Benjamin Toff
@BenjaminToff
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Director, Minnesota Journalism Center, & Associate Professor @umn_hsjmc. I study the public’s changing relationship with news and journalism.
Minneapolis, MN
Joined May 2011
I guess I'm over here at Blue Sky now: @benjamintoff.bsky.social
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Congrats to @BenjaminToff, @ruthiepalmer, and Rasmus Nielsen whose book, AVOIDING THE NEWS received the 2025 International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award! https://t.co/zRlOr30jLX
@icahdq @ColumbiaUP #ICA25 #ICA2025
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Bring your questions about AI ethics to the 2025 IIJ Freelance Conference, for Poynter’s @AlexMahadevan, Trusting News’ @lwalsh and @BenjaminToff from the Minnesota Journalism Center. Learn more: https://t.co/DvbEPYEqEJ
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The Minnesota Journalism Center at @UMN_HSJMC is very happy to be hosting this event celebrating the EIGHTY year history of this unique Minnesota institution. More information here: https://t.co/KYekbTkOVJ
Looking forward to repping @APMResearch/@MPRnews at today's @UMN_HSJMC event with @BenjaminToff & @SidBedingfield, @UW's Patricia Moy,* @RoperCenter's Kathleen Weldon, Rob Daves,* & @StarTribune's @mattdelong
https://t.co/95zqRPbbVR *Not 1, but 2 past @AAPOR presidents!
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Not sure why I haven't seen more made of this but if exit polls are right, Trump did WORSE w/ white voters (57-41) vs. Biden (58-41). All the movement was w/ non-white voters whose Democratic support fell 7 points & voted at lower rates. Electorate was 4 points MORE WHITE overall
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Re-reading an article I wrote right after the 2020 election and I had forgotten just how eerily reminiscent this week has been. This part especially... https://t.co/ABRFkhpHb1
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The 2024 elections may be almost over 🙏 but fear not Minneapolitans, the 2025 elections are just starting to heat up...
Today, all my attention is on electing Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and DFLers up and down the ballot and turning out voters tomorrow. Here is the statement I gave to the Star Tribune earlier this evening:
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The great @emilyvanduyn wrote a whole book about this phenomenon after Trump got elected in 2016…
A woman at Obama’s Pittsburgh rally told me she and her friends, when they go to rural PA, “leave post-it notes in the bathroom saying: NOBODY WILL KNOW WHO YOU VOTED FOR.” Why? She said women in red areas feel stigmatized if they oppose him & don’t all know their vote is private
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This is ridiculous. The public has lots of info needs beyond Trump & national politics. They ignore that coverage because they think it’s irrelevant to their lives. You can disagree (I do!) but MANY feel that way about politics. Writing them off as hopeless is the problem.
Anonymous TV exec: "If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they're not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form."
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As someone who has spent a lot of time studying the erosion of the public’s trust in news, I’d like to suggest to the @WashPost’s billionaire owner that he rethink his strategy of dressing up his editorial interference as a (sudden) matter of principle. https://t.co/5GeHr890wR
washingtonpost.com
A note from our owner.
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Some readers seem disconcerted by a reassuring article with my byline. I'm usually the guy who finds a cloud around any silver lining. But I've done the reporting and I'm convinced that Trump, if he loses, will fail to overthrow this election.
time.com
Thank new laws, fail-safes, and courageous election officials
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"Being immersed in a community of people who talk about news, value it, and help make sense of it can make it go down easier."—Benjamin Toff, Ruth Palmer, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen https://t.co/jpELY8DLfS
@benjamintoff @ruthiepalmer @rasmus_kleis #InformYourVote #NewsAvoidance
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Thanks to @eduardosuarez for writing up our conversation the other day about news avoidance and the US election. Hard to believe 8 years have passed since I started studying the topic as a postdoc at the @risj_oxford…
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The decision to call this thing the “Habermas Machine” is going to be seriously triggering to a large number of academics…
Earlier this year, I started a team at @GoogleDeepMind focused on viewpoint pluralism in AI. Today, that team has its first publication in @ScienceMagazine! 🎉 Huge congrats to @mhtessler, @bakkermichiel & the whole team!
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Great discussion of interviewing from @kellymcb: “a skilled interviewer wants the audience to walk away remembering what the subject said, not how the questions were asked. Journalists who seek to be remembered for cleverness… will inevitably resort to performative behavior.”
There's a better way to do tough interviews. I rewrote @tonydokoupil's and @BretBaier's questions.
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Fascinating case of local news meets astroturf lobbying campaign. Feels like this sort of thing may become increasingly common…
1/ THREAD: After a large solar farm was proposed, it seemed to many in Knox Co., Ohio that an anti-solar machine took over news & politics overnight. They were right. Here’s how fossil fuel interests shaped the conversation, and how a hometown paper’s new owners amplified it 👇
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"Just as some people place limits on their use of social media, accessing it only on specific devices or during particular times of day, setting boundaries can make time spent with news feel more productive and less draining."—Benjamin Toff, Ruth Palmer, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
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Are you a journalist hoping to use polls in your reporting? We compiled a list of tips for you to responsibly and effectively use polling in your work.
pewresearch.org
We’ve compiled some tips for journalists who use polling in their work during election season and beyond.
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Last call for priority consideration for our @UMN_HSJMC tenure-track position in journalism with a focus on data science and applied research! Deadline is tomorrow:
🚨Please spread the word! 📢 @UMN_HSJMC is searching for a tenure-track Assistant Professor with a focus on emerging areas of data science including AI, combining quantitative social science approaches with applied research in the practice of journalism.
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