Ari Goldman | Columbia Journalism School
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Ari Goldman

Professor of Journalism

International Affairs Religion Writing

Ari L. Goldman has taught at the journalism school since 1993. He is the director of the school’s Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life. The Scripps Program has enabled Professor Goldman to take students in his “Covering Religion” seminars on funded study-tours abroad during spring break. In the past, his class has visited India, Russia, Ukraine, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. To learn more about his most recent trip to India visit his class blog. 

In addition to the religion seminar, Professor Goldman also teaches Reporting, the Master’s Project and the course “The Journalism of Death & Dying,” which looks at everything from writing obituaries to covering natural disasters and suicide.

Before coming to Columbia, Goldman spent 20 years at The New York Times, most of it as a religion writer. In addition, he covered New York State politics, transportation and education. He was educated at Yeshiva University, Harvard and Columbia. Goldman was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; a Skirball Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England, and a scholar-in-residence for a semester at Yeshiva’s Stern College for Women.
 
In addition to his teaching on the university level, Goldman is on the faculty of the School of The New York Times where his course, “Writing the Big City: Covering New York,” is one of the most popular offerings. It is open to high school students of all ages.

He occasionally contributes articles and reviews to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The New York Jewish Week and the Forward.

 

Contact

Email:
[email protected]
Phone:
212-854-3878
Office:
Pulitzer Hall, Room 807
“
It’s not about the technology; that is going to change. It is about thorough reporting, clear writing and being an ethical journalist.
”

Classes taught

Covering Religion

Covering Religion aims at preparing students to write about religion with depth, sensitivity and sophistication. This year, the seminar will focus on the diversity of religious faiths found in the American South. Thanks to a generous grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation, the course will include a weeklong study-tour of the region at no cost to students. The study-tour will take place over spring break.In addition to reporting and writing assignments, each student will make an oral presentation in class about the coverage of his or her faith beat. While still in New York, students will select and begin to report on the stories that they want to cover while traveling. Upon their return, students will write and produce the stories that they worked on while traveling. This course is open by application only to all MS students, both part-time and full-time.

Follow the Covering Religion blog to learn about the places where we've traveled.

The Journalism of Death and Dying

Just about every journalist has to cover death, whether a fireman’s funeral, a fatal car crash, a memorial service or a simple obituary of a community leader. This seven-week course will equip students to cover end-of-life issues, including terminal illness, murders, suicides and fatal accidents in both the personal and public spheres. With the help of experts on trauma, students will discuss best practices about interviewing the bereaved and survivors. The reading list will include some of the great journalism on death and dying, including classic obituaries and accounts of disasters such as 9/11, Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. The class will also look at some of the digital media outlets that are increasingly used to memorialize the dead. Finally, the class will explore the cross-cultural and cross-theological practices surrounding death. Over the course of the semester each student will visit a public memorial and a funeral home and write a story from each venue. There will be weekly research, writing and rewriting assignments with the goal of producing three 1,200-word articles.

Books

The Search for God at Harvard
Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today
Living a Year of Kaddish
The Late Starters Orchestra