What does the career path look like for today’s local journalists?
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Tuesday, February 8, 2022
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What does the career path look like for today’s local journalists?Plus: How newsroom ideology affects slant in the news, why burned-out/overworked reporters are quitting — and is the inverted pyramid still the way to tell stories online? By Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis. |
What We’re Reading
Study Hall / Ashley Bardhan
Why is media so obsessed with the Drunken Canal?: A hater reports →
“Legacy media and their writers want to keep the implausible, gorgeous New York writer alive. Many people in power positions will bat their eyelashes online about how they value fair pay and how they totally support diversity in the workplace. Then, it seems they log off of Twitter, shake hands with each other, and agree to celebrate all these transgressive apolitical New York women. It reinforces that media is for the wealthy, glamorous few. This decision has no empathy, no real regard – no matter how many black squares they post – for how that feels to the little girls in the world who want to be writers, but can't be that.”
The Washington Post / Erik Wemple
The Sarah Palin trial exposes the allure of “both sides” journalism →
“Palin v. New York Times is about an erroneous claim, the vaunted ‘actual malice’ standard and fact-checking practices at the Times. But it's also about the totemic insistence of the mainstream media to filter breaking-news events through insights on ‘both sides’ of the American political divide. That particular model comes away looking tattered.”
Poynter / Elizabeth Djinis
“I’m doing the things I never had a chance to do”: Why leaving journalism and coming back was the right decision →
“An industry that polices its own identity must also police who gets to call themselves a journalist and who doesn't.”
The Cut / Michelle Santiago Cortés
Because your algorithm says so: Examining our (sometimes toxic) relationship with our AI overlords →
“When we decide that an algorithm can ‘understand us’ and it matches us with songs, people, and TikToks that align with our needs and desires, we slip into a sort of weird devotion. When we match with the same person over and over on dating apps, we wonder if it's a sign…Our algorithmically orchestrated encounters with people on dating apps or psychology buzzwords on social media start to feel preordained, as if the fact that the algorithm put something on our path Means Something™.”
The Financial Times / Erika Solomon, Olaf Storbeck, Kaye Wiggins, and Arash Massoudi
Women spoke up, men cried conspiracy: inside Axel Springer’s #MeToo moment →
“The Reichelt drama offers an insight into a powerful publisher that aims to create ‘the leading digital media company of the democratic world.’ It also sheds light on the workings of some of the world's biggest private investors that bought a large stake in Axel Springer in 2019.”
Press Gazette / Andrew Kersley
‘Relaxed’ BBC Three news bulletins aim to ‘bring back’ the TikTok generation →
“The Catch Up, a nightly two to four-minute news bulletin, is using its short length, graphics and explanatory news style to make broadcast news that is not only similar in style to social media content, but also optimised for later posting on social media.”
Intelligencer / Sarah Jones
Dear CNN, please calm down. →
“CNN's entanglement with the Cuomos is squarely on Zucker, and this now-soured relationship at least indirectly led to Zucker's current troubles. But you wouldn't know that from watching CNN, which has fallen back on the usual pundit-centered drama instead of actually reporting the news.”
MIT Technology Review / Jane Lytvynenko
Why the balance of power in tech is shifting toward workers →
“Concerns and anger over tech companies' impact in the world is nothing new, of course. What's changed is that workers are increasingly getting organized. Whether writing public letters, marching in protest, filing lawsuits, or unionizing, the labor force that makes the corporate tech world run is finding its voice, demanding a future in which companies do better and are held more responsible for their actions.”
The Verge / Nilay Patel
Capital B CEO Lauren Williams explains why we need news for and by Black people →
“I wanted to know why Lauren decided to go and found a startup, what the last year of building that startup ahead of launch has been like, and how she thinks about standing out in a media business where the pressures of social media and search traffic kind of make everything look the same. And, of course, I wanted to know how she plans to grow. Now that she's the CEO, how is she making decisions about Capital B's path forward?”
The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is suing Insider over sexual assault claims in its articles about him →
“In a lawsuit filed Monday in the District Court in Massachusetts, Portnoy accuses Insider — including the company's chief executive, top editor and two correspondents — of ‘willful and unlawful defamation and privacy rights violations’ over the publication of the stories.”
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