Beth Knobel

PhD, MPP, Harvard University; BA Barnard College, Columbia University

Beth Knobel had a 20-year long career as a journalist before joining Fordham University in 2007. She brings experience in all major areas of journalism—newspapers, magazines, television, radio and Internet--to her classes. From 1999 to 2006, she was the Moscow Bureau Chief for CBS News. In nine years at CBS, she worked as both an on-air correspondent as well as a producer. She is a recipient of an Emmy award for coverage of the 2002 Moscow theater siege, and Edward R. Murrow and Sigma Delta Chi awards for coverage of the 2004 Beslan school siege. She still appears regularly on CBS News broadcasts commenting on news related to Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet states. Dr. Knobel spent 14 years total living in Moscow, where she worked for The Los Angeles Times, the television news agency Worldwide Television News, and the production company Feature Story before joining CBS News. Earlier in her career, she worked for The New York Times and Ladies‘ Home Journal magazine, and during her student days edited The Columbia Daily Spectator and Governance: The Harvard Journal of Public Policy. Dr. Knobel received masters and doctoral degrees in public policy from Harvard University, and her bachelors in political science from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Her research interests include Journalism Studies; Watchdog Journalism; Television Production; Press, Politics and Public Policymaking; Political Communication; Russia

BOOKS:

The Watchdog Still Barks: How Accountability Journalism Evolved for the Digital Age (Fordham University Press), 2018.

(With Mike Wallace) Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists (Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random House), 2010. Chinese language edition, 2017.

SELECTED PAPERS AND ARTICLES:

“Early Coverage of COVID-19 at US Local Newspapers,” paper for the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Aug. 2020.

“The Great Game and the Iterations of Political Talk Shows on Russian State Television,” Post-Soviet Affairs, May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2020.1772664

“Judicious Skepticism: Fact Checking Trump,” in Press in the Trump Era, Arthur S. Hayes, editor, New York: Peter Lang, 2018

"Reliance on Government Sources at American Newspapers in the Digital Era," paper delivered at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington DC, August 2018

"The end of investigative journalism? Not yet." Columbia Journalism Review, April 13, 2018.

"Watchdog Reporting at American Newspapers and a Case Study of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution," paper delivered at the Annual Conference of International Communication Association, Seattle, WA, May 2014

"Watchdog Reporting at the Wall Street Journal, Before and After Murdoch," paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, London, US, June 2013 

“How Watchdog Reporting in US Newspapers is Changing During these Challenging Economic Times,” paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Phoenix AZ, May 2012

“Samizdat 2.0: The Dymovskii Case and the Use of Streaming Video As a Political Tool in Contemporary Russia,” with Jonathan Sanders, paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Phoenix AZ, May 2012

“Samizdat 2.0: The Dymovskii Case and the Use of Streaming Video As a Political Tool in Contemporary Russia,” with Jonathan Sanders, International Journal of E-Politics, 3(1), 26-41, January-March 2012

Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists (Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random House), 2010.

“The Dymovskii Effect,” paper delivered “The Etiology and Ecology of Post-Soviet Communication” conference, Columbia University, May 2010.

“Journalists in Peril,” in Battleground: The Media (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2008).

“Master of a Fading Craft” on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Edward R. Murrow, The International Herald-Tribune, April 25, 2008

“Boris Yeltsin: Frustrating the Media," Harvard Journal of Press-Politics, 1998

Red Star Rising: Coverage of Mikhail Gorbachev by US Network Television 1984-86, Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1992

Public Journalism (graduate)

Introduction to Multimedia Journalism

Intermediate Multimedia Journalism

Television News Innovators

Intermediate Video Journalism

Writing Television and Radio News

Introduction to Press, Politics and Public Policy

Journalism Workshop

Writer's Guild of America-East
Overseas Press Club
International Communication Association
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies