NIEMAN REPORTS

The Off ending Art PoliticalPol cartooncartooninging after Charlie HHebdo

nr_winter2015_covers_spine_31815.indd 1 3/25/15 2:38 PM nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd A Cambridge, MA02138-2098 FrancisOne Avenue, at HarvardUniversity, the NiemanFoundation September, andDecemberby is publishedinMarch,June, Reports Nieman Manchester, NH03108 Nieman ReportsP.O. Box 4951, Postmaster: addresschanges to Send ISSN Number0028-9817 P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH03108 and changeofaddressinformationto: Cambridge, MA02138-2098 FrancisOne Avenue, to: correspondence Please addressallsubscription the Niemanoffi Back copiesareavailable from Single copies$7.50. add $10peryearforforeignairmail. $40 fortwoyears; Subscription $25ayear, 617-496-6299, [email protected] subscriptions/business additional entries Boston, and Massachusetts Periodicals postagepaidat Fellows ofHarvardCollege. Copyright 2015bythePresidentand [email protected] MA 02138-2098,617-496-6308, FrancisOne Avenue, Cambridge, editorial offices Pentagram design Laura Mitchell Tara W. Merrigan editorial assistants Jonathan Seitz researcher/reporter Jan Gardner senior editor James Geary editor Ann MarieLipinski publisher www.niemanreports.org for Journalism atHarvardUniversity The NiemanFoundation ce. (USPS #430-650) #430-650) (USPS Contributors Seattle Times and The Dallas Morning TimesandTheDallas Seattle News. entrepreneurship. Hepreviouslyworked forThe where heteaches digital journalismandmedia of journalismatSouthernMethodist University, Jake Batsell and manyotherpublications. Sloan ManagementReview, TheNew York Times, Boston Globe,TheEconomist,Fast Company, MIT Fellow whowrites aboutinnovationforThe Michael Fitzgerald Sentinel inNorth Carolina. Project beforebuyingtheweeklyOuter Banks director atthePew ResearchCenter’s Journalism at aweeklypapernearBoston. Hewasassociate Mark Jurkowitz news forweeklynewspapersonLongIsland. York Newsday, shebeganhercareercoveringlocal Journalism. Aformer businessreporter forNew professor attheStony BrookUniversitySchool of Barbara Selvin Frazier,Delinda researchassistantonthisproject. 2015 VisitingNiemanFellow. Specialthanksto (@webbmedia).Sheisa2014– strategy consultancy and founderofWebbmedia Group,adigital Amy Webb cronyism. founded in2010to reportoncorruptionand investigative journalismoutletinSerbiathathe Fellow, iseditor inchiefof Pištaljka,anonline Vladimir Radomirovic and Scientifi appeared inPopular Mechanics, Wired, The Atavist andGuerillaScience.Herwritinghas who hasproduceddigitalandliveworksfor Olivia Koski viewers per episode before ending in 2014. viewers perepisodebeforeendingin2014. anaudienceof30million three years,attracting show.Program”), apoliticalsatireTV Itranfor comedian, wasthehostof“Al-Bernameg” (“The Bassem Youssef political cartoons asaFulbright fellow. “The World.” HeresearchedEgyptian publications, andisacontributor to PRI’s Foreign Policy, TheGuardian,andother aboutArabicmediaandsatirefor written Cairo ReviewofGlobalAff the coverstory, issenioreditor ofthe Jonathan Guyer c American. (page 18) is a digital media futurist 18)isadigitalmediafuturist (page (page 48) is an assistant professor 48)isanassistantprofessor (page (page 8) is a multimedia journalist 8)isamultimediajournalist (page (page 26) is an assistant 26)isanassistant (page (page 30)started (page hiscareer (page 37)(page (page 42) is a 2011 Nieman 42)isa2011Nieman (page (page 12), a 2015 Nieman 12),a2015Nieman (page (page 32),whowrote (page , an

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YOUSSEF: MARTHA STEWART FOR IOP; OPPOSITE: TOP, FRANCOIS MORI/ASSOCIATED PRESS; BOTTOM, COURTESY OF HBO The murder of cartoonists for the Paris-based Charlie Hebdo ignited a debate on freedom of speech Contents Winter 2015 / Vol. 69 / No. 1

Features Departments storyboard cover From the Curator 2 Step into the Story 8 By Ann Marie Lipinski The immersive potential of virtual reality The Off ending Art 32 By Olivia Koski Political cartooning after Charlie Hebdo Live@Lippmann 4 By Jonathan Guyer Quartz publisher Jay Lauf Whistleblowing in the Balkans 12 Mightier Than the Sword 37 Independent news outlets struggle Satire has an enduring role to play Niemans@Work 6 to survive By Bassem Youssef Breathing new life into archives, By Vladimir Radomirovic bringing social commentary to the streets, informing public debate in India How to Make J-School 18 watchdog Matter (Again) Need to Know 42 nieman journalism lab A new blueprint for journalism education Why in-depth coverage of net neutrality The Triumph of the Social Platform 46 By Amy Webb is essential Distributed content off ers new possibilities By Michael Fitzgerald for publishers to fi nd revenue and readers Covering the Community 26 By Joshua Benton Why local weekly newspapers matter By Barbara Selvin Comedian John Books 48 Oliver’s powerful Excerpt from “Engaged Journalism: TV segment on net Connecting with Digitally Empowered neutrality led to News Audiences” an overwhelming By Jake Batsell onslaught of public comments on the FCC’s website Nieman Notes 52 page 42 Sounding 54 Denise-Marie Ordway, NF ’15

front cover: Christopher Weyant

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 1 3/31/15 2:39 PM From the Curator

Parsing the Equivalency Debate Is it possible to place stories on some universal scale of import and assign coverage and Protesters in Paris adapt a Charlie Hebdo slogan to highlight a January 7 Boko Haram massacre empathy accordingly? But there is a pernicious quality to those depth of coverage.” The danger to reporters equivalency arguments that suggest ma- who enter the perimeters of Boko Haram’s levolent intent on the part of journalists power. The diff erence between a terrorist and overlook more complex realities about eruption and a civil war. How we report on newsgathering. As reporting resources con- a “principle”—freedom of expression—un- tract and social media empower us all as ar- der murderous attack as opposed to ongo- the facebook posting was striking, biters, debates over where journalism aims ing coverage of “an appalling, mind-boggling coming from a friend who writes powerful- its fl oodlights have grown more pitched. disregard for the sanctity of human life.” ly about race and was now arguing against These questions took on an urgent The implied threat that the terror in Paris the University of Oklahoma’s expulsion of quality following the Charlie Hebdo kill- could be replicated in the U.S. fraternity members for their racist chants. ings in Paris. Heavy coverage by Western But what particularly troubled Wycliff “Educational institutions ought to edu- media soon found critics: Why did that about the equivalency criticism were two cate—or try to,” he wrote. “This was a teach- story—with 17 victims and three gun- things the critics implied but did not state. able moment and should have been used men dead—receive more attention than The fi rst: That black lives are not val- to teach.” Boko Haram’s murderous attack in Baga, ued in newsrooms the same as white lives. Others weighed in, until one poster ef- Nigeria, with claims, according to the BBC, “There may be cases where this is true or fectively shut down the debate. “Instead of of between 150 and 2,000 dead? Some crit- where the facts suggest it, but Charlie dialing up the umbrage meter for a bunch of ics sought a discussion about the inherent Hebdo/Boko Haram was not one,” Wycliff drunk and stupid college students … I wish diff erences in the stories. Others practiced wrote me. “If black lives were undervalued people would get outraged—and do some- ridicule, as evidenced by this tweet from a in the Boko Haram case, it was the Nigerian thing about—things like this.” She linked to journalism professor: “US media on Baga: government that did the undervaluing.” the tragic story of a teenage mother’s search Hey, we just did Ebola. Isn’t there someone The second: The media is responsible for for justice following rape accusations. The else to call?” shining a light on Boko Haram suffi cient to discussion fell silent. The equivalency battles rang hollow to cause the world to intercede. “I think the Is it possible to place stories on a uni- me, with more emphasis on body count es- critics vastly overstate the ability of the me- versal scale of impact, import, or horror and timates than the larger news signifi cance of dia to galvanize ‘the world,’” Wycliff wrote. assign coverage and empathy accordingly? either development. And why did the sto- Reading Wycliff ’s closing thought, I re- These equivalency debates are the natural ries need to compete, rather than stand on fl ected on our last issue of Nieman Reports extension of trying to hold two or more their individual merits? I wanted to check documenting the perilous conditions in events in balance, a primitive defi nition of my refl exes so I contacted the man whose which so many foreign correspondents work what news editors do. When their work is Facebook account hosted the short-lived and the anemic support for their labor. good, there is a complex weave of decisions discussion about hate speech in Oklahoma: “That doesn’t relieve the media of the hidden beneath the surface of a news report. Don Wycliff, a wise journalist and critic duty to report, to keep trying to make the who served as public editor of the Chicago relevant interesting,” he wrote, “but it does Tribune, head of that paper’s editorial argue for some sobriety about what can be board, and writer for The New York Times accomplished.”  Why did two news stories editorial pages. He said the discussion had troubled him, need to compete, rather too, then parsed the criticism: The logistical than stand on their diff erences of traveling to the stories that

own individual merits? made for “huge differences in speed and Ann Marie Lipinski ABITBOL OPPOSITE: LISA PRESS. CAMUS/ASSOCIATED THIBAULT

