other person a break, you do what you can. If you happen to be lucky enough to make a lot of money, then you do what you can to give a hand to other people and to spread that around as much as you can. That means also supporting other forms of journalism, local journalism in New York City. I'm fond of Hellgate and The Village Sun. About five years ago, I went to both the city and something called WNYC.

Brigid Bergin: Oh, I've heard of them.

Craig Newmark: I don't know about them, but too many tote bags.

Brigid Bergin: Never enough tote bags.

Craig Newmark: My deal is I went to both of them and I said, "Well, I can give you a $100,000 a year for 25 years, or I could just give you $2.5 million now, I wish you could make better use of it that way, and so that's what I did there. The idea is to, well, if you're successful, if you're lucky that way, a lot of people pull up the ladders and so other people can't get into the middle class or better. An alternative way of doing things is to make more ladders to help more people get into the middle class or better. That's a good way to spend money.

Brigid Bergin: I appreciate both Dean, your optimism, and Craig, your ladders. I want to introduce a caller to this conversation who gets at a question that I wanted to ask both of you. TJ in Manhattan, you're on WNYC.

TJ: Good morning, Brigid, and good morning, Craig. My question to you is about AI. AI seems to be in its infancy replacing lots of positions, like doctors, journalists, lawyers, et cetera, et cetera. Are you afraid that in the future AI will displace journalists, and journalists will be out of a job?

Brigid Bergin: TJ, thanks for your question. For anyone who didn't hear it, the question is about AI, artificial intelligence. It's certainly a potentially disruptive technology. It's got a lot of potential. I'd love to hear from both of you. First, how you are viewing it and maybe even interacting, teaching it at the J-School, and then your view on it, Craig.

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: We've been teaching artificial intelligence since 2015, actually. We didn't call it that way, we call it machine learning or interrogating the algorithm. We were very focused on the biases that are inherent to these algorithms and this artificial intelligence. We have actually been teaching and incorporating into the curriculum for quite some time. What we're doing now is we're assembling right now an incredible group of thinkers who come from tech, people who are developing their technology, people who are using their technology.

As our neighbor said, it's still a very new thing, but it's still going very fast and really transforming the world around us, so we want to understand how journalists can use AI. This is a technology, there's no going back, and not having this transforming the world is going to happen. It's very early, so I think we have a say, journalists and the news industry and journalism school, we still have a say and we need to fight for it to be able to frame it and shape it in a way that can actually help journalism instead of harming it, of course with the possibilities of harm in mind.

Craig Newmark: I don't think we know how powerful generative AI will be. It may be of assistance in newsrooms in terms of maybe writing copy, but humans are needed to gather the intelligence, the information that journalists need to work with, humans are needed to analyze that intelligence, and humans are needed to speak truth to power. That's the vital role of journalists, they need to show courage, figure out what's going on, and then call out people and hold them accountable. Generative AI systems, I don't think we'll get that far, certainly not in my lifetime.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Mary in Sunnyside, Queens. Mary, you're on WNYC.

Mary: Oh, I am. Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here. I think what everyone so far has said is just terrific. I'm actually a photojournalist, but my training is in Italian and economics and fine arts, but my work is documenting the Mexican community in New York since the 90s. I think it's exciting that there's philanthropy, that there's this initiative of City College to support young people who don't have the means to pay for their education. My daughter is a student there, so she's studying a different field, but I think we're going in the right direction.

Brigid Bergin: Mary, thanks so much for your call. Part of what you do at the J-School, it is a comprehensive curriculum. Photographers are very much part of what people-- one of the skills people learn while they're there, right?

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Yes. Actually, we have a core curriculum. Everybody leaves the masters with understanding how to report, how to fact-check, how to be rigorous, gather information, and sharing that information, and serving the information needs of the communities. We train around the ethics of journalism and the mission of journalism so people understand exactly how their jobs are needed and why they're needed in our communities.

We have a lot of specializations. We have a photojournalism specialization, we have a documentary specialization, a business and economics, arts and culture, international reporting, local accountability reporting, bilingual reporting, data journalism which is very strong. We have an amazing audio reporting concentration. Many of your colleagues are teaching for us there. Many of our alumni end up working for this station. We offer training so everybody who leaves, by the time they graduate, they're able to do everything that is basic to journalism, but they also have a deep specialization in a medium.

I think what we do that we're very good at is that we really train reporters and editors and news leaders and journalists for the industry as is but also for the industry of the future. We also train or develop or help develop an ability to adapt to changes and to continue changing with the industry.

Brigid Bergin: Dean, you talked about how the school has always had a mission and a commitment to training a diverse group of journalists and making sure that the voices of our entire community are reflected in the newsrooms where we work. For listeners who aren't familiar, can you talk a little bit about the center for community media that's also at the J-School?

