On the media shipwreck

Media statistic of the week 

The New York Times has published its latest Diversity and Inclusion Report, which shows that its staff is steadily becoming more diverse across gender, race and ethnicity: Women now represent 51% of staff and 49% of leadership, and people of color now represent 32% of staff and 21% of leadership. The numbers are driven in part by the diversity of its new hires, but The Times acknowledges continued gaps in representation at the leadership level, which means “focusing on inclusion and career development is equally important to accelerating progress here.”

Wesley Lowery offers, “Good for NYT for self publishing this. Noteworthy that while the company overall and newsroom specifically have achieved near gender parity in both the overall workforce and in leadership, there’s been almost no improvement in terms of racial diversity.”

For more on this topic, be sure to read Ron Nixon’s piece for Investigative Reporters and Editors on publication without representation. As he points out, increasing diversity in U.S. newsrooms has been a primary mission of the American Society of News Editors since 1978. And yet, according to its latest survey, people of color represent 22.6% of the workforce in U.S. newsrooms, while census data show that people of color make up about 40% of the population. “Want to know why the American press fails to speak to so many Americans? Every word of this is true,” says Clay Lambert.

 This week in media history

On May 30, 1783, Benjamin Towne published the first daily issue of the Pennsylvania Evening Post, making it the first American daily newspaper. Initially running three days a week, the Post was the first newspaper to print the United States Declaration of Independence, on July 6, 1776, and the first to publish the Lee Resolution, which established the new country.

This week in the media industry 

Who wins?

What’s a bright spot for publishers during a very dark time for the industry? You’re looking at it. As Max Willens reports at Digiday, publishers are seeing a mini-boom in coronavirus newsletter signups.

Fraser Nelson highlights, “Interesting piece on the popularity of Covid newsletters: from Time, Buzzfeed, USA Today. The Spectator’s Covid email - the latest on science, politics, data, research - now has more subscribers than any mentioned in this piece (>100k) and a 46% open rate.”

In other words, “Wondering who wins at the coronavirus crisis? N E W S L E T T E R S ?? “We’ve proven to ourselves that we can be far more agile with this product line.” @kimfox (So did we, btw. We spun up our newsletter Coronavirus Today in just a day??.),” Kim Bode of the Los Angeles Times shares. And Tom Lappas of Henrico Citizen says, “This is true for us, too. We've had almost 800 new signups for our daily newsletter in the past 60 days, all organic through our site.

Meanwhile, theSkimm, known for its newsletter The Daily Skimm, is launching a digital membership model called “Teal Memb’rship,” according to the scoop by Sara Fischer of Axios. You might remember that the company recently laid off 20% of its staff due to plunging ad revenues.

Another publishing bright spot: Coronavirus Books, From Covid-19 Case Studies to Pandemic Poetry. As Alexandra Alter reports at The New York Times, authors and publishers are racing to produce timely accounts of the coronavirus outbreak. But publishing in the midst of an unfolding story does have its challenges. 

“It’s a hard subject for writers to write, and it’s hard for publishers to buy, because you don’t know what the narrative arc is yet,” literary agent Amanda Urban told Alter. And the question of how much pandemic deep-diving the reading public can stomach remains to be seen.

Filling the gap

The industry as a whole continues to struggle, though, and Kayleigh Barber of Digiday rounds up some of the pleas to readers from news publishers, including The New York Times, The Guardian and BuzzFeed News. The message: ‘We need you to fill the gap’: Publishers are making a hard sell for subscriptions. The lesson: “Don’t be afraid of using the troubles caused by coronavirus to guilt your readership into paying you for your content,” says Simon Owens.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is rethinking its commercial playbook, with chief revenue officer Joy Robins telling John McCarthy of The Drum, "Our first priority can’t be to sell advertising.” On Twitter, McCarthy shares, “@washingtonpost’s CRO Joy Robins talked me through its reaccessing the ad market. ‘Clients coming to the Post to better understand consumer sentiment, what they reading more of or less of as the weeks go by as the news environment changes.’”

Gannett is launching “Rebuilding America,” a combined ad sales and news initiative for the end of the month on the theme of how businesses and individuals are preparing for a broad reopening of the economy. That’s according to internal memos obtained by Rick Edmonds at Poynter. 

But is the project a little too close to crossing that never-to-be-crossed line? Edmonds writes, The sources who provided the internal memos to Poynter also indicated that NewsGuild chapters are preparing a protest letter this week to CEO Mike Reed, charging that the plans cross an ethical line by linking content so closely to advertising.”

