The Journalism Program welcomes adjunct instructor Robert Samuels, a visiting journalist from The Washington Post. Samuels will teach JOU 375B: A Deep Dive Into Race and the Media in fall 2021. 

Robert Samuels is a national political enterprise reporter for The Washington Post who is known for his nuanced and empathetic work reporting across all socioeconomic backgrounds. His beat includes traveling through the country to chronicle how the lawmakers, policies and prominent issues in the nation’s capital impact the lives of everyday Americans. In 2011, Samuels joined The Post Metro staff covering local education, and then social issues. At the Miami Herald Samuels spent nearly five years covering crime, local and state government and human interest stories around the region. Samuels grew up in the Bronx.  He is alumnus of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern where he is the only student to have ever been both editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Daily Northwestern and the black student magazine, BlackBoard. Samuels was one of the lead reporters who authored George Floyd’s America, a series of stories on Floyd and systemic racism that recently won the prestigious George Polk Award for Justice Reporting. Samuels has previously been a finalist for the Toner Prize for Political Reporting – the nation’s top political reporting award – and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

In the Deep Dive course, students will work to study the successes and failures of journalism in covering issues related to race and racism. The course will look back to the Civil Rights era and explore contemporary coverage of such issues as the Black Lives Matter movement, racial disparities in health, and criminal justice, with reporting exercises that give student practice grappling with these complex issues. Conducted on Zoom.