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Sure. We have a center of community media that serves media outlets in the Black media, Latino media, Asian media, and immigrant media sectors. The purpose of that center is to help or maybe to work with these outlets and with these publishers and journalists, and work with them to find sustainability and to find solutions to problems they might have. In some cases, that is they need training. We are doing a lot of AI training with these organizations, for example. In some cases, it's training around election coverage and ethics around elections coverage. In some cases, it's about how to find new sources of revenue, how to serve their communities better, and understand what is it that the communities are needing in terms of information.

We've also developed very, I think, critical research around these sectors. We have national maps of Black media, of Latino media, we just launched the one on Asian media. We have directories of outlets. One of the issues these outlets have suffered as much as their communities is the lack of visibility for mainstream media and for communities that are not the ones they serve. We've tried to eliminate that and get them to be seen by everybody else. We've done also a lot of research about content, about how they've covered the COVID pandemic, for example. There's a lot of training and support, and then also connecting them to the larger mainstream media ecosystem.

Brigid Bergin: Tom in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC.

Tom: Hi there. I was a public relations person for a big financial company that I won't mention. What has happened over six or seven years for journalists who used to write about financial services, in particular, are now working for the company that I used to do public relations with. I knew all four of these folks. I think it reflects the numbers of people who've left journalism and moved into even public relations or different kinds of communications functions within big financial firms since the financial crisis, really.

On one particular industry, finance and financial services, I've seen those numbers. It's been amazing. As I said, four people who I used to work with when they were journalists are now working for the firm that I used to be a PR person for. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the same in other industries.

Brigid Bergin: Tom, thanks for that call. Dean, Craig, we do see a lot of movement often in later years for journalists from journalism to PR. I know for me, I started in communications then went to journalism. Can you speak to that, this idea that the sustainability of these careers, it's really hard work? Not only is the industry in this point of shift, but the work itself is hard.

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: I've been thinking of course a lot about this. When you are trained as a journalist, you're trained to do many things. You're going to be good at a lot of other jobs if you're a really good journalist. You're very good at finding solutions, you're very good at being in any situation and understanding what's happening around you, you're very good as a communicator, you're very good at telling stories, you're very good at doing it in many different formats and medium.

Of course, that's a very personal decision, and because of what I was talking about, about the lowering salaries in the industry and all these layoffs, some people have found that they needed to pay the bills and they needed a different job, and that's totally fine. I think that's why we're doing what we're doing. We are trying to eliminate tuition so that we actually don't force people in that direction when they don't want to go in that direction when they want to stay in journalism.

Most of the people who become a journalist, and you know this because you're one, but maybe people who are listening don't, we are people who really believe in really being part of a larger world than just our worlds. We like to know what's happening, we like to understand why things happen, we like to be part of history as it's happening, and we like to be able to translate that and explain and share information that is meaningful to people, that people need to make decisions. Why the two subways derailed in your city two weeks ago? I know it because I was listening to you in my car and I finally knew was it safe to be on the subway or not.

Being able to answer those questions, questions that impact the life of our neighbors and our communities, is a wonderfully rewarding feeling. The sense of service. I think we all have this sense of public service. We like to be helpful, and we like to have an impact that will make our societies better. I just feel sad when somebody makes a decision to abandon the field when they were passionate about it and they lose this significance and worth in their lives, and I hope they can come back. Some people decide it's not for them, and that's totally fine too. They will have the skills. They're probably very good at that PR firm, and they might enjoy it more. It might be better for their lives. I'm hoping that we can help the people who don't want to make that move and who want to stay reporting to keep their jobs. Eliminating student debt is a huge part of that decision.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Before I let you two go, Dean, there's one other exciting partnership from the school that I want to shout out since there's an upcoming deadline, and it's your partnership with Howard University and other HBCUs. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Yes. We have a new partnership with the Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard University to train undergrad students from all of the historically Black colleges and universities around the nation on data journalism. That's an area in journalism where there's actually more jobs. That's a growing side of the industry, and it's a very important one because if you can find data and understand data and translate it into stories, that's a very powerful source of reliable reporting.

Also, to what Craig was saying before, to check power and to find through data how government and how money's being spent, how power is being used, et cetera, how public housing is being allocated. There's so many important stories that rely on reliable data, and that's a very hard job to find it and mine it and translate it. That's a growing side of the industry, as I was saying, but there's not a lot of diversity in that side of the industry. We are always looking at those gaps, and so we decided to partner with this wonderful university to try to fill that gap. That's what we're going to do and we're going to start at the undergrad level.

Brigid Bergin: I think the application for those undergrads is due later this month-

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: In February, yes.

Brigid Bergin: -in February. If you're a student at an HBCU and you are listening right now, check it out on the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism's website. It's a pretty exciting opportunity. We're going to have to leave it there for now. My guests have been Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Dean Graciela Mochkofsky of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Thanks so much to you both for coming on.

Craig Newmark: Thanks.

Dean Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you for having us.

 

 

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