Cox Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management & Leadership

Board of Advisers

The Cox Institute is engaged with a variety of partners and collaborators. We appreciate the support we receive from everyone involved with our work. We also want to recognize the special contributions of the following industry and academic professionals who serve as advisers to our programs.

Bob Sullivan, chair

Bob Sullivan is a veteran journalist and author of five books, including The New York Times bestsellers,“Gotcha Capitalism” and “Stop Getting Ripped Off.”  He has won the Society of Professional Journalists Public Service Award, a Peabody award, a Webby award, a Carnegie Mellon University CyLab Cybersecurity Journalism Award and the Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness Consumer Media Service Award.  He spent nearly two decades working at MSNBC.com and NBC News, and still appears on TODAY, NBC Nightly News and CNBC.  He’s now a syndicated columnist and host of AARP’s “The Perfect Scam” podcast,  co-host of the podcast / audio documentary “Breach,” which examines history’s biggest hacking stories, and co-host of the podcast “So, Bob,” which tackles stories about the unintended consequences of technology. His latest podcast is called “Debugger,” exploring issues at the intersection of technology and democracy, produced in cooperation with Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Advisers

Institute Happenings

Certificate in News Literacy

The News Literacy Certificate program enhances students’ ability to discern between credible information and information disorder through critical examination of how we access, analyze, verify, create and share media messages with an emphasis on news.

Cox-SABEW Fellowship

The Cox-SABEW Fellowship program started in 2013 and honors students who have embraced business journalism and qualified for the recognition through professional experience and student media.

Journalism Writing Lab

The Journalism Writing Lab’s mission is to guide students as they report, write and produce meaningful stories, deepening their reporting abilities. The Journalism Writing Lab partners with professional news organizations for the benefit of students and the industry. Contact professor Lori Johnston, director of the Journalism Writing Lab, with questions.

Covering Poverty

Covering Poverty is a resource for journalists, devoted to helping community, regional and national journalists cover poverty within their beats and to provide guidelines on how to appropriately write about people and poverty-related matters. Students involved in Covering Poverty have been published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Oglethorpe Echo, The Athens Banner-Herald and The Current. The Writing Lab partners with other publications in the Southeast to produce Everyday Heroes, a special AJC section. Covering Poverty also is part of The Carter Center’s Mental Health Parity Collaborative.

“My experience with the Cox Institute’s Covering Poverty project was very formative. In my first two semesters at Grady, I was able to take on stories that dealt with heavy topics, and the lessons I learned from those stories and the people I interviewed has helped me find ways to connect with my community and learn about the struggles they face here at UGA and in the Athens-Clarke area. I even had my stories published in The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, which was exciting to know that it had a larger audience and people saw the sensitive work we did throughout the year.”
—Liz Ryamrev, journalism student and editor-in-chief of The Red & Black, in a “Profiles of Tenacity” piece

Here are some examples of our work:

• How Athens hip-hop artists address mental health struggles (AJC)
• Everyday Heroes: #Bakewithme Project passes ‘bread hug’ onto others (AJC)
• Everyday Heroes: Aliyah Williams (AJC)
• Everyday Heroes: Riya Patel (AJC)
• Nonprofits, individuals come together to help year-round (The Oglethorpe Echo)
• Here to Help: Lexington Baptist Church’s monthly food pantry has been a community fixture for over 20 years (The Oglethorpe Echo)

Reporting & Writing Resources

Watch tutorial videos on using style guides, quotation/attribution, interviewing and more: Skills for Storytelling and Reporting YouTube Channel.

Additional Resources:

• Reporting I Textbook
• Book Recommendations
• Reporting and Writing Checklist
• AP Style: Most Common Rules
• How to Use the Online AP Stylebook
• Five Ways to Get In Touch with Sources 
• Interviewing 101
• How to Write an Email to a Source
• Using Quotations
• How to Correctly Use Quotations and Attribution
• Guide to Person on the Street Interviews
• Your Guide to Covering a Speech, Event or Meeting
• The Art of Lead Writing
• Tutorial Graphics on Various Journalism Writing Styles
• Using Social Media to Report and Promote Your Work
• 10 Major Writing Takeaways
• The Polishing Process