2 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_4215_PG2.indd 2 4/2/15 11:36 AM hasan cemal, 2015 recipient of the lyons award

turkish journalist hasan to be spiked, or a journalist where I come from. I come percent submission don’t really Cemal is this year’s recipient fi red. This is a land where the from a country where the like the “Journalist Nation.” of the Louis M. Lyons Award for prime minister can even decide prime minister has ensured For example, in Turkey, Conscience and Integrity in who will or will not appear on a that the profi ts from the President Erdogan refuses to Journalism. The Nieman class of talk show. large government tenders he meet with journalists who may 2015 honored him in recognition Allow me the luxury of controls are used to create ask him any uncomfortable of his long career dedicated to quoting from myself [on the media empires under his questions. It has been years championing freedom of the press state of journalism in infl uence; where he has the since he held a real press in Turkey and as a representative Turkey]: “Editors and leading fi nal say on the appointment of conference. He can only be of all Turkish journalists working columnists fail to defend editors in chief and columnists, in the presence of journalists today under increasingly diffi cult journalism against those in and on basic editorial issues. whom he knows will play conditions. A journalist for the power because they are unable Not surprisingly, this has by his rules. If, by chance, past 46 years, Cemal in 2013 to protect journalism from resulted in a one-sided media someone fi nds the opportunity parted ways with the newspaper their bosses. The profession is totally under his control. to rear their head and ask a Milliyet after it refused to publish divided and weak. In order for Recep Tayyip Erdogan— real question, they will fi nd a column he wrote. A co-founder the relationship between media prime minister for over a themselves on the receiving and president of Punto24 (P24), and government to acquire decade and, since August, the end of a severe dressing-down. a nonprofi t initiative aimed at public legitimacy, in order for Turkish president—is moving But journalists will continue promoting editorial independence the relationship between Turkey toward what he calls to ask questions. No dictator in Turkey, Cemal now writes journalism and owners to obey a presidential system but can divest journalists of this a column for the Turkish news ground rules built on respect, which is tantamount to one- democratic right. Yes, we must website T24. Edited excerpts it goes without saying that man rule. He has no respect continue moving forward. from his speech at the Nieman journalists themselves must for the rule of law. He has no What journalists do that makes Foundation on March 12: recover their own sense of concern for the independence us diff erent is that we are the integrity. We cannot sit back as of the judiciary. He does not voice of those who have no i come from a country if our hands were tied. Our recognize the separation voice. We cry out where others where a journalist was arrested inaction marks the death knell of powers. He has not learned cannot. And we make the whole and her mobile phone and of democracy and an end to the that getting the most votes world hear the cry that would computer seized because of a rule of law.” is not a license to violate otherwise remain lodged in the single tweet; a country where, The column was never democratic values, nor to force people’s throat. for that single tweet, she faces published in the newspaper the surrender of the judiciary, What I am describing is not fi ve years in prison. where I had worked for 15 nor to ignore the separation of just true of underdeveloped I come from a country years. It was enough to get powers, to trample on freedom countries. As a profession, where a prime minister has me fi red. But, of course, I had of expression, to destroy free we must fi nd ways to make declared social media to be it published on the same day, and independent media, nor ourselves heard—to shout with a social menace, Twitter and at the online newspaper T24, to subjugate civil society. If he an ever-fi rmer voice. YouTube were banned by where I have been writing for hasn’t learned this by now, When I got fi red, I did what government fi at, and all a the last two years. chances are he never will. any member of the Journalist prime minister has to do is pick Let me tell you a few [more] He is a man who could have Nation would do. I started all up the phone for a news item things about the country led Turkey into the family over again. In my case it was of democracies, but who is T24, one of Turkey’s new and now leading it back to the brave online newspapers. A wilderness. We are moving few days after I was told to put from a system of “military down my pen, I walked up a bureaucratic tutelage” to a mountain on the Turkish-Iraqi system of “civilian despotism.” border with retreating Kurdish In Turkey I am known for guerrillas. I went into the fi eld having coined the expression to report and to write. “Gazeteci Milleti” or the And when I got home, “Journalist Nation.” The main I began devoting time to qualifi cation for citizenship founding an organization called of this nation is the ability to P24, a civil society organization ask questions. Questioning is a that encourages editorial way of life for us. And for this independence and quality reason we are not particularly journalism. How do we do that? popular. And those who require The fi rst step is not to give up. Turkish journalist Hasan Cemal says he won’t stop asking questions not just 99 percent but 100 That, too, is not always easy. 

nieman reports winter 2015 3

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 3 3/25/15 2:15 PM Live@Lippmann

On the importance of voice Obsession Interlude How do we produce content that’s diff erent from other websites? I think it’s voice-ful- Quartz publisher Jay Lauf on ness. I think it’s not trying to cover every- branding, messaging apps, thing, but we’re saying let’s cover the stuff that our readers are obsessed about. I think and why the homepage isn’t dead we’ve done a good job of establishing a voice and intelligence and keeping a focus on things that are important. There are strategies that we’re tinkering with. One is the idea of Quartz being a glob- al brand from the get-go and to speak in a ay lauf found a way around this really need to be that long?” If there’s post-national voice. I think we still speak trouble early in his career. He wanted a “there” there, it might be “Why don’t you with a pretty heavy American accent and I to be a journalist but when he couldn’t take fi ve more days or two more weeks and think we want to shed that over time. We do J fi nd a job he took a position selling ads do more reporting and actually say some- that by getting journalists who either have for a trade magazine publisher. In thing bigger? I think there’s a bigger point experience in, or are on the ground in, these 2001, as the dot-com bubble burst, he to be made here.” diff erent locales. was hired as advertising director for Wired mag- We try to entertain and inform at the India is this first regional bet to try azine, improved its fi nances, and was named same time with charts. A chart can stand on to customize a little bit. I don’t think our publisher in 2006. Two years later he moved to its own on Quartz just like a cute picture of objective is to have a bunch of Balkanized The Atlantic as vice president and publisher. He a cat might. In the same way that a cute cat international editions of Quartz. But India helped usher the magazine into the digital age video may be the hottest thing on BuzzFeed, was big enough, complex enough, and dis- and was instrumental in the company’s launch Quartz content that has charts tends to be tinct enough that we felt like here’s a place of the online business publication Quartz three some of the highest-ranking articles in where we should try to cover it a little bit years ago. As publisher of Quartz, he is oversee- terms of traffi c. from the inside out. What we’ve done there ing a global expansion. Lauf spoke at the Nieman is put Indian journalists on the ground in Foundation in February. Edited excerpts: On hosting events India so that our coverage does get into the Events are a huge piece of The Atlantic, subtleties. If you are either a British-based On going short or long both in terms of revenue and brand stature. or anywhere but India-based journalist and We tend to focus on stories that are either I love the fact that they give you a textural you’re covering [Prime Minister Narendra] short, meaning under 500 words, or longer, three-dimensional way to connect with the Modi in the election, you might over-ex- deeply investigated pieces. We use analytics audience that I think ties them more close- plain, in some ways, elements of who he is or as guideposts. Everything from the original ly to the brand. It’s an integral part of the the dynamics. Whereas if you’re the Indian interface of the site to the way we do our business strategy for us. It’s always a slower journalist, you might skip two paragraphs journalism is informed by data, but I think go to build those than advertising, which is of set-up. I think it’s helped us to be more there’s as much art to it as there is science. just transacted at a much more rapid pace. knowing in that sense. It’s an experiment. In If you take a look at your top 100 stories January we eclipsed the million reader mark in a given year, you can start to glean what On the Daily Brief e-mail newsletter in India, so something’s going right there. works and what doesn’t. There are always It comes out fi rst thing in the morning in exceptions to this rule. But what tends to three broad time zones: Asia, Europe, and On advertising work in the social ecosystem in terms of in the U.S. It’s one of our stellar products in All these advertisers are shifting their dol- gaining traffi c and gaining eyeballs is one of terms of building a brand affi nity. It has al- lars increasingly to the Internet. Where’s those two things, rather short or rather long ways had a better than 43 percent open rate, stories. Either be succinct—usually that in- which is unheard of for e-mail newsletters. volves some infographics—or say the most It’s grown organically so I think that helps defi nitive thing on a subject, make a must- with the open rate. Our own editors are an read. Those are the things that people tend We do sell it out almost every day to a obsessive bunch. They tend to share most or come back and read most. sponsor of one kind or another. In and of What I see is if you submit a 600-word itself, it’s a very worthwhile venture, both to have generalist abilities piece, not every time but a good chunk of commercially but also to proactively give but a handful of things

the time, the editor’s going to say, “Does readers a regular touch point with our brand. that they obsess about SEITZ JONATHAN

4 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 4 3/25/15 2:15 PM priority—journalists who have some coding experience or are actually tech savvy in an engineering sense. That ChartBuilder prod- uct was built out of that.

