This should be a thrilling time
Media statistic of the week?
A new Pew Research Center report on the state of journalism reveals 77% of journalists would choose their career all over again , though 57% are highly concerned about future restrictions on press freedom. Jeffrey Gottfried , Amy Mitchell , Mark Jurkowitz and Jacob Liedke have the findings from the survey of nearly 12,000 working U.S.-based journalists, conducted between February and March of this year.?
Overall, journalists remain passionate about their work, but they recognize serious challenges in the news media more broadly. When asked to describe their industry in a single word, 72% used? a word with negative connotations, such as “struggling” and “chaos.” Among other key findings, 42% of journalists say they’ve been harassed by someone outside their media outlet, often through social media. And while most U.S. journalists do not have a union in their organization, many say they would join one. Read the full report here .
This past week in the media industry?
Deep diving into the tumult
In media circles, The Washington Post has been making headlines, but not only for its news coverage. Last week, Katie Robertson and Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times took a closer look at editor Sally Buzbee’s first year on the job and how infighting is overshadowing big plans at The Washington Post . Mullin described it as a “New deep-dive into the tumult” at The Post.
Kara Swisher says, “My summary of this article is @SallyBuzbee is a woman running a large newsroom. You’re welcome.” And Amanda Hesser wonders, “Anyone else sensing a whiff of sexism in the criticism of @SallyBuzbee at @washingtonpost? Why was Marty Baron’s top-down style acceptable and her collaborative approach not?”
Meanwhile, Benedict Evans says, “Imagine if the New York Times covered the internal bickering, politics and grudge matches at every thousand-person org like this. ‘The latest on the Dunder-Mifflin beat…’”
It’s not just the Times writing about The Post. Max Tani of Politico also reviewed the Washington Post’s New Leader, One Year In: Mean Tweets, Internal Battles, Finding Direction .
As Robertson notes, “Politico confirms all of my and @BenMullin’s reporting on the Washington Post in a new story by @maxwelltani.”
As for what’s in The Post’s new social media guidelines, Rachel Cohen highlights this from the Times’ reporting and says, “policies like these are great at not clarifying anything,” while Bill Grueskin notices , “Politico's story cites a section on hashtags, which also seems like a minefield. (And yes, these things are hard!).”
Mathew Ingram concludes, “If I were trying to explain to senior editors the downside of having a vague and intermittently enforced social media policy, I would just tell them to read this article.”
So, what have we learned? “Leading the @washingtonpost is a lot harder than writing about it,” tweets Kyle Spencer .
Upsetting to see this
We have more from Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson of The New York Times, who reported last week that USA Today removed 23 articles after an investigation into a reporter’s work revealed sources that appeared to be fabricated.
“Oof, this is brutal,” tweets Margaret Sullivan .?
Mullin and Robertson write that the reporter, Gabriela Miranda, resigned from the paper “recently, as the investigation progressed, according to a person briefed on the inquiry. Her most recent article for the newspaper was published on April 17.”?
Meanwhile, Thomas Hartwell shares, “Gabriela Miranda was a reporter under me briefly and boy lemme tell you there are stories I have about that that probably could’ve predicted this.” You can read his full Twitter thread here , in which he describes her as a “modern day Stephen Glass.”
Ultimately, as Eva Herinkova says, this is “Absolutely bonkers. Properly sourcing your material and doing the work would be easier than fabricating 23 articles like this. Upsetting to see this from a reporter, especially at a large publication, when there’s already so much distrust of the media.”
Left of the dial
On to some more fighting news, Christine Armario and Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post wrote about the political brawl over a Miami giant of Spanish talk radio .
Steve Herman puts it this way: “In #Florida , @radiomambi710 to move across the political spectrum but will stay at the same spot on the dial.”
The surprise sale of conservative radio station Radio Mambí to Latino Media Network, a start-up founded by two Latinas who built their careers working for Democrats, “has become a flash point in a larger debate about free speech and Spanish-language misinformation on radio, a medium that industry analysts say has far more resonance with Latinos than any other demographic group in the country,” Armario and Izadi write.
In other words, “If you can’t regulate lies and conspiracy theories on talk radio, maybe you can buy the radio station?” tweets Blake Eskin .
Facebook, for better and for worse
Facebook looks ready to divorce the news industry, and I doubt couples counseling will help , says Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab. “Out of every 1,000 times someone sees a post on Facebook, how many of them include a link to a news site? Four. No wonder Facebook doesn’t want to write publishers big checks anymore,” he writes.
The way Nico Colombant sees it: “This seems like it will lower barriers to news dissemination on Facebook for better and for worse. Good for the independents, entrepreneurs and smaller fish.”?
Dave Earley says, “This is an important read for anyone involved in journalism. @jbenton analyses these stories: WSJ: FB rethinks news deals, and publishers stand to lose millions in payments Verge: FB is changing its algorithm to take on TikTok, leaked memo reveals.”
Alexandra Bruell and Keach Hagey of The Wall Street Journal reported on how Facebook is re-examining its commitment to paying for news , prompting some news organizations to prepare for a potential revenue shortfall of tens of millions of dollars. And here’s Alex Heath at The Verge on how Facebook plans to become more like TikTok .
So, Facebook is openly copying TikTok and calling it out as a significant competitor. But Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s head of global business solutions, says his company specializes in entertainment, not social media . In that interview with CNBC’s Alex Sherman , he also said the platform hasn’t seen an advertising slowdown despite what other companies are saying.
