Media

Even before the 2020 election, Donald Trump laid the groundwork. If he lost, he said, then it had to be because the election was rigged. Actually, that conspiracy theory based on nothing but Trump’s own imagination (or devious planning) dated all the way back to the 2016 election. He said if he lost that election, […]

The post Trump, conservative media and the big lie — the damage is not done appeared first on Poynter.

Trump is suing his niece, Mary Trump, The New York Times and three Times reporters over what he claims was an “insidious plot” to obtain his tax records. Trump’s lawsuit claims the Times convinced Mary Trump to “smuggle records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to the Times.” The Associated Press’ Michael […]

The post The NYT knocked on Trump’s niece’s door. An ‘insidious plot?’ A Trump lawsuit claims so. appeared first on Poynter.

Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Seven states with low vaccination rates and high COVID-19 infection rates are using most of the drug […]

The post Seven states are using most of the dwindling monoclonal antibody supply appeared first on Poynter.

The disappearance of 22-year-old Gabrielle Petito has captivated the public, with national news organizations devoting substantial coverage to the twists and turns of the investigation and social media users scouring Petito’s Instagram and YouTube accounts for hidden clues. On July 2, Petito and her fiancé Brian Laundrie left New York in a white van on […]

The post Why the Gabby Petito case has drawn so much attention compared to other missing people cases appeared first on Poynter.

Simply conducting a Google search to verify if a given statement about ethnic minorities in Japan is true or not could help correct disinformation, a new study published Wednesday in PLoS One found. To understand some of the consequences of searching online for information, researchers at the City University of Hong Kong’s Department of Media...

The ferry crossing from Washington state to British Columbia, more than three hours of uninterrupted travel, provided the time and luxury to read the Sunday edition of The Globe and Mail. On that December day in 2019, a story about an Indigenous Metis family dominated the front page, a description of young parents who had […]

The post It’s not easy to cover Indian Country. Here’s why you must. appeared first on Poynter.

Which came first: public scrutiny of misinformation on social media sites or companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google investing in fact-checking? The answer may not surprise you. It was something to think about while listening to a webinar on Tuesday called “Fighting fake news as a business model,” which promised “success stories from major press...

The Lead is a weekly newsletter that provides resources and connections for student journalists in both college and high school. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning during the school year. I followed a common path at my student publication in college: I was a beat reporter for the university news […]

The post Student journalists need better editing and management training, and we’re here to help appeared first on Poynter.

Something strange happened in Philadelphia last year. And in Houston. And Tampa Bay. And Charleston. When for-profit newsrooms asked their communities to support them through donations, those communities did. “We definitely learned that local communities are willing to support local news organizations, and it really didn’t seem to matter if they were for-profit or nonprofit,” […]

The post For-profit newsrooms are adding philanthropy as another way to make money appeared first on Poynter.

Most of us are familiar with John Walsh. He’s the TV personality and victims’ rights advocate who created and hosted the show “America’s Most Wanted” in the late 1980s — just a few years after his 6-year-old son, Adam, was abducted and murdered. Since his son’s death, Walsh has become one of the leading advocates […]

The post John Walsh’s explosive comments about the Gabby Petito case, and why we, the media, are captivated by the story appeared first on Poynter.

Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. COVID-related hospitalizations are clearly falling. They’re down to 94,100, the lowest rate in a month, and down […]

The post COVID-19 hospitalizations are falling appeared first on Poynter.

With President Joe Biden moving to tighten vaccine requirements, some Republicans have pushed back, arguing that Biden’s policies unduly constrain personal liberty. During a Sept. 16 interview on the conservative channel Newsmax, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., focused on the prospect that Biden could make vaccination a requirement for interstate travel, such as on a plane. (Biden has […]

The post Amid proposals for travel vaccine mandates, is there a right to unfettered travel in the US? appeared first on Poynter.

There’s new data out from Gallup/Knight Foundation on how trust in the media varies by age. One interesting chart shows the different things that different age groups are looking for in trusted news organizations. 18- to 34-year-olds are significantly more likely than older people to say that news orgs should back their work up with...

Nieman Lab is often pitched and rarely covers news site redesigns because these stories are almost always super boring for everyone except the company pitching them, but I’ll admit this tweet from Skift cofounder Rafat Ali caught my eye: I used that word “debranded” deliberately, not a misspelling of rebranded. Radically simplify the design so...

Some months ago, just after the naming of my successor as president of ProPublica, I took the opportunity in another venue to give some unsolicited advice to leaders of nonprofit news organizations. Today, with that successor happily in place, I want to turn around and do the same favor for major donors to nonprofit journalism (or most anything...

It has been clear for several years that Facebook wishes it never got into the news business. Sure, having a few news stories sprinkled throughout the News Feed probably makes a subset of their users happy and more willing to tap that blue icon on their homescreen again tomorrow. But there aren’t that many of...