On messaging apps I think people think WhatsApp is often just for kids or the general public, but it’s not. In the same way, Twitter or Facebook was this funny little thing and then it was not. Messaging apps are becoming ubiquitous. There are big, big audiences to tap into. Publisher Jay Lauf, with Melissa Bailey, NF ’15, says Quartz wants to shed its American accent We are tinkerers and experimenters so when you see something capturing that that money coming from? It’s coming out alist abilities but a handful of things that they much of an audience, you’re going to want to of print in a big way. It’s coming out of TV a themselves obsess about. It’s why you come experiment and tinker with it. Notifi cations little bit, although TV seems to always have up with a product like ChartBuilder. That and messaging seem to be a way that more some stability. was the product of one journalist who was and more people are getting information. I think a lot of companies want to do obsessed with the fact that he couldn’t get That might be an area that you could see branding on the Internet. The advantage for charts built quickly and he just went deep on something from us. Quartz is we’re giving them a place where that and he coded it. I think a lot of publishers are making the they feel comfortable doing it. In order to do But then there is also looking at, “OK, mistake of trying to put all their eggs into branding well, I think they need a couple of what is our target audience obsessed with the Facebook basket, and that feels a little things. They need a clean canvas to paint on. right now or going to be obsessed with?” dangerous to me. That has not existed on the Web for a long Bitcoin was probably a combination of time. It’s an ugly cacophony. those two things when we obsessed about On the homepage What we try to steer every advertiser that. Abenomics was nobody’s obsession, Our homepage traffi c has grown since we’ve toward is, don’t just do a fl at billboard that probably, on our staff , but we felt like a slice launched, both in terms of percentage and doesn’t ask you to do anything. Create in- of our audience is going to be really, really overall traffi c. “The homepage is dead,” we teractions. Use the interactive infographics obsessed with that, and that’s something have said, but the truth is, even if 11 percent that are catnip on our website in your ad- that’s important to cover. of our audience, up from 8 percent of our vertising. Create sharing mechanisms. Then audience, is on the homepage, that’s some- what we’ll do is, if you had a video embedded On hiring thing like one million or so people who are in your ad, we’ll tell you how many people What we hire for—and this seems obvious— going to the homepage on a regular basis. watched the video and what the video com- is a natural curiosity. You don’t want some- How do you treat them? Give them a rea- pletion rates were. Did they watch three sec- body who just has experience and is only son and a reward for coming back. Maybe onds and punt or did they watch this whole relying on that. You want somebody who’s the Daily Brief e-mail newsletter is a way three-minute video? Did they share it? If it’s constantly curious about the way the world to create a homepage for Quartz that’s re- an interactive infographic, how many people is changing. Even the journalists who joined warding as a homepage. It will be interesting clicked on it how many times? Those are all us in 2012, the world has shifted drastical- to see how this maps over time. We might proxies for how engaged people are. ly on them, so that you better be curious, be wrong on this, but the conventional number one. wisdom would be that we want visitors to On obsessions vs. beats Number two, we do put a premium on the homepage to quickly get deeper into Some obsessions are not necessarily intui- quality. That can take a variety of forms. Quartz, right? Our supposition right now is tive, like The Next Billion [Internet users] What their resume looks like and where that our visitors want to be informed, and or the Internet of Everything. they work, the work that they’re putting if we’re a news source, and if the homepage I think where obsessions get very distinct out. But quality is really important, par- is a place where—after you’re stuck in this and very powerful and diff erentiate us are in ticularly, again, on the social Web where meeting with me for an hour—you want to those more micro-obsessions. Alchemy is the quality comes in a lot of diff erent shapes quickly see what’s going on with the global word I use in that instance, because it is ac- and sizes. economy, we can reliably give it to you there. tually a little bit of data and a lot of editorial I don’t know that we overtly look for Maybe the preference actually is “no, take intuition. Our own editors are an obsessive this, but we tend to attract—and actually me deeper.” We’re in the middle of that ex- bunch themselves. They tend to have gener- this will make somebody jump up the list of periment right now. 

nieman reports winter 2015 5

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 5 3/31/15 12:57 PM Niemans@Work

University’s School of Journalism devel- and fi nding innovative ways to give classics oped prototypes to turn it into a video from our 81-year print archive new life on game in which users can control a digital phones and tablets. And it also means con- Luke as he rushes past drug smugglers and sidering novel ways of presenting Esquire searches in the dark desert for a place to stories, whether in a weekly original podcast camp. Others created a crowdsourced series or as a season of animated shorts. Or version where those who live on the bor- here, at Northeastern’s Ryder Hall, on a bru- der can contribute their own stories and tally cold January night in Boston, it means Make It New photos. Then there was the interactive working with and learning from the stu- map, where Luke’s walk unfolded in dis- dents in StoryLab. A partnership crete digital chunks, one for each leg of There were just shy of 20 of them, mostly created by the journey. young women, nearly all with deep design These students were participating in and coding backgrounds. Their task over the Esquire’s Tyler StoryLab, an initiative I launched in late course of the semester will be to reimagine, Cabot, NF ’14, 2014 with Jeff Howe, NF ’10, and Dina Kraft, rethink, re-create a few Esquire stories for and Northeastern NF ’13, who run Northeastern University’s the digital world. Media Innovation Program. Our collabo- Hands are up, keyboards clicking. I’m University ration, which includes a future of narrative telling them about the writing and the edit- empowers j-school blog called Storybench, seemed fated: Jeff ing process, how we construct stories. “How and Dina are building a curriculum that will much interaction will we have with your students to tell teach a new generation of storytellers how staff ?” they want to know. They want our old stories to create impactful journalism using the notes and photos and research. They want in new ways bleeding-edge digital tools of today. to be able to sit down with our writers and Meanwhile, at Esquire, where I direct editors to discuss their stories and how they our R+D eff orts and edit features, I’ve been plan to reinvent them. focused on fi nding new ways to both tell and They will get all of this. In exchange, we sell stories. just ask for a window into what the future of This means experimenting with paywalls narrative journalism could look like. 

from the very beginning—the scrolls of maps marked with every police station, hospital, and border patrol outpost; the long discussions about satellite phones and kidnapping insurance; the phone call with my writer, Luke Dittrich, about “The Judge,” a gun a desert wanderer tried to convince him to purchase for protec- tion—“Walking the Border” was an unusual story. We spent months plotting the route and safety and evacuation plans—did you know there’s a missile and bomb testing ground on the Arizona border?—and then Luke set out from San Diego and walked east. He pushed all of his gear and water un- til his feet bled, and then bled some more. Then we created an 8,000-word narrative about his experience. Five years later, the story has taken an- other strange turn. Students at Northeastern

Breathing new life into Esquire’s archives might happen via a weekly podcast or a series of animated shorts Esquire editors and j-school students are reimagining Luke Dittrich’s story about his border walk

6 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 6 3/25/15 2:16 PM Taking Back in this case, an artwork. (Quick background: Fusion, a cable and digital network aimed at the Streets millennials, is a joint venture of Univision At Fusion, Jane and Disney/ABC, and many of our stories focus on social justice issues.) Spencer, NF ’13, Our Mexico City project began in brings together Brooklyn, as a collaboration between the new media artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Fusion ed- itor Anna Holmes, founder of the women’s and a sense of site Jezebel. In 2012, Tatyana plastered public service the streets of Brooklyn with portraits of women talking back at their harassers. The project featured drawings of her female subjects in confrontational poses with lines such as “My outfi t is not an invitation,” and “My name is not baby.” Many were defaced Artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, left, in Mexico City in mexico city, where street or ripped down, creating a conversation in with project participant Yucari Millán harassment is notoriously aggressive, de- the streets. grading catcalls are hurled at women on bus- Last fall, Anna commissioned Tatyana video, artwork, and text. The piece collapsed es, sidewalks, and in their daily commutes. to take the same project to Mexico City the boundaries between journalism and Last fall Fusion embarked on a project to and recreate it in Spanish in partnership activism, and gave the project a digital life document the routine ways women are as- with Fusion. The team interviewed dozens that expanded its reach beyond the streets saulted in public. “‘All The Time. Every Day.’ of women in Mexico—students, moth- of Mexico. Surviving Sexual Harassment in Mexico ers, politicians, and a police offi cer—and Ultimately, it highlighted a problem so City” combined interactive journalism, Tatyana created a new set of portraits and ubiquitous in many cities around the world public art, and social activism into a digital posters featuring women confronting their that it’s tacitly accepted. experience on our site. harrassers in Spanish. The posters were “People have asked, ‘Was there one thing One of our goals at Fusion is to off er new plastered all over Mexico City, sparking a that happened that made you start this proj- forms of commentary. We’re exploring opin- city-wide dialogue. ect?’” says Tatyana, the artist, “and there ion formats that involve interactive graph- Fusion documented Tatyana’s process, wasn’t. It’s the sheer fact that it happens all ics, comics, spoken-word video pieces—and creating an interactive story that included the time.”

