The Macarena of future of journalism j-school fever dreams
Media statistic of the week?
The final tallies are in from NBCUniversal: Viewership of the Tokyo Olympic Games was down 42 percent from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. In fact, the Tokyo Olympics pulled in the smallest audience since NBCUniversal began covering the Summer Games in 1988, pulling in an average of 15.5 million viewers for its prime-time broadcast and digital presentations each night. Rio averaged 26.7 million viewers, while the 2012 London Games drew an average of 31.1 million.
As Tiffany Hsu reports at The New York Times, the network faced plenty of hurdles this year, from Covid issues to time zone challenges. But the Games were still profitable for NBCUniversal, with ad sales exceeding $1.2 billion. And as Eric Deggans highlights at NPR, viewers streamed a record 5.5 billion minutes of events across social media and online platforms such as NBCOlympics.com, the NBC Sports app and the streaming service Peacock, making the Tokyo Games the most-streamed Olympics ever and giving Peacock its best two weeks of use since it debuted in April 2020.
This past week in the media industry?
Back to the newsroom...or not
With the Delta variant fueling another Covid surge in the US, many newsrooms and media companies have put their return-to-office plans on pause. Digiday’s Sara Guaglione spoke with some media employees about how they feel about their companies’ office reopening delays.?
While one Politico employee told Guaglione she was “more than ready” to get back into the office, most seemed to be in agreement with another Politico employee, who said, “I want to see my coworkers again soon but want it to be safe for everyone so I don’t mind waiting some more.”
Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times reported last week that CNN Fired Three Employees Who Went Into the Office Unvaccinated, one of the first known examples of a major American corporation terminating workers for ignoring a workplace vaccination mandate.
And on the other end of the spectrum, Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post reports on concerns by Bloomberg industry journalists about the requirement to work in D.C.-area offices. Staffers are frustrated as the company mandates twice-weekly appearances but isn’t requiring vaccinations.
Good old-fashioned principles
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that he’s resigning, “succumbing to a ballooning sexual harassment scandal that fueled an astonishing reversal of fortune for one of the nation’s best-known leaders,” as Luis Ferré-Sadurní wrote at The New York Times.
But as he fought for his political life over the past few weeks and more, he was also up against a tenacious local newspaper that hasn’t backed down in its continued coverage of the governor’s scandals.?
Azi Paybarah talked with Albany Times Union editor in chief Casey Seiler for his New York Times story, ‘Ugh’: Life at Andrew Cuomo’s Hometown Newspaper. As Paybarah tweets, “The @timesunion, a robust, principled daily newspaper, is in Cuomo’s backyard. What could go wrong?”
Well, for starters…
“The Times Union, which is owned by Hearst, has stuck to its old-fashioned principles. No going off the record unless absolutely necessary. Minimal schmoozing with sources. Don’t let your inbox dictate how you’re going to spend your day,” Paybarah writes. “That approach is particularly ill-suited for a Cuomo administration.”
“Oh how fun it’s been to watch @CaseySeiler and the rest of the TU’s talented staff give Cuomo hell (and even better, to see them get credit for doing so),” tweets Stephanie Lee.
Dan Rodricks shares, “I adopted a rule many years ago: When an elected official, prosecutor, lawyer or any government or corporate official starts right in with, ‘Off the record,’ I come right back with, ‘Why?’ Nine times out of 10 the reason does not justify OTR.”
The other Cuomo
In her Washington Post column, Margaret Sullivan also praised the governor’s hometown paper, writing, Albany’s newspaper has covered Gov. Cuomo’s sexual misconduct admirably. Chris Cuomo and CNN have blown it.
And they kept blowing it. In the national coverage leading up to Cuomo’s resignation, there was one detail in Michael Scherer’s story on Monday at The Post that caught the eye of quite a few journalists. Scherer reported that Cuomo was hunkered down in the governor’s mansion and consulting with what few advisers remained, among them, his brother, CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
Dell Cameron pointed out, “WAPO just reported that @CNN’s Chris Cuomo is continuing to advise his brother. Two months ago he acknowledged on air this was ‘inappropriate’ and said, ‘It will not happen again.’”
