4 Free June Webinars: Nonprofit Journalism, Job Hunting, Fake News & Faith in Journalism

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Wed., June 8 – The Importance of Nonprofit Journalism in Today’s Democracy

What: Distinguished editors from several independent news outlets will talk about the future of nonprofit journalism, offer examples of its impact in reporting critical issues, and its importance to our sometimes fragile democracy particularly as it relates to the area along the I-10 corridor.

Who: Susan Goldberg, Arizona State professor and former Editor and Chief of National Geographic

Hannah Brown, Co-Founder & Editorial Director, The Marjorie

Robert Moore, Founder and CEO, El Paso Matters

Dianna M. Náñez, Executive Editor, Arizona Luminaria

Sara Solovitch, Editor, Searchlight

When: 10 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Ten Across (originating from ASU)

More info

 

Fri., June 10 - Facts in a Time of Fiction: Reporting the truth amid lies and disinformation

What: How misinformation and lies spread after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, along with insights on how conspiracy theories grow.

Who: New York Times writer and author Elizabeth Williamson, whose critically-acclaimed book “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth” offered on-the-ground reporting to trace a line from conspiracy theories around Sandy Hook to Jan. 6, 2021.

When: 11:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute

More info

Sat., June 11 - Refreshing Your Resume & Cover Letter for a Job Hunt

What: If you haven’t updated your resume lately, or if you aren’t getting the results you hope for, maybe your resume needs attention. We will provide useful tips on how to present your information and what to avoid.

Who: Elena Cabral, Assistant Dean, Academic Programs & Communications, Columbia Journalism School

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Association of Hispanic Journalists

More info

 

Fri., June 24 - Faith in Journalism: How news organizations can build trust with religious Americans

What: Topics include how journalists of faith navigate challenges from inside their newsrooms and from inside their faith communities; Whose faith is centered in coverage and whose is marginalized, mischaracterized, or misunderstood; Which best practices can help extend our community’s understanding of itself.

Who: Moderated by Julie Moos, the Institute’s Executive Director, Panelists include:

Dawn Araujo-Hawkins, vice president at Religion News Association

Alison Bethel, vice president of corps excellence at Report for America

Sarah Breger, editor at Moment Magazine

McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic

Aysha Khan, journalist and Harvard Divinity School student

Holly Meyer, religion news editor at The Associated Press

Bill Mitchell, publisher, CEO, and president at the National Catholic Reporter

Paul O’Donnell, editor-in-chief at Religion News Service

When: 11:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute

More info & Registration

When Work is like a Family

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When a business is presented as a family, its workers may feel pressure to pledge an unreasonable degree of loyalty to their employer, putting up with long hours, mistreatment, and the erosion of work-life boundaries, all in the spirit of harmony and a shared purpose. In other words, when a workplace resembles a family, it’s frequently for reasons that would make you want a different job.

Joe Pinsker, writing in The Atlantic

18 Articles about Writing Cover Letters

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Betting on Those We Love

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The year is 1995. Jeff Bezos launches an online bookstore out of his garage in his Bellevue, Washington. His parents sink a substantial portion of their life savings into the effort. "We weren't betting on the Internet," his mother would later say. "We were betting on Jeff." By the end of the decade, Jeff's parents were billionaires.

It doesn't always work out this way, but is betting on those we love ever a misplaced wager? There are many ways besides money that we can show them through our action we are on their side and are rooting for them.

24 Data Science Articles from May 2022

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Spark or Hadoop? Both Apache products can be used by data scientists but which is the better analytics tool? Here’s a comparison—along with which one will fit better based on your project focus

Fixing data lake errors can be time-consuming, and costly—here are some thoughts on standardized an autonomous validation approach to avoid the lake becoming a swamp

Interpol: in a couple of years expect state-developed cyber weapons to be available on the dark net  

Do you think Python is slow? Here’s a fast way to loop in Python

Looking for patterns in satellite image time series with python? Here’s a quick guide for handling time-varying imagery with open python libraries 

Can the new-and-improved Large Hadron Collider save particle physics?   

Want to run Python code in a browser? Soon you might be able to 

The AI Engineering Process: A guide to solving an AI problem

The challenges of organizing geospatial intelligence efficiently 

Making predictions outperforms smart teams of data scientists working on large data sets. Some examples of machine learning mistakes thanks to the narrow thinking of the humans that created them.

