Media Archives - Public Seminar

Media

Eight Months to Learn Spanish

The 2026 World Cup will be a revelation, proving soccer’s arrival in the United States and inviting more Americans to see themselves as part of a Spanish-speaking Americas

November 25, 2025 • by Sean Jacobs and Ivan Pech Luna

On Sunday, October 26, Spain’s two powerhouse clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, met once again in El Clásico, the name given to any clash between the two. Both teams command massive global followings, including in the United States, and this weekend was no exception. The match, held at the ...

Media

Emily Nussbaum Is Getting Realer Than Real

A review of Cue the Sun!—The Invention of Reality TV

October 15, 2024 • by Hannah Berman

Emily Nussbaum is a highly celebrated intellectual and writer. She has written for the New Yorker for several years, first as a television critic, then as a staff writer. She’s the author of I Like to Watch, a collection of essays about her television hot takes; she’s also a Pulitzer ...

Emily Nussbaum Is Getting Realer Than Real

Film

Enter the Glow

Hannah Burns explores identity, escapism, and queer belonging in I Saw the TV Glow

October 9, 2024 • by Hannah Burns

Sometimes the only place we can be ourselves is inside the media we consume. Sometimes that is where we see options, where we feel less “other.” Watching I Saw the TV Glow, I loved the thought that Jane Schoenbrun’s amazing new film will join a queer film canon in which a ...

Media

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Why are my friends talking like incels?

October 7, 2024 • by Jake Neuffer

“Been gymmaxxing lately,” my friend quipped as he made a protein shake. “Proteinpilled too,” I said. My generation is speaking a new slang—new to us, anyway. Not quite ubiquitous, but familiar to that contingent of chronically online youth (and is that phrase not becoming a tautology?). These are phrases borrowed from incels, ...

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Activism

Publishing and Political Culture

A forum on little magazines and radical politics

April 23, 2024 • by Hira Ahmed, Lisa Borst, Max Fox, Charlie Lee, Natasha Lennard, Natasha Lewis, Max-Henry Moorhead and Edward Ongweso Jr

The New School’s Creative Publishing & Critical Journalism (CPCJ) and Woodbine Research Center present a discussion on the role of radical politics in publishing. ...

Film & Performing Arts

Horror and Humor in Hulu’s The Other Black Girl

The genre-bending drama challenges the white workplace

February 26, 2024 • by Kelby Clark

Based on the bestselling novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl dissects the horror of insidious racism in white workplaces...

Horror and Humor in Hulu’s <em>The Other Black Girl</em>

Media

What Does It Mean to Be “Latino”?

From ads to academia, which box do we check?

November 21, 2023 • by Kevin Anzzolin

From historical influences to contemporary marketing, Kevin Anzzolin explores the evolving nomenclature of the diverse "Latino" community....

Media

Being Online

“The world must be made interesting, an object of curiosity, to answer the economic demand of the media”

November 21, 2023 • by Noam Yuran

The mobile phone has changed what it means to be a person. It has taken away our ability to bear intense emotions. It has infringed our sense of autonomy and diminished our ability to be alone....

History

Watergate Summer

In 1973, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer’s determination to broadcast a Congressional investigation mattered to our democracy, and revolutionized television news

June 10, 2022 • by Claire Potter

In other words, alternative television showed government as it was, mainlining the excitement of democracy to a dedicated and growing group of political junkies. At the same time, seeing the investigation play out live provided reassurance that Watergate was a constitutional crisis but not, as Nixon characterized it, a plot ...

Media

Has the Press Corps Learned Nothing?

Journalism, when done right, should change a person

November 9, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Members of the Washington press corps like to tell a story about the heroes of the Washington press corps “holding power to account.” This seems noble, and it can be, but more often than not, it’s not noble. In practice, what “holding power to account” means is countering the dominance over ...

Economy

Five Years of Silence

How states and corporations use public records exemptions to cover up deal details

November 1, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

The Tennessee legislature last week approved a massive new deal for a Ford electric vehicle and battery plant at a site about 50 miles east of Memphis. The legislation creates a “megasite” authority that will dole out $884 million in state funds: $500 million in corporate handouts to Ford and ...

Media

The Biggest Media Bias That No One Is Talking About

How newspapers are obscuring a violent Republican crime wave

September 22, 2021 • by John Stoehr

When most people think about “bias” in news coverage, they usually think of some kind of ideological bent, as if the Washington Post, say, is trying to advance some kind of political agenda with its journalism. While this does apply to right-wing outlets, like the Washington Examiner, most of the rest of ...