And Bill Grueskin notes, “Yesterday, @brianstelter said Chris Cuomo’s work for his brother, the NY governor, was ‘a conundrum for CNN that has no perfect solution.’ Today, we find that Chris is *still* advising his brother. It’s not a conundrum. It’s clear what CNN should do.”
In his Post column, Erik Wemple cuts to the chase with a brutally honest dissection making it clear why CNN must investigate Chris Cuomo.
Keep creating great #journalism
Star Tribune Media closed Minnesota alt-weekly City Pages in October of 2020, saying the alt-weekly became “economically unviable” as a result of the pandemic. Now, four former City Pages editors have launched Racket, a reader-funded, writer-owned digital news startup.?
Sarah Scire of Nieman Lab has the details on Racket, which, instead of relying on advertising and being owned by a billionaire (which was City Pages’ model), “will be online-only, mostly member-supported, and owned by four founding editors.”
For his Hell World newsletter, Luke O’Neil spoke with Emily Cassel, the last editor in chief of City Pages, about the new effort. The piece’s headline gives you a good sense of what’s in store in this Q&A: Fuck it, we have to own the thing ourselves.
Meanwhile, here’s another “trend in the newspaper business and a positive one: Hearst Connecticut, with 18 outlets, joins the growing roster of digital sites organized for statewide coverage.” That’s Rick Edmonds of Poynter, who wrote about how Hearst is conquering Connecticut with the latest in a growing roster of statewide networks.?
As John Ferraro says, “(It’s mostly ever-improving journalism).” Jim Welch’s message to the team: “Keep creating great #journalism -- @Wendy_Met @ferrarohearstct @VTConfidential @capitolwatch @nickrondinone @LGriffinCT @AlexPutterman We’ll all win.”
The failure of The Correspondent?
In less rosy news, The Correspondent, the English-language site from the founders of Dutch news site De Correspondent, launched in 2019 and shut down on December 30, 2020. Why did it fail?
At a panel last week, NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen and De Correspondent cofounder Rob Wijnberg, who served as editor-in-chief of The Correspondent, spoke with Hearken founder and CEO Jennifer Brandel about what went wrong.?
Laura Hazard Owen wrote about the panel and has some excerpts and takeaways at Nieman Lab. Quoting Wijnberg, who said, “The assumption that you have to deliver can be very problematic,” she tweets, “lord, give me the confidence of these guys talking about why The Correspondent failed.”
Brian Morrissey’s take: “This thing was the Macarena of future of journalism j-school fever dreams. Was obvious when they were talking vs doing.” But at least they were willing to talk about the missteps. “This is, I think, an important piece on the failure of The Correspondent, on which @NiemanLab did consistently excellent, skeptical work,” says Richard J. Tofel.
Making newsrooms safer for survivors
Here’s an important read from Orion Rummler at The 19th on how newsrooms are failing to protect women journalists. Survivors hope Felicia Sonmez’s lawsuit will change that.
Rummler shares, “I spoke with @alexdstuckey and @TulikaBose_ on the importance of @feliciasonmez’ lawsuit for survivors of sexual assault ‘If you look at the fact that 1 in 5 women are assaulted and you look at how many reporters there are — there are a lot of us.’”
“So proud of @alexdstuckey for speaking in this @19thnews piece,” says Sarah Smith. “She’s been brave to not only share her own experiences, but continually call out mishandled sexual assault coverage and work to make newsrooms a safer place for survivors.”
Preserving digital culture
Maria Bustillos, one of the founders of the journalist-owned Brick House publishing cooperative, has a new piece in The Nation about the effort to stop the mega-publisher trend of turning all readers into renters.?
The piece is called Sell This Book! and it’s also “On the danger of publishers treating a book like a ‘subscription’ -- a flow of Netflixian bits that they can turn off when they want, and voila, you no longer possess a book ... that you originally paid for in full,” tweets Clive Thompson.
