Alma Matters helps you plan your week in college journalism by identifying trends in national journalism, offering ideas for classroom discussions and highlighting bright spots in college media. Written by the Poynter Institute’s director of college programming, Barbara Allen, the weekly Alma Matters newsletter will lighten the load for educators, journalism students and student media organizations. Subscribe now to enjoy Alma Matters each Sunday morning during the academic year.

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Furman players Tyrese Hughey and Alex Williams, right, celebrate their upset win against Virginia in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

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1.ACES Main Header - Jan 2023

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Me and my mom, circa 1975. Here, I demonstrate my curiosity about cameras.

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Adam Sandler in 2019. (Shutterstock)

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Kevin Ott and his family. (Screenshot, NBC News2)

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MediaWise Campus Correspondent Kobe McCloud teaches students at Howard University how to tell fact from fiction online. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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Steve Kraycik, a professor and director of student television at Penn State, coordinates a newscast run by students. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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MediaWise Campus Correspondent Maya Broadwater of the University of Miami teaches viewers how to identify fake photos using a reverse image search. (Screenshot/MediaWise and NBCLX)

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A television news crew prepares to deliver a report on the effects of Hurricane Ian near a statue of a flying boat Sept. 28 in St. Petersburg, Florida. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

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Here's hoping your campus looks like this right about now. (Shutterstock)

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(Graphic by Chris Kozlowski)

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Our first Campus Correspondents at the Poynter Institute in early March 2020. (Photo by Chris Zuppa)

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A view from Pass-A-Grille Beach at sunset near St. Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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Demonstrators protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

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A view from Pass-A-Grille Beach at sunset near St. Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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USC students presented their DEI effort, the Equity Board, to an engaged group of students from California and across the country. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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Yours truly, attempting to shape young minds. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Carter, Cal State Northridge)

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People protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

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Students at USC work on a live broadcast at the Annenberg Media Center in February 2022. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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Students from The Hofstra Clocktower at the Lawrence Herbert School of Communications. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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The last time Teachapalooza met in person was 2019. Welcome back to St. Pete, friends! Save the date for June 10-12.

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James O'Keefe, President of Project Veritas Action, walls to the podium to speak at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

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Lane DeGregory (left) and Maria Carrillo are the journalists behind WriteLane. (Photos courtesy Tampa Bay Times)

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FILE - In this Jan. 9, 2021, file photo, Washington State players kneel during the national anthem in front of standing Stanford players before an NCAA college basketball game in Santa Cruz, Calif. Student-athletes across college campuses are taking a lead from professional athletes by using their platforms in hopes of creating change. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

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Michigan Daily editor-in-chief Claire Hao in the newsroom last week. (Photo by Allison Engkvist)

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The News Womb, a meeting space at the University of Wisconsin Daily Cardinal. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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Students at the University of Miami share pizza while researching their topic for the Poynter College Media Project. (Photo by Barbara Allen)

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A Delta airline crew cheers after delivering the University of Alabama football team to Tuscaloosa in January 2021 following the team's national championship win. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)

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Here I am at the student media offices at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, leading the first of several Poynter College Media Project workshops. (Courtesy TAMUSA)

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Like Will Ferrell at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2011, it's time for you to take a bow ... at least for the summer. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

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In this image for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, a Lindy's worker carries crabs and corn onto a loading dock April 21, 2021, in the company's Woolford, Maryland, location. The company on Chesapeake Bay hires local and migrant workers to process live crabs, crab meat and oysters. (Carmen Molina Acosta/University of Maryland via AP)

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A screenshot from the Morgan State University project.

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Members of the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism shoot scenes for a PBS "Frontline" documentary to which they contributed. (Courtesy)

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Dan Rather spoke at Poynter in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2016. (Photo by Tom Cawthon/Poynter)

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Diversity Across Curriculum

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(Photo courtesy Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Sun)

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A video still showing a hearing from the 394th Judicial District Court of Texas in which an attorney accidentally showed up in a virtual call with a kitten filter. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)

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The Washington D.C. metropolitan area is under a lockdown and citywide curfew. (Photo by zz/STRF/STAR MAX/IPx)

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If this looks like the newsroom you once worked in, it might be time to freshen up your skills. This is the Associated Press London bureau newsroom in an undated photo. (AP Photo)

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Lucas Saez, 22, fills out his voter registration form as his father Ramiro Saez, center rear, looks on at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department in Doral, Florida. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

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President Donald Trump in 2017 (Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx)

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Hand off some of your platform power — here's how. (Shutterstock)

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Hundreds wait in line for early voting Sept. 18 in Fairfax, Virginia. Misinformation about candidates and election issues is prevalent, so this week's newsletter offers some tools you can use in the classroom to educate students. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

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A students stands on the balcony of Ehringhaus dormitory at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The university announced that it would cancel all in-person undergraduate learning following a cluster of COVID-19 cases which caused some students to pack and leave campus. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

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In this 2013 photo, actor Alan Alda addresses a communicating science class on the campus of Stony Brook University in New York. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

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This is one of a series of illustrations created by Nina Wilder, a student at Duke University who was involved in our “How college journalism covered COVID-19” project that launches today. Read more below.

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Graphic by Ava Cruz/ The Daily Pennsylvanian

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Graphic by Lauren Bryant, courtesy of Chalkbeat.

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Black Lives Matter protesters rally at the Statehouse in Des Moines, Iowa, in June. Young journalists may balk at the idea that race and gender identity are political issues, since many emerging journalists consider “political” issues simply the facts of their existence. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

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Protestors make a fist during protests in London. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

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A protestor in Coral Springs, Florida. (Credit: mpi04/MediaPunch /IPX)

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University of South Carolina senior Jesikah Lawrence drafts the day’s budget on a whiteboard during a journalism capstone class, a Monday-Friday newsroom in which students produce content for a website and a daily news broadcast. Faculty are employing a similar concept for students over the summer. (Photo by Kim Truett/University of South Carolina)

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As a U.S. secret service agent with an automatic weapon watches over James Brady, the president's secretary, after being wounded in an attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan, in Washington, D.C., March 30, 1981. A Washington, D.C. policeman, Thomas Delahanty, lies to the left after also being shot. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

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The University of Texas has said it will announce plans for the fall in the coming weeks. (Shutterstock)

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A man sits on the Columbia University campus in March in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

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Robert Wilonsky, a columnist with The Dallas Morning News, gives a tour of Dallas to the summer 2018 interns on June 12, 2018. (Carly Geraci/The Dallas Morning News)

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Don Angelo Riva walks in a park in Carenno, Italy, on April 2. Within two weeks of a lunch with his parents and an elderly priest, both his father and the priest were dead after contracting corona virus. His mother — a widow after 63 years of marriage — was nursing a fever quarantined in her valley home. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

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A free graphic available from SciLine. (Screenshot)

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Barbara Allen, director of college programming for Poynter, works with students in the MediaWise Voter Project Campus Correspondent program. (Chris Zuppa for Poynter)

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