Author Archives: Dave Poulson

Lessons from the Trump surprise

PoulsonTeachBy David Poulson
The post-election analysis of the U.S. presidential race contains excellent lessons for communicating research and science.
Here’s why:
The question many people are now puzzling over is how could all those highly-educated, highly-paid statisticians and pollsters get the election so wrong. Seemingly no one projected a Trump victory.
And now the science of polling is taking a beating. It may never recover.
Perhaps it never should.
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Knight Center director analyzes election, teaches environmental journalism in Nairobi


 
Knight Center Director Eric Freedman is in Nairobi this week leading a training workshop for East African environmental journalists.
The workshop is organized by the Graduate School of Media and Communications at the Aga Kahn University.
Freedman, a Pulitizer Prize winning former political reporter for the Detroit News, was asked by African media to analyze the U.S. presidential election while he was in town.

Research director co-edits special section of international journal

Bruno Takahashi

Bruno Takahashi


Research director Bruno Takahashi has co-edited a special section of the International Journal of Communication.
The special section, titled “Climate and Sustainability Communication Campaigns,” was co-edited with Lucy Atkinson from the University of Texas-Austin, and Merav Katz-Kimchi, from the School of Sustainability, IDC, Israel. The special section includes articles from scholars from different communication subdisciplines, and from various methodological vantage points that examine the current state of, and the prospects for, climate and sustainability communication campaigns.
This special section grew out of a postconference cosponsored by the Environmental Communication, Health Communication, and Political Communication divisions at the 2015 International Communication Association meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Dr. Takahashi is currently the chair of the Environmental Communication Division.
One of the articles, “The Roles of Social Media in Promoting Sustainability in Higher Education,” was co-authored by Takahashi and Dr. Serena Carpenter, assistant professor in the School of Journalism at MSU, along with Ph.D graduate, Carie Cunningham (now assistant professor at Duquesne University), and Ph.D student Alisa P. Lertpratchya.
The articles can all be accessed here.

Changing press corps, changing news coverage at Michigan’s Capitol

Eric Freedman

Eric Freedman


By Eric Freedman
This column originally appeared in Domemagazine.com.
When I joined the Lansing Bureau of the Detroit News, the paper was in the process of vastly expanding its Capitol staff to more than a dozen, including a photographer and political columnist. We were by far Michigan’s largest bureau covering state government and politics. Continue reading