Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism
OFF THE TOP
You might have heard: Knight Commission report calls for “radical transparency” in newsrooms (Aspen Institute)
But did you know: ‘Explain your process’ box improves perceptions of news organization (Medium, Trusting News)
A new study from the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin found that adding a box explaining your story process can improve a user’s perceptions of a news organization. The researchers examined whether, one, users noticed the box, and two, if it impacted how trustworthy they thought the news organization was. The box explains why a newsroom chose to cover a particular story, how it approached finding sources, and provides insight into the information gathering and fact-checking process. To run the testing the Center for Media Engagement used content from two of the Trusting News project’s partners: USA TODAY and the Tennessean. (Trusting News, which is affiliated with API, partnered with CME to conduct this study.) Research participants either viewed a news article with a box or without and then were asked a series of questions about the news organization. According to the study, “people who viewed a news article with the box perceived the news organization as significantly more reliable, compared to people who saw the same story without the box.”
+ Noted: Advocacy group Free Press calls for tax on targeted ads to fund civic-minded journalism (Free Press); Two AP journalists to focus on #metoo, gender politics through 2019 (AP); U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms (Washington Post); ONA19 is now accepting pitches for sessions and speakers (ONA19)
API Update
Trust Tip: Use direct language when explaining your work (Trusting News)
Journalists know the importance of using simple, direct language in their reporting. But it’s just as important when trying to show audiences how their newsroom is striving to be fair and balanced — especially since many people don’t assume balance is a goal of journalism, writes Lynn Walsh, assistant director of Trusting News. “We need to stop assuming our communities are giving us the benefit of the doubt and look for opportunities to talk directly to them about our work.” This edition of the Trust Tips newsletter offers examples of how to do so. Sign up for weekly Trust Tips here, and learn more about the Trusting News project — including how your newsroom can get free coaching — here.
TRY THIS AT HOME
How Mississippi Today and WLBT balance data and broadcast needs while co-investigating stories (Nieman Lab)
Collaboration “is such a buzzword in journalism right now, and those of us paying attention have known that we’re going to have to figure out how to collaborate, and print and broadcast can’t exist in silos anymore,” said Erica Hensley, journalist for Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news site. As part of a grant from the Knight Foundation to experiment with cross-medium collaboration, Hensley is working with C.J. LeMaster, a senior investigative reporter for Jackson’s NBC affiliate WLBT, to report out four investigations for the local Mississippi area over 18 months. As an investigative reporter, LeMaster wasn’t being pulled to produce a segment for the newscast every day; more typical was spending two or three weeks preparing investigations for a four- to six-minute package. But he still didn’t have the same freedom as Hensley, who is doing “the lion’s share of the work on the data [which] I would not be able to do by myself. Or if I did, it would take me so much longer.”
+ Related: Registration is now open for the 2019 Collaborative Journalism Summit, hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media (Center for Cooperative Media)
OFFSHORE
‘Seeded in social media’: Jailed Philippine journalist says Facebook is partly responsible for her predicament (Washington Post)
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, whose news outlet Rappler exposed violence-inciting fake accounts on Facebook linked to the Duterte administration, says Facebook’s failure to remove the accounts in a timely manner has resulted in her arrest and the legal challenges she is now facing. Ressa was arrested earlier this month on charges of cyber-libel and is currently free on bail awaiting arraignment March 1. “If Facebook had taken action in 2016, I wouldn’t be in this position,” Ressa said. It is against Facebook’s policy to create and use accounts using false identities, as these accounts did, and to use the platform to call for violence against individuals or groups, as many of these accounts also did. Rappler’s series described how “sock puppets,” fake accounts controlled by a network of Duterte supporters, engaged real people online and spread lies, misleading photos and false incidents of rampant crime to drum up support for Duterte’s hard-line anti-drug policies. The accounts called for violence against legislators, civic activists and journalists, Ressa among them, who spoke up against Duterte’s tactics.
+ “Slow news” startup Tortoise hosts “think ins” to allow members and journalists opportunities for face-to-face dialogue (Journalism.co.uk); A former Vogue editor’s Instagram-based news startup is being backed by The Guardian (BuzzFeed News)
OFFBEAT
Why we’re entering the Golden Age of Podcasts (Chartable)
Podcasts have been around since at least 2004. But unlike text-based news and blogs, which have gone through waves of centralization and disruption thanks to Facebook and Google, the podcast industry has remained decentralized. There are dozens of popular podcast players, and no single gatekeeper in the industry. Despite many attempts, there has never been a “Netflix of podcasts.” That may change soon: Spotify bought Gimlet Media, a premium podcast studio, and Anchor, a podcast hosting platform, for $340 million earlier this month. That’s a lot of money for an industry that was sized at just $314 million in 2017. While Spotify’s acquisition spree won’t change the podcast industry on its own, it’s another signal that we’re on the cusp of a similar change for podcasting.
+ Earlier: First signs of a subscription model for podcasts (Twipe)
UP FOR DEBATE
‘Getting over ourselves’ (Columbia Journalism Review)
Attacked by the “other side,” reporters tend to recede among their own kind, seeking solidarity, writes Kyle Pope. “On social media and in conversations over beers, the bunker is fortified, as journalists begin to dismiss, and tune out, people who dislike them. Then they continue on as they were, filing hot takes at a rapid pace, chasing the next scoop (always following Trump’s lead), and loudly broadcasting their stories in frantic hyperbole. More and more, everyone accepts a world that is cleft in two — us and them, facts versus fantasy, the enlightened few against an angry mob.” This kind of tribal thinking isn’t helping to rebuild journalism, writes Pope — not when the craft relies on being able to listen to and understand those with different worldviews. “Journalists have long thought that we have unique access to a greater truth, and, if others can’t see or won’t accept it, we soldier on, smugly content in the knowledge that right is on our side. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that if that attitude doesn’t change, journalism as we know it may not survive.”
SHAREABLE
‘Hard to back out’: Publishers grow frustrated by the lack of revenue from Apple News (Digiday)
Last year, Apple News brimmed with promise for publishers, offering an engaged, high-quality audience that seemed to do nothing but grow. Ad revenue wasn’t great, but at the start of 2018, most publishers assumed that would come around. One year later, most publishers are still waiting. Monetization on Apple News remains a slog, according to seven publishers interviewed by Digiday. Ad revenue is bogged down by advertisers’ disinterest in the ad inventory that publishers are selling directly, and by remnant ad fill rates that many publishers describe as abysmal, even after a modest improvement to start the year, sources said. One source said their publication earned “low five-figures” every month from Apple News; another said they earned less than $1,000 per month.
+ “This is one of the most unique local newspapers we saw. It has such a clear connection to, and understanding of, its audience.” The Villages Daily Sun, which covers a massive retirement community in central Florida, ranks in top 10 for world’s best-designed newspaper (Society for News Design)
The post Need to Know: February 27, 2019 appeared first on American Press Institute.
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