GOING DEEP nonprofi t, and our mission issues critical to the future we focus on big data; and, 2014 VISITING is to focus public attention of the world’s largest three, a “data room,” where FELLOW SAMAR on complex but important democracy, convulsed as it readers can experience the PADMAKER issues—such as health, is by epochal change. In a data we use in the “Grand HALARNKAR IS jobs, energy, agriculture, nation of 1.2 billion people Challenges” stories. BUILDING A and industry—that have and about 20 offi cially Our diverse group of DATA-DRIVEN dropped off the radar recognized main languages, writers and the ability SITE ABOUT of an economically stressed this may appear a doubtful to get published in diverse INDIA’S BIGGEST and sensationalism-prone endeavor. But the great media have placed us CHALLENGES mainstream media. force multiplier is India’s in a situation where the I have discovered that Wi-Fi subscriber base: challenge is not ideas and in a media landscape more than 900 million. stories but production starved of perspective and If we get our strategy right, resources. Right now, I and depth, if you demonstrate our small size may be a colleague edit or rewrite intent, readers and writers irrelevant to our outsized everything that goes up— over the five months will come. And so they ambitions. we release a story a day, six that I have been editor of do—freelance journalists, The “Grand Challenges” days a week. It isn’t easy. IndiaSpend, a data-driven experts, and university project is unabashedly Our writers do not always website that focuses on professors are eager to ambitious. Three new write in English, money public interest journalism, write for IndiaSpend. initiatives should help us is always an issue (but we our social media following The depth of writing increase our reach. One, have enough for the next six has increased by about talent we now attract has a launch in Hindi, the most months), and we are limited 600 percent, albeit from a allowed us to embark on widely spoken language; in our storytelling abilities low base. our most diffi cult project two, we will partner (any volunteers?). Our stories are carried yet. “Prime Time: India’s with grassroots media But, hey, this is a start- by prominent newspapers Grand Challenges” is a organizations that will help up. No one said it would

OPPOSITE: VANCE JACOBS OPPOSITE: VANCE and websites. We are a new section that explores us with reporting while be easy.

nieman reports winter 2015 7

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 7 3/25/15 2:16 PM Nieman Storyboard

you’re standing in the middle of an eerily empty two-lane road. Cookie-cutter apartment complexes surround you. Broad- leaved trees line the street. It looks like an average American suburb, but something’s not right. You look left, then right. Yellow police tape blocks off the street, and red and blue lights fl ash in the distance. You move for- ward a bit and notice the white outline of a body on the asphalt, sprawled with its left hand above its head. Glowing arrows beckon away from it. Following them, you Yend up at the passenger-side window of a police cruiser. You enter a fl ickering cylin- der. It brightens, and a comic strip appears showing an illustration of a man wearing a baseball cap, looking down the road you just walked along. This is a 3D rendering of Canfi eld Drive in Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014. Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when he died and is the man in the baseball cap featured in the illustration, is just one char- acter you meet in this virtual world, created by graphic journalist Dan Archer with the How virtual help of photographs, satellite imagery, and reality and other video game software. Archer, through a fellowship at the technologies are Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute fostering immersive and a partnership with Fusion, where “The Michael Brown Shooting Visualized: storytelling Eyewitness Accounts” was published last BY OLIVIA KOSKI December, reconstructed eight eyewitness accounts for users to explore, guided by ar- rows that lead to the locations where each person observed the event. He notes that us- ers spend on average over 10 minutes with his Ferguson piece, “practically unheard of in the ADD [attention defi cit disorder] world of online news,” he says. Those are Step promising stats at a time when media out- lets are fi ercely competing for users’ atten- tion. Immersive journalistic experiences like this one could become a way to keep into the audiences engaged while off ering reporters innovative new ways to tell stories. The goal of journalism has always been to be immersive, to bring audiences as close to unfolding events as possible. New Journalism icons like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese practiced their own form of low-tech im- Story mersive journalism by inserting themselves into their stories in imaginative ways. The qualities that lend virtual reality its “wow” factor are the same ones inherent in any well-crafted tale, fiction or non. Though

8 nieman reports winter 2015 Illustration by Alex Nabaum

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 8 3/25/15 2:16 PM nieman reports winter 2015 9

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 9 3/25/15 2:17 PM Nieman Storyboard

his digitally rendered version of Ferguson e la peña also presented Palmer Luckey raised $2.4 million through a is far from seamless—the graphics are pix- an immersive piece at this Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift vir- elated, and the mouse controls don’t always year’s Sundance Film Festival, tual reality system. He off ered development work the way you want them to—Archer D “Project Syria.” It transports kits to early adopters who wanted to make believes immersive storytelling is the best you to a lively intersection in games for it. Facebook bought the company model for presenting “complexities, ambi- Aleppo, Syria. You hear a girl sing in Arabic. for $2 billion. Though the Oculus Rift has guities and all-out contradictions inherent Suddenly, a bomb explodes. People fl ee in yet to reach the general public, anyone who in larger, longer-running stories.” Someday, every direction, and through the thick cloud wants to try it out can order a prototype. he hopes, this interactive model could of debris you see several bodies lying on the Other competitors have also launched con- give the old-fashioned feature a run for ground. A screeching fi lls your ears. When it sumer-grade devices. its money. stops, a narrator’s voice breaks in, “A third Video game technology has attracted Immersive journalism is picking up now of all Syrians have been displaced by the journalists looking to experiment with story- in part because the necessary technology war.” A child runs by as the narrator con- telling forms, including David Dufresne, who has gotten better, cheaper, and more por- tinues, “Reports indicate children have been is a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of table. The smartphone’s ability to stream specifi cally targeted in the violence.” The Technology’s (MIT) Open Documentary high-defi nition video as well as its increasing chaotic sounds crescendo and then cease as Laboratory. Dufresne is convinced journal- popularity—58% of Americans had one as of the scene fades to black. ists can deepen users’ experiences by bor- January 2014, according to Pew Research— You are then transported to a desert, rowing narrative and nonlinear techniques have further accelerated adoption. Add to with trailers and tents visible in the dis- from fi lmmakers and gamers. “The video that the more widespread use of interactive tance. Translucent white fi gures stand be- game industry has revolutionized the nar- data visualizations and advances in wearable fore you. More and more fi gures and more rative,” he says, particularly by encouraging computing and the stage may be set for a and more tents appear as the narrator con- audiences to participate in the story. more robust adoption of virtual reality. “It’s tinues, “There are now over a million refu- In “Fort McMoney,” Dufresne put the not just the media coming to you,” says Dan gee children.” For de la Peña, the virtue of fate of a real Canadian town in Alberta, Fort Pacheco, professor of journalism innova- virtual reality is that it puts “people inside McMurray, into users’ hands. Fort McMurray tion at the Newhouse School at Syracuse the story so they can experience the action sits atop a large oil sands reserve, and you University. “You move into the media.” as it unfolds. [It] allows you to experience get to decide its future in a Web-based doc- Immersive storytelling was on prom- stories in a visceral way.” umentary game. The experience opens cin- inent display at the Tribeca Film Festival Just a few years ago, head-mounted dis- ematically. Driving down a snowy highway, last spring in the form of “Use of Force” by plays that simulate 3D environments cost you pass an overturned car. A woman’s voice former Newsweek correspondent Nonny de tens or even hundreds of thousands of dol- narrates, “You have reached the end of the la Peña. When you strap on the headgear to lars. They were rarely found outside mili- road, at the world’s edge.” You’re eventually experience the piece, the fi rst thing you hear tary research labs. Then, in 2012, inventor left to explore the photorealistic setting. is crickets, then screaming. Two uniformed agents drag a man dressed in white to the The 360-degree video Dan Edge is shooting in Africa will give Frontline viewers a new perspective ground and start kicking him. A dozen oth- er offi cers stand quietly by as he screams. Other bystanders watch in horror. A man asks, “Why are you guys using excessive force?” A woman shouts, “He’s not resisting! He’s not resisting!” This incident occurred in May of 2010 at the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego. The death of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas, the man in white, was ruled a homicide by the San Diego coroner’s offi ce. Border agents maintain force was necessary be- cause Hernandez-Rojas, who had metham- phetamine in his system, was combative. It is a very disturbing few minutes to re- live. Though the computer-game feel of the graphics creates some cognitive dis- tance between you and the action, you are confronted with the stark brutality of the beating in a way that feels more intimate than the documentary footage on which the virtual rendering is based. In the immersive version, you feel powerless to stop a violent act that feels like it’s happening before your very eyes.

