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The New Yorker is a magazine that revolver around the publication of essays, fiction, criticism, cultural commentary, and reportage. It’s often focused on New York’s culture and social events and has a clear editorial line that leans progressive, as most publications in the region. Unlike any other publication I have ever seen, The New Yorker lists it’s writers, contributors, critics, and cartoonists right on the first page, but it doesn’t print it’s masthead anywhere in the magazine. If you do a little digging, you will find out that David Remnick has been the editor since 1998, but there is no masthead listing the editors and staff. It appears to be a tradition rooted in the magazine’s founder and first editor in chief’s idea that “...in the early days of the magazine..., first, there were no proven editors; second, I was encouraging people to write for a magazine that used pseudonyms and initials, signed pieces at the bottom, and didn’t play up writers in any way; and, third, be...

Melissa Noel is an award-winning freelance journalist. She has worked for NBCNews.com, Huffington Post, Caribbean Beat Magazine and Voices of New York and the recipient of a Pulitzer Center grant to report on Caribbean children left behind by their parents when they migrate to another country.  On November 28th, she stopped by LaGuardia to talk about her reporting, the challenges she faced, the opportunities she found, and the children at the center of these stories. Being the daughter of Caribbean parents, from Guyana, to be more specific, it was only natural that this subject didn’t seem foreign to her. In early 2016 Noel attended a Caribbean Film Academy screening in Brooklyn of the short film “Auntie” by Barbadian filmmaker and Barrel Stories Project founder Lisa Harewood. Both the fictional film and the documentary project highlight some of the very real ways migration and separation impact Caribbean families. After the screening, she met Melissa Elias, originally from Tri...

If you’ve never heard about FiveThirtyEight (from now on FTE) you are in for a treat. That is if politics and polling are right up your alley. Nate Silver is a skilled statistician and editor in chief of FTE. The site provides analysis that’s heavily reliant on statistics provided by outside pollers as well as statistical analysis models developed by SIlver himself. Sports and Politics are the center of attention of FTE, and their models have proven to be very successful (last election results notwithstanding). The story in question is titled “Can a Democrat Really Win a Senate Race in Tennessee? Or Mississippi?!?! Analysis based on hard data of this specificity is hard to question. It requires a significant knowledge and a proficiency in the statistical field that makes it hard for the journalist writing the piece to veer away from what would be considered true or to make false statements. This very same level of specificity is responsible for what it would be considered a loyalty...

It’s Wednesday at 10:00 am. I walk into a dark, half full theatre. Twenty drums are arranged in a semicircle while a man wearing a white shirt and a fedora is loquaciously talking about “Bomba”, the traditional drum rhythm from the island of Puerto Rico. The man in the fedora is José “Dr. Drum” Ortiz, a co-founder and Musical Director of BombaYo Afro-Puerto Rican Arts’ Project, the keynote speaker at the “Playing Bomba Together: A Latin Percussion Workshop with 50 Bomba Drums” event. “Drumming is like a workout for the mind”, he says, while he explains the technique associated with Yubá, one of the rhythmic styles most prominent in Bomba. The seats behind the drums are occupied by students and faculty alike. They try to reproduce the rhythm that Dr. Bomba just demonstrated. Nuyan Haque, a student in the audience, tells me that Dr. Drum has been explaining the historical importance of Bomba for Puerto Rico. “He’s doing a great job tying it up with the cultural relevance that it has ...

Feature stories share a number of characteristics. Defined in part by what they are not, it could be said that an absence of urgency is what sets them apart from breaking news. In June’s issue of The Bridge, there’s a feature story titled “Ambar Castillo: A Vivacious LaGuardia Student and a Fulbright Scholar”. This is a story that checks almost every box of the feature story characteristics list. Right off the bat, after a soft lead, we are presented with an anecdote, a little story of how the interviewer met with the interviewee. There’s an abundance of details in the anecdote that falls in line with what’s typical of this type of story. “ I was already inside the office waiting for her when I heard some knocks. Through the glass window of the door, I saw her beaming and enthusiastically waving at me—I opened it, and in an instant, she gave me a welcoming hug, all while carrying with her an enormous backpack that probably weighed more than she”. There’s a clear sense of organiza...

The notion that journalism is a public service is not widely spread among society. Most journalists might certainly understand it that way, but in recent times it’s been more than clear that the public doesn’t completely trust in the capabilities or rather, the motivation, of the Fourth Estate to exercise as a watchdog of government. Certainly, this lack of trust has hindered the ability of the media to exercise as checks and balances with the three branches of government. It’s very hard to demand accountability when the public trust doesn’t back the effort. The first chapter of News Matters is a powerful reminder of the responsibilities of the media, as well as the consequences of both good journalism and bad journalism. It’s a good reminder that when exercised correctly, journalism can impact the lives of the community it serves in a highly positive manner. Corrupt officials and the party structures that sustain them can be brought down with methodic and responsible use of good j...