Some researchers claim we’re on the cusp of GoPro physics—where a camera can point at an event and an algorithm can identify the underlying physics equation

An in-depth look at Neural architecture search—the AutoML subfield aiming to replace manual designs

In an effort to enhance artificial intelligence & machine learning technologies military researchers are letting it be known they want more accurate processing of covariance information related to environmental variations and noise

Intelligence agencies are starting to coalesce around a set of common standards and data for using open source intelligence

A detailed explanation of handling satellite imagery in the format of .tiff files using Python.

A way to better understand road networks by measuring their spatial homogeneity using machine-learning tools like graph neural networks

The place where machine learning shines

A new deep learning technique shows promise to make robotics systems more stable in handling deformable objects

Small satellites: The implications for national security 

Ukraine may be a tipping point for developing intelligent weapons

Two main types of adversarial attacks in neural networks

It’s not just about gathering data—it’s telling compelling stories 

NGA to Leverage AI, ML for GEOINT Analysis at Scale 

From data scientist to … comedian?

Follow for a daily Data Science article

Plan to Adapt

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The primary message of (many career) books and countless others is to listen to your heart and follow your passion. Find your true north by filling out worksheets or engaging in deep, thoughtful introspection. Once you’ve got a mission in mind, these books urge, you’re supposed to develop a long-term plan for fulfilling it. You’re supposed to craft detailed, specific goals. You’re urged to figure out who you are and where you want to be in ten years, and then work backward to develop a roadmap for getting there.  

This philosophy has some serious strengths. It’s important to have worthy aspirations. If you are passionate about something, you’ll have fun, stay committed, and achieve more. It’s also right to invest for the long term: to find out whether you’re good at something and whether you like it, you need to stick with it for a meaningful amount of time.  

But it presumes a static world. You will change. The environment around you will change. Your allies and competitors will change. It’s unwise, no matter your stage of life, to try to pinpoint a single dream around which your existence revolves.  

Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha from The Startup of You

What you'll be like a decade from now

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Why do people get ill-advised tattoos, marry questionable partners, or make financial-planning decisions they come to regret? A new study suggests that part of the reason is that we aren’t very good at predicting how much we’re going to change in the future. We are prone to believe whatever we think and value now will hold true. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert led the study and says, “People really aren’t very good at knowing who they’re going to be and hence what they’re going to want a decade from now.” Gilbert tells LiveScience.com, “At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

The Harvard University study survey of more than 19,000 people between the ages of 18 and 68. People act as if history shaped them and then ended, leaving them in their final form. The researchers call the effect “the end of history” illusion.

Younger people in the survey did not expect to change as much as their the elders changed within the same time frame. The researchers made an effort to make sure that the people in the survey were not just overestimating past change but rather underestimating future change by comparing the results to predictions made on another survey a decade ago.

Although we aren’t very good at predicting our future selves, most of us are able to see that our values, preferences and personalities are different from a decade ago. We just can’t predict how much change will come looking forward the same length of time.

We may be motivated by the desire to comfort ourselves. We tell ourselves that future change won’t be very dramatic. We know ourselves and the future is predictable. Our present selves are permanent, so this thinking goes.

Other studies show you are less likely to change the older you get, but you will still change more than you expect.

Gilbert offers this advice: Take care when making long-term decisions to include a “margin for escape”. If you are buying a ticket to see your favorite band in ten years, you might want to pause before buying a ticket.

But there is another side of the coin to consider before including a 10 year opt-out clause in your wedding vows: Research shows that when people feel they have the ability to change their minds, they're less happy with the choices they've made.

You can read more about the study in the journal Science.

Stephen Goforth

15 Career Advice Articles

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Frankl’s Decision: Meaning or Happiness?

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By 1941, Viktor Frankl’s theories had received international attention and he was working as the chief of neurology at Vienna's Rothschild Hospital, where he risked his life and career by making false diagnoses of mentally ill patients so that they would not, per Nazi orders, be euthanized.

That was the same year when he had a decision to make, a decision that would change his life. With his career on the rise and the threat of the Nazis looming over him, Frankl had applied for a visa to America, which he was granted in 1941. By then, the Nazis had already started rounding up the Jews and taking them away to concentration camps, focusing on the elderly first. Frankl knew that it would only be time before the Nazis came to take his parents away. He also knew that once they did, he had a responsibility to be there with his parents to help them through the trauma of adjusting to camp life. On the other hand, as a newly married man with his visa in hand, he was tempted to leave for America and flee to safety, where he could distinguish himself even further in his field.

