Media

When it comes to news coverage of diversity in the workplace, The Wall Street Journal’s sterling reputation is frequently on display through the work of its reporters. A recent byline from Georgia Wells dove into Google’s labor dispute over lack of opportunity and unequal treatment of women and minorities. Harriet Torry’s recent dispatch from Washington […]

Stories fill social media platforms in a continuous stream, so drawing readers to your work gets more difficult every day. Cutting through the social noise starts with sharper headlines that resonate with audiences. Here are eight tips for stronger headlines on social media. Explain the news: People want to stay informed and learn information they […]

The hasty effort in New York to pass a right-of-publicity bill ended—for now—last week after the state assembly sponsor pulled his bill and the senate appeared unwilling to advance its own version until the assembly acted. Media organizations had opposed the legislation: The National Press Photographers Association said the assembly bill would “unconstitutionally deprive” its […]

NPR's top news executive announced plans to roll out a regional hub system at a speech for the Public Radio News Directors convention in Miami on Friday. Michael Oreskes, NPR's senior vice president for news and editorial director, told news directors that he envisions, "more than four and less than 12 hubs around the country." […]

When it comes to the sale of the Chicago Sun-Times, one craves the kind of decisiveness demonstrated by the early-morning tweets of President Trump. Who knows, maybe he'd announce a sale to his favorite media vehicle, "Fox & Friends." We are, after all, in rather uncharted territory on many fronts with the president. By Monday, […]

Jostling for readers for your listicle on Facebook? Aim for the number “10” in your headline. Trying to promote a story on Twitter? Emotion-based appeals popular on Facebook don’t translate to Twitter. Findings from a BuzzSumo trigram analysis of 100 million headlines published between March and May of this year confirms a lot about the...

This is the first in an occasional series of essays on important writing and language books and the wisdom they offer. One of the most famous bits of writing advice over the last century comes to us from British author Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, known to his mates and university students as Q. (He should not […]

Want to buy stock in the fast-rising digital news business? That is easier said than done. Last week, the CEOs of both Vice and BuzzFeed dropped hints that they might, possibly, go for an initial public offering in 2018. They fit the profile — big, fast-growing, around long enough to claim staying power. But the […]

These things are facts: As local newspapers die out, most American journalism jobs left are increasingly concentrated on the coasts, where major publications are headquartered. Internet publishing jobs, in particular, are largely the province of coastal elites. And if you live in a rural area, you are probably not reading many articles by journalists with...

When Donald Trump was elected president, many media outlets in coastal cities were in disbelief. They sought electoral reasoning in the Rust Belt, the South, the Midwest and Mountain West — basically everywhere they weren’t. That meant putting a bit more emphasis on areas that hadn’t gotten as much coverage before. “We are still the...

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. Race, violence and misunderstanding are part of Chicago's civic shame. The tragic spectacle now ensnares a theater critic while underscoring tricky issues of cultural and media diversity. To […]

CJR recently invited contributions from journalists whose work focuses on the healthcare challenges specific to their communities. We asked each reporter the same question: “As the nation anticipates passage of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, what are the health stories that are most urgent for journalists to tell in your region?” As the Senate moves […]

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Sam Sanders is on a mission: to go beyond the headlines. His new NPR talk show, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders, covers what’s happening and also tries to understand how it makes people feel. As one of the original co-hosts of the NPR Politics Podcast, Sanders broke down the 2016 election cycle for […]

The Washington Post may not yet be Americans' newspaper of record, but after its publication of groundbreaking revelations about Russia's meddling in the 2016 election Friday, it's certainly one step closer. The Post broke the news that the Obama Administration secretly grappled with whether to retaliate against the Russian regime after receiving a top-secret intelligence report last August […]

In May, Brent Musburger received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Sports Emmys in New York. It was a well-deserved honor given the scope of his career. And to think, Musburger’s iconic broadcast career might not have happened if a Chicago American sports editor had been willing to give him a $10,000 raise. I […]

The Yahoo News Digest, a modern relic of the ancient time of finite news (a.k.a. a newspaper), is being sent to the app graveyard. The brainchild of a British teenager who sold it to Yahoo for $30 million in 2013, the Yahoo News Digest app found favor from users for its simplicity and strict curation....

