Good morning. Elites caught in a bubble? John Oliver and Meryl Streep bashed Donald Trump and praised journalism. Donations soared for two nonprofits praised by them: ProPublica and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Hip, hip, hoorah. Truth and justice win out over the forces of darkness. Or did they? You couldn’t try harder, or be more articulate, than Streep. “It was simply stunning: eloquent and urgent, the […]
Courtney Radsch was just sitting down to watch the Golden Globes when Meryl Streep came on. Radsch, a fan of Streep’s, sat down to watch the awards show with her husband and heard the Academy Award-winning actress make an unexpected plug for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “That was pretty exciting,” said Radsch, advocacy director at CPJ. “I don’t think any of us were expecting such a […]
She didn’t just talk about Trump.Image: grant pollard/ invision via AP By Marissa Wenzke2017-01-10 01:31:59 UTC “You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now,” Meryl Streep told the audience during her acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday night. “Think about it — Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.” Well, that last group has […]
Mistakes can lurk in your writing, whether it’s a story, article, blurb, e-book, caption, tweet, menu, flier, Facebook status, blog post, script, advertisement, graphic novel, comic, brochure, editorial, email, manifesto, letter, birthday card, bumper sticker, wedding invitation, classified ad or graffiti. One cause of errors: You tend to read (or edit) with your memory rather than to actively read what’s on the screen. Your brain fills in […]
Watergate. Spying by the National Security Agency. Bungled protection by the Secret Service. These stories have two things in common: Each were major, consequential pieces of journalism about the federal government that got big results. And none of them were broken by the White House press corps. With less than two weeks before Donald Trump is inaugurated as the nation’s 45th president, news organizations have begun plotting […]
This is the first piece I have published since my official retirement from Poynter on New Year’s Eve. I have lots of work ahead of me, but it has been fun and instructive to look back. If you reach your destination in decent shape, it’s easy to forget the bumps in the road behind you. Better to look at the odometer and celebrate the distance you’ve traveled. […]
The Cohort is Poynter’s bi-monthly newsletter about women kicking ass in digital media. Happy 2017, friends! I gave up on yearlong resolutions a few years back, but I still adore fresh beginnings and all the promise they hold. Instead of setting specific goals this year, I’m focusing on the kind of work I want to do, the kinds of days I want to have, the kind of purpose […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Even when it comes to brutality, little is left to the media imagination these days. The latest example of the decline in consensus about the acceptable involves the Facebook video of a mentally disabled Chicago man who was attacked and […]
Social cards — images designed for specifically for social media — aren’t new. News organizations have been using them to create content and promote their journalism for awhile now. So when Marketplace’s Nishat Kurwa took on the idea of social cards for the L.A.-based public media organization, she combined the concepts of distributed content and social promotion. And, kind of by accident, she started tackling another challenge: Culture. […]
This week’s news that Medium is laying off 50 employees and closing its offices in Washington, D.C. and New York came as a surprise to the stable of news organizations that signed up to use the site as its publisher. The prospects for Medium, which was sold to publishers as a high-end alternative to traditional web advertising, now look less rosy as the company backpedals from what […]
Facebook’s new head of news partnerships will be Campbell Brown, the founding editor in chief of a nonprofit educational news site. Brown, who was previously a journalist for CNN and NBC News, will be “working directly with (Facebook’s) partners to help them understand how Facebook can expand the reach of their journalism, and contribute value to their businesses,” she wrote on Facebook Friday. Brown founded The Seventy […]
It’s not exactly “Dewey defeats Truman,” but the cover of Thursday’s Express, The Washington Post’s free publication, is a doozy. The cover, which leads with the origins of this year’s Women’s March on Washington, shows people scattered into a well-known symbol. The problem? It’s the wrong symbol. Mid-morning Thursday, Express tweeted an apology: We made a mistake on our cover this morning and we’re very embarrassed. We […]
For the past 24 hours, Chicago media have been cautiously running gruesome video of four people tying up, cutting, beating and taunting a mentally disabled man while broadcasting the ordeal live on Facebook. The video is hard to watch. One of the captors slapped the victim repeatedly and used a knife to cut the victim’s clothing then cut a plug of his hair and scalp. While the […]
A revolving door of cable news show hosts continued spinning Thursday as Tucker Carlson got a new gig at Fox News, while former colleague Greta Van Sustern got a new home at MSNBC. Two days after Megyn Kelly announced she was leaving a popular Fox perch for NBC News, Fox moved quickly and promoted Carlson to her prime-time spot. That leaves its primary evening line-up resembling an […]
Good morning. Here’s our morning roundup of all the media news you need to know. Want to get this briefing in your inbox every morning? Subscribe here. Embedded plentifully during the presidential campaign, the press may now leave most consumers in the cold. I’d been talking to Merrill Brown, director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair, New Jersey State University, about Megyn Kelly’s big […]
Megyn Kelly is leaving Fox News for NBC News, bringing an end to one of the most protracted and public contract negotiations for a television news personality in years. The “Kelly File” host is getting a three-part deal at NBC News: She will host a new one-hour daytime program, anchor a new Sunday evening news magazine show and contribute to NBC’s breaking, political and special events coverage, […]
As Hurricane Sandy bore down on the Connecticut coast late October of 2012 and Gov. Dannel Malloy pled with residents to find high ground, reporter Neena Satija couldn’t shake one thought: “We are clearly not prepared for this.” Sandy passed, and sheer luck spared the state the worst of its impacts. But did officials acknowledge the averted disaster? Not in Satija’s view. “All of a sudden talk […]
To understand how Donald Trump will change America, don’t listen to his speeches, says Vox Editor-in-Chief Ezra Klein. Instead, look at the president-elect’s policies, he said. “This idea that Donald Trump exists in some state of quantum unknowability is going to end the day that he raises his hand and takes the oath of office,” Klein said. “So we need to change ourselves to give people coverage […]
It wasn’t that long ago that there were a few sure things in this world: — ESPN would continue to print money thanks to fees from its 100 million-person subscriber base. — The NFL would continue to generate massive TV ratings thanks to an insatiable demand for all things football. — The Cubs would continue their century-plus run of futility thanks to a curse from a goat, […]
Here’s something you don’t hear enough: Journalists, you’re doing a good job. Chances are good that you learned a new skill this year and put it into action. Maybe 2016 was the year you started using Snapchat to tell global stories. Perhaps you figured out how to use GIFs, or augmented your reporting with data. It’s also possible that you unleashed some bots upon the world. In […]
This year, I visited six newsrooms. Some had low-ceilinged cubicle mazes with coffee-stained carpets and newsprint towers. Some had quote-covered glass meeting spaces and slick, quiet rooms. At all of them, I found local legacy newsrooms, or “old media” as they’re often called, doing the work of digital journalism. In one case, the print product was an afterthought. In another, it had been rethought. At all of […]
Over the past nine months, I’ve admitted some big weaknesses to hundreds of strangers. I’ve spoken about my struggles with low self-esteem, battles with self-care and history with anxiety. I’ve divulged uncertainties about starting a family and taking on bigger responsibilities at work. And I’ve shared it all in a newsletter that’s devoted to women excelling as leaders. I launched The Cohort newsletter in March as an […]
Front pages on Wednesday led with a last salute to actress Carrie Fisher, who died on Tuesday at age 60. Many of the fronts feature images of Fisher in her iconic role as Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise. Here’s a quick collection, via Newseum: United States: Brazil: Canada: Colombia: France: United Kingdom: Kristen Hare covers the media for the Poynter Institute. Her work for Poynter […]
