Scholarship at the DeWitt Wallace Center emphasizes solutions to societal challenges involving media and democracy. Below are links to a wide range of individual and collaborative faculty news items, published work, research and projects. Click on a faculty member’s name below, and skip down to view their most recent activities.
FACULTY
James T. Hamilton, Director
Philip Bennett
Sarah Cohen
Ellen Mickiewicz
Kenneth Rogerson
ADJUNCT and VISITING FACULTY
Misha Angrist
Robert Bliwise
John Burness
Kip Frey
Clay Johnson
Laura Roselle
Michael Schoenfeld
James T. Hamilton
Charles S. Sydnor Professor of Public Policy; Professor of Economics and Political Science and Director, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy
James T. Hamilton has contributed an essay entitled “What’s the Incentive to Save Journalism?” in the forthcoming (2011) book Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can be Done to Fix It, edited by Robert McChesney and Victor Pickard (New York: New Press), pp. 277-288.
Hamilton has also contributed a chapter entitled “Measuring Spillovers in Markets for Local Public Affairs Coverage,” forthcoming in Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication, (New York: Oxford University Press).
During the 2010-11 academic year, Hamilton served as a consultant to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Working Group on the Information Needs of Communities. In June, 2011, the FCC released a “white paper” based on the group’s research, which included interviews with over 600 journalists, scholars and industry leaders. The 475-page report, entitled, “The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age,” can be downloaded from the FCC website.
Hamilton, an economist, also released a book with Scott de Marchi in Nov 2009, entitled You are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind that Really Determine How We Make Decisions. Hamilton and de Marchi demonstrated how the research in the book applies to current political debates, in an article, When Political Decisions Have Costs, Huffington Post, Nov 3, 2009.
Sarah Cohen, Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy and James T. Hamilton, Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, together with Fred Turner of Stanford University, published an article entitled “Computational Journalism” in the October, 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM, (Vol. 54 No. 10, Pages 66-71). The article explores “how computer scientists can empower journalists, democracy’s watchdogs, in the production of news in the public interest.”
Philip Bennett
Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy
While continuing his teaching and research at Duke, Patterson Chair Philip Bennett has taken on a new role as Managing Editor at the PBS investigative documentary series “Frontline,” beginning May, 2011. The Sanford School announced Bennett’s Frontline role in a press release, and UNC TV’s NC Now interviewed Bennett about ideas he has for his work with Frontline. At Duke, Bennett teaches about the role of secrecy in the news media’s reporting on national security. On Sept. 7, 2011, Frontline aired “Top Secret America,” and Bennett published a related online article entitled “Has the Balance Tipped.” For more on Bennett’s work at Duke on national security reporting, check out his Rutherfurd Living History interviews at Duke with journalists Jane Mayer, Dana Priest and Sy Hersh.
The summer 2011 edition of the Duke journal History of Political Economy (HOPE) features Professor Bennett’s presentation entitled “When a Crisis in Journalism Meets an Economy in Crisis” (Volume 43, Number 2: 375-378), which was originally delivered at a March 2010 conference celebrating the intellectual legacy of Craufurd Goodwin.
Bennett was also interviewed in March, 2011 by Duke student journalist Michael Shammas for The Chronicle, about the challenges of keeping reporters safe in war zones. The story followed the release of four New York Times journalists held by the Libyan government.
Bennett, together with Duke alum and NYT reporter Mark Mazzetti, answered audience questions about national security reporting, on Duke University’s “Office Hours” webcast on January 28, 2011.
Sarah Cohen
Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy
Knight Chair Sarah Cohen recently soft-launched The Reporters’ Lab as a vehicle for the open-source computational journalism research initiative at Duke, which she leads. Look for the official launch of the The Reporters’ Lab site in February 2012.
Cohen, together with visualization experts Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, created TimeFlow, a timeline and chronology tool for reporters covering long-running stories. Cohen updated news about TimeFlow’s ongoing development, with examples of its use in her blog in The Reporters’ Lab.
Sarah Cohen, Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy and Jay Hamilton, Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, together with Fred Turner of Stanford University, published an article entitled “Computational Journalism” in the October, 2011 issue of Communications of the ACM, (Vol. 54 No. 10, Pages 66-71). The article explores “how computer scientists can empower journalists, democracy’s watchdogs, in the production of news in the public interest.”
In May 2011, Cohen was featured in the Nordic Media Festival’s journalism track discussing recent changes in investigative reporting and new techniques for reporting and storytelling
Cohen and Texas Tribune reporter Matt Stiles were interviewed on May 13, 2011 by Brooke Gladstone in an On The Media report about Data Journalism.
Cohen testified about the Freedom of Information Act before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 15, 2011. Professor Cohen’s testimony was entitled “Ensuring Transparency and Accountability in the Digital Age.” (Cohen is introduced at 86:25.) Duke student journalist Yeshwanth Kandimalla followed up with Professor Cohen about her testimony in a Q&A feature in The Chronicle.
Cohen served as an advisor for the first stage of the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership, a $2.5 million project to help bridge the gap between journalism and technology.
Cohen has served as a board member of the 4,500-member Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. since 2010.
Ellen Mickiewicz
James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science
As a guest research fellow at the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, Austria, Ellen Mickiewicz, James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy, conducted research this summer on “Internet Encounters: Cognitive processing instruments and news and information in Russia.”
Kenneth Rogerson
Co-Chair, Policy Journalism and Media Studies Certificate Program; Lecturer in Public Policy and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Public Policy
Kenneth Rogerson was quoted in the Chronicle’s September 14, 2011 article entitled Duke survey shows social media spending on the rise.
