David Frum on Trump and the media

David Frum, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, has emerged as a leader among conservatives who were opposed to Donald Trump during the presidential campaign and who remain opposed. He has an article in the new edition of The Atlantic headlined “How to Build an Autocracy.”

I am assigning an excerpt from the article about Trump and the media, and I ask you to read it before class on Wednesday. Please search for “At a rally in Grand Rapids,” which will take you to the beginning of the section in which Frum discusses the press. The section ends with “to assert power over truth itself.”

The entire essay is well worth your time, although the brief excerpt I’ve cited is all that I am requiring you to read.

Boston Globe political reporter James Pindell to speak on Wednesday

James Pindell

This Wednesday we will greet our first guest speaker of the semester: James Pindell, who covers politics for The Boston Globe. Pindell has been reporting on the New Hampshire primary for years, and as such has a unique perspective on President Trump, whose relationship with the media is the topic of our class this week, as well as an ongoing theme every week.

Please come prepared with questions for Pindell. You should read this interview he did with the Nieman Journalism Lab earlier this year on his multi-platform coverage of the New Hampshire primary. And read his column, “Ground Game,” which you can find in the Politics section of BostonGlobe.com. (Cast your eyes to the right once you get there.) You can also sign up for the newsletter version of “Ground Game.”

Your review of ‘The Elements of Journalism’

Your first graded assignment of the semester is due next Wednesday, Feb. 1, at 10 a.m. Please write a 500- to 800-word review of Kovach and Rosenstiel’s “The Elements of Journalism.” As the syllabus says, you should summarize what you think are the key points in the book. Tell us what you agree with, what you disagree with and what you think Kovach and Rosenstiel left out.

I would like you to write this in the form of a review that we might read in a newspaper or on a website. A review is different from academic report. You are providing a recommendation to your audience: Should they read this book or not? Thus you want to write it in a journalistic style, with a strong lede, rather than in the stilted language of a class paper. Try to write an enticing headline to go along with it.

If you are not familiar with how to write a book review, you will want to take a look at some good ones. We all subscribe to The Washington Post, so be sure to take a look at its book section. You’ll want to concentrate on the nonfiction reviews. The New York Times offers extensive book coverage, including a standalone Sunday Book Review. The Boston Globe publishes good-quality book reviews, too.

Please write it as a Microsoft Word document and send it to me by email.

Journalistic codes of ethics and the rise of professional standards

Tom Rosenstiel and Jack Shafer on how to cover the Trump presidency

Tom Rosenstiel, the co-author of “The Elements of Journalism,” wrote an excellent article for the Brookings Institution recently called “What the post-Trump debate over journalism gets wrong.” In it, he outlines seven steps for how journalists can hold President Trump to account while continuing to practice what he and Bill Kovach call “the journalism of verification.”

This week Jack Shafer of Politico wrote a much snarkier piece, “Put on Your Big-Boy Pants, Journos,” that actually parallels Rosenstiel pretty closely.

What should be the 11th element of journalism?

Before class next Wednesday, Jan. 25, please write a comment on Facebook regarding what additional element you would add to “The Elements of Journalism.” Explain your reasoning. The 10 that Kovach and Rosenstiel have come up with are pretty comprehensive, but strive to think of something that is clearly different from theirs. Again, I’m looking for somewhere between 100 and 300 words. Just write your comment beneath the post I’ve written.

Notes on ‘The Elements of Journalism’

NPR’s top news executive on Trump and the role of the media

Michael Oreskes, NPR’s senior vice president of news, sent a toughly worded memo to his staff recently regarding ongoing efforts by President-elect Donald Trump and his aides to delegitimize the news media.

As Oreskes reminds us, the Obama administration has had a difficult relationship with the press as well with its zealous campaign against leakers and its overly restrictive rules regarding access for photojournalists.

There is much here to think about as we prepare for the Trump inauguration on Friday.

Northeastern faculty members debate the CNN and BuzzFeed stories

I thought you would like to see this debate between School of Journalism Director Jonathan Kaufman and me over the CNN and BuzzFeed stories about the Russian dossier containing unverified reports about President-elect Donald Trump’s personal behavior and financial entanglements.

Though both of us agreed that CNN’s report was an example of ethical journalism, we disagreed about BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the raw, unvetted material.

Your reaction to Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron’s 2015 speech

I have posted the details of this brief assignment at our Facebook group. Now that everyone has joined, I’ve changed the settings to “secret.” We will all be able to see what each other is writing, but the group will have no visibility to anyone else. If you want to watch the speech again, or if you were not in class to see it, you will find a link under Week 1 in the syllabus.