Reporting
Post - 9/11
After
the Debris, What’s the Story?
A Conference for Journalists About What to Cover Next
Wednesday, May 1, 2002
6:00 - 8:00 PM, Reception Follows
CAMI Hall, 165 West 57th Street, New York
As
Cleanup of Ground Zero comes to an end, a panel consisting of
journalists, photo editors, and experts in social, psychological,
and rebuilding issues will discuss the stories that will be emerging
in the months to come. What can be learned about what NY faces
from the experiences of other cities that have suffered major
attacks? As NY grieves, heals, copes, and reconstructs, What are
the stories, Why do they matter, Where are the sources, and What
have the media learned elsewhere about how to do this job? Freelancers,
staff journalists, photojournalists and editors will gain ideas
about ways of framing innovative stories about 9/11 in the months
and years to come.
Robert
J. Lifton, Center on Violence and Human Survival, John Jay College,
"Terrorism and Response: America’s New Vulnerability"
Lifton, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology, will discuss how
to cover apocalyptic violence without fostering zealotry and further
global destruction.
Lifton
will draw upon his scholarship on apocalyptic violence, Nazi doctors
who killed in the name of healing, the problem of genocide and
nuclear weapons; Hiroshima survivors; brainwashing, and the Vietnam
War experience. He will focus primarily on the example of Aum
Shinrikyo, the fanatical Japanese cult that released Sarin gas
into the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Dr. Lifton’s books
include Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic
Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, The Genocidal Mentality:
Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, The Future of Immortality;
and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, The Nazi Doctors: Medical
Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, Death in Life: Survivors
of Hiroshima, Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans--Neither Victims
Nor Executioners, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism:
A Study of "Brainwashing, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years
of Denial, and The Protean Self and Human Resilience in an Age
of Fragmentation.
Edward
Linenthal, University of Wisconsin, "Sites of Violence, Bereavement
Communities, and the Challenge of Memorializing the WTC Site"
Linenthal, Professor of Religion and American Culture at the
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, explores the phenomena of memorializing,
grieving, and healing. This is reflected in his most recent book,
The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory,
where he interviewed more than 150 direct participants. Other
works by Dr. Linenthal include: Sacred Ground: Americans and
their Battlefields and Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create
America’s Holocaust Museum. He is the co-editor of A
Shuddering Dawn: Religious Studies and the Nuclear Age (Suny);
American Sacred Space (Indiana); and History Wars: The
Enola Gay and Other Battles For The American Past (Metropolitan
Books/Holt), cited by the Los Angeles Times as one of the
ten most significant non-fiction books of 1996. He serves as a
contributing editor of the Journal of American History.
A frequent consultant for the National Park Service on issues
of interpretation of controversial historic sites, Linenthal worked
for the Park Service at the 50th anniversary events at the USS
Arizona Memorial in 1991, and delivered the commemorative address
at the Memorial in 1994.
Fred
Ritchin, "Pictures, Images, and the Future of the City’s
Grief" Fred Ritchin is Associate Professor of Photography
& Imaging and Communications at NYU and former picture editor
of Horizon Magazine and the New York Times Magazine.
He will discuss the role of photography and digital communication
in covering responses to disaster. Ritchin was nominated for the
Pulitzer Prize in Public Service by the New York Times for the
web site, "Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace" (1997).
Penny
Owen, Reporter, Daily Oklahoman, "Finding a New Normal —
What We’ve Learned from Oklahoma City" As a staff
reporter for the Daily Oklahoman, Penny Owen covered the Oklahoma
City bombing from the first hours of the explosion to the 1997
trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to McVeigh’s
execution in 2001. She also covered the Columbine shootings in
Littleton and their aftermath. Ms. Owen now serves as a Texas-based
bureau correspondent for the Oklahoman, and has won multiple awards
for her work.
Moderator:
Jay Rosen, Chair, NYU Department of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Jay Rosen is associate professor of journalism at New York
University and Chair of the department there. Since 1990 he has
been a leading figure in the reform movement known as "public
journalism," which calls on the press to take an active role in
strengthening citizenship, improving political debate and reviving
public life. From 1993 to 1997, Rosen was the Director of the
Project on Public Life and the Press, funded by the Knight Foundation.
In 1999, Yale University Press published his book on public journalism,
titled, What Are Journalists For? In October 2001, Rosen
helped edit the first book published about the terror attacks
in New York City, entitled, 09/11 8:48 am: Documenting America's
Greatest Tragedy.
Sponsored
by:
Dart
Center for Journalism and Trauma/Dart Center Ground Zero www.dartcenter.org
NYU
Center for War, Peace, and the News Media
www.globalbeat.org
NYU
International Trauma Studies Program www.nyu.edu/trauma.studies/
In
association with the NYU Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
For
more information on this event call Dart Center - Ground Zero
(212) 873-9744
back
to top 