The student newspaper at George Washington University may soon move from off-campus to university-provided housing, according to an email sent by the GW Hatchet's Board of Directors, potentially threatening the future independence of the operation. According to the email, which was sent to "supporters and alumni" on Tuesday, the potential move comes amid a financial crisis […]

On the morning of July 20, 2016, Ukrainian journalist Pavel Sheremet left his apartment in central Kiev, stepped into his car, and began his morning commute. Security footage from that day shows Sheremet, in a red Subaru, inching toward an intersection. Suddenly, the car jerks back as a fiery explosion rips through the front seats. […]

When The Washington Post launched The Lily last week, journalists at several media organizations applauded the move. "I think it’s really exciting to see a surge of these outlets catered toward women," said Sarah Menkedick, founding editor of Vela magazine. "There is still such a significant gender gap in publishing." The news product is catered to millennial […]

On the latest episode of The Kicker, we run through some of the media stories we at CJR are watching this week, including the push for unionization at digital media outlets and a new attempt by NPR to reach younger audiences. Then, I talk to CJR Managing Editor Vanessa Gezari, a former foreign correspondent, about how a […]

“Only Hungary has a bigger gap…” The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2017, out this week, touches on all kinds of digital news trends — see here for Nieman Lab’s general roundup and here for two of the report’s authors’ takes on how social media may actually diversify people’s media diets. There’s also more on...

CJR recently invited contributions from journalists whose work focuses on the healthcare challenges specific to their communities. We asked each reporter the same question: “As the nation anticipates passage of the Better Care Reconciliation Act, what are the health stories that are most urgent for journalists to tell in your region?” As the Senate moves […]

THE BETTER CARE RECONCILIATION ACT—the Senate GOP’s version of the American Health Care Act—may be the most anticipated and least understood piece of legislation put forth by Republican lawmakers under the Trump Administration. Editorial boards around the country have criticized the secrecy surrounding the bill’s conception—as “detestable” and “unhealthy” and “too much.” Newsrooms have an obligation to […]

It’s Healthcare Day on Capitol Hill: Senate Republicans are finally revealing their secret Obamacare-replacing bill today. But in the inboxes of many Vox readers, every day has been Healthcare Day for a few months now. VoxCare is only Vox’s second email newsletter and its first focused on a specific topic (Vox Sentences is an evening...

The Knight Foundation is throwing some real money at the fake news problem and its related issues. The Knight Prototype Fund, which shells out up to $50,000 to developers of early-stage media projects, announced a round of 20 new initiatives, all of which are addressing in some way ongoing concerns about trust in news (including the fake...

A great interview is one of the journalist’s most powerful tools. For the next five weeks, the Columbia Journalism Review and MaximumFun.org will broadcast conversations with some of the world’s greatest interviewers. Hosted by NPR’s Jesse Thorn, the podcast, called The Turnaround, will examine the science and art of journalism. This first episode features Ira […]

The United States recently elected an unusual president. And to go with the times, Americans are exhibiting some behaviors in media consumption that are, if not unusual, then at least different from those of people in other countries. That’s one of the recurring findings in a report out Thursday from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the...

Despite widespread fears that social media and other forms of algorithmically-filtered services (like search) lead to filter bubbles, we know surprisingly little about what effect social media have on people’s news diets. Data from the 2017 Reuters Institute Digital News Report can help address this. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our analysis shows that social media...

It’s no secret, of course, that many news organizations are struggling to find sustainable business models, finance ambitious reporting, and build trust with audience. And while many startups over the years have attempted to deal with these issues, a new platform said Wednesday it was looking to address these challenges with a new type of...

Is The Economist left- or right-wing? Why are The Economist’s writers anonymous? Why does The Economist call itself a newspaper? Readers have a lot of questions about the 173-year-old magazine — ahem, newspaper — and The Economist is using Medium to help answer them. In December, the magazine’s social media team launched Inside The Economist,...

In May 2015, the two of us were brought together to consider how to help what eventually became Univision’s Fusion Media Group focus on “slow innovation” questions, beyond the remit of the daily production teams already in place. This work led to what became known as the company’s Center for Innovation and Engagement. FMG’s primary...

Essentially today's White House press briefing, as depicted by @11thHour. pic.twitter.com/yvwFQ2VRgx — Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) June 20, 2017 Are the White House press briefings becoming so brief that they’re actually disappearing? On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer — who is, reportedly, leaving his role for a different position in the White House, which...

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 124, published June 20, 2017. Industry responses to the Apple analytics news. Last week’s newsletter was super heavy on my own analysis on the matter, and to balance things out, I’m course-correcting this week with a handy-dandy roundup of some of the more interesting...

