Shorenstein Center Names Spring Fellows

The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy will introduce its spring fellows and visiting lecturers on Monday.

The four new fellows--who include a former Clinton speechwriter, the chief political correspondent for The New York Times and a columnist for the Boston Globe--will examine the influence of the media on a variety of issues.

The four fellows will produce a 40-page paper on their research about the media, while the visiting lecturers will teach at the Kennedy School of Government.

Richard L Berke, the chief political correspondent and senior writer for The New York Times, will be a lecturer this spring, and will teach "Press and Politicians: Behind the Scenes of the 2000 Campaign."

Spring fellow Hans Bergstrom, chief editor of Dagens Nyheter, a leading Swedish newspaper, will use the semester to continue work on his book about the biotechnology revolution, and will assess the effects of images of age in American and European newspapers.

Spring fellow Trudy Lieberman, a writer of health policy for Consumer Reports and a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, will look at how the media contributes to waste and harm in health care. She will focus on how the media covered medical interventions like bone marrow transplants for breast cancer patients, and whether these interventions were effective.

Spring fellow Jeff Madrick, editor of Challenge magazine and an economics columnist at The New York Times, will examine how the media have reported and analyzed the new economy.

Spring fellow David Nyhan, a columnist and associate editor at the Boston Globe, will address issues of fairness in journalism in the context of the Internet, webcasting and television.

Rick Kaplan, former president of CNN-US, will be the visiting Lombard lecturer. He is teaching a module--a six-week half credit course--called "Do American Media Meet the Needs of a Modern Democracy?" that will be open to college students.

Kaplan's course will discuss current issues facing the media, such as the effects of media mergers on the industry and whether there are diminished rules for reporting sources of late. Guest speakers at his lectures will include Ted Koppel of ABC News, Gerald Levin, CEO of AOL Time Warner and Andrew Hayward, President of CBS News.

Timothy E. Cook, Dickinson Professor of Political Science at Williams College, will teach "Media Strategies and Governance" and "The Politics of Sexual Diversity: Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Politics in the U.S. and Beyond." Cook was the visiting Lombard Professor of the Shorenstein Center in 1989-1990.

Michael Waldman, who has written or edited nearly 2000 presidential speeches, including four State of the Union addresses and Clinton's acceptance speech for the 1996 Democratic Convention, will teach a module on "Speeches and Speechwriting:: Beyond the Bully Pulpit."

Waldman was a fellow at the Institute of Politics in 1999.

The Shorenstein spring fellows and visiting faculty are enthusiastic about their new positions, Lieberman said, "It's really a wonderful opportunity to take three or four months off and tackle a research project."

Kaplan said, "I'm really honored that they asked me to do this. It's been exciting to develop this course because it really gets you thinking about what you are doing in a much deeper way. Hopefully, at the end of this class, we'll have ideas on how to improve the whole industry."

A committee of faculty and staff from the Shorenstein Center selected the fellows and faculty in March 2000.

According to the website, the Shorenstein Center is a Harvard research center dedicated to exploring press, politics and public policy in theory and practice.