Dec. 5 on Zoom: Making Sense of Long Island’s News Deserts: An Interactive Map
Posted on Nov. 25, 2024 / Subscribe 0
Although Long Island sits in one of the biggest media markets in the world, several local communities have become “news deserts” — where local news coverage is shrinking — producing a measurable and consequential deterioration in civic dialogue. The emergence of news deserts is a national phenomenon, posing serious challenges to underrepresented communities and grassroots organizations.
For more than a year, Hofstra University Professors Aashish Kumar, Mario Murillo and Scott Brinton, a PCLI board member, have been working to develop an interactive website that graphically represents the findings of their 2024 study, “The Suburban News Desert: Where Communities of Color Are Starved for Critical Information Amid Crime-Centered News Coverage,” published by the Texas Center for Community Journalism and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication this past June. The study was more than two years in the making.
The three will run through their findings and launch the new website. A question-and-answer session will follow.
Date: Thursday, December 5
Time: 7 p.m.
Where: Via Zoom
Biographies:
Scott Brinton, a Hofstra journalism professor since 2009, co-directs the university's Summer High School Journalism Institute, which recruits students from nearby communities of color to study journalism at the Herbert School, and he edits and advises the award-winning Long Island Advocate, the Herbert School’s online multimedia publication showcasing the best student work from their classes and internships. He was formerly executive editor of Herald Community Newspapers in Garden City and a freelancer for The New York Times and Newsday. He was most recently named a Faculty Champion of Local News by the Center for Community News at the University of Vermont.
Aashish Kumar is a full professor of television and immersive media. His areas of expertise include documentary, interactive and immersive media, participatory media, and storytelling for social change. He is also the founding program director of the Interdisciplinary Minor in Immersive Media, an innovative program launched in conjunction with departments from Hofstra’s schools of Communication, Engineering and Computer Science, and Humanities, Fine, and Performing Arts. He is the recipient of two Fulbright Senior Scholar awards (2022 and 2008) and two Fulbright Specialist awards (2016 and 2019).
Mario Alfonso Murillo is a professor of radio journalism, media studies and Latin American studies at Hofstra University and is currently the vice dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. In his more than 35 years working in radio, he has served as program director, director of public affairs programming, and as host and producer at WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York; was a feature correspondent for NPR’s Latino USA; and was a regular guest host on WNYC New York Public Radio. From 1987-89, he was a reporter for the all-news commercial radio station WINS 1010AM in New York City.
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