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Week in Review

Erin Hennessy

Happy almost Halloween! I’m just back from watching the world’s cutest pirate parade around his daycare, and I know the entire TVP Comms team is counting the minutes until the end of the work day and the beginning of Halloween weekend. Before you head out to trick and/or treat, grab two handfuls of candy corn (that one’s for new mom Ali Lincoln) and check out this week’s higher education news.
What’s new this week:
Our team is in awe of the prolific, fantastic Anthony Gaughan. The Drake University professor is The Conversation’s newest columnist and this week shared his thoughts on Paul Ryan’s elevation to speaker of the House of Representatives, a piece that was also picked up by Fortune, and Jeb Bush’s do-or-die debate performance, which also ran on The Huffington Post. He also wrote for US News & World Report this week about our country’s messy, dysfunctional campaign finance system.
This week, the GED Testing Service launched their newest initiative, GEDWorks, which was noted by Inside Higher Ed and The Washington Post. This employer-sponsored program will offer employees the opportunity to prepare for and take the GED test at no cost, increasing the number of adults with a high school equivalency credential.
What we’ve been talking about:
Four years ago, Teresa Valerio Parrot launched TVP Comms and this week, she shared her secrets to success.
And in his first official blog post, Bobby Mathews wrote about his decision to join TVP Comms and how he’s adjusting so far.
Don’t forget to check out the latest on Inside Higher Ed’s Call to Action blog—Michael Stoner offers ideas for adapting content marketing to the higher education space.
What we’ve been reading:
Kristine Maloney
As an English major, I just couldn’t resist this headline: “Ted Cruz as Beowulf: Matching Candidates with the Books They Sound Like.” The piece, and accompanying graphic, is an analysis of candidates’ speaking styles, including the complexity and tone (positive/negative) of their speech, matched to similar complexity and tone in literature. Perhaps not surprisingly, at one extreme is Trump, who has the simplest and most positive speech (The Legends of King Arthur), and on the other is Sanders, with the most complex and dire speech (Journey to the Center of the Earth). While the graphic is kind of fun, there’s also a lot of serious information about the ways in which candidates are communicating to us and the impact their methods and language have on voters.
Bobby Mathews
When the director of the FBI says the Black Lives Matter movement drives violent crime higher and makes cops more timid, he ought to have some data to back that assertion up. But he doesn’t. As Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, we expect law enforcement to act on evidence. And there’s no evidence that 1) violent crime is increasing; or 2) that such an increase—even if it did exist—is evidence of a trend.
Kyle Gunnels
My mom shared this with me the other day, and it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve read/watched in a while. I’m convinced that New York City has more hidden amazing things, especially historically, than any other city in the U.S. Which is why this story about Dead Horse Bay was so intriguing to me. I lived not too far from this national park that is literally covered in history. This feature looks at the items strewn along and buried beneath the shoreline that detail a period of New York and our country’s history, and touches on the debate about what to do with the massive amounts of garbage (or art, or artifacts depending how you look at it) at Dead Horse Bay.
Erin Hennessy
The New York City Marathon will be held on Sunday, so this piece about the history of marathons—including why they are 26.2 miles—and the contributions New York and New Yorkers have made to the sport is worth a read as we head into the weekend.
Teresa Valerio Parrot
As a parent of an only child and because I work in higher education, I was intrigued by the Chinese government’s decision to end its one-child policy. As it stands, so many institutions are clamoring to enroll full-pay Chinese students and I anticipate that trend will continue. I am predicting an uptick in the number of NACAC presentations on legitimately recruiting Chinese students and increased (and often unnecessary) apprehension from American parents regarding their child’s ability to compete for admission against Chinese students. As importantly, I look forward to reading about how China is increasing its own capacity to educate its students domestically. Policies have intended and unintended consequences and this one should be interesting.
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