Liz Schwartz

YouTube video by Harvard Kennedy School Class of 2025 Awards Ceremony

Christiane Amanpour (2002 Goldsmith Career Award winner) recommending Who Is Government (2024 Goldsmith Explanatory Prize winner) in her @harvard.edu Kennedy School class day address. (This is a @shorensteinctr.bsky.social niche post) m.youtube.com/watch?v=y4oa...

Also: in his profile when we met @afertig.bsky.social said his favorite kind of day was walking around a great city, stopping in coffee shops and bookstores (and museums? Probably)...he did not lie. That is the man's bliss. He's the best.

I am rightfully proud and impressed that @afertig.bsky.social made it to all 21 Boston Independent Bookstore Crawl stores in ONE DAY. Especially since E and I did four with him, and chauffeured for four others, and he did ALL 12 of the rest on his own, mostly by public transit! H/T @mbta.com

This new prize we added to the Goldsmith Awards last year is TIMELY, ya know?

Announcing the semifinalists for this year's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting! This group represents the top 30 entries that our judges deemed to be of extremely high quality and in keeping with the Prize’s criteria for impact on US government: loom.ly/Rqu0D…

Reading through roughly chronological, limited context posts about the Super Bowl (without having watched) feels like 2025. Strong reactions to fast moving things that make no sense.

I’ve been having bad dreams about the rising fascism in the United States. Am I the only one?

My guess is not. I want to gather together what’s going on in our unconscious about ~these times~ because I think it will make us feel less alone. That’s why I started this:
www.dreamsofthesetimes.com

Researchers rush to preserve federal health databases before they disappear from government websites Journalists have long relied on federal health data for their reporting. We include several tips that they can use to help researchers preserve the data.

Save the data

Via @journoresource.bsky.social

Even though our captain described it as "a bit of a mess of planes on the ground right now," I have to be impressed by how many people are clearly working hard to make Logan airport functional in the snowstorm tonight!

Come learn and ask me questions about the new Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Reporting at 4pm ET TODAY! shorensteincenter.org/new-event/go...

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

Anytime!

lol, me too, just a lil comms person over here, wishing things were different, whispering into the void of sedentary institutions.

PS - I hope this is taken in the appreciative, respectful tone I intend, and also, seriously, I really enjoyed Bright Ages! It was the kind of book I always wanted to read when I was studying medieval history in college.

So, I fully agree that there should be many pathways for public engagement for academic expertise. And that people should be paid for their work. And I wish that there were more platforms for expertise to get to average people, because bad info is rife and free, and good info is valuable. Fin.

...or relies on journalists or comms people (ahem, 🙋🏼‍♀️) to make it publicly accessible. Both of those groups have their own incentives, which are not always to make the point about the research that the academic wants to make. And neither have the expertise to always communicate it accurately.

Academia requires publishing in peer reviewed journals in order to succeed, be promoted, be respected, etc. As far as I'm aware those journals never pay authors - because the incentive structures of academia mean they don't have to. Which means the knowledge is often lost to the public...

If it wasn't only the tenured few who had adequate time and resources to both do the research and even consider finding ways to get it out in the world, the question of being paid or not would be less a concern. Less, not none, but heinous pay for adjuncts isn't solved with freelancing.

Ok, I finally have time to write this out. And thanks again for engaging in this!
The Conversation aside, I think if academia incentivized public engagement alongside academic publishing, we'd have a lot more publicly-accessible expertise. And that would be a good thing.

Oh, agree for SURE. Isn't this as much an issue with the institutions (and institutional norms of higher ed) and incentive structures as anything?

Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Fan of your work. Totally respect the sentiment here, though I disagree about predatory, but would love to discuss it more! I'm interested in how we get more expert knowledge into the mainstream, and building interest from both sides in more than interview soundbites.

Excellent cranberry sauce ratio

The Conversation is great for this! theconversation.com/us

@propublica.org coming in with the essential hard hitting Thanksgiving content

Buffalo brussels sprouts as a Thanksgiving side - yah or nay? The spice could cut the other flavors nicely?

Cranberry sauce is the BEST part of Thanksgiving. Maybe people were confused by the question.

Didn't change who i was, just made me happier. 😊

Photo of a black horse with a fluffy mane, walking down a dirt road with trees and fields along the side, taken from the horse's back

Am I a person who posts horse content on BlueSky? Possibly.

Tbh, college me was exactly like high school me.

The shift here from the bird app feels like that moment between high school and college when you could reinvent everything about yourself.