Media and Leadership

BY SUSAN SALTER REYNOLDS

What does leadership look like in the digital world? The most clicks? Likes? Followers? Influence?

Or is it the courage to use digital tools to hold power accountable, using investigative journalism that locates the truth, reveals injustice and fraud, and creates opportunities for activism? The audience, in this new world of media consumption, is no longer a passive recipient of news.

“A journalist’s job is to adjudicate the truth,” says Jerry Swope, department chair and associate professor of Digital Media and Communications. “But it’s also to tell stories. We help students develop the skills they need to tell their stories.”

Saint Michael’s newly branded Digital Media and Communications Department is one of the few media studies, journalism, and digital arts programs housed within a national liberal arts college in the U.S. The curriculum is built on several core strands: media studies, digital media

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: LEADING THROUGH ART

At the end of art & design professor Becca Gurney’s Introduction to Graphic Design class, the conversation turns from learning how to visually translate and produce art by using digital tools to how art and artists can play an active role in creating change. These posters, displayed in the Dion Student Center, are a few of the results from the latter discussion.

arts: digital photography, digital film, graphic design, animation, interactive web design, journalism: writing, reporting, informed citizenry, and global media. Courses like Media Revolutions: Impact, Transformation, Research & Understanding; Global Communication & Culture: Diversity, Identity & International Media; and Media Health and Happiness explore ethical questions facing producers and consumers of digital media.

In their final year, students must complete a capstone seminar in which they work as independent media producers responsible for all aspects in the creation of a book, interactive website, or film documentary. At every stage, digital skills are blended with liberal arts and ethical issues.

The Media Creation Studio has become a hub for students and faculty working on digital projects and exploring various forms of media production. Graduates of the program have won Pulitzer Prizes, Emmys, Fulbright fellowships, and other prestigious awards. They work nationally and internationally at the New York Times, CBS, Disney, the New Yorker, Discovery, TripAdvisor, Facebook, PBS, NPR, ABC, Vermont Public, and many other places.

Swope believes the biggest ethical issue facing digital media is the emphasis on profit, and the bias that profit creates. Audience fragmentation is a close second, with echo chambers that prevent consumers from seeing a variety of perspectives. Students in the department learn to develop media and news literacy skills by asking key questions, such as Who owns the platform? Who runs it? Who benefits? Another problem facing consumers, especially younger audiences, is information overload. When the goal is to reach eyeballs, all too often news is blended with entertainment, and facts suffer.

Today, Swope says, notions of journalistic objectivity are changing. “We talk in class about the limits of objectivity, and the dangers of false objectivity.” Identifying bias is critical on both sides of the media equation: creator and audience.

Ethical leadership in digital media includes an obligation to present the facts, reveal bias, and identify accountability.

“We are educating the whole person and developing caring citizens. As teachers, we are leading by example.” Swope sees leadership in many places, in athletics, in the school newspaper, The Defender, which often holds people in power at the College accountable. He is proud of the way the writers and editors ask hard questions and work to quell campus rumors.

Jonah Kessel ’06, deputy director of opinion video at the New York Times, has worked in Africa, China, and all over Asia. When we spoke, he had just returned from Ukraine, where he interviewed children whose parents had been killed in Russian attacks. His team’s short videos are thought-provoking, unforgettable, and beautifully crafted. They include “In This Story George W. Bush Is the Hero,” “A.I. Is Making It Easier to Kill (You),” “How Russia Perfected the Art of War,” and “How to Stop the Next Pandemic,” to name a few.

“Leadership is transformative,” Kessel says. “But when I was coming out of college, I didn’t think about that. I wanted to make visual journalism. I was doing that at the Defender and at the [Burlington] Free Press. I began to think more and more about impact. In the last five years, I’ve gained more levers to pull to create good journalism with impact.”

Thinking about leadership, Kessel recalls professors and coaches at Saint Michael’s. “I manage a team at the New York Times now,” he explains, “but my leadership is not vertical. We have different jobs and creating one of our videos is a collaborative team sport. There’s huge value in fostering, among team members, creative vision and the confidence to have ideas.” Kessel’s team meets biweekly to pitch ideas. It’s clear that this is one of his favorite parts of the job. It’s a passionate team—“we look for opportunities to make viewers uncomfortable, to identify and reframe the truth,” Kessel says. “We start with a story and begin every conversation with the facts in that story. Then we transform that story into a video concept.”

This is service journalism, Kessel explains. “And accountability is a key piece of service journalism.

“I’m after the truth.”