“So much net art that I cherished last decade eroded away,” David Moore shares. “The service @delicious was totally down for the count for a while! Surf club blogs are gone and their archived versions are incomplete. There’s a new way for libraries to preserve digital culture.”
Journalism in the atomic age
Next, Ben Smith links to “An incredible pair of pieces on insider and outsider journalism by @WilliamJBroad.” Or as Kashmir Hill puts it, “ How to do journalism. How not to do journalism.”
We’ll start with William J. Broad’s New York Times story on How a Star New York Times Reporter Got Paid by Government Agencies He Covered. As Broad explains, William L. Laurence, a reporter for The New York Times known as “Atomic Bill,” became an apologist for the American military and a serial defier of journalism’s mores. He augmented his Times salary with supplementary pay from the Manhattan Project, the Army surgeon general and Robert Moses, the master builder of New York City.
As Garrett Graff says, “This is a WILD story about journalistic ethics and the patriotic haze of World War II and the Cold War. The photos alone make clear how central the main character was to key atomic history.”
“The newsman ‘made decisions based on what was best for him, not necessarily on what was in the best interest of the public. He was primarily interested in building his own brand,” Kelley Vlahos highlights, noting, “Some things never change.”
So that’s from the “how not to” category. For the “how to” story, “Get to know Charles H. Loeb, journos!” Holly Edgell links Broad’s New York Times piece on Charles Loeb: The Black Reporter Who Exposed an Atomic Bomb Lie.
“This is a fascinating and exciting story — Charles Loeb was totally unknown to me prior to this,” tweets Alex Wellerstein.
David Sanger calls it “A remarkable story by my colleague @WilliamJBroad about Charles Loeb, a Black correspondent who exposed the Big Lie of 1945: govt. denials that radiation made the atomic bomb a different kind of weapon, one that led to horrible deaths. A must-read.
A thoughtful and wild read
Brace yourself for this next one. Anousha Sakoui points out that “it’s been hard to convince ppl the biz of social media is important. here’s some size & scope as they say at bloomberg. ‘They make about $800,000 a month, a number that sounded so absurd I asked Paytas to clarify repeatedly.’”
That’s from Scaachi Koul’s BuzzFeed News profile of one of YouTube’s most prolific trolls, Don’t Piss Off Trisha Paytas. After 15 years of it, says they’re done trolling — or are they?
On Twitter, Koul shares this particularly colorful spoiler: “My profile of Trisha Paytas started in May when I visited their LA mansion. It ended last week when they called me, among other things, a ‘conniving little snake rat face’ and ‘the bottom of the barrel scum pig of the universe.’ Here’s how we got here.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
As Ema O’Connor says, “Some people say journalists shouldn’t make themselves a character in their work, but what if you’re dragged kicking and screaming into the middle of it? Such a thoughtful and wild read from @Scaachi, per usual.”
In other words, “pause whatever you’re doing and read this,” tweets Arianna Rebolini.
A newsroom lifer reaches a breaking point
In case you missed it, Out of The Newsroom is Spencer Ackerman’s piece in his Forever Wars newsletter that he describes as “a messy confessional piece about being a newsroom lifer who’s reached a breaking point.” Also: “Revealed: the secret origin of Attackerman, transformed by the fire of the long-dead NYPress.”
It’s a clear-eyed reflection that’s resonating with a lot of journalists. “I really enjoyed editing @attackerman’s very frank look at the lies we tell each other and ourselves to make newsroom journalism seem romantic,” Sam Thielman shares. And his reaction to this part: “lolsob.”
Lainna Fader has “Deeper admiration for @attackerman for this honest piece,” adding that “People who refuse to stand with their exploited colleagues to inch a little closer to power are truly pathetic, and will always be remembered as such.”?
“All of this from @attackerman is... like a look into my soul lol,” tweets Davey Alba.?
Career moves
A few more
From the Muck Rack Team
Karina San Juan’s career in PR has spanned two countries, seven industries and multiple organizations, including American Express, Walmart and her current role as director of communications and public relations for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. On the Muck Rack Blog: From the Mexican government to health care, Karina San Juan shares insights from 20+ years in PR.
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