Mitchell Stephens

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Mitchell Stephens is a professor of Journalism and mass communications at New York University. He is also a respected journalist with several original published works.

1 Personal Information
2 Published Work
3 Recent Work
4 External links

[edit] Personal Information

Mitchell Stephens was born on August 16, 1949 in New York City, and was raised in Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island. His father was Bernard Stephens (1917-1990), a labor newspaper editor. His mother, Lillian Stephens, is a retired professor of education, and lives on Long Island. He has one sibling, a sister, Beth Stephens, who is an international human rights lawyer and law professor at Rutgers in Camden, New Jersey.

He attended the Wheatley School, a public school in East Williston, New York, and graduated in 1967. He graduated from Haverford College in 1971, with honors in English. In 1973 he graduated from UCLA with a masters in Journalism, and received the Edward R. Murrow Award for best student in broadcast journalism.

His wife is Esther Davidowitz, magazine writer and editor, and currently editor-in-chief of Westchester Magazine. Their children are Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz (the noted social activist), Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, and Noah Stephens-Davidowitz.

[edit] Published Work

Stephens has published many books and textbooks on journalism, including:

Without Gods: Toward a History of Disbelief - blog chronicling the writing of his next book, a history of atheism (to be published by Carroll & Graf)
the rise of the image the fall of the word (Oxford University Press, 1998)
A History of News (Viking, 1988)
Writing and Reporting the News (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986)
Broadcast News (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981)

He has also published several articles on journalism and contemporary thought in several publications, such as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Journalism Quarterly, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and many others.

Many of Stephens' journalistic arguments stem from a reaction to works by journalists such as famed critic Neil Postman (author of "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business"). Stephens contends that television, like many previous forms of media, is stuck in an 'imitation' stage of development, and we have thus not seen its proper use.

HELLO!!

[edit] Recent Work

Stephens has completed a journey around the world (December 2000 to August 2001), working on the theories of cultural homogenization and travel itself. His work related to his travels through 38 countries by cars, buses, boats, trains, ferries, freighters, and by foot can be seen in FEED magazine, LonelyPlanet.com, ROADthinker.com, ideaVIDEO.com, and in "Marketplace" reports for public radio.