10 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 10 3/25/15 2:17 PM There’s a woman facing you from the At MIT, David their farm for the past century, to illustrate passenger seat of a Ford F250, door ajar. how climate change, new technologies, and When you hover the mouse over her, ev- Dufresne aims to cultural shifts are aff ecting agriculture. It erything around her blurs. When you click, combines a computer-generated world with titles appear on the screen identifying create a template 360-degree video to depict the nuances of Marquesa Shore, a waitress and car sales- farm life. In the video scenes, you feel like a woman. She arrived in Fort McMurray two for interactive voyeur, witnessing intimate moments like months ago and earns about $10,000 a a father-son outing on a tractor. month. “It’s good,” she says. “It’s good to documentaries A team at Frontline, in collaboration be a woman here.” with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism Users are then off ered two choices: Get at Columbia University and the Canadian Into Her Pickup Truck or Speak To Her company Secret Location, is taking users Later. If you choose the latter, you can ex- into the Ebola crisis. Director Dan Edge is plore other characters. If you choose the fi lming 360-degree video in West Africa for former, you take a ride in her truck as she Rift developers have tried to address the the project, which includes a standard 2D, tells you about life in Fort McMurray. A few problem of motion sickness by reducing the linear documentary as well as digital inter- minutes later, she off ers to drop you off at lag that can occur between a user’s actions action. The project will present the Guinea City Hall, where you can meet the may- and the reaction of the program. village of Meliandou, where scientists have or. Throughout the game, users refer to a Simulations that supposedly portray pinpointed what they believe is the fi rst case dashboard that tracks their progress. For real-world events also raise psychological of Ebola. In one planned scene, you can ex- Dufresne, this kind of gamifi cation can at- questions, such as: Are you “you” when you plore the inside of a towering, hollowed out tract users to stories they might otherwise enter these worlds or one of the individuals tree, home to a colony of bats that scientists ignore. “Nobody wants to read a news re- depicted? How do you distinguish your own are studying to determine if they were the port or watch a movie about environmental views from whomever’s perspective is be- source of the outbreak. issues,” he observes. “What we saw with ing displayed? And where does the journal- While “Harvest of Change,” Dan Archer’s ‘Fort McMoney’ is a lot of people who came ist exist in these spaces? Karim Ben Khelifa Ferguson piece, and the pioneering work by for the game stayed for the topic.” provocatively plays with questions like this Nonny de la Peña rely heavily on computer One of the biggest challenges in con- in “The Enemy,” an audio-video installation graphics, the Ebola project replaces 3D mod- structing a story with so many different that puts users directly between two sol- eling with 3D fi lm footage. Raney Aronson, possible outcomes is thinking non-linear- diers on opposing sides of a confl ict. deputy executive producer at Frontline, en- ly. Rather than watching a documentary Khelifa is collaborating with D. Fox visions layering multimedia data visualiza- that unfolds scene by scene, the audience Harrell, founder of MIT’s Imagination, tions into this 3D environment. “The dream explores the people and places of Fort Computation, and Expression Laboratory, would be that you could go inside the tree McMurray based on their preferences. If you to tailor the action to each individual vis- and then explore everything we know about don’t want to meet the mayor and hear her itor. “Your virtual representation shifts it”—from inside, she says. perspective on things, you can click away. If depending on how you interact with the There are many questions to address as you’re interested in the real issues behind soldiers,” Harrell explains. Are you looking the team completes the project in the com- the game, you can debate them with other the character in the eye, shifting to the side, ing months. A big one, says Taylor Owen, players. As part of his fellowship at MIT, or spending more time with one person than research director at Tow Center, is: Where Dufresne is building a tool that he hopes the other? The answers alter the narrative. do you situate the journalist? What does will make it easier for journalists to create That sort of advanced interaction creates narrative look like when cuts are no lon- interactive projects of their own, a kind of a sense of intimate presence, says Harrell. ger needed because the camera captures Microsoft Word or Final Draft for interac- You’re not just telling people a story; they’re an entire room at once? In documentary tive documentaries. “We lose a lot of time participating in the creation of it. interview scenes, for example, the subject explaining to each other what we are doing,” “There are a lot of ethical questions, but is often the only person on screen. With he says, and he hopes his software template it’s not unique to digital media or virtual re- 360-video, both interviewer and interview- will enable editorial teams to collaborate ality,” says Harrell. “Even media that seem ee are captured and the viewer can look more effi ciently. to be very direct are actually very subjec- back and forth between them, just like they There are potential downsides to im- tive.” Harrell points out that a unique ad- would in real life. mersive experiences. For starters, virtual vantage of stories with game-like qualities is Though the technology is new, the eth- reality technology can make some people that people see diff erent perspectives with ical challenges facing journalists are not. feel sick. Simulators make you think you’re each exposure to the story and can come to “Any time you’re creating a computational moving when you’re not, and some experi- their own conclusions. world or self, you’re abstracting from the ence motion sickness. “You don’t always get As virtual reality enters newsrooms, real world, taking some elements from the a good match between what the sensors in journalists will need to develop standards real world, leaving some out,” says MIT’s the system are reporting compared to what for working in the new form. One of the fi rst Harrell. “There are changes.” The impera- the inner ear is experiencing,” says Douglas to test them is The Des Moines Register with tive of remaining true to the reported facts Maxwell, a project manager for the U.S. an immersive experience called “Harvest of is the same, regardless of whether the sto- Army who has been studying virtual envi- Change.” It brings readers into the simulat- ry is intended for the evening paper or the

COURTESY OF FRONTLINE COURTESY ronments since the late 1990s. The Oculus ed world of the Dammanns, who have run Oculus Rift. 

nieman reports winter 2015 11

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 11 3/25/15 2:17 PM nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 12 BALKANS THE IN BLOWING WHISTLE- 12 ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES RADOMIROVIC BY VLADIMIR Yugoslavia former countries of the the in to survive struggle outlets Independent news

nieman reports

winter 2015 3/25/15 2:18 PM A protester in Macedonia calls for the release of Tomislav Kežarovski, the jailed investigative reporter depicted on the mask

nieman reports winter 2015 13

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 13 3/31/15 12:57 PM n august 2012, jelena krstović outlet, a small bi-weekly magazine called was one of the most influential Svedok (“The Witness”), reprinted the sto- people in Serbia. At just 30, she ry. Everyone else remained silent. Djilas, in was a vice president of the coun- addition to being mayor of Belgrade, was try’s biggest privately owned com- also co-owner of Serbia’s biggest advertising pany, Delta Holding. Miroslav and media buying agency. Mišković, the sole owner of Delta, Three months later, in November 2012, is one of the wealthiest people in the tabloid Kurir (“Courier”) published a Central and Eastern Europe, hav- front-page story featuring the tweet. The Iing made his fortune in retail, in- story appeared a month before Mišković was surance, and food production. In arrested on unrelated charges of corruption. 2007, Forbes magazine estimated Mišković’s At the time, the government was trying to net worth at $1 billion. replace Djilas as mayor. (He was forced out On August 29, 2012, Krstović tweeted a year later.) Mišković admitted he had a an Instagram photo of herself on a private stake in Press, and the newspaper folded a jet, a Louis Vuitton notebook on her knees. few days after this announcement. Djilas has “Working in the air” was her caption for the never publicly commented on his relation- photo. The picture itself would not have ship to Press. Jelena Krstović has not repre- been interesting—just another of Serbia’s sented the company in public for the past nouveau riche bragging about their wealth— two and a half years and has largely avoided had it not been for the notes. A closer ex- Twitter. Her LinkedIn profi le states she is amination of the scribbling revealed that no longer vice president of Delta Holding. Press, a pro-government tabloid that was Opaque funding, hidden ownership, one of the biggest dailies in Belgrade, was murky ties among politicians, big business, co-owned by Mišković and that the other and journalists—these problems are all too owner was the mayor of Belgrade, Dragan common in the countries that once made Djilas. Before the unintended publication up Yugoslavia. Fourteen years after the last of this information in the tweet, the pub- of the Balkan wars ended, the region has lic had been in the dark as to who owned made limited economic and political prog- Press. The owners had been hidden behind ress compared to other countries in Eastern off shore companies in Cyprus and a couple Europe. Slovenia and Croatia have joined of lawyers in Serbia. the European Union, while the rest (Bosnia IN CROATIA AND Pištaljka (“The Whistle”), an investiga- and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, tive journalism website I co-founded, pub- Serbia, and Kosovo, a province that seceded BOSNIA, INDEPENDENT lished a story about the tweet hours after it from Serbia in 2008 and is recognized by a had been posted. What followed is typical of slim majority of U.N. members but not by the Serbian media scene, and of the Balkans Serbia) are at diff erent stages of negotia- NEWS PORTALS in general. Krstović deleted the tweet half tions to enter the bloc. an hour after our story ran, later claiming Despite the proclaimed goal of pan-Eu- ARE AMONG THE MOST that the tweet had been “manipulated and ropean integration and the fact that most

photoshopped.” Only one other media people speak variants of the same language, VISITED SITES ČOLIĆ/KAMERADES SAŠA

