Covering Spaces and Places: Journalism and the Built Environment

Susan Drucker (Hofstra University)
Gary Gumpert (Urban Communication Foundation)
Susan Szenasy (Metropolis Magazine)
Brian Lehrer (The Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC)

One way of looking at the city in terms of communication has been through the journalists who tell the stories of cities and critics of city architecture. Acclaimed writers such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Ada Huxtable, and Grady Clay have written about cities. It should be noted that “urban journalism” was included in the consideration of Habitat III, seen as serving a key role in spreading the New Urban Agenda (Urban Journalism Academy, 2016). The Urban Communication Foundation has recognized an impressive group of such journalists with the Gene Burd Urban Communication Award, which seeks to “reward and thereby improve the practice and study of journalism in the urban environment by recognizing high quality urban media reporting, critical analysis, and research relevant to that content and its communication about city problems, programs, policies, and public priorities in urban life and culture” (Urban Communication Foundation). The distinguished journalists recognized for a career of work in urban journalism include Susan Szenasy (Metropolis), This panel will include award winning journalists who cover the changing built environment and the people who inhabit it.