News Book Club is back!

I’m sorry it’s taken me awhile to introduce our next read, but the past few weeks have been nuts. Thank you for your patience, and I’m thrilled to introduce our next host and our upcoming book options. 

Anita Zielina, the Director of News Innovation and Leadership at the CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, will lead our conversation. An experienced digital media executive, Anita is leading the creation of CUNY’s new executive program in news innovation and leadership. I first met Anita in her past role of Chief Product Officer at Switzerland’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung Media Group. 

Mark your calendars: Our next Zoom meeting will be on Monday Nov. 25 at 1 p.m. EST. You can click here to add it to your Google calendar. As always, you can join the conversation on Slack as well or on Twitter with the hashtag #NewsBookClub.

Anita has picked three books, and together we will vote on which one we want to read together as a community. Here are the three options: 

• There’s No Crying in the Newsroom: What Women Have Learned About What It Takes to Lead by Kristin Gardy Gilger and Julia Wallace 

Written by two Arizona State University journalism professors, “There’s no Crying in the Newsroom” documents how women have broken through leadership ranks in newsrooms over the past 40 years. 

“They weren’t particularly welcomed, but they fought their way to the top,” Wallace told the international-news-breaking State Press. “It focuses on women from then until current times, and how they got into leadership positions, what they did when they got there, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.”

More here: https://www.nocryinginnewsrooms.com/

• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer

As work has become more remote and more global, we have had to adapt to working across cultures. This can be a challenge. “Most managers have little understanding of how local culture impacts global interaction,” Meyer writes. “Even those who are culturally informed, travel extensively, and have lived abroad often have few strategies for dealing with the cross-cultural complexity that affects their team’s day-to-day effectiveness. The Culture Map provides a new way forward, with vital insights for working effectively and sensitively with one’s counterparts in the new global marketplace.” 

More here: https://www.erinmeyer.com/book/

• Couples That Work: How Dual-Career Couples Can Thrive in Love and Work by Jennifer Petriglieri

As people who work in news, our careers definitely impact our personal lives. This book by INSEAD professor Jennifer Petriglieri examines how couples navigate the challenges of managing their careers and relationships. Here’s how Petriglieri described that challenge in a recent Harvard Business Review article: “What couples need is a more comprehensive approach for managing the moments when commitments and aspirations clash…My research revealed that dual-career couples overcome their challenges by directly addressing deeper psychological and social forces—such as struggles for power and control; personal hopes, fears, and losses; and assumptions and cultural expectations about the roles partners should play in each other’s lives and what it means to have a good relationship or career.”

“Couples that Work” will be published on Tuesday October 8. More here: https://www.jpetriglieri.com/books/.

Click HERE or enter your choice below to vote on which book you’d like to read.

The poll will remain open until next Wednesday, Oct. 9 and I’ll announce the winner on Thursday Oct. 10. 

Thank you to everyone who joined us in August to discuss “Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America” by Dorothy Butler Gilliam. I especially want to thank Teresa Gorman for hosting the conversation and the Democracy Fund for sponsoring our book giveaway. 

Gilliam was the first African American woman reporter at The Washington Post. Her memoir was a stark reminder of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in newsrooms to help ensure that coverage is representative of our communities. 

If you want to catch up on our discussion, you can listen to a recording here. 

Thanks again for participating in News Book Club. Please don’t hesitate to reach out directly with any questions, and please remember to vote!

Creative Commons photo of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore by Matthew Petroff.