This post was written by Hatchet Reporter Amelia Williams.
The School of Media and Public Affairs announced Monday that a Washington Post investigative reporter and a former PBS “Newshour” executive will join its journalism faculty next fall.
Imani Cheers of PBS and Cheryl Thompson of the Post will look to use their professional experiences to arm students with skills like data interpretation and on-camera reporting and interviewing.
Thompson will teach investigative journalism and news writing courses when she arrives on campus in the fall. Students will have the chance to work collaboratively on projects with the award-winning journalist, and could be published in the Post, SMPA Director Frank Sesno said. Her stories helped bring down former Prince George’s County, Md. executive Jack Johnson, who was sent to jail for corruption in 2011.
Cheers said in an interview that said she thinks the school will eventually have to emphasize topics like data visualization, an area that has seen job growth in recent years. She also stressed the ability to innovatively use social media, which she called one of the largest differences in journalism demands since she graduated.
“Large and powerful media organizations are looking for recent college graduates who can put together massive amounts of data together and visually, engagingly, and compellingly portray that. Those weren’t jobs a few years ago,” Cheers said.
Emily Thorson will also join the college’s political communication faculty. She recently earned her Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania, where she has conducted research on how the media ensures the public is informed on issues and is currently researching how voters interpret misinformation, even after it is corrected.