A year ago, I quit the best job I ever had to start Platformer. Today I wanted to tell you all how it’s going, what I’ve learned, and how I hope the business will evolve in year two. My hope is that this piece offers some texture to ongoing discussions about how the creator economy and...

Remember Genius? The startup that started out decoding rap lyrics (and named Rap Genius) but then wanted to create a new layer on top of the entire internet and “annotate the world”? The one that The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza, in 2015, said was “the future of journalism”? Genius raised a ton of money from...

Preaching to the choir, shouting in an echo chamber — whatever your preferred metaphor is, a study published earlier this week in the Journal of the European Economic Association sheds some light on what may be happening when people are surrounded by others with like-minded views — and especially when they have a tough time...

Is there something WEIRD about fact-checking? Much of the research about combating misinformation with fact-checking comes from experiments that looked at single countries in North America, Europe, and Australia. By over-relying on Western, educated, industrialized, and rich countries — known, charmingly, to scholars as “WEIRD” populations — for data, were scholars making claims about fact-checking...

The phrase “pivot to video” has become a joke, shorthand for a media company’s last-ditch effort to turn things around before the layoffs begin. “Today’s metrics are tomorrow’s punchlines, and yesterday’s pivot is today’s clumsy tumble,” Vice’s union tweeted on August 26, following the company’s elimination of 17 staffers across Vice and Refinery 29. The...

Research tells us that our democracy relies on healthy local journalism, but we know the industry is ailing. Closures, layoffs, and cutbacks in local news — common before the pandemic, thanks to collapsing ad revenue — have only accelerated. Some in Congress, it seems, would like to do something to help. The Local Journalism Sustainability...

Prestige magazines are so white, “their mastheads resemble member registries at Southern country clubs circa 1950,” Erin Overbey, The New Yorker’s archive editor, tweeted on Tuesday. To prove it, she was armed with 96 years’ worth of data from her own employer — circumventing the notion that a diversity audit has to come from the...

If you’re not already sitting down, I recommend it, because the main takeaway from this new NYU report on social media and political polarization is downright shocking: So Facebook’s a problem, but it’s not the only problem? I know, right? Mind-blowing stuff. But more seriously, I recommend taking a look at the paper, out today...

Facebook has been quietly experimenting with reducing the amount of political content it puts in users’ news feeds. The move is a tacit acknowledgment that the way the company’s algorithms work can be a problem. The heart of the matter is the distinction between provoking a response and providing content people want. Social media algorithms...

Six months after The Boston Globe and Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research announced the revival of abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator, some of the puzzle pieces of the joint venture are falling into place. Amber Payne and Deborah Douglas, co-editors in chief of the new publication, shared some details on where things stand during a...

Conversations about trust in news often tend to focus on folks who are actively hostile to certain brands — people wearing “CNN FAKE NEWS” and rioting in the Capitol, people assaulting journalists at Trump rallies or Black Lives Matter protests. But “indifference, not hostility, is the primary challenge for journalists when trying to increase trust in...

Is Australia the future? I mean, from a time zone perspective, it definitely is. (Unless you’re reading Nieman Lab in Kiribati, in which case: E rab’a te kaitiboo!) I keep meaning to ask the ghost of Dick Clark why Melbourne gets to do New Year’s so early. But Australia increasingly looks like the future for...

The Institute for Nonprofit News regularly surveys its member newsrooms about their needs. What their members say they need most? Money, please. The second-most common request, though, is help collaborating with other newsrooms. After all, INN members — more than 350 of them across the U.S. — run the gamut from large, well-staffed outlets to tiny local...

When Mukhtar Ibrahim launched the nonprofit Sahan Journal in 2019, he hoped for it to be “a one-stop shop for all things about immigrants in Minnesota,” for an “audience [of] all Minnesotans.” It was still an unproven concept; in addition to being its founder, Ibrahim was the site’s only employee at launch. He saw Sahan...

Happy first birthday to Defector, the worker-owned sports and culture website started by former Deadspin staffers. On Tuesday, editor-in-chief Tom Ley posted a status update on how things went in the website’s first year. Things went well! — “As of today, we have received subscription payments from more than 40,000 people,” Ley writes. A subscription...

Hot Pod, the newsletter about the podcasting industry, has been acquired by Vox Media. Founder Nick Quah will become a full-time podcast reviewer for Vulture and Hot Pod, now written by Ashley Carman, will live on at The Verge as the site’s first paid product. some professional news… — Nick Quah (@nwquah) September 7, 2021...

In 2012, Marissa Evans wanted to make history when she applied to be editor-in-chief at Marquette University’s student newspaper, the Marquette Tribune. If she got the job, she would become the second Black person — and first Black woman — to lead the Tribune since the paper was founded in 1916. Black students comprise less...

