Tiziana Sianora Rinaldi

· 5 min read I have often talked about the importance of listening to the communities we serve as journalists, and providing their members with information and resources relevant to their lives. After all, they are the people in whose lives we strive…

For a journalist who has traditionally gained access to immigrant communities through gatekeepers — community leaders, nonprofits, lawyers organizations or other intermediaries— producing a short-term project to serve and interact directly with…

While waiting for the 1 train to go downtown to attend my Social Media Tools class at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY recently, I had this thought: “Why is it that when we have a full schedule we manage to get things done, but…

I’ve been in media and communications since I began working in New York in 1991. At the most fundamental level, the Community Engagement class helped me realize that I had been a social journalist all along. For all the years I felt unsure how I…

I recently started building a Facebook group that is part of a larger effort to bring the service of journalism to a community of malemployed immigrants. They’re foreign-trained, highly specialized newcomers — dentists, pharmacists, surgeons,…

At the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, I’m developing a journalistic project for the community of malemployed immigrants in New York. They’re foreign-educated newcomers with college degrees or higher who end up in jobs that…

What lasts almost 24 hours, is as exciting as it is exhausting, and involves a network of dozens of journalists in newsrooms around the country who want to make sure all eligible Americans can cast their votes? It’s Electionland, a collaborative…

Yesterday evening I attended an important event in my community of practice, skilled immigrants looking to position themselves in the US job market. They are newcomers with college degrees or higher who often encounter socio-economic barriers to…

Several years ago I took a course in cross-cultural psychology at the New School University. For our first class, we gathered on a bright September’s afternoon in a sunny room in Chelsea, Lower Manhattan, and played a card game. That’s right, a card…

Last year I attended the Society of Professional Journalists’s regional conference in New York City and met Mariel Fiori. She’s the founder and managing editor of La Voz, a Spanish-language monthly with a large following in the mid-Hudson…

About 10 years ago I began visiting immigrant detainees through the Sojourners Detention Visitor Program, an initiative that connects imprisoned immigrants facing deportation proceedings with community volunteers willing to pay a friendly visit. As a…

I have worked for both Italian and American media companies in New York City. Aside from their size — small foreign bureaus vs. the headquarters of a national media organization — their approach to setting the daily news agenda was the same. First…

Social journalism is about going into a community, and learning about it from it to identify which needs journalists can help solve. That means investing time, and bringing an expanded tool box of information-gathering skills to achieve goals…

I found out about social journalism a few years ago, when I attended an event at the newly renamed Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. At the time, I was looking to fulfill both an ongoing desire to voice the discoveries of my transplanted…