As Anna S. Redsand recounts in her biography of Frankl, he was at a loss for what to do, so he set out for St. Stephan's Cathedral in Vienna to clear his head. Listening to the organ music, he repeatedly asked himself, "Should I leave my parents behind?... Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate?" Where did his responsibility lie? He was looking for a "hint from heaven."

When he returned home, he found it. A piece of marble was lying on the table. His father explained that it was from the rubble of one of the nearby synagogues that the Nazis had destroyed. The marble contained the fragment of one of the Ten Commandments -- the one about honoring your father and your mother. With that, Frankl decided to stay in Vienna and forgo whatever opportunities for safety and career advancement awaited him in the United States. He decided to put aside his individual pursuits to serve his family and, later, other inmates in the camps.

The wisdom that Frankl derived from his experiences there, in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, is just as relevant now as it was then: “Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is.” 

Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic

Murder Confession Tattoo

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A Los Angeles gang member was convicted of murder because he had his crime tattooed on his chest. Seven years after the 2004 killing, the 25-year-old was arrested for another crime. That’s when a police officer noticed the scene inscribed on the man’s torso. It included a lifeless body and the outline of a liquor store. A law enforcement officer went into the man’s cell, pretending to be another member of the same gang. The confession given to the undercover cop led to the man’s conviction on first-degree murder charges.

Each of us has secrets hidden underneath carefully guarded masks. Whether or not we wear them as tattoos, their itch reminds us of how they have impacted our lives.

Stephen Goforth

Harmful comments at Work

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Families and workplaces have a tendency to overlook people’s harmful comments or behavior out of respect for a shared history. At family gatherings, “sometimes there’s this idea of like, Oh, well, that’s just Uncle Larry. He might say some homophobic or racist, sexist stuff, but that’s just how he is,” Cynthia Pong, a New York City–based career coach said. “I have seen that happen before in the workplace, excusing people who’ve maybe been around the company for some time, and really not holding them to account for the highly problematic things that they may be saying or doing.”

Joe Pinsker, writing in The Atlantic

Upcoming Webinars: Mental Health in Media, Disinformation

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Wed., May 25 - Mental health in media

What: A discussion of mental health portrayals on-screen.

Who: Various industry leaders.

When: 10 am, Pacific

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: USC Annenberg School of Journalism

More info

Sat., June 5 - How to Cover Race Workshop

THIS EVENT IS NO LONGER SCHEDULED

Fri., June 10 - Facts in a Time of Fiction: Reporting the truth amid lies and disinformation

What: How misinformation and lies spread after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, along with insights on how conspiracy theories grow.

Who: New York Times writer and author Elizabeth Williamson, whose critically-acclaimed book “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth” offered on-the-ground reporting to trace a line from conspiracy theories around Sandy Hook to Jan. 6, 2021.

When: 11:30 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Press Club Journalism Institute

More info

12 apps for Job hunters

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Career Builder - online hiring app that allows job seekers to access tools that will help them at every point in the process.

ExpressJob - mapping that shows nearby jobs and makes applying easy with one-click applications but also offers ways to stay organized once you are hired (timesheets, schedule, etc.)

Glassdoor - search engine platform offering job openings along with company reviews.

Good & Co. - Uses Myers-Briggs to help users know whether a job will be good fit.

Hirect - chat-based-direct hiring platform.

Hirewire - rather than upload a resume, build an interactive profile for employers to check out. Mostly service industry positions.

Indeed - sort through the search engine database and stay on top of openings that interest you. 

Linkedin - the social network for professionals.

Linkup - focuses on little-known job listings. Free, iOS only. 

Monster - brings jobs from other job searchers into a single app.

Snagjob - only hourly jobs. Free.

ZipRecruiter - offers more than 100 job boards with filters. Sends notifications about vacancies.

More job hunting help

Emotional relief is not the same as emotional recovery

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Venting can be like scratching a mosquito bite. It feels like it works at first. Studies have shown a drop in diastolic blood pressure of 1 to 10 points after venting. But they show no attendant drop in hostility. It feels like we release anger or frustration, but we don’t. Even if we didn’t experience this temporary alleviation, there’s the fact that negative feelings naturally dissipate over time. People who do nothing assume the abatement owes to time; people who vent believe venting did the trick. And our choices can be self-reinforcing. If it seems like venting worked, we’re less likely to abide by social norms around holding back in the future. 

Gail Cornwall & Juli Fraga writing in Slate