Updates

Like many of us, I first learned of the cyclosporiasis outbreak that has now affected 34 states from the memes. Explosive diarrhea is excruciating and dangerous and, well, a popular source of content. As I investigated further, I saw that this news story is as complex as the job… Read More

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive (TVNA) has been an important tool for researchers since it was founded in 1968. To get a better idea of its recent research impact, we conducted a Google Scholar search to learn more about what disciplines are using the TVNA and what topics are being… Read More

By Shane Jafar, Master of Marketing ’26 There’s a lot of talk in higher education about how AI can now “write for you.” Paste in a prompt, get a polished blog or report out, and you’re done. In practice, that approach usually leads to generic, surface-level… Read More

Analysis by Namrah Khan Weather and climate disasters have become a reality for much of the U.S. For more than 40 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked disasters with damages of one billion dollars or more. In the 1980s, NOAA reported 33 billion-dollar events; that… Read More

Vanderbilt’s Television News Archive is a playground for researchers, and a primary goal for the McGee Center is to increase engagement with the collection. This spring, we had two opportunities to do this. Buchanan Library Fellowship: Speak Up for Science Our latest Buchanan Library Fellowship focused on media coverage of… Read More

By Shane Jafar, Vanderbilt Master of Marketing Candidate ’26 Have you ever wanted to know how major networks covered the events of the Vietnam War or how inflation was discussed in the 1970s? There is an archive for that!  The Vanderbilt Television News Archive (TVNA), the most… Read More

I’m getting this in just under the wire for 2026’s Scholastic Journalism Week, which the Journalism Education Association has themed Press Under Pressure. I agree with the message and understand the dire tone, especially since the number of U.S. high schools with a newspaper has dropped precipitously in… Read More

[Introduction written by Jim Duran, Director of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive] On January 3, 2026, President Trump announced the U.S. military had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and was bringing him to New York to face prosecution for narcoterrorism. The event dominated headlines for several days, and news media outlets… Read More

As I write this, with 20 tabs open and notifications nagging me, I am overwhelmed. We’ve diagnosed this as information overload. This is certainly a big part of the problem. But as I’ve spent more time talking to people about how they consume information and attempting to optimize my… Read More

This post was submitted by Lily York, an Environmental Sociology and Political Science major at Vanderbilt University Each night, network news reaches millions of Americans. Even as skepticism toward the media grows, television news continues to influence what people perceive as important, urgent, and controversial. Climate change is one… Read More