14 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 14 3/25/15 2:18 PM Balkan countries remain economically and support the government. Instead of investi- censorship, self-censorship, and the gradu- politically fragmented. Unemployment is gating the prime minister and MPs on possi- al disappearance of investigative reporting high in nearly all the Balkan nations, with ble corruption charges, police searched the from the mainstream media. According to Macedonia’s rate at 29%, according to the offi ces of Klix and left with reporters’ cell a recent report called “Soft Censorship: International Labour Organization. In such phones, hard drives, CDs, and fl ash drives. Strangling Serbia’s Media” by the World circumstances, it is diffi cult to sustain inde- Prosecutors said the police were ordered to Association of Newspapers (WAN-IFRA), pendent media outlets and easy for political fi nd out who was “eavesdropping” on the “there are no consolidated data about state or business forces to suppress critical cov- prime minister. The police search of Klix’s funds participating in the media market. erage. An annual report conducted by the offi ces led to a series of protests by journal- Unoffi cial estimations of media organiza- Journalists’ Association of Serbia (UNS) ists in Bosnia, uniting reporters across eth- tions vary from 15% to even 40%.” recently found that 40% of journalists sur- nic lines. “It is only by solidarity that we can The economic crisis “sucked the air veyed occasionally face censorship, a drop prevent further erosion of media freedom,” out of the debates on press freedom,” says from 46% in 2012, but that as many as 48% says Siniša Vukelić, a Serb journalist. Ljiljana Smajlović, president of the UNS believe other journalists self-censor their In a market as fragmented as that of the and editor in chief of Politika, a conserva- articles. There are, however, signs of hope former Yugoslavia, however, it is almost im- tive daily, considered Serbia’s newspaper of as investigative reporting moves online. In possible to sustain an independent media record. “Economic survival has become the Croatia and Bosnia, news portals not linked company. Whereas in the past a newspa- motto. Everyone fears layoff s. Journalists to big business or politicians are even among per could easily have a circulation of sev- have been pauperized over the years. Few the most visited sites, ranking only behind eral hundred thousand copies, best-selling feel secure in their jobs, while the odds of giants like Facebook, Google, and YouTube. dailies in Serbia and Croatia sell just over fi nding another journalism job, should they In November 2014, the Sarajevo-based 100,000 copies now. lose the present one, are very small.” In the Klix, the most visited news site in Bosnia, And there is always the issue of revenue. past six years, a ‘pay to play’ model has de- published an audio recording of Željka In Serbia, the total advertising market fell veloped in the region, whereby media out- Cvijanović, prime minister of Republika from a peak of $260 million in 2008 to about lets receive government grants, ads from Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia and $200 million in 2013. This led to virtually government-controlled agencies, and direct Herzegovina, discussing “buying” two op- all media looking for funding from govern- funding in return for positive coverage and/ position members of Parliament (MPs) to ments, which, in turn, opened the door to or lack of critical reporting.

Serbian businessman Miroslav Mišković secretly held a stake in Press, one of the biggest dailies in Belgrade, before it folded amidst scandal

nieman reports winter 2015 15

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 15 3/25/15 3:08 PM Take the daily Nezavisne Novine parts, rely heavily on funding from Western report on,” says Igor Gajić, former editor (“Independent Newspaper”). Željko governments and charities, public funds in chief and general manager of Reporter Kopanja started the paper in Banja Luka, not under political control, and donations weekly, which folded three years ago. Gajić capital of the Serb part of Bosnia, after the from readers. Cenzura Plus, run almost ex- now works as an advisor in the Republika Bosnian war ended in 1995 with money from clusively by women, produces a weekly TV Srpska government. He says he is disillu- the U.S. and other Western governments. program shown on several local stations and sioned after getting Reporter through 15 In 1999, after publishing a series of stories engages in civic activism. H-alter, a left-wing turbulent years: “I and my colleagues tried on war crimes by Serbs in Bosnia, he had portal, publishes comments and investiga- hard to raise the level of professionalism both his legs blown off in an assassination tions critical of the pervasive role of the and dignity of journalism in Bosnia, but we attempt. He returned to work soon after, Catholic Church and nationalism in Croatia. failed. The more we insisted on being true turning Nezavisne into the biggest media In neighboring Slovenia, the wealthi- to journalism, the weirder we looked to company in Republika Srpska. But lack of est of the former Yugoslav republics, the just about everyone else. No one writes for advertising revenue led Kopanja to turn to government has “indirect, but noticeable” readers or viewers anymore, but exclusively the Bosnian Serb government for assistance. infl uence on the media, according to vet- for fi nanciers.” According to data published by the eran reporter Igor Mekina. “The three big Predrag Radonjić, deputy editor in chief Bosnian Center for Investigative Reporting dailies—Večer, Delo and Dnevnik—all owe of Serbian-language nonprofi t KIM Radio in (CIN), Nezavisne Novine received more money to banks controlled by the govern- Kosovo disagrees. “We are mostly fi nanced than $400,000 from the Bosnian Serb gov- ment. There are independent outlets, like by international organizations, and this ernment in 2011 for four projects, which the left-wing Mladina (“Youth”) and the is the backbone of our freedom,” he says. included distribution of the daily in Serbia, right-wing Reporter weeklies, but their in- KIM Radio has not only managed to oper- opening an offi ce in Washington, and con- fl uence is limited,” says Mekina, who was ate for 15 years in a small Serbian enclave ducting two polls, one on the public per- foreign editor of Dnevnik until 2008. near Priština, the capital of Kosovo, which ception of the government and the other on “Only those media close to govern- is largely Albanian, but has grown to be a re- starting a business in the Republika Srpska. ments, tycoons or criminals can survive,” spected source of information not only for Nezavisne Novine has not investigated says Senad Pećanin, founder and former local Serbs, but also for Albanian journalists. the growing business empire of Republika editor-in-chief of Dani (“Days”), an inde- Srpska President Milorad Dodik, though it pendent weekly based in Sarajevo, Bosnia. has carried out other investigations, includ- “Journalism in the countries of the former n neighboring macedonia, which ing one on some 5,000 cell phone numbers Yugoslavia survived decades of communist also is split along ethnic lines, Almakos, that had been illegally tapped by the Bosnian dictatorship, years of wars in the 1990s, but a small Albanian-language website, has security and intelligence services. not this market totalitarianism.” Pećanin also become a credible source of infor- Foreign publishers also carry out gov- had to sell Dani in 2010 due to lack of funds. mation. Covering news from Albania, ernment-funded projects. Ringier Axel He is now a practicing lawyer. I Macedonia, and Kosovo, the site draws Springer, a joint venture between the Swiss Some journalists have found other ways readers from both from the region and publisher Ringier and the German pow- to make money, serving as advisors to pol- the diaspora. According to Web analytics erhouse Axel Springer, publishes the Blic iticians, spokespersons for government company Alexa, about a third of visitors (“Flash”) and Alo (“Hello”) tabloids and agencies, or editors of official websites. to Almakos come from Switzerland, which the 24 Sata (“24 Hours”) free newspaper Sometimes they continue reporting, despite has a sizeable population of Albanian immi- in Belgrade. The company received more the confl ict of interest. For example, Danijel grants. This helps the site attract ads uncon- than $600,000 in 2010 and 2011 from the Apostolović, from 2007 to 2012 was a jour- nected to local tycoons or the government. Serbian government to perform environ- nalist at the Serbian public service TV, RTS, Almakos is part of a new generation mental research. State auditors could not and the media advisor to Mirko Cvetković, of Balkan media, developing business find evidence of any research performed who has served as prime minister and fi - models that make them independent of by Ringier Axel Springer, while Blic daily nance minister. He has since left journalism. governments and big business and estab- published a number of articles presenting “It has become normal that a politi- lishing credibility across ethnic divisions. Environment Minister Oliver Dulić in a fa- cian or a tycoon tells a journalist what to Still, old animosities remain. Most eth- vorable light. Blic did not report that Dulić nic Macedonian journalists “fi ght for the was selling computer equipment to as many Macedonian cause,” says Almakos general as 70 agencies controlled by the government manager Semi Mehmeti, and most ethnic and had authorized payments of $33,000 for Albanian journalists “fi ght for the Albanian developing a simple website and $670,000 JOURNALISTS cause.” This was on display in the spring of for advertisements during the Serbian Open 2012 during ethnic riots in the country, when tennis tournament in 2009 and 2010. These ACROSS NATIONS ARE most Albanian-language media blamed stories about Dulić were published online by Macedonians and most Macedonian- nonprofi t organizations, including Pištaljka. language media blamed Albanians. The The online migration of investigative re- OVERCOMING THEIR coverage prompted the Association of porting is not limited to Serbia. In Croatia, Journalists of Macedonia, an inter-ethnic or- sites like H-alter and the ironically named DIFFERENCES TO FIGHT ganization, to appeal to fellow reporters to Cenzura Plus (“Censorship Plus”) are run as stop producing articles that “contribute to

nonprofi ts and, like their Serbian counter- FOR PRESS FREEDOM fueling passions and inter-ethnic tensions.” ČOLIĆ/KAMERADES SAŠA

16 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 16 3/25/15 2:19 PM A 2012 protest in Belgrade organized by 99% and Occupy Serbia targets corruption. The mayor at the time co-owned the nation’s largest ad agency