No publications are recession proof

It was only a week ago that we were sharing the news of The Atlantic’s massive increase in subscribers over the past few months. And yet, due to the pandemic’s economic fallout, the publication announced that it’s laying off 68 employees, or 17% of its staff. New York Times media reporter Marc Tracy writes that the development is “evidence that even the most robust media businesses are vulnerable to the crisis that has ravaged news organizations nationwide.” 

Tracy calls the piece “Our read on layoffs at The Atlantic, and what it means that this even happened at a news media outlet that would seem to have everything going for it.” As Katharine Murphy says, “Hard to be hopeful when the hits keep coming. This publication has some of the best coverage of US politics and the pandemic. No publications, however venerable, are recession proof.” 

“Bad times for good journalism and we need it more than ever. Please subscribe to a news magazine or #buyapaper,” Kirsty Lang urges. Particularly since the coronavirus has closed more than 30 local newsrooms across America. And counting, as Poynter’s Kristen Hare reports.

“Now, small newsrooms around the country, often more than 100 years old, often the only news source in those places, are closing under the weight of the coronavirus,” writes Hare. The result: “the end of news dedicated to those communities, the evaporation of institutional knowledge and the loss of local jobs.”

And then there’s the threat to critically important community news organizations. As Nicole Acevedo explains at NBC News, these media outlets serving immigrant families are a ‘lifeline’ for Latino families. Acevedo takes a look at how outlets like Jambalaya News are countering potentially deadly misinformation and innovating while on “survival mode.” On Twitter, she shares, “It's not everyday I get to highlight the work of fellow Latina journalists doing incredible work during tough times. I truly felt inspired by these women.” 

What’s the solution??

Axios’s Sara Fischer and Scott Rosenberg wrote about the mass layoffs across media outlets over the previous week and how those cuts are weighing on the industry’s morale. Jeffrey Cunningham calls it “A strong article by @sarafischer @scottros on the media shipwreck. Goes back to a decision to go mass vs. class that valued great journalism (Economist, Wall Street Journal).” 

“Just when reporters are needed the most. What’s the solution??” Shachar Bar-On wonders. It certainly still seems elusive. As Fischer and Rosenberg point out, “the industry, now entering the third or fourth round of this cycle, doesn’t seem able to change its behavior,” which means the pendulum swinging between ad revenue and subscriptions income “now feels like a wrecking ball.”

Where are they now

Of course, the media was in crisis before the pandemic hit. Another piece from Poynter’s Kristen Hare updates us on the 161 Times-Picayune staffers who were laid off last year. 

Hare tracked down about 40 of the 65 from the newsroom, and Michelle Rafter says, “This @Poynter story on where reporters laid off from Times-Picayune last year is a small sample size but still gives a good look at where people land - very few went freelance. It’s harder than it looks. But if you get it, it can be a great career.”

Haley Correll, who’s now a social media manager for the American Red Cross, expressed this sad truth: “I think there are also a lot of stories being left untold. There just isn’t the journalism manpower in this city that there used to be, and as New Orleanians, we’re worse off for it.”

“Honest, touching reflections from my lovely former colleagues a year after the Times-Picayune layoffs. Thanks,” tweets Diana Samuels.

One more reason

Matt Rosoff says, “This piece from @megancgraham is an indictment of the entire broken ad tech industry. As thousands of journalists lose their jobs, news sites are ripped off left and right by scammers who copy and paste their content for a quick buck.” He’s referring to Megan Graham’s CNBC story on how a broken internet ad system makes it easy to earn money with plagiarism. 

Graham shares, “Last month, I started finding my stories on ad-supported sites that were ripping off content from publishers. To see how easy it was to monetize these sites, I made one. Within days, I was approved by adtech co’s to run ads on stories ‘stolen’ from CNBC.”

Conrad Quilty-Harper says, “If you work on a news website, you know that plagiarized news sites are almost impossible to fight,” and that’s why Barbara Demick says it’s “One more reason, real journalism is in trouble.”

What if, and hear me out here, journalism matters

Meanwhile, “Did Plandemic - a conspiracy theory video about the Coronavirus that’s been widely debunked - really spread faster online than Taylor Swift’s new album or those UFO videos? We took a hard look at the numbers.” Sheera Frenkel links to her New York Times piece with Ben Decker and Davey Alba on How the ‘Plandemic’ Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online and gained more traction than mainstream online events.

