Lecture Series #4: What Principles and Skills Does Superlative Journalism Require?

A lecture on a pressing topic by a university journalism professor.

{Note: This is the fourth in a series of university lectures on the current state of journalism in the United States. The first lecture in the series, “What Is Journalism?”, can be found here, while the second lecture, “How Does One Study Journalism in 2021?” can be found at this link. The third lecture is “How Do Journalists Determine the 'Newsworthiness’ of Information?”}

I gave the lecture below, addressing the principles and skills needed to be a superlative journalist, as part of a course entitled Twenty-First Century Journalism. To be clear, this lecture was not developed with Substack (or even a general audience) in mind. But I believe it may be useful to a larger listenership at a time when the question of who is or is not a journalist, and how we recognize journalism worthy of our respect and support, is central to public debate over the state of journalism in the United States.

The lecture is about 70 minutes, and, as you might expect given the purpose for which it was first created, it proceeds at a stately pace. But I think if you bear with it, you’ll find it illuminating. To read pages from the journalism textbook it mentions, see here.