When Al Jazeera brings you hope.

Mondays are class days, but that doesn't mean sore legs crammed in a lecture hall. Today, our class visited Al Jazeera. Yeah – the London broadcast office of the news organization that is widely watched in the Middle East, Africa and Europe but has been made the target of fear and group-think criticism in the United States. Fox News once reported that Al Jazeera broadcast beheadings, which was untrue.

The staff members we met were journalists tired of working for ABC, BBC and other mainstream media. They wanted to travel, rethink the model of storytelling and were frightened that after the Iraq War started, news agencies started cutting back on their Middle East reporting.

One program we learned about, the Listening Post, was most fascinating to me, as it analyzes media coverage throughout the world:

The Listening Post

After the depressing news we're all hearing about newspapers and careers in journalism, it was uplifting to see a news agency that was still dedicated to accurate storytelling, and still excited by hiring new journalists and brainstorming new coverage ideas.

In the evening we saw "39 Steps" at the Criterion Theater. It was a glorious romp of theatrical agility. Only four actors pulled off something like 100 roles, switching hats, costumes and voices. It was a humorous interpretation of the Hitchcock film, and more than anything I was impressed by the choreography that juggled props, set and characters.