Category: Journalism

Hurricane Harvey has made broadcast journalists covering the Category 4 storm and its devastating aftermath some of the most recognizable figures in American homes this week. Inevitably, as with coverage of any catastrophe that’s close to home, the media have come in for a raft of criticism over how they’re doing their jobs — no matter how they do it.

This annual gathering is usually a moment to hammer out what divides the fractious conservative movement. What it has revealed so far is what unites it: contempt for “#fakenews” and the journalists that the former Breitbart News writer Ben Shapiro memorably described as “advocates of leftism, masquerading as objective truth-tellers.”

When your job is to constantly share your life, even your worst moments are an opportunity to please your audience.

As the monopolies grow, the possibilities for securing revenue for writing and being party to its distribution constrict. According to the Poynter Institute, jobs in journalism shrank by 23 percent between 2007 and 2018 (in print by 45 percent). Shane Bauer’s 2016 report on private prisons, which contributed to a Justice Department decision to end private prison contracts, reportedly cost $350,000 to produce and brought its publishers $5,000 in ad revenue. Observers dispute attempts to place a dollar amount on what Google and Facebook have pulled from journalism earnings, but no one disputes that Google and Facebook have grown rich advertising around journalism, and news publishers, who create the “content” and pay those who write it, are losing. Other models for funding journalism, such as philanthropy and venture capital, are coming up short as well.

There’s only ever so much you can control at any job. You make the things you make as good as you can, at which point they are not really yours anymore, or anyway not yours to control.

Readers across the country told us how they were affected by the decline of local news: “Our community does not know itself.”

Good morning and welcome to a special edition of the Poynter Report. Today, I look back at the year in media — from the best to the worst to the odd to the inspiring and everything in between.

No matter where we spoke to people, certain themes continuously came up regardless of the topic we were researching. We looked at these themes through the lens of news, but they are indicative of how people consume content and use technology. We’ve collected 10 of our top themes and are sharing them below and as a downloadable packet.

Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin. Many Americans are throwing up their hands and tuning it all out.

A growth in impostor local news that promotes ideological agendas.

What’s Left of Condé Nast Two years after Si Newhouse died (and Graydon Carter left), Anna Wintour and a new CEO map out the future they can afford.

Now that Sports Illustrated’s three owners, Meredith Corp., Authentic Brands Group, and TheMaven, have completed the callous layoff of half of Sports Illustrated’s newsroom and finalized a deal that gives control of the publication to TheMaven, a wannabe tech company helmed by notorious scumbags Ross Levinsohn and James Heckman, the future of Sports Illustrated is coming into focus. It’s not pretty.

The journalists who create that content deserve a cut of that $4.7 billion, said David Chavern, the president and chief executive of the alliance, which represents more than 2,000 newspapers across the country, including The New York Times.

This is a bigger problem than the Oxygen Theory, which argues that by debunking a falsehood, journalists give the claim a longer life. The Liar’s Dividend suggests that in addition to fueling the flames of falsehoods, the debunking efforts actually legitimize the debate over the veracity. This creates smoke and fans suspicions among at least some in the audience that there might well be something true about the claim. That’s the “dividend” paid to the perpetrator of the lie.