Journalism

  • Faculty & Staff
  • Full Time Instructors
  • Donald A. Bird
    Professor of Journalism
    (A.B., Rutgers University; M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University
    email: donald.bird@liu.edu




    Now in his 28th year at LIU, Dr. Bird has media experience that includes copy-desk editing, broadcast sports reporting and public relations. He worked at The Associated Press in New York City, reported on the Robert F. Kennedy primary presidential campaigns, and was associate editor of The African Press. Bird has been a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution and other organizations. He teaches mass media, new media, news writing, public relations, sensationalism and speech courses.

    Dr. Bird graduated with distinction from Rutgers—The State University, where he was a Henry Rutgers Scholar, and earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University in Folklore and Mass Communication. LIU awarded him the David Newton Award for Teaching Excellence and he has held post-doctoral research appointments at Harvard University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow.

    Dr. Bird has taught adults at NBC and Pfizer as well as graduate courses at military bases in five states. He has served as journalism department chair for 16 years and is a member of the George Polk Awards Committee. Among his scholarly publications are articles on Inside Media, WordPerfect: The Magazine, Hugh Hefner and Charles Collingwood. His current research includes 9/11 web communications and folklore, presentation of self on Facebook and tabloid journalism.

    He consulted with Commersant, a Russian business publication, and helps host visiting journalists from the United States Department of State’s International Visitor Program. During his fourth trip to China in December 2007 he lectured on journalism topics at Renmin University of China in Beijing, Beijing Normal University and Nankai University in Tianjin. During March 2005 he lectured at Fudan University in Shanghai and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.
  • Hal Bock
    George Polk Journalist-in-Residence
    Advisor to the campus newspaper, Seawanhaka
    (B.A., New York University)




    Bock has written sports for the Associated Press since 1963, covering more Super Bowls and World Series than any AP sports writer in history. His assignments covered the full spectrum of sports: baseball and football playoffs, Olympic Games, championship fights, the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500, Wimbledon and U.S. Open Tennis, the Masters and U.S Open Golf, college football bowls and the NCAA Final Four. Bock has written or edited 13 books and scores of magazine articles, and his work has appeared in the Fireside Book of Baseball and in the anthology Best Sports Stories of the Year. Most recently, he wrote the text for The Associated Press Pictorial History of Baseball and children’s books on Super Bowl MVP Steve Young and NBA MVP David Robinson. He led panel discussions at Hofstra University’s Babe Ruth Conference in 1995 and Long Island University’s Jackie Robinson conference in 1997.

    Bock, a native of New York City and a 1961 journalism graduate of New York University, won Associated Press Sports Editors awards for his Olympic coverage in 1980, columns in 1986, enterprise writing in 1990, Sunday features in 1991, and feature writing in 1994 and 1996. He shared an Associated Press Managing Editors award in 1993 for a series on sports gambling and won Pro Football Writers Association writing contest prizes in 1995 and 1996. He was a judge for the Women’s Sports Foundation 2000 journalism awards and teaches sports writing, news reporting and sports public relations at the Brooklyn Campus of LIU.
  • Ralph Engelman
    Professor Of Journalism
    Department Chair
    (B.A., Earlham College; M.A., Ph.D., Washington University - St. Louis)
    email: ralph.engelman@liu.edu



    Dr. Engelman teaches courses in media and society, communications law and history of the press. He has published articles and reviews in The Yale Review, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism History, Journalism Monographs, American Journalism, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Television Quarterly and the Approaches to Learning series of the Modern Language Association. His book, Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History, was published by Sage in 1996. Columbia University Press will publish his biography of broadcast journalism pioneer Fred Friendly. In his two decades at LIU, he has received the highest awards given by the Brooklyn Campus for both teaching and scholarship: the David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching (1989) and the Trustees Award for Scholarly Achievement (1999).

    Engelman is the coordinator of LIU’s annual George Polk Awards Seminar. Since 2001, he has appeared as a moderator on Reporter Roundtable, a public-affairs program aired by Time-Warner, Cablevision and RCN in New York City. He serves as a journalism consultant for the Interactive Encyclopedia of Television, a project of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation, and is a former board member of the Pacifica Foundation.
  • Jennifer Rauch
    Assistant Professor of Journalism
    (B.A., The Pennsylvania State University; M.J., Temple University; Ph.D., Indiana University)
    email: jennifer.rauch@liu.edu



    Dr. Rauch teaches courses in news writing & reporting, mass communication, magazine editing & design, online/multimedia journalism and new media & society as well as special topics such as “Not Necessarily the News: Political Entertainment, Youth Audiences & Civic Culture” and “From Boob Tube to YouTube: The Rise & Fall of Network Television.”

