MMC Journalism Prof Helps Students Navigate Changing Media Landscape, Global Affairs

Journalism professor Tatiana Serafin with students from her Reporting Climate Activism class in 2022

Serafin, an award-winning journalist who has won accolades for her coverage of the war in Ukraine, is the coordinator of the College’s Journalism program, where she teaches the introductory course Journalism in the 21st Century along with Media, Law and Ethics, and advanced seminars such as Public Affairs and Political Reporting.

Her classes are models for experiential learning: During the 2022 mid-term elections, when Serafin learned that President Biden would be attending a private memorial service at The Met—which was being used at the time as an early voting polling site—she had students rush over to cover the news and conduct on-the-ground interviews. This semester, with presidential elections less than two months away, her political reporting class will be polling MMC students about their voting plans while supporting an overall get-out-the-vote drive.

As a researcher, Serafin has also trained her sights on exploring how the delivery of news on social media can be improved. “I’m looking at how we can better utilize social media to connect the younger generation with relevant news as opposed to just memes,” she said. “I know right now that a lot of people are down on social media, but it’s important. It connects us. It connects us to all parts of the globe.”

Highlighting those global connections has been central to Serafin’s teaching and work. In 2020, she began partnering with international relations scholar—and a former Georgetown University classmate—Nikolas Gvosdev on The Doorstep, an event series and podcast showcasing how global news impacts listeners’ daily lives. The project grew out of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs’ U.S. Global Engagement Initiative, where both were senior fellows.

Before its launch, Serafin and Gvosdev had been conducting focus groups and surveys among U.S. voters to learn more about their engagement with and questions about international affairs. But after the pandemic hit, Serafin suggested they switch gears and do a podcast—another area where growing numbers of consumers say they get at least some of their news. They taped early episodes remotely.

The show touched on hot-button topics, including supply chain shortages, conflicts in Haiti and Sudan, and climate change. “We wanted to be an international news podcast at a time when people were scared and focused internally,” Serafin said. “Our goal was to speak about what was going on in the world and to connect it to our audience’s everyday lives—to bring it to their doorstep.”

That ethos separated the podcast from many traditional news sources, which “are typically very segmented, with separate desks for foreign and local news,” Gvosdev said. The show also introduced viewers to the storytellers behind important news pieces, highlighting the work of authors, journalists, and researchers.

Most recently, The Doorstep, in collaboration with MMC’s Social Justice Academy, hosted New York Times investigative reporter Megha Rajagopalan, who wrote about human rights abuses in the global sugar trade for the paper last spring.

The episode was one of a few to be taped at MMC, giving students an up-close view of the work and planning that goes into producing a podcast. Those onsite productions went so well that Serafin and Gvosdev traveled to other colleges across the country, including Ohio State and the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Gvosdev said he hoped students were able to take gems away from the experience and see Serafin’s dedication to the craft of interviewing. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I have a list of questions, and I’ll act as a camera and try to capture what I’m seeing,’” he said. “It’s the how do I connect to what I’m seeing on the human level, and how do I not only cover it, but interpret it and explain it so that people will understand.”

The show ended its run in June after four years and 99 episodes. But its legacy—cemented with its win last summer of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award and Bronze Medallion for the episode “Can Putin be Prosecuted for War Crimes?”—continues.

Serafin is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in educational leadership at Wilkes University and said she is eager to continue to help students and broader audiences draw new connections between themselves and the world around them.

“I think the biggest lesson is how much work needs to be done to make international affairs a higher priority for Americans,” she said. “America tends to get isolationist. And I think for students, it’s really important for them not to perpetuate old patterns of isolationism, but to continue to be engaged with the world.”

Published: September 18, 2024