Out of Nowhere – Columbia Journalism Review

Out of Nowhere

What’s lost and won as newsrooms close their offices for good

via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/out-of-nowhere.php

Bowie, of the Baltimore Sun, began adjusting to working from home. It was feasible only because of the strong relationships she’d developed with editors over three decades in the newsroom. “You can sort of read them through Slack channels and email in a way that if I was a new reporter entering the newsroom it would be very, very difficult,” she told me. Early in the year, the Sun’s staff had shared a Pulitzer Prize for a series of investigations into allegations of corruption and fraud committed by Catherine Pugh, the former mayor. Bowie believes that work would have been impossible as a remote project. “There were so many moments during those months where the discussions in the newsroom resulted in better stories coming out, because we were all asking each other questions all the time,” she said. “I know for a fact that our reporting would not have been as good if we couldn’t have been together in that room.”