It’s tempting to be cynical about Facebook’s push into local news. The company last week named 25 local journalists who will join Bulletin, a newsletter platform that provides “independent creators” with a website, podcasting capabilities, and a host of social, monetization, and content moderation tools. I spent the past week talking to a handful of...

Early September is usually a big time for Apple. Until Covid broke the streak last year, it had released a new iPhone between Sept. 7 and Sept. 12 for eight consecutive years. But it turning out to be a busy season for the publishers of news apps on Apple devices, too. A new policy change...

To the ancient Greeks, Cerberus was the hound of Hades, a multi-headed dog with a serpent’s tail who kept souls from escaping the underworld. His eyes burned with fiery lava and he vomited bile. The canine’s namesake, Cerberus Capital Management, is a private equity firm that, like Alden Global Capital, specializes in acquiring distressed businesses...

Wirecutter, the 10-year-old shopping recommendations site that The New York Times bought five years ago, has already made the Times a lot of money. Now it’s getting monetized further: Wirecutter, which now is going behind the Times’ metered paywall, The Wall Street Journal reported and Times confirmed Tuesday. As of Wednesday, a standalone Wirecutter subscription...

Back in February, Facebook said that it would “temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in News Feed” for some users in Canada, India, Brazil, and the U.S. On Tuesday, the company said that these tests had “positive results.” As a result, we plan to expand these tests to Costa Rica, Sweden, Spain and Ireland....

Parents around the country are freaking out and holding their collective breath as a new school year begins. My kid has been back at in-person school for about a month, and we’ve been averaging about two robocalls a week about new cases of Covid at school. What’s worse, the school district’s Covid plans, 20 months...

A year ago, I wrote about how the wave of developer discontent with Apple’s App Store policies — a fight being led by Fortnite-maker Epic Games — could end up benefiting news publishers. They alone don’t have the market pull to force Apple into policy changes around revenue, but they’ll be happy to ride the...

Back in the day, it took a lot more time and effort to prepare dough for a regular home meal. Once the dough is mixed and stirred, it had to sit for hours in order to become ready. Today, however, with the modern touch of technology, home cooks use a very handy little machine called […]

The post Best Wet Grinders for Indian Cooking in 2020 appeared first on Jim Romenesko.

No matter whether you cook food for your family or are a professional chef, efficiency is crucial while working in the kitchen.  All you look forward to while cooking is to make delicious dishes effortlessly. Many find the task of peeling potatoes time-consuming. But when you have an electric potato peeler, you can have them […]

The post Top Electric Potato Peelers in 2020 appeared first on Jim Romenesko.

The cure for the newspaper  industry’s ills was once thought to be a “hyper-local” focus, but that’s not proving to be the salve for New York City, which is suffering an unprecedented decline in local news coverage. The latest casualty is the New York  Daily News, which on Monday said it would cut its newsroom staff […]

The United States Holocaust Museum is conducting an interesting exercise in crowdsourced research using newspaper archives from the 1930s and 40s. Called “History Unfolded,”, the project asks students, teachers and anyone else who’s interested to look in local newspapers for accounts of 34 different Holocaust-era events that took place in the U. S. and Europe, […]

With the media world buzzing about the fake news engine that is Cambridge Analytica, news about a new Google initiative to support quality journalism might easily be overlooked. The multi-faceted investment covers everything from website analytics tuned to the needs of publishers to machine learning tools that identify potential subscribers. Of particular note is Subscribe with […]

“Research has shown that the downside of powerful, centralized networks is their susceptibility to being subverted and exploited,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims in a fascinating analysis of why social networks, which were supposed to challenge hierarchy, have reinforced it instead. Delving into network theory, Mims explains why networks that start out with […]

Despite a Pew Research study‘s finding last year that two-thirds of Facebook users rely on the site for news, the COO of the world’s largest social network insists that Facebook isn’t a media company. “At our heart we’re a tech company… we don’t hire journalists,” Sheryl Sandberg told Axios. Although Sandberg admitted that her company […]

After a spate of closures and layoffs in the latter part of the last decade, the newspaper industry appeared to find its footing over the past few years. But now that oasis of stability may be drying up. Hard times are hitting some of the most resilient titles, and the trend indicates that things are […]

We’re going to call a time-of-death on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, despite the fact that the newspaper says it’ll live on with a website. Everyone says that these days. The more important news is that the 24-year-old daily will shutter its print edition and lay off 106 staff members. It will maintain an online-only edition, but most […]

The idea of convincing readers to pay a few pennies to read a single article has been largely scoffed at over the years, but Blendle may have cracked the code, at least a little bit. Launched two years ago in Europe, Blendle says it just surpassed the one-million-member mark. It’s getting hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors […]