These days, it's hard to tell if you're reading a celebrity tabloid or the day's headlines. Anderson Cooper outed himself as gay, former Houston Chronicle reporter Sarah Tressler was outed as an ecdysiast, and the news service Journatic was outed for outsourcing articles to the Philippines.
Fortunately, the Media Critics--Derek Donovan, Sylvia Maria Gross, and Mike Williams--are back on Up to Date. Whether its outings (voluntary or otherwise), the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, or the cuts at the Times-Picayune, the Media Critics are here to get past the tabloid drama and dig into the stories behind the news.
Derek Donovan is the Public Editor for The Kansas City Star. Sylvia Maria Gross co-hosts and produces KCUR's KC Currents, an award-winning weekly news magazine that covers news and culture in Kansas City’s diverse communities. Her stories have aired nationally on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, The World and Studio 360. Gross grew up in New York City, Brazil and the suburbs of Washington, DC. She studied English at Yale University, and then spent a year researching arts education in Brazil on a Fulbright grant. When she returned from Brazil, she taught middle school math and English while completing a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City. She reported in New York about education and culture before moving to Kansas City in 2004. Mike Williams is an associate professor in News and Information at the University of Kansas. Williams is the Journalism School's director of special projects and innovation. He was an associate professor at the University of Maryland before deciding to return to KU. He has two journalism degrees from the KU School of Journalism, and taught visual communication and photojournalism here from 1988 to 1994. Since then he has been an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Ohio University and Maryland. He was director of Internet publishing for a Wisconsin publishing company and has held various positions on newspapers in Mississippi, New Mexico and Oregon.
