For the first time, The Associated Press now permits journalists to use “they” as a singular pronoun. The AP announced the style change Friday at the American Copy Editors Society conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. The change follows years of questions among copy editors, reporters and editors about the use of language specifically about people who are non-binary and don’t use gendered pronouns. The change is in […]
Trailing by three, Clemson was driving against Alabama late in a pulsating, nerve-racking College Football Playoff championship game. Deadline for The Washington Post’s Chuck Culpepper meant filing almost immediately after the game ended. Culpepper looked at his computer, and only a couple of paragraphs stared back at him. Did he panic, knowing he had to generate an entire story on a close game in a matter of […]
Before she became Facebook’s Head of News Partnerships, Campbell Brown had to deal with a low-tech filter bubble. As a host on CNN, she was competing every night with the likes of left-leaning MSNBC and right-leaning Fox News. Battling low ratings, she left her 8 p.m. slot in 2010 with a rare hat tip to her partisan competitors. “I hosted a show on CNN, and I had […]
Chartbeat and CrowdTangle today announced a major expansion of a tool for measuring how stories are performing on social platforms. The two companies began a beta version of the Offsite Social service in September 2016. Two months later Facebook acquired CrowdTangle. The announcement says that Facebook is now making a “robust” (but unspecified) additional investment in expanding what’s measured and taking the service global including to European […]
One of the brightest lights in local journalism suffered a setback late last year when Raleigh Agenda, the sister site of Charlotte Agenda, closed its doors after failing to find a sustainable business model. But the closure of the site didn’t prevent the parent company from banking a comfortable profit in 2016, said Ted Williams, Charlotte Agenda’s cofounder and publisher. The company brought in about $875,000 in […]
Imagine that The New York Times, The Washington Post and PBS launched a joint fact-checking project. That is, roughly speaking, what happened in Norway earlier this week. VG and Dagbladet, Norway’s two largest online news sources by readership, joined forces with NRK, the public broadcaster, to launch Faktisk. The initiative, a team of at least five journalists led by investigative reporter Kristoffer Egeberg, will start publishing by June […]
Twitter reflects the good, the bad and just plain ugly reality of social media these days. For academics, journalists and voters, there’s never been a more crucial time to talk about the impact these social media platforms have on factual journalism and being watchdogs of the powerful. It’s in vogue to attack the messenger for the message. We are called liars. We are called “nasty people.” We […]
The lead of your story has to speak to what motivates viewers to sit and watch. Here are five motivators for engaging viewers with a news story on TV or the web: Money Family Safety Health Community You can address the “safety” motivator in crime stories, in stories about unsafe cars or in stories about texting or talking on the phone while driving. The “community” motivator might […]
The majority of news coverage in the United States is still written or produced by men, according to a report released today by the Women’s Media Center. At 20 of the nation’s top media outlets, men produce about 62.3 percent of news coverage, according to the report, which examined 24,117 pieces of content from newspapers, wire services, television and internet media. The report, the fifth annual edition […]
Iona Craig, who reported on the aftermath of the botched Navy SEAL raid in Yemen for The Intercept from Yeman, did so with the help of the Pulitzer Center. Iona Craig. Grants from the Pulitzer Center go a long way for international journalists who eke out a difficult existence covering tough stories from dangerous places. The details of her recent Yemen experience should give pause to most […]
Staffers at Independent Journal Review accused Benny Johnson of plagiarism in 2015, just a year after BuzzFeed fired him for copying dozens of other sites, according to a story published Tuesday by Business Insider. Johnson, who joined Independent Journal Review in 2015 after being let go from BuzzFeed for 41 examples of plagiarism, was accused by his colleagues in November 2015 of copying part of an article […]
Audience engagement is more than just a buzzword — it’s an essential part of journalism. By focusing on three topic areas — transparency, listening and outreach — you can build trust and engagement with audiences in today’s political landscape. Here’s a checklist to help you get started with meaningful audience engagement from Jennifer Brandel, founder and CEO of Hearken, How are you creating opportunities for participation? How […]
