Does having stronger local newspapers make people more likely to follow COVID safety guidelines? Er, not so much

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Does having stronger local newspapers make people more likely to follow COVID safety guidelines? Er, not so much A new study finds that the more local newspapers there were in a county, the worse it performed on a measure of social distancing in the early days of the pandemic. But take the findings with a grain of salt. By Joshua Benton.

How newsrooms are experimenting with Twitter Spaces “We’re starting to wonder, ‘Okay, can this work as a social audio conversation? How can we get more voices on this whether from the audience or our sources?'” By Sarah Scire.

The Democracy SOS fellowship is designed to help newsrooms improve their politics and election coverage What We’re ReadingNative American Journalists AssociationCraig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY will offer full-tuition scholarships for NAJA members who are New York State residents →To be eligible, applicants must be members of the Native American Journalists Associations, New York State residents, and highlight a demonstrated interest in Indigenous storytelling.Poynter / Alex Sujong LaughlinHow to speak up about microaggressions in the newsroom →“When you’re a person from a marginalized background though, it’s not always clear when or how to speak up. Your colleagues might not take your concerns seriously, you might get labeled a troublemaker or overly sensitive, or you might face covert or overt retaliation (which, depending on the specifics of the situation, might be illegal). Choosing to speak up could have real consequences on your professional life.”The Verge / James VincentA lone undersea internet cable connected Tonga to the world. A volcanic eruption broke it. →“The incident is a vivid demonstration of the fragility of modern internet. Although we think of the web as a dense network with numerous redundancies, the truth is that it contains many single points of failure. In the West, this is most obvious when huge web outages are caused by disruptions from centralized services like Amazon Web Services — a subsidiary of Amazon that supplies servers and computing power to the world’s biggest companies. For countries like Tonga, though, undersea cables are a more obvious bottleneck.” TechCrunch / Sarah PerezInstagram launches an early test of creator subscriptions in the U.S. →“Through the Subscriptions product, creators can choose their own price point for access to their exclusive content. There are eight different price points to choose from, starting at $0.99 per to month to as much as $99.99 per month, depending on how much a creator believes their content is worth.”Digiday / Sara GuaglioneWhy media unions are demanding to participate in management’s return-to-office planning →“The root of the tension is management setting what unions say are arbitrary dates for when they want employees back at their desks — and resisting coming to the bargaining table to negotiate a return with the union, according to interviews with members of the NewsGuild of New York and the Writers Guild of America, East. “The New York Times / Katie RobertsonA.V. Club staff members lost their jobs after refusing to move to Los Angeles →“The group of employees, which includes editors and a senior writer, represents nearly half of The A.V. Club’s editorial team, according to its online masthead. The seven who refused the move are among the publication’s longest-tenured journalists.”Deadline / Denise PetskiPBS’s new partnerships and mentorship program are aimed at improving diversity in documentary filmmaking →“In a new partnership with Firelight Media, the nonprofit filmmaking organization founded by Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith, PBS is committing $3.6 million over three years to support mid-career nonfiction filmmakers through the org’s William Greaves Fund. The fund, which resources talented storytellers from diverse communities in the U.S., is designed to address the persistent structural challenges many filmmakers face after producing their first films.” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Laura OliverThis news site in India is training hundreds of young women in digital journalism to reach remote audiences in news deserts →Editor-in-chief Kavita Devi explains: “Khabar Lahariya started with the objective to bring to life the news deserts in India’s hinterland, mostly the rural areas where you wouldn’t find mainstream media covering issues that plagued these smaller places. Communities are still marginalised, whether that’s caste-based or Indigenous tribal communities. These are groups who don’t get the spotlight in mainstream media. One of our core objectives was that these people get their voices heard and that their issues come to the forefront.”Local News Lab / Christine Schmidt and Teresa GormanMeet the Ecosystem Builders: A unique group of leaders transforming local news →“They are people who are intimately familiar with their local news ecosystem, which is essential for journalism that truly reflects the community interests and addresses information needs. They are the “green shoots” of news ecosystems, willing to experiment in new projects or help introduce collaboration and new ways of working to legacy organizations.”The New York Times / Vanessa Friedman and Jacob BernsteinAndré Leon Talley, editor and fashion industry force, dies at 73 →“Called ‘The Only One’ by The New Yorker by virtue of his being the rare Black editor at the top of a field that was notoriously white and notoriously elitist, Mr. Talley, who stood 6 feet 6 inches tall, was an unmistakable figure everywhere he went.”Columbia Journalism Review / Paroma SoniHouston will get a nonprofit newsroom, with initial funding of $20M →“The investments — $7.5 million each from the Houston Endowment and the Kinder Foundation, $4 million from Arnold Ventures, $1.5 million from the American Journalism Project, and $250,000 from the Knight Foundation — are for an initial period of three years.” Staffers have not been hired yet.Adweek / Mark StenbergAxios Pro Deal newsletters launch, at $599 annually →“Called Axios Pro, the newsletters cost $599 per year individually or $1,799 for All Access, which includes the three existing newsletters — as well as two more that the publisher aims to release this spring, covering media and climate tech.”Chicago Sun-Times / David RoederWBEZ parent company’s board approves acquisition of Chicago Sun-Times →It’s “a major step forward in a deal to create one of the largest nonprofit news organizations in the country.”Nieman Reports / Steven GreenhouseNewsrooms are unionizing pretty much “nonstop.” Here’s why →“There was a time when in every conversation about organizing, people felt they were taking a big leap and they were really going out on a limb, but that has been mitigated to a large degree.”

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