Chandlee, who worked at Facebook for 12 years, added that if Facebook is trying to be more like TikTok, it risks running away from the thing it’s good at.?
Shocked, shocked
Speaking of TikTok, there’s this “monster scoop,” as Stephanie Lee puts it, from Emily Baker-White of BuzzFeed News: Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China .
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Daniel Byman is just “Shocked, shocked.” Augustine Fou reminds us, “it's a Chinese made app after all.” But Karl Bode thinks a little perspective is in order: “we live in a country with no meaningful internet privacy laws, in which absolutely every last shred of movement, browsing, and behavior data is mindlessly monetized with zero accountability i'd still argue your tiktok likes are the least of your worries.”
‘The dilemma we face’
A new deep dive by Dan Froomkin , published in the Washington Monthly and produced in association with the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism & Liberty, exposes Jeff Bezos’s Next Monopoly: The Press .
With his vast investment in The Washington Post’s digital publishing technology, Arc XP, Bezos could soon control the backbone of most large American newspapers, and Froomkin notes:
“The dilemma we face is that one of the best answers to the news industry’s technology woes is in the hands of a man who has repeatedly proved that he cannot be trusted to have anyone’s best interests at heart other than his own, and whose MO includes ravaging the competition.”
“So the news industry is once again flocking to a third-party service that could be bad for the news industry in the long run? Few things are as predictable as that.” tweets Dan Gillmor .
Froomkin would like to see Bezos donate Arc for the public good, a la Andrew Carnegie building more than 1,600 public libraries across the United States. In the meantime, Ali Winston says it’s “Deeply alarming & why principled independent journalism is always worth your support.”
The democracy beat
CNN’s Clare Duffy goes Behind the Associated Press' decision to appoint a democracy editor: 'This is a very crucial beat.' ?
Tom Verdin , a 20-year veteran of The AP, has been appointed to the role, and as Duffy reports, AP executive editor Julie Pace told CNN’s Brian Stelter he should have plenty to do: “I think [what’s happening with elections nationally and at the local level] certainly could provide enough fodder to keep a democracy editor and a democracy team quite busy."
Yes, but, “Activating a ‘Democracy Team’ -- like the @nytimes did -- doesn’t do much good if the rest of the newsroom is on Team Impunity,” says Dan Froomkin .
At Press Watch, he argues that the ‘Democracy Team’ is outnumbered and outgunned at The New York Times .
“If you think about it, the Schmidt-Haberman article actually describes the newsroom’s own rationale for its failure: He lied so much, what were we supposed to do?” tweets Froomkin, who adds, “This should be a thrilling time for political journalists, because holding the powerful accountable is their highest calling, and accountability is in the offing.”
Courts, journalism and ethics
After prevailing last week in a libel claim brought against her by the main funder of the Leave.EU campaign, Carole Cadwalladr writes about how the judgment offered both personal relief and hope for public interest journalism. Read her piece at The Guardian, Arron Banks set out to crush me in court. Instead, my quest for the facts was vindicated .
“Boris Johnson’s government came to power on the coat-tails of Brexit. It has refused to investigate Russia’s continuing attacks on western democracy and our information systems,” Neal Romanek quotes, from “@carolecadwalla being an absolute boss.”
Sarah Ellison of The Washington Post reports that Fox News agreed to a roughly $15 million settlement with Melissa Francis , a former host who filed a pay disparity claim and left the network last year. That’s a big payout, one that “is unusual in television news,” Ellison notes, and “it underscores perennial concerns that women do not prosper as well as men in this industry.”
Jacob Shamsian and Ashley Collman at Insider spoke with journalism ethics experts for their story, Savannah Guthrie interviewed Amber Heard after her husband worked for Johnny Depp's lawyers. Experts say she should have stayed away from the story .?
The verdict: “Bizarre on all sides,” tweets Jeff Benjamin . “I don't know why anyone at NBC thought it was all right for SG to do this interview, much less AH agreeing to this...there's so much consideration needed to who journalists can interview, how did this get OKed by anyone.”
Ms. at 50
As Ms. Magazine celebrates 50 years this summer, Jessica Bennett of The New York Times has a new Q&A with some of its early editors and writers, including co-founders Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, with reflections on the magazine’s founding and where the feminist movement is today.?
Read that piece on the magazine that was criticized for being too radical and for being not radical enough: ‘I Feel Proud, and I Feel Mad as Hell’: Gloria Steinem on Ms. Magazine and Feminism Today .
Alexa Mills calls it a “Lovely history lesson,” and Joanne Lipman praises this “Great interview on @MsMagazine...including how long it took the @nytimes to adapt 'Ms.' Same at @WSJ: When I was a college WSJ intern, on the rare occasions when we interviewed a woman, I was told to ask her to specify if she was ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.’”?
America has no chill
Last up, this simple plea by Aussie Patrick Marlborough at Gawker, I Should Be Able to Mute America .?
As Michelle Manafy says, “Good morning. This is a most excellent take on Twitter culture, America's in particular: ‘America has no chill. America is exhausting. America is incapable of letting something be simply funny instead of a dread portent of their apocalyptic present.’”?
Or as Janina Matthewson says, “hello, give this a pulitzer.”
All in all, “just a hugely enjoyable piece on the bane of our collective existence: Americans on Twitter,” tweets Marie Le Conte .
A few more
From the Muck Rack Team
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