The rhythm of Washington, D.C. has been thrown off in recent months as President Trump has refined his ability to create entire news cycles with a series of tweets dashed off before breakfast. So, Politico is trying something different. Today, as pundits chew over the latest twist in the Russia-Trump story, an email will arrive in the inboxes of political junkies across America bearing a digest of […]
Joanne Lipman, who joined Gannett 15 months ago to create an investigative network of the company’s 109 community papers, today was named editor-in-chief of USA Today. Lipman said in a phone interview that she is “pleased at how the USA Today Network has come together…. I’m awed by the increased quality and ambition in the work.” But rather than job accomplished, she sees her new post as […]
I am a writing teacher, not a beat reporter. No one calls me “scoop.” So it was fun last September to help break the news that the Daily Beast was about to publish a new piece of work from Jimmy Breslin. It was a pleasure to analyze the essay, part of a fictionalized memoir, and reflect on the work of the famous/infamous New York City columnist, who […]
The Cohort is Poynter’s bi-monthly newsletter about women kicking ass in digital media. I remember the moment I knew I wasn’t going to be a conflict photographer. I was a freelance photojournalist based in Mumbai, India, and in New York for a week visiting prospective clients. All assignments mattered, but there was one publication that I held to an unattainable standard — The New York Times. I […]
The Trump administration’s budget blueprint, released this morning, proposes to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, as well as many public radio and television stations across the United States. In a section on page 11 labeled “major agency budget highlights,” the budget summary lists the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as among the independent agencies that will be defunded, along with […]
In the months since the election, America’s major newsrooms have been recruiting investigative journalists with the knowledge and skills to dig into government institutions at the federal, state and local levels. The New York Times, BuzzFeed, ProPublica, The Washington Post and CNN have all posted or filled investigative reporting jobs in the days since the election, and announcements of new hires come on a near-weekly basis. “It’s […]
Memorable writing has a strong voice. But how do you develop the genuine tone that distinguishes your writing? Consider these components: What is the level of language? Is it concrete or abstract or somewhere in between? Do you use street slang or the logical argument of a professor of philosophy? What “person” do you work in? Should you use “I” or “we” or “you” or “they” — […]
Independent Journal Review on Thursday took down a story that implied Barack Obama’s recent trip to Hawaii had something to do with a federal judge’s decision to block President Trump’s immigration order. The story, published earlier today, was headlined “Fmr President Obama Made ‘Surprise Visit’ to Hawaii, Days Before Judge Issued Travel Ban Ruling.” It juxtaposed Obama’s visit to Oahu with U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson’s […]
During his trip to the Korean Demilitarized Zone Friday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson excluded the pool reporter representing U.S. networks from a meeting, allowing a team from Fox News to be admitted instead. Tillerson was visiting the United Nations Command, Military Armistice Commission meeting room in the DMZ’s Joint Security Area, the so-called “truce village” where negotiations between North Korea and South Korea have historically taken […]
I think that Donald Trump has invented a new use for quotation marks. In several now-famous tweets, the president accused Barack Obama of wiretapping him during the election. Trump used quotation marks around versions of the word but also used the word without quotes. When the accusation was criticized from many quarters, Trump, and those speaking for him, said that when the president said “wiretapping”, he really […]
For Diana Sugg, writing a big story is a little bit like eating a slice of pizza. Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew at the beginning, said Sugg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor at The Baltimore Sun. Start with the small end. The slice — and the story — gets wider the farther in you go. At the beginning, find something appetizing and easy to “swallow” […]
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon CEO, is undoubtedly familiar with “tone at the top,” a term coined by audit firms and drilled home by business ethicists in the wake of financial scandals at Xerox, Enron and Arthur Andersen. When corporate leaders fail to model tone at the top by upholding principles, corners are cut and lapses trickle down and poison institutional culture. And yet […]
