Creators will always find a way

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Media statistic of the week

Yesterday was Super Tuesday and November 2024 is fresh on everyone’s minds as we head into what’s sure to be a tumultuous election season.

Nadia Brown, Camille D. Burge and Christine Slaughter from Sisters in U.S. Politics conducted a study to investigate the ways Black women use social media, TV news and other sources to engage with politics.?

Here’s a snippet of what they found after surveying 2,284 Black women voters in March 2022:

“In our study, we find that 54% of Black women go to television news as a primary source, 26% browse the internet as a primary source, and 11% watch television talk shows. The remainder consult either radio or newspapers.”

You can check out all the details in this piece for Nieman Lab.?

This past week in the media industry

An unfortunate reminder that national media is still a very exclusive circle

Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton set out to answer an interesting question: Is The New York Times’ newsroom just a bunch of Ivy Leaguers?

After The Times recently redesigned reporter bio pages, Benton realized he could more easily find the answer. Here’s how he did it: “I read through all 460 [staffer bios] and pulled out every mention of attendance at a college or university. Of those, 331 listed at least one alma mater. For the remaining 129 — plus 14 who had only listed a graduate program — I went diving across the internet for more info, checking out everything from LinkedIn profiles to personal websites to book-jacket bios. In the end, I was able to track down what I believe to be accurate university info on all but 11 of the 460.”

OK, so what did Benton find??

“Indeed, the eight Ivy colleges alone make up 107 of the 393 staffer alma maters listed here — about 27.2%. Yale (26), Columbia (21), and Harvard (20) are the top feeders, with Brown (10), Cornell (10), Princeton (10), and Penn (8) in a second cluster and Dartmouth (2) bringing up the rear.”

The article garnered a lot of interest from fellow members of the media on X.?

“An unfortunate reminder that national media is still a very exclusive circle — and it really shouldn't be,” tweets Daniella Diaz.

“I’ve said this many times, but it’s worth repeating… We need better pipelines for students from the working class or underrepresented communities to enter journalism,” adds Will Flannigan.

10/10 lede

“10/10 lede from @tylerpager” tweets Jeff Stein in regards to The Washington Post’s White House correspondent Tyler Pager’s much-discussed piece about President Biden and the information he consumes on a regular basis.

(You’ll have to read the piece to see the lauded lede.)

Here’s an interesting snippet from the article about President Biden’s news diet: “His news consumption comes from three main sources: cable television, print newspapers and the Apple News app on his iPhone. Biden is a loyal watcher of “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, tuning in most mornings while he works out. If the show runs a negative segment on Biden, he often complains to aides in the morning when he arrives at the Oval Office.

Biden also watches CNN and Fox News, aides say. Although he is not nearly as glued to the television screen as Trump was, some aides wish the president would spend less time watching cable news.”

“This WaPo story is the beat-sweetener to end all beat-sweeteners,” tweets Chuck Ross.

‘Just survive til ‘25’

How bad can it get for Hollywood? reads the headline of cultural historian and author Mark Harris’ opinion piece for the New York Times: “For Hollywood, 2023 was not so much a disaster as a preview of disasters to come,” Harris writes.?

Here’s a look at what’s happening: “The year 2023 was a time of downsizing, diminishment, shelving, sidelining, retrenching, retreating and bet-hedging. And 2024 is the year of consequences. The plain fact is that, thanks to the strikes, there simply aren’t enough movies and new shows in the pipeline to give the business the boom year it badly needs. (This weekend’s big opening, “Dune: Part Two,” was delayed from its original 2023 premiere date because of the strikes’ disruption.) For Hollywood, it will take at least a full year for the supply lines to start flowing at capacity again — and there are fewer supply lines than there used to be.”

"’As for new projects, the industry’s current whispered motto seems to be: Just survive till ’25.’ As a journalist I've never felt more like I worked in Hollywood,” writes John McGrath on X.

A few more

• “NewsGuard, the news rating service, is adding more automation tools as it works to track misinformation efforts ahead of the 2024 elections,” reports Marty Swant for Digiday. Learn more about NewsGuard’s new AI-assisted tools for early detection of election-related misinformation.
• Also on the election front, Semafor launched a Microsoft-sponsored “Global Election Hub” to cover votes happening around the world in 2024, according to Bron Maher for Press Gazette.
• Rest in peace. Award-winning journalist Chris Mortensen who reported on the NFL for ESPN died earlier this week at the age of 72, reports ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques. “Hard day for ESPN family. Chris was the standard in our business as a reporter and person. Always there to help and give advice. Even as a young reporter, I leaned on him for direction, and he didn’t really know me nor did we work together at the time. ??” tweets Chris Low.
• WIRED Magazine’s Reece Rogers explores how creators are evolving from using music in TikTok videos to sound clips in the wake of music from Universal Music Group being removed from the platform. “But creators will always find a way…” tweets Mashudu Modau.?
• MyHeritage announced the launch of OldNews.com, a new website that offers access to thousands of historical newspapers, mainly from the 1800s and 1900s for a subscription price of $99/year, reports TechCrunch’s Aisha Malik.
• The Verge’s Kevin Nguyen pens a eulogy to TinyLetter which shut down last week: “Before there was Substack, and long before the word “creator” was used with any kind of seriousness, there was a small newsletter tool that captured a moment: TinyLetter.? Appropriately humble in name, TinyLetter was light on features and heavy on focus.”?
• Great news! Apple just introduced transcripts for podcasts. “With transcripts, users can read the full text of an episode, search the episode for a specific word or phrase, and tap on the text to play the podcast from that point in the episode. As an episode plays, each word is highlighted, making it easy to follow along,” the announcement reads.?
• In more podcast news: “The era of the massive podcast deal continues. Alex Cooper of Call Her Daddy and the Kelce brothers are shopping their shows around hoping for eight- or nine-figure deals,” tweets Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman. She dives deeper into the potential deals here.?

From the Muck Rack team

Michael Smart has worked with dozens of top pitching pros in his 20-plus years as a PR coach, and the consensus is that by following up on a pitch, you can get up to five times more coverage.

“A pitch that doesn’t require follow up is like a journalist that doesn’t require caffeine: extremely rare,” Michael said in a recent Muck Rack webinar.

When done right, journalists don’t mind when PR pros follow up. Oftentimes, emails get lost in their inbox, or they simply have chaotic weeks and lose track.

Check out the webinar recap + watch a recording of the webinar so you don’t miss out on any of the examples.?