Q&A: Benjamin Tetteh, Newhouse Doctoral Candidate

Benjamin Tetteh is more than a doctoral candidate at the Newhouse School; he’s an award-winning journalist and podcaster, documentary producer and critical scholar. Learn more about what Tetteh is researching at Newhouse, how his experiences as a journalist have influenced his research and what he hopes to do after earning his Ph.D.

How did you become interested in your research topics, which include media revenue and innovation, photography and media law? 
My interest stems from my practice in journalism. Some of the key challenges I saw in newsrooms had to do specifically with revenue. Revenue drives the newsroom, it drives who is hired, what stories are told and how they are told. Also, the media doesn’t operate in isolation. We operate in this whole environment of local laws and policies, national and international laws and principles, and they impact the way we practice journalism. 

Why did you choose to attend the Newhouse School for your research? 
At the time, I was looking at which institutions would be a good fit and which ones had the flexibility for the research I was doing. Newhouse had that flexibility and also was very good at promoting its Ph.D. program. There was also a lot of support and engagement from faculty members. Dr. Dennis Kinsey, who was the director of the Ph.D. program at the time, was one of the key reasons that I eventually settled on Newhouse. 

Can you describe some of your specific research projects? 
In terms of media economy, I’m looking into alternative revenue sources for media. A lot of media outlets still rely on advertising revenue, which can be unpredictable and come with conditions, so I’m interested in how smaller media organizations can generate financial support from the public through memberships. I’ve also done comparative analysis of data privacy laws and looked at the impact of economic and political factors on journalistic independence. My dissertation on press freedom in Ghana looks at the impact of laws, economics, politics, certain socio-cultural factors and how these factors impact the freedom of journalists to tell stories. 

What impact has your research had? 
My research and projects have impacted various fields. They have been presented at conferences, and a few articles have been submitted for publication in research journals. One project, which is also part of my interest in the media in Africa, looks at the insurgency we’ve seen over the last decade of Chinese media on the African continent. I started it as a classroom project for my Media Content Theory class and later turned it into a two-part podcast series, which went ahead to win a Foreign Correspondents Excellence Award, which is highly competitive. A paper I wrote on that was a joint winner of the Newhouse grad research award last year. I also wrote a book chapter in Global Journalism which has just been published by Rowan & Littlefield. It is a popular textbook used to teach media and communication in colleges and universities, and I am excited to be a contributor to the second edition.

What was it like winning the Foreign Correspondents Excellence Award? 
It was quite an honor. For the past few years my focus has been my research and producing content for academia, but journalism is my bread and butter. I love it. And so for me, I still try to contribute to that industry. I knew that the content I had produced was good enough, which is why I turned it in. Winning the award was quite a privilege, and also an acknowledgement of [my work]. 

What experiences in your journalism career have influenced your research? 
I’ve covered multiple elections and coup d’états in Africa, and I covered some landmark events here in the U.S. – including the COVID-19 outbreak, the George Floyd protests, and the 2020 U.S. election as well as the Biden-Harris inauguration. All these events impact the way I do my work, the way I tell stories. I always ask: Why do we tell a story this or that way? Why do we frame the story this way? Whose voice do we include or whose voice do we edit? All of them contribute to the way we tell stories and for me, coming from my background, I see the media and communication as a tool for change. That means empowering the disenfranchised, the minority, those who are abused and whose stories are not taught or told. Those are the things that matter to me through my own profession, but also now going into academic research. I’m looking at how we use communication as a tool to empower everyone to have a voice. 

What are your favorite aspects of Newhouse?  
One thing I cherish about the Ph.D. program is the flexibility to pick the topics that you want to work on. Another thing that I think Newhouse does well is supporting Ph.D. students in terms of grants, in publishing their work and through conferences, like the Springboard conference we held at Newhouse. The school also has great faculty and a strong pool of alumni. 

What do you hope to do after earning your Ph.D.? 
As I conclude my Ph.D. I’ve had the opportunity to teach some courses and I like it a lot. So, I’d like to stay in higher education to teach, mentor and motivate students to do investigative journalism, do long form narratives, do the stories that people don’t go to. And I will continue to conduct research in those topics that are dear to me. But I’d like to wear my professional cap on the side so I can still contribute to the industry or media in various forms.