Macedonia’s ranking in the annual Press to the few remaining investigative reporters nalists have gone on to found the online out- Freedom Index that Reporters Without in Macedonia.” lets that are keeping investigative reporting Borders compiles has dropped precipitously, There are a few legacy titles managing alive in the Balkans. from 34 in 2009 to 117 in 2015. In explaining to survive after years of turmoil, including In Serbia, my publication, Pištaljka, as the drop, the organization cited the ongoing the progressive Koha Ditore (“Daily Times”) well as Južne Vesti (“Southern News”) and case against investigative reporter Tomislav in Kosovo, which began publishing in 1997 the Center for Investigative Reporting have Kežarovski. In October 2013, Kežarovski was as the fi rst independent Albanian-language welcomed journalists who used to work for sentenced to four and a half years in prison daily in the former Yugoslav countries. mainstream outlets. In Slovenia, a group of (reduced to two years on appeal in January A 2010 study by the Organization for Security young journalists launched the nonprof- 2015) for publishing in 2008 the name of a and Co-operation in Europe showed, how- it Pod črto (“Bottom Line”) to investigate protected witness in a murder investigation. ever, that most government-controlled graft and corruption; its business mod- Kežarovski had quoted a leaked police re- advertising goes to other dailies, usually el is based on donations from readers. In port that included the name of the witness, connected to ruling parties. Koha’s editor in Croatia, Vjetrenjača (“The Windmill”) uses who was not then under protection and later chief Agron Bajrami says that journalism in a similar business model to fund data jour- said that he gave a false confession under Kosovo is “under siege” and he’s pessimistic nalism on topics like public procurement police pressure. about the future. “The economic situation and government spending. The month before his arrest, Kežarovski in Kosovo is pathetic, and the pressure from Pištaljka, launched in 2010, relies on had published an article raising questions the government is growing by the day,” he tips from the public. On average, we re- about the police investigation into a car says. “I am not certain we will be able to ceive about 100 tips per month, about 10% crash that killed Nikola Mladenov, owner of withstand much longer.” of which are extremely well documented. the independent weekly Fokus (“Focus”). Fear of losing their jobs is an important Once we investigate the tips and publish Mladenov’s newspaper was one of the last reason journalists in mainstream media stay stories, the mainstream media tends to print outlets critical of the Macedonian away from sensitive subjects. (I and a group reprint them, which brings the issues to a government, according to the Committee of my colleagues were fi red from Politika wider public—and, in many cases, there are to Protect Journalists. Tamara Chausidis, in 2009, after we published articles critical consequences for politicians. Our experi- president of the Union of Macedonian of Serbia’s foreign policy and the pervasive ence so far proves that there is a motivated Journalists, argues that the crash article graft in the government.) But having lost audience interested in investigative report- was the real reason for Kežarovski’s sen- their jobs—or being unable to secure jobs ing. It is this audience that Balkan journal- tence, which she called a “chilling message at legacy titles in the fi rst place—many jour- ists must continue to engage and develop. 

nieman reports winter 2015 17

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 17 3/25/15 2:19 PM HOW MAKE J

In this excerpt from her forthcoming e-book, Amy Webb outlines a new blueprint for the future of journalism education BY AMY WEBB

18 nieman reports winter 2015 MAT nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 18 3/25/15 2:19 PM TO SCHOOL TER(AGAIN) nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 19 3/25/15 2:19 PM n the fall of 2000, i sat in I am deeply concerned about the fu- magazine, broadcast, and PR to entrepre- the large seminar room at the ture of journalism education in America. neurial journalism and data journalism. Columbia University Graduate Journalism isn’t a licensed profession in the If we can all agree that journalism educa- School of Journalism listening to United States, and so anyone—journalism tion is still necessary, that its purpose serves a lecture about whether journal- degree or not—can call herself a reporter. It the future of our society, then I believe we ists should be allowed to use dig- can be argued that universities exist solely must fi gure out a way to make the degree ital cameras. It was meant to be a for scholarship and to teach, and that they matter more. diffi cult, complicated discussion do not play a role in the day-to-day practice As part of my Nieman Visiting Fellowship about ethics. The problem was, of modern news media. I disagree with both at Harvard, I spent the past several months I I’d just moved to New York City assertions. Universities must propel the developing a new blueprint for journalism from Tokyo, and in my pocket was profession forward and become the connec- education. To do this, I solicited respondents one of the fi rst mass-market camera phones. tive tissue between what’s come before and through the Online News Association’s edu- To me, it seemed more useful to talk about what’s still to come. Journalism’s problems cators network, via infl uential thought lead- the ethics of accepting photos from readers, are journalism education’s problems, too. ers in journalism and academia, and through since we’d all be using similar phones within There have been many efforts to re- various social media channels. I surveyed fi ve years. think journalism education, including at faculty and administrative staff working in I raised that point as I held out my my alma mater. Stephens College president academia and professionals working in all phone and took a photo of the whole class. Dianne Lynch, Baruch College media law areas of journalism (publishers, editors, The technology had not yet made its way professor Geanne Rosenberg, the American reporters, broadcasters, designers, prod- into the U.S., but I argued that within just Press Institute, and, of course, the ongoing uct managers, and developers as well as a few years, my classmates would see a dra- Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of people in sales and fi nance). I conducted matic change in their mostly analog mobile Journalism Education are all working on in-depth interviews with academic leaders phones. Consumers would be able to take various aspects of this issue. Indeed, all of (deans, department chairs), journalism fac- photos, e-mail them to friends on the spot these worthwhile endeavors have crystal- ulty, and professionals working in various or even post them to the Internet, without lized the need for reform. Now, we must roles within media, technology, journalism, ever having to use a PC. advance the foundation they created and and fi nance. But I was immediately, and somewhat radically evolve journalism education for a Together with a research assistant, I an- embarrassingly, dismissed. “Why on earth digital environment that is in constant fl ux, alyzed the degree and major requirements, would anyone print a low-quality photo where the means of transmission are being courses off ered, and faculty community at in the newspaper or show it on TV? That built and are controlled outside the core 31 universities, which are representative of won’t happen,” my professor snapped back, profession and where anyone can produce the various programs throughout America. returning the conversation to the ethics of content that looks like—but isn’t necessari- I also read all of the available research on the digital cameras. ly—vetted, reported news. future of journalism education, including Of course, the rest isn’t history; it’s the Some schools welcome the disruptive works from the Carnegie-Knight Initiative present. In classrooms across the country, change. They’re off ering classes in virtu- on the Future of Journalism Education. students are being taught about a media al reality and wearable technology. Some Finally, I worked with researchers, admin- ecosystem that’s already been eclipsed by are betting on code, mandating courses in istrators, and professors at the Harvard new platforms, devices, and business mod- data science, even if syllabi don’t integrate Graduate School of Education to learn more els. Some of them might be wondering, as well within the rest of the curriculum. Still about leadership and management within I did, whether they’ve made a mistake in at- others are slowly transitioning away from universities, educational models that must tending journalism school at all. traditional concentrations like newspaper, serve a changing profession, and change

20 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 20 4/2/15 10:48 AM management within a rigid environment Overcoming Hidden Challenges to mention a lengthy accreditation process. like academia. A century-long strain exists between jour- “Over the decades, some professors have Though I am not an academic, I have nalism schools and other departments with- speculated about going independent of the served as an adjunct professor at Temple in universities. In their paper, “Educating university, especially when things looked University, University of the Arts, University Journalists: A New Plea for the University fiscally bleak a quarter-century ago, but of Tokyo, and the University of Maryland, Tradition,” former journalism school that would have been a terrible mistake,” teaching emerging technologies and da- deans Nicholas Lemann of Columbia, says Sree Sreenivasan, former dean of stu- ta-driven reporting. I’ve consulted for a John Maxwell Hamilton of Louisiana dent affairs at the Columbia University number of universities, including Colorado State University, and Jean Folkerts of the Graduate School of Journalism. Integrating State University, Columbia University, and University of North Carolina off er a metic- more closely with the rest of the university, the University of California-Berkeley. And ulously-researched, detailed history of three he adds, aff ords opportunities to experi- I serve on the advisory board for Temple strands of journalism education: as a social ment, to work with other departments on University’s Department of Journalism. science (University of Wisconsin), as a lab- research, and to help lead—rather than I began my research with a set of as- oratory approach (University of Missouri), follow—the industry. For journalism ed- sumptions about what the future of journal- and as a liberal arts hybrid (Columbia ucation to thrive, it will require funding, ism education should look like. Like most University). Outside of journalism edu- cross-disciplinary collaboration, and re- non-academics I interviewed, I thought cation, this debate continues, with some search partnerships. that eliminating tenure and reforming cur- dismissing journalism education as a pro- My research suggests that journalism riculum was the only path forward. Midway fessional endeavor serving no real purpose faculty and administration do not have through my work at Harvard, I realized that inside a serious research institution. enough clout within the university com- catalyzing real change requires a cultural Journalism programs are an academ- munity. Deans and administrators set the revolution. I now believe that the entire mis- ic unit within a broad university commu- vision and the overall strategy for their de- sion of journalism education must be recast nity, even if they offer some skills-based partments, but external faculty governance for the knowledge economy, which implies coursework that services the profession. committees determine tenure require- recalibrating approaches to leadership, ten- “Sometimes we don’t do a good enough job ments and promotions and set the rewards ure, and accreditation. What follows is my explaining what we have to off er and how structure for others within the university. analysis of the hidden challenges in journal- that contributes to the university’s research High-ranking faculty and university admin- ism education—and a blueprint for how to and scholarly mission,” says Maryanne istration are not always clear as to what val- overcome them. Because there are so many Reed, dean of the Reed College of Media at ue journalism programs add to the broader variables—some schools of mass commu- West Virginia University. community. “Journalism faculty don’t real- nication include PR, advertising, and cor- Journalism programs must make a deci- ly act like other faculty,” says Matt Waite, porate communications, while others only sion: to split from the university or to fully professor of practice at the University of offer journalism degrees—I am focusing assimilate. Forming an independent school Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism exclusively on undergraduate schools that requires signifi cant funding, hiring lots of and Mass Communications and founder of would currently meet accreditation stan- faculty and administrative staff , and vast in- the school’s Drone Journalism Lab. “Many dards and off er journalism majors. vestments in branding and marketing, not of us are former journalists. We didn’t come up in academia. We tend to seek leadership positions in our profession, not within the university.” Journalism faculty must ascend the ac- ademic ranks. The executive management within universities tends to come from other disciplines. There are rare excep- tions: Vincent Price, a communications “THREE scholar, is the provost at the University of Pennsylvania; Susan Herbst has a PhD in communication theory and is now the pres- ident of the University of Connecticut. As is traditional within academic departments, RETIREMENTS AND department chairs of journalism programs tend to rotate every one to three years, and the position carries little responsibility. Worse, faculty members often reject the additional layer of leadership and instead AN ACT OF GOD” task the department chair with tedious ad- ministrative issues. When asked about the most critical skills necessary for academics WHAT ONE SURVEY RESPONDENT SAID IT WOULD working in journalism departments today, not a single respondent mentioned anything TAKE TO REIMAGINE THEIR J-SCHOOL CURRICULUM about leadership training, organizational