And, on July 20, 2011 on the day the Republican presidential candidates held a Twitter debate and following President Obama’s Twitter town hall, Rogerson was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor article GOP candidates debate on Twitter: What could they say in 140 characters?. On the same day, he provided Duke Today’s featured News Tip, entitled News Tip: Debates Via Social Media ‘More Spectacle Than Substance.
In Spring 2011, Rogerson worked in collaboration with Denise Comer, Thompson Writing Program, and Rebecca Vidra, Lecturer, Nicholas School of the Environment on the eReading Pilot Project. Rogerson posted “Dante’s iPad,” a guest blog about the eReading Pilot Project in the Duke Center for Instructional Technology’s blog on June 28, 2011.
In April, 2011 Rogerson was profiled in Duke Today’s Blue Devil of the Week
Rogerson contributed an opinion piece entitled “When Pundits Run for President the Public Isn’t Fooled” in The New York Times’ Room for Debate section of the Opinion Pages, published on March 3, 2011.
Misha Angrist
Assistant Professor of the Practice, Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy
Misha Angrist, teaches Science and the Media in the Sanford School’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy, and is Assistant Professor of the Practice in the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. He also teaches within Duke’s first-year FOCUS Program and in the Department of Biology. Angrist blogs regularly at Genomeboy.
Angrist recently published an article in the journal Personalized Medicine (Nov 2011, Vol. 8, No. 6, Pages 651-657), entitled You never call, you never write: Why return of “omic” results to research participants is both a good idea and a moral imperative. He previewed this article in a video recorded at the 2011 Children’s Mercy Hospital conference on Personalized Medicine. Also forthcoming: Wagner J, Angrist M The smorgasbord of DTC genetic tests and relevant legal protections in the U.S.A., Nature Education Knowledge.
In 2009, Angrist had his entire genome sequenced at high coverage by the Duke Center for Human Genome Variation, and then wrote a book about this experience called Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, published by HarperCollins in 2010. The paperback edition will appear in November.
Robert Bliwise
Visiting Lecturer in Public Policy and Editor, Duke Magazine
Bob Bliwise is Founding Editor of Duke Magazine, to which he recently contributed a feature article entitled The Nixon Library That Wasn’t in the May-June 2011 issue.
Bliwise also recently published the articles What’s Your Type? A tour of London with a font savant, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, on November 13, 2011; and Seeing Red: Can we understand Rothko’s work without decoding his favorite color?, in the Spring 2011 issue of the magazine American Scholar.
Bliwise was quoted in a Duke Chronicle article by Caitlin Moyles on April 7, 2011, on Duke alum Edward Gomez, an award-winning art critic.
John Burness
Visiting Professor of the Practice in Public Policy
John Burness has returned to teaching this fall at Duke, after a one-year leave to lead his alma mater, Franklin & Marshall College, as interim President.
Burness recently weighed in on controversy surrounding Donna Shalala’s tenure at the University of Miami, in an Associated Press article by Justin Pope on August 27, 2011.
In June, Burness participated in the Worldviews Conference on Media and Higher Education, 2011, where he joined keynote panels discussing the question of “Can higher education trust the media?” and the role of media and higher education in promoting democratic culture. Some of Burness’ comments were recorded in a “live blog” of the conference by PhD student Melonie Fullick.
Kip Frey
Adjunct Professor of Public Policy
Kip Frey has taken on new titles at Duke. In addition to his position as Adjunct Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School, where he teaches Intellectual Property: Law, Policy and Practice at Duke, he has joined the Law School as Visiting Professor of the Practice of Law, and Director of the Law and Entrepreneurship Program.
Frey commented on the Law and Entrepreneurship Program recently in The Financial Times. Nov. 25, 2011.
This fall, Frey also joined EvoApp, a young technology firm specializing in social media business intelligence, as reported in the News & Observer, on September 7, 2011.
Clay Johnson
Visiting Lecturer in Public Policy
Clay Johnson received an Emmy in the historical documentary category at the 25th Midsouth Regional Emmy Awards on January 29, 2011 for “Floyd,” a documentary about Hurricane Floyd produced and written for WRAL-TV. To learn more about the documentaries Clay produces for WRAL go to http://www.wral.com/news/local/documentaries/ and to learn more about Clay and his other work go to his website.
Johnson has recently launched a WRAL blog called Behind the Doc, through which he provides behind-the-scenes insight into the production of WRAL documentaries.
Laura Roselle
Visiting Professor of Public Policy Studies, Professor of Political Science at Elon University
Laura Roselle joined Christopher Gelpi (Duke) and Brooke Barnett (Elon) in a working paper entitled: “Polarizing Patriots: Divergent Responses to Patriotic Imagery in News Coverage of Terrorism.” Also, the revised and updated edition of Roselle’s book Media and the Politics of Failure: Great Powers, Communication Strategies, and Military Defeats, was released in October 2011.
Roselle has been elected program chair for the Information Technology and Politics (ITP) Section for the 2012 American Political Science Association annual conference. The 2012 conference theme is “Representation and Renewal,” and the ITP section call for papers has been posted here.
Roselle organized the March, 2011 conference Media and Politics: Openness, Accuracy, and Honesty in the 21st Century Media Landscape at Elon University. Elon junior Marlena Chertock’s blog about Roselle’s presentation on media literacy includes video from the conference.
Michael Schoenfeld
Adjunct Lecturer and Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations
Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations, joined Tracy Futhey, vice president for the Office of Information Technology, in a Duke Primetime employee forum on how technology is changing communication, research and teaching at Duke, on Feb. 1, 2011. Schoenfeld describes in detail an innovative classroom use of teleconferencing in which his students followed CNBC’s John Harwood through a newscast, as part of Schoenfeld’s course Crash: The Intersection of Politics, Policy & Media (starts at 34:46).