1967: More than 75 race-fueled riots engulf communities across the United States, sparked by angry mothers hosting a sit-in at a Boston welfare office that turned violent. 2014: Venture capitalist Tamer Hassanein and Russian investor Leon Semenenko create Timeline, with the mission of contextualizing the news in history. 2015: Timeline is featured on the App...

Baited links in emails is nothing new for users of modern technology, from journalists to ordinary people. Being hacked by individuals associated with Russian or other foreign servers is unfortunately also not uncommon. Receiving an email that accuses you of sexual escapades, on the other hand, watching your Gmail and Facebook accounts being taken over,...

It’s a warm afternoon in mid-April and journalist Jorge Caraballo Cordovez makes his way down a busy street in East Boston. Passing convenience stores, a Colombian bakery, and a hair salon, Caraballo stops to talk with nearly every passerby in this primarily Latino neighborhood in Boston, Mass. He hands everyone a postcard, and speaking in...

It’s not that The Washington Post itself doesn’t post plenty of content that is appropriate for millennial women to read. But The Lily, a “publication for women” that the Post launched last week, starts with the premise that a lot of young women simply aren’t reading the Post at all and would respond better to...

Donald J. Trump contains multitudes. The president’s 140-character official statements have been a source of much schadenfreude on Twitter, where critics — with no shortage of glee — regularly surface old statements from the president that contradict recent stances or otherwise foreshadow current critiques of Trump’s own presidency. There’s a tweet for every occasion. In...

For some soldiers, the hardest part about war is coming home from it. Beyond post traumatic stress disorder or other battlefield wounds, many veterans also suffer from conditions like adjustment disorder that complicate the process of acclimating to civilian life. And often one of the biggest problems is finding a job. Veterans-focused job site HirePurpose...

“新闻软文,” or “News-style soft article.” Want to discredit a journalist? That’ll be $55,000. 100,000 real people’s signatures on a Change.org petition? $6,000. And those Chinese “soft articles” can be gotten for as little as USD $15. The folks at security software company Trend Micro studied Chinese, Russian, Arabic/Middle Eastern, and English marketplaces and found that...

Bloomberg Businessweek has a big new interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook — and it would really like you to pay to read it. Businessweek launched a two-tiered metered paywall (and a resdesigned site, app, and weekly print magazine) Thursday. There’s also “a new regionalized email newsletter,” Daily IQ, only for subscribers. Here are the...

When Matter cofounder and managing director Corey Ford finished the inaugural two-city version of the media startup accelerator, he was nearly dead. As half of Matter’s original two-person team, he had spent 122 days working with half of the class in New York City, while his home (and two kids) were in Oakland, along with...

A month ago today, Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a prominent Mexican journalist known for his work on drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico, was shot to death in broad daylight in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Cárdenas’ murder, the sixth one of a Mexican journalist this year, was yet another reminder of the dangers facing...

Journalism is becoming increasingly automated. From the Associated Press using machine learning to write stories to The New York Times’ plans to automate its comment moderation, outlets continue to use artificial intelligence to try and streamline their processes or make them more efficient. But what are the ethical considerations of AI? How can journalists legally...

“So, one must pay for journalism?” reads one question on the FAQ page for The Ken, a subscription-based English-language business news outlet out of Bangalore, India. “Yes” is the publication’s one-word answer. The site has stuck to a careful, quality-over-quantity approach since its official launch in the fall of 2016, pushing out one piece of...

When it comes to hearing from readers, The New York Times wants to go a lot further than just letting people chime in at the bottom of some articles. Last week, the newspaper announced The New York Times Reader Center, a new initiative focused on finding new ways to connect with Times readers and deepening...

Those disheartened by the way that U.S. media organizations covered the 2016 election likely long for the American equivalent of the BBC: a large, publicly funded broadcast organization free of the commercial pressures that made Donald Trump a permanent fixture of news programs in the year leading up to his victory. But not even the...

Welcome to Hot Pod, a newsletter about podcasts. This is issue 123, published June 13, 2017. We’ve got a lot to talk about. “It may look obscure,”tweeted Gimlet’s Matt Lieber, “but this is the biggest thing to happen to the podcast business since Serial first went nuclear.” Lieber was talking about a major announcement that came...

Please sign in. Those three words — a request as old as the web — now drive the strongest strategy of our news era: reader revenue. Today, The New York Times announces and starts to rollout the most significant redesign in its digital history. That redesign, 18 months in the arduous making, won’t turn heads...