Nate Minor highlights, “‘After BuzzFeed published its piece, the tenor of comments and shares around ‘Plandemic’ shifted. More people began to fact-check and debunk the video.’ ...what if, and hear me out here, journalism matters and we should not despair quite so much?”

Around privilege and prominence

Here’s a story that ties back to our media stat of the week. “Who gets to take ‘global pantry’ staples and make them mainstream? (Hint: usually white people) I can’t recommend this fantastic piece by @navalang enough. It uses the Alison Roman fracas to explore the broader issues around privilege and prominence.” Elina Shatkin links to that piece Navneet Alang wrote for Eater, Stewed Awakening.

“[R]eal change only happens when the thing that white supremacists fear becomes true: that the mainstream increasingly becomes rather than simply appropriates the ‘ethnic,’” Alang argues. “In the meantime,” he says, “I find myself searching for food media that reflects me.” 

“Remember a month ago when I said @navalang was one of the best writers, period? Yeah, I definitely stand by that,” tweets Helen Rosner. Bottom line, “If you're interested in food media/culture (or even if you're not!) this is essential reading,” says Mollie Reilly.

Welcome back, we need you!!

We’ll wrap it up with some great news: “Thankfully, the ClickHole-shaped hole in our hearts — which has gotten bigger thanks to a pandemic and months of self-isolation — has been filled up again.” As Vulture’s Megh Wright puts it, ClickHole has returned at exactly the right time. 

The outlet that Cards Against Humanity bought is back, telling us it “could not be more thrilled to once again be squirting hot viral trash all over your social media feeds.” Simon Owens notes, “Why Clickhole will be interesting watch over the next few years: after the acquisition, its editorial staff was given a majority stake in the company. We'll see how a media company operates when its writers have skin in the game.”

In the meantime, “Welcome back @ClickHole, we need you!! A big thank you to @Stetheridge for answering my questions ahead of today’s big relaunch,” tweets Wright.

A few more

• The Sunday New York Times devoted its entire front page to honoring the 100,000 lives lost to the Coronavirus, which Cliff Levy says proves the value of local journalism: “@nytimes was able to put together this deeply moving portrait of the lives lost in the outbreak only because of the crucial reporting on deaths by these local news organizations.”
• Max Resnik of Local Voices Network has published a useful and timely Journalist’s Guide to Using Zoom for Community Engagement.
• Chaim Gartenberg of The Verge reports on the launch of Instagram’s new Guides feature that lets creators curate content together in a single location. Elana Zak is pretty enthusiastic about it: “I can see newsrooms using Instagram’s new Guides so many creative ways. Some ways that pop into my head: restaurant reviews, how-to guides, bios of candidates running for office. So many options!” 
• Joe Rogan’s podcast is becoming a Spotify exclusive. Ashley Carman has that story at The Verge, and Eric Kay thinks, “This really escalates the future of walled-off podcasts,” while Dan Seifert says it’s “time to quit spotify.”
• In What Would David Carr Say? Karen Ho takes a look at “Ben Smith's latest media column, Substack economics, and the rapidly dwindling number of people who have a job in media.”
• And one more from The Verge, this time via Jay Peters, who reports that Twitter is testing a way to let you limit replies to your tweets. Ian Bogost notices, “The remarkable thing about Twitter is that the more features it removes, the better it would be. The ultimate version would be one in which you cannot post or read tweets at all.”

From the Muck Rack Team

We’re excited to announce the newest course as part of Muck Rack Academy— Fundamentals of Social Media. This free certification course for journalists, PR pros and everyone in between is taught by Sree Sreenivasan. Save your seat here! 

It’s putting it mildly to say the media industry has been going through some changes lately. For PR pros, maintaining an accurate media database is more challenging than ever. On the blog today, Muck Rack’s Editorial Director Andrew Mercier shares his thoughts with Justin Joffe on the evolution of the media database, how Muck Rack’s Editorial team accounts for constant change in the industry, and why the accuracy of a database ultimately depends on both the people and tech that maintain it.

As part of PR Daily’s Media Relations & Measurement Virtual Summit, I moderated a panel of journalists who discussed how the coronavirus pandemic has changed news media coverage. 

Question of the week

What are some of your favorite newsletters these days (other than Muck Rack’s, of course)?