    Before joining LIU in 2004, she was a professional journalist and publication specialist for seven years at news organizations including the Philadelphia City Paper, China Daily and Morning Call as well as for non-profit and corporate clients such as the American Red Cross, Air Products & Chemicals and Lehigh University. Her words and images have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Magnet magazine and The Chicago Reader.

    Dr. Rauch earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University-Bloomington, where she was a Chancellor’s Fellow. She won a scholarship from the Poynter Institute to study multimedia journalism, an instructional innovation grant from LIU’s Office of Academic Affairs, and a GIFT Scholar award from the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication.

    Her articles examining alternative media models—including the UN-sponsored Inter Press Service, civic & citizen journalism, and independently published zines—and news audiences have been published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Popular Communication and Media, Culture & Society. Her research on news content has appeared in Mass Communication & Society and Social Movement Studies. She also is a contributor to the International Encyclopedia of Communication.
  • Adjunct Instructors
  • Robert Anthony







    Anthony is a technology and personal computing columnist whose work currently appears in Bloomberg Markets magazine, The Network Journal, Black Enterprise, Black Issues Book Review and elsewhere. He was the senior writer at PC Magazine from 1993 to 1998 and was a reporter at the Milwaukee Sentinel from 1981 to 1988. He is a past president of the Deadline Club (the NYC chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and still serves on the board. He also currently serves on the board of the New York Association of Black Journalists. Anthony teaches computer-assisted reporting at the Brooklyn Campus of LIU.
  • Plathel Benjamin







    Benjamin is an award-winning journalist who began his career as a regular contributor to the Village Voice and has written for the New York Daily News, New York magazine, Discover, George, Emerge, The Sunday Times of London and The Guardian. His stories have won the Griot Award, among others, and been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes. For more than a decade, he has been writing, producing and delivering programs for WBAI Radio, where he hosts a weekly show on politics and culture. Benjamin, who has appeared on television shows from "Geraldo" to "Politically Incorrect," writes columns, features, sports commentary, book reviews and obituaries for the online news magazine The Black World Today. He is a co-author (with MacArthur Fellow Stanley Crouch) of Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folks, a book of essays on W.E.B. DuBois. A founding member of the department of Afro-American Studies in the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Benjamin has lectured at Harvard University and the Sorbonne. Presently, he is investigating the exclusion of black construction workers and contractors from meaningful participation in the reconstruction of New Orleans.
  • Claudia Caruana
    (B.A., M.A, Syracuse University)






    Caruana is a medical/science writer and author of five books, including the cookbook Taste of Malta. Her work has appeared in Saveur, Cooking Light, The New York Times, Newsday, Parents, Seventeen, Academic Physician & Scientist, Environmental Health Perspectives, Chemical Week, The Writer and many other consumer and professional publications. She has been the recipient of several fellowships for journalists. Most recently, Caruana participated in the National Press Foundation's Biomedical Engineering Journalism Fellowship program held at the University of California at San Diego in 2004, and was a CASE Media Fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a past president of the Deadline Club (the NYC chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists) and Sigma Delta Chi.
  • Dan Colarusso
    (B.A., Long Island University)






    Colarusso is the Deputy Business Editor of the New York Post, which has been recognized as one of the top sections in the country by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Before joining The Post, Colarusso was a columnist and associate editor at TheStreet.com, a leading Internet financial news organization. His work has also appeared regularly in The New York Times, Barron’s and other leading business publications. Colarusso, who graduated from LIU’s Brooklyn Campus in 1988, teaches business writing.
  • Janell Crispyn
    (B.S., Broadcast Journalism, Syracuse University, 1977)






    Crispyn has more than 20 years of experience as a news director, traffic reporter, advertising representative, writer and announcer for Shadow Broadcast Services, Editor & Publisher magazine, Dow Jones, and several New York radio stations. She has reported for WINS, WABC, Bloomberg and Sirius Satellite radio, among others. Crispyn won news awards from the Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists, as well as a 1981 Outstanding Young Women in America Award. She's a leader of the SPJ's New York Chapter and a member of the Radio/Television News Directors Association.
  • Ed Downe
    (B.J., University of Missouri)






