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On an early fall day my first year in the Peace Corps, I walked across the street from Johanna Cecilia High School, opened the gate to my yard, walked up the stairs, slipped out of my shoes and stepped inside my house.
It was lunchtime, I could still hear the shouts and laughter of my Guyanese students across the road. Soon, one of them was shouting up to me from outside my gate.
“Miss Pauline says you must turn your television on.”
I flipped on the TV the school let me borrow when they didn’t need it, sat down, and didn’t get up again until the power went out that night.
It was Sept. 11, 2001, and every station in Guyana was showing American news and the attacks on the World Trade Center. I’m pretty sure I watched Paula Zahn all day ([link removed]) , and for many of the days after that.
That moment was significant for everyone, of course. It was significant for me because I was so far from home. Without a cellphone or Wi-Fi, in the early days of online news that I could not access except in Guyana’s capital, Zahn and her colleagues at CNN were all I had to stay connected to what was happening.
I have other significant media moments, too, including the day five years ago when I went to three different grocery stores to get The New York Times on the day they ran a front page of COVID-19 obits. ([link removed])
This year, in honor of Poynter’s 50th birthday, we’re marking 50 of the most significant media moments and people from the last 50 years.
“All of us at Poynter have been thinking about the 50th anniversary for a couple of years now,” my colleague Tom Jones told me. “I wanted to think of a way where we could look back at the past 50 years and also look forward.”
(Continued below.)
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Jones was reminded of ESPN’s “30 for 30,” a project that network created in 2009 for its 30th anniversary, with 30 documentary-style films.
“But what was really clever about ‘30 for 30’ was ESPN just didn’t come up with the 30 most memorable moments and games and athletes,” Jones said. “They picked 30 people and moments that were a big deal at the time, but maybe we had forgotten their impact. Or maybe we didn’t realize at the time the impact on the future. And that’s what we’re really going for with The Poynter 50 — moments and people that were not just famous or memorable but had a real impact on the media moving forward. Our choices have to be more than just memorable events — such as the attacks on Sept. 11 or the 2008 financial crisis or the fall of the Berlin Wall or the COVID pandemic. They had to have changed journalism or the media, and not always for the good. It’s about lasting impact.”
First on the list: CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 ([link removed]) .
“That changed the way we viewed cable news,” Jones said. “We saw war coverage around the clock in real time from reporters who were there. That coverage showed that the news not only could be important, but incredibly riveting. And it paved the way for the creation of other cable news networks.”
Watergate, on the other hand, will not be on the list.
“Why? Because the Watergate break-in, cover-up and coverage did not happen in the past 50 years,” Jones said. “It happened before Poynter opened in 1975. But here’s what did happen during Poynter’s existence: the release of the movie ‘All the President’s Men,’ which was, of course, about The Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate. It might have been the first movie to show journalism as a tedious and noble profession. And there’s no question that the movie, in part, inspired generations of journalists to go into the business. That’s what we’re talking about when it comes to having a true impact on the world of journalism.”
I asked Jones what he’s learned about our industry through this project.
“That is it is constantly changing,” he said. “It’s changing so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up. When Poynter opened its doors 50 years ago, there was no internet, no social media, no cable news, no cell phones. How audiences receive information changes almost daily, it seems. We’re talking about things today that only seemed possible in science fiction books just a few years ago. I’m talking about artificial intelligence. Fifty years ago, we could have never imagined getting videos on our phones in real time, just as we can't imagine what the next 50 years have in store for us.”
Check out the project here ([link removed]) , and share your significant media moments ([link removed]) with us here.
While you’re here:
* Check out NC Local ([link removed]) , “a nonprofit organization that serves as a hub for new content, services and products in partnership with newsrooms and trusted messengers across the state.”
* Applications are now open for Columbia University’s Energy Journalism Fellows ([link removed]) .
* And finally, I’m really excited about a new program ([link removed]) we’re hosting at Poynter aimed at helping journalists hone their nonfiction book ideas.
That’s it for me. Thanks for reading and for being you!
Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])
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