"To continue
this conversation, go to our Web site"
How often do you hear, “To continue this conversation,
go to our Web site”? The conversation is the point,
Jesse Kornbluth ’64 would say.
A lifetime writer whose first work was published in Look
magazine when he was a teenager, Jesse says he was “teed
up to write for print.” He spent years writing in
every genre, publishing books and contributing to the New
York Times Magazine, Esquire, and New York Magazine, culminating
in five professionally exciting years (1987–1992)
with Tina Brown at Vanity Fair. (“Like playing on
the 1927 Yankees,” Jesse describes that time. “You
had to pinch yourself—the masthead had everyone you
admired.”)
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New Media: Touchpoints
As a matter of his own past and future, Zander Dryer ’00
is a student of “new media.” After graduating
from Yale Universi-ty, Zander wrote for Slate magazine [Slate
is an online magazine only], then continued to freelance
for Slate as he moved to write for The New Republic (TNR—print
and online). He still writes for both journals, but is working
with Peter Beinart, editor of TNR, on Peter’s book
about the history of liberalism in the United States over
the last century.
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What's a News
Magazine to Do Today?
George Hackett has been a senior editor at Newsweek for
13 of his 25 years with the magazine. During his career,
George has edited some of Newsweek’s most popular
features, including “Peri-scope,” “Perspec-tives,”
“My Turn” and “Conven-tional Wisdom Watch.”
He has also been an entrepreneur as well as an editor. George
launched both “Cyberscope” and “Focus:
On Technology” during the ’90s, before becoming
Newsweek’s science and technology editor in 1995.
Add an early period writing in the “National Affairs”
section, and you have a well-qualified commentator on the
state of news gathering and reporting in 2005.
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The Web Journalist
Jesse Sarles ’93 manages and maintains cbs4denver.com,
the Web site for KCNC-TV, a CBS station in Denver. The station
bio describes Jesse as a “classically trained journalist,”
who “worked in radio and TV news” before “jumping
into the new world that is the Internet.”
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Broadcast News:
Where We Are Now
In the 21st century, the landscape of broadcast journalism
includes not only local and network news, but also cable
channels and related Web sites. The reach expands even as
the ownership of outlets contracts. The 24-hour cycle of
today’s news drives the new engines: time and space
must be filled. Viewers can watch the video clips online—the
same clips endlessly, if they desire. Entertainment news
and hard news blur. Speechwriters craft messages mindful
of the potential for soundbites to resonate indefinitely.
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Media as Social Force
The first myth is that the media do not matter that much—that
they merely reflect reality, rather than shape it,”
writes media expert Robert W. McChesney in The Problem of
the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century.
“In fact,” he says, “media are a social
force in their own right, and not just a reflection of other
forces.”
Milton graduates active in the world of national print media
use the force of their inquiry, writing and editing to shape
ideas. They work to influence how we think about government,
why we pay to see a movie, what we read, or who should become
a hero.
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