Despite shrinking newsrooms, we have more journalism choices, in part because of freelance journalists. Freelancing creates workers who are particularly adaptive and creative; skills educators want to instill in students. I interviewed and surveyed more than 50 freelance journalists in several countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Colombia, Israel,…

Presents a content analysis of suicide stories in the Israeli Press (1955-90) and measures of real suicide events to highlight the selective, distorted, and reconstructed nature of reporting suicide. Argues that such reporting may account for at least some of the contradictory findings of studies on the impact of publicized suicide stories on…

An Israeli study determined what happens when persons with low-literacy levels read news accounts that presuppose general knowledge that the writer expects them to have, but that they may not necessarily possess. The study sample consisted of about 600 students, mostly women, in 30 literacy centers throughout the country. In each class, adult…