    Downe was founder and CEO of Downe Communications, Inc., at one time the largest magazine publisher in the world, owning more than 25 magazines including Ladies’ Home Journal and Family Weekly. In addition to publishing magazines and books, Downe Communications owned cable TV systems, radio stations, direct mail and magazine subscription centers. Downe holds an honorary doctorate from LIU.
  • Megan Donis
    (B.A., University of British Columbia; M.S., Columbia University)





    Megan Donis is senior producer of public affairs programs for Brooklyn Independent Television. Born in Vancouver, Canada, she began her career in journalism as an on-camera reporter. Megan moved to New York in 1998 to complete her master’s degree in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Since graduating in 1999, she has worked to juggle her two passions, documentary and news. Megan has worked on several Emmy/Peabody-award-winning PBS and HBO documentary series including EGG the Arts Show, Broadway: The American Musical and Classical Baby. She produced a radio documentary on Spiritual Healing, part of which aired on ABC News Radio. In addition, she helped launch YO New York.com, an internet TV station covering city news and entertainment. Megan returned to Vancouver in 2002 to work as a reporter for News 4, but her love of Brooklyn drew her back a year later. At Brooklyn Independent TV Megan produces and hosts Brooklyn Review, Brooklyn’s only TV news magazine.
  • Jill Grossman







    Jill Grossman has been a reporter and editor for New York City community newspapers and magazines for more than a decade. Most recently a senior editor at City Limits magazine, Jill has also served as editor of The Westsider and Chelsea Clinton News and as managing editor of the The Riverdale Press. She was an assistant press secretary to Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger. Her freelance work has appeared in several outlets, including The New York Observer and the New York Blade. In addition to teaching at LIU, Jill is an adjunct professor at New York University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
  • Michael Jordan
    (B.J., University of Missouri; M.S., New School University)
    email: michael.jordan@brooklyn.liu.edu





    Michael Jordan – no, not that Michael Jordan – teaches classes ranging from international reporting to sports writing at LIU’s Brooklyn Campus. Jordan is a freelancer focusing on international affairs, specifically the United Nations, Middle East, former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. He has served as the U.N. correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and has contributed U.N. coverage to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Post, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post and the Jewish news service, JTA. Jordan has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, The Jerusalem Report and The Forward. He recently reported from Kosovo, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. Jordan was for six years a Budapest-based correspondent, roaming Eastern Europe and the Balkans for the Christian Science Monitor and many others. Many of Jordan’s dispatches can be found at www.csmonitor.com and www.jta.org.
  • Leonard J. Hollie
    (B.A., University of Cincinnati; M.S., Columbia University)






    Hollie, a full adjunct professor, began teaching intermediate and advanced reporting classes at the Brooklyn Campus of LIU in 1995. He has been a member of the panel of judges for LIU’s George Polk Awards since 1999. He is an editorial manager at Standard & Poor’s, where he manages five editors who supervise the work of 70 analysts in five cities covering health care, higher education and state and local government. Before S&P, Hollie was finance editor at The Net Economy magazine, a Ziff-Davis publication; senior editor at IndividualInvestor.com; and a reporter for Knight-Ridder Financial News, Knight-Ridder Newspapers, and Crain’s Communications. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the New York Financial Writers Association.
  • Sylvia King-Cohen
    (B.A., M.A., Oklahoma State University)






    King-Cohen, a features news editor with Newsday, is a former deputy sports editor for the Long Island-based newspaper. Prior to Newsday, she was a sports wire editor for the Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution for five years, a foreign wire editor for the Dallas (Texas) Times Herald for four years, and assistant editor for a group of weeklies in the Dallas area for nearly four years. She started her career as features editor and then managing editor of a prize-winning daily in western Oklahoma called the Weatherford Daily News. King-Cohen is a graduate of Oklahoma State University, where she attended both undergraduate and graduate school. During graduate school, she twice was editor of The Daily O'Collegian, the college's independent student newspaper, which is published daily and had a circulation of more than 20,000. A native Oklahoman, King-Cohen teaches news editing and layout at LIU’s Brooklyn Campus.
  • David Liu
    (B.A., Tunghai University; M.A., New York University; M.S., Pratt Institute)






    David Liu’s career at the Associated Press has spanned more than 37 years. As part of his executive duties, he has traveled extensively throughout the world and met many prominent industry leaders. Currently the director of foreign-language newspapers, Liu promotes AP services in the United States as well as in Asian and Pacific regions and assists major media corporations in conceiving and developing creative strategies. During his long residence in the United States, he has held faculty and director positions at several universities and institutes. Liu also is a columnist for the Wen Hui Bao (Daily) in Shanghai, China. In 1988, he published his first book, Things American: The Art of Life in the United States, and in 1990, he launched the magazine East-West Forum, which circulates widely in affluent Chinese communities in the United States, Canada and China. Liu, who is fluent in both English and Chinese, is a native speaker of Mandarin, Cantonese and five other dialects.
  • Errol Louis
    (B.A., Harvard; M.A, Yale: J.D., Brooklyn Law School )






    Errol Louis has been a columnist of the New York Daily News since June 2004, when he began writing a twice-weekly column on a wide range of political, legal and social matters. Lous is a member of the Daily News editorial board and a frequent guest on television and radio, including New York 1, WNYC radio, WABC radio, WCBS-TV, WABC-TV and CNN. He has regularly served as guest host of the "Brian Lehrer Show" on WNYC radio. Prior to joining the News, Louis served as associate editor of The New York Sun, where he published hundreds of columns and won an award for commentary from the New York Association of Black Journalists. He has written a regular column, "Commerce and Community," for Our Time Press, a Brooklyn-based community newspaper, since 1998. Louis is a receipient of the New York Magazine Award as one of 10 New Yorkers making a difference "with energy, vision and independent thinking."
  • Bebeto Matthews
    (B.A., Howard University)







    Since joining the Associated Press (AP) as a staff photojournalist in 1992, Bebeto Matthews has produced national and international assignments including the '92 Olympics, Haiti, presidential conventions, Montserrat volcano eruption, Princess Diana's funeral, the Sept. 11 aftermath, West Indies and English cricket, and Latin America. His work has earned numerous honors and awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, National Association of Black Journalists, New York Press Photographers Association and other professional organizations. The video documentary feature "Sophia," which Matthews produced for the AP's online service, won the Society of Professional Journalists' best multimedia news project award in 2001. He has worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Newsweek, The Montgomery Journal (Rockville, Md.) and The Quincy (Mass.) Patriot Ledger. Matthews also served as a judge for the 2006 NPPA "Pictures of The Year" awards, screening over 60,000 works for honors.
  • Thomas Pison
    (B.A., University of Pittsburgh; M.A., Yale University; Ph.D., SUNY-Buffalo)






    Pison, who teaches public relations and advertising at LIU’s Brooklyn Campus, has more than 20 years of experience in integrated communications systems and organizational development. Pison is now research director for responsebydesign.com, a New York-based online marketing and advertising agency. He also develops on-site and computer-based training (CBT) programs for writing budgeting and finance proposals, project management, and business communications. Pison has published extensively on Internet technology in leading journals such as Circuits and Design (an IEEE publication), The Transponder, and Security Concerns. He initiated the monthly column, Tech Tools, for Technology & Skills Training magazine, the largest paid-circulation training magazine in the United States. He was also technical editor for the ASTD Lamplighter, an award-winning publication on current trends in human resource training and development.
  • Eugenia Woody
    (A.B., Douglas College; M.A., University of Michigan)






    Woody is a professional journalist with decades of experience in broadcasting who currently serves as an advisor to the Women’s Media Center. For 20 years she was an executive editor, manager, producer and writer for WNBC, where she produced Emmy-nominated reports from South Africa’s first democratic elections and coordinated war reporting from Qatar. Woody also has worked as a managing editor at New York 1 and news producer (on a program anchored by Oprah Winfrey) at WJZ-TV in Baltimore. She is a founding member of the New York Association of Black Journalists and a former board member of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Woody is currently involved in the formation of a progresssive women’s radio network.
  • Staff
  • Zena Kennedy







    Zena Kennedy, the department secretary and an LIU alumna, has a background in public relations and photography. She worked for Tex McCrary Public Relations (a.k.a. Texcomm) as a photographer, archivist and assistant for military, political and charitable events. Kennedy also worked independently for the US Army and Air Force. Currently pursuing a graduate degree in photography and art, her interest is in American history and Americana. Kennedy, who emigrated from Italy with her multicultural parents, is of Italian, Austrian and Croatian heritage and speaks Italian and Croatian. She studied British history in London and is a current member of Mets and Red Sox Nation.