nieman reports winter 2015 21

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 21 3/31/15 11:08 AM management, or administrative strategy. By terests to create partnerships where univer- quired to be viewed as an equal among es- and large, departments do not mentor fac- sities research and prototype the future of tablished academics. ulty to become university leaders. Louisiana news from a more practical standpoint. Departments and schools must redou- State University created a weeklong leader- ble their eff orts to identify capable, charis- ship academy to help new chairs, deans, and matic leaders, to cultivate them, to provide directors from journalism schools across eantime, in other fields, them mentoring, and to enable them to the country build their leadership skills. critical research and develop- rise through the administrative ranks of But that one week of training can’t possibly ment is conducted in partner- academia. Because faculty are rarely pro- catalyze organizational change without in- ship among universities and moted to deans from within their own de- tensive buy-in and support from faculty and external partners: Stanford partments, the entire journalism and mass administration once the fall semester starts. M School of Engineering’s cor- communications academic community While research fields like science and porate partners include Intel, must agree to work collectively to support engineering can count on outside funding, Google, Boeing, Bosch, HP, and more. The this change. If all schools accept this bur- most journalism programs are funded al- MIT Media Lab counts Hearst, DirecTV, den, it will pay signifi cant dividends for all most entirely out of their university’s gen- Comcast, Pearson, Twitter, and Google programs well into the future. eral funds. Sally Renaud, interim chair of among its corporate lab members. Aside The current system prevents curricu- the journalism program at Eastern Illinois from a very few cases (for example, the Tow lum development from keeping pace with University, notes that “schools are struggling Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia), the changing realities of modern journal- to fi nance the equipment [and] technology” these partnerships and programs do not ex- ism. A curriculum redesign might require required to teach classes. “Journalism has to ist at other journalism schools. As it stands, the approval of several key stakeholders: learn to defend itself better and to educate the future of news is being built by those department faculty and leadership, faculty the public about its role [within a universi- working at the epicenter of technology. governance committees, a university’s cen- ty]. We don’t do this very well.” The lack of political standing within a tral administration, accreditation commit- Unlike partnerships between large com- university community has a direct impact tees, or, for some public schools, even state panies and academic departments, which on the resources allocated to that depart- boards of education. While this environ- put universities at the forefront of research ment or school. As a result, journalism pro- ment is intended to safeguard a high quality and development, partnerships between grams often struggle for funding relative education, it can cripple fi elds that are in the journalism programs and the broader jour- to other liberal arts programs. “It’s hard to midst of great change. When asked: “If you nalism community have been largely trans- continually get funding from our universi- were to reimagine your entire curriculum actional: Students research a project as a ty to update computers, video recorders, now, what steps would be necessary?” one class or provide content as interns. And for cameras, and software and to get access to survey respondent wrote, “Three retire- the most part, that primarily benefi ts the data sets,” wrote one associate dean of a ments and an act of God.” schools. “We were asked to host interns,” mid-sized journalism program who wished Many survey participants reported that says Zach Seward, senior editor of Quartz, to remain anonymous. “University admin- their departments only self-audit curric- echoing a common sentiment among those istration doesn’t understand the changing ulum once every three years, and that’s interviewed: “This created more work for us nature of storytelling tools. I have to keep mainly to ensure that courses off ered are than anything else. It wasn’t a true partner- reminding them that we’re not the English still relevant. At several schools, there is no ship in any sense, where we were creating department.” ongoing, holistic approach to curriculum de- value together.” News organizations, which Journalism programs believe that ap- velopment. Survey participants cited admin- are already strapped for cash, do not have pointing non-academics to leadership istrators and faculty who “don’t understand a rubric for corporate involvement within positions will stimulate interest from foun- the value of digital journalism,” “meetings journalism schools. dations and corporations and will attract upon meetings” in which “one person can There are very few exceptions: for exam- larger numbers of student applicants. In the completely derail everything,” before a plan ple, Syracuse University and Gannett are January 2007 issue of the Harvard Business is formed. Therefore, meaningful change is working on a virtual reality news environ- Review, John P. Kotter, professor emeritus diffi cult to muster. “Many of our electives ment using the Oculus Rift. While I applaud of leadership at Harvard Business School, could have been taught 10 or 15 years ago,” this eff ort, it would further everyone’s in- argued that “major renewal programs often wrote one assistant professor at a large uni- start with just one or two people. In cases of versity in the South. successful transformation eff orts, the lead- Some schools have reframed their cur- ership coalition grows and grows over time. riculum so that concentrations are not tied But whenever some minimum mass is not to any publishing medium or technology. achieved early in the eff ort, nothing much Course descriptions are written so that they CURRICULUM worthwhile happens.” In order to build that can be updated continuously. One strategic coalition, the leader must be respected and approach is to decouple educational compo- trusted among her peers. In fact, I am one nents from publishing mediums. “It strikes DEVELOPMENT DOESN’T of those outsiders—I’ve been approached me that much of journalism education is about four dean’s positions in the past 18 still very rooted in print design mentality,” KEEP PACE WITH months. I may be an expert on the future says Justin Ferrell, fellowships director at of media and technology, but I lack all the the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at CHANGING REALITIES academic credentials and qualifi cations re- Stanford University and the former digital

22 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 22 3/25/15 2:20 PM by the Accrediting Council on Education IN THE SURVEY, FEWER THAN in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). Because accreditation is stan- dard peer-review practice within a uni- versity, journalism departments need accreditation in order to be recognized as 25% equals. In addition, many parents highly val- ue accreditation when helping their children OF THOSE WORKING IN MEDIA SAID THAT A make decisions about college. However, by its current design, accred- itation can unintentionally encourage the status quo. Including preparation time, the accreditation process can take three to sev- JOURNALISM DEGREE en years. Most often, administrations must get new courses passed through faculty gov- ernance, which takes additional time. And, once a school begins that process, it is using accreditation standards that will have been IS NECESSARY set a minimum of one year earlier. To its credit, the ACEJMC now includes FOR THE PROFESSION among its criteria “instruction, whether on- site or online, is demanding and current [ACEJMC’s emphasis], and is responsive to professional expectations of digital, techno- logical and multimedia competencies.” The ACEJMC is already working to emphasize design director at The Washington Post. Building a coalition across campus to applied research that informs the practice as “That’s designing for a certain type of narra- include journalism courses in general ed- a criteria for tenure and accreditation. tive. Web design is not about narratives. It’s ucation requirements will solve a problem Currently, there is no incentive or reward about behavior. This requires a much more for other schools and will ultimately com- for iteration or to signifi cantly modernize holistic approach to curriculum.” municate the value of journalism education journalism programs within a reasonable Another approach to overcoming cur- throughout the university. Yet, undergrad- timeframe. By the late 2000s, it had taken riculum stagnation: put advisory boards to uate journalism students must take nearly so long for many journalism programs to in- better use. Many schools maintain advisory all of their general studies courses (eco- corporate interactivity into their curricula boards, but they often convene only twice a nomics, statistics) in other departments. that students were graduating with skills in year and have little responsibility in curric- Remarkably, English composition is still a Flash, a software product that was already ulum development. Instead, schools should requirement for nearly all journalism ma- being retired in newsrooms. Although it is create advisory boards with a combination jors, and those credit hours must typically working to update the criteria for accred- of industry change-makers and open-mind- be taken in the English department. Courses itation so that they more closely reflect ed faculty in order to meet a nexus of in- in the journalism school rarely count toward the changing needs of the profession, the novation and institutional support. Board requirements for non-majors. ACEJMC hasn’t yet fully recalibrated its members should be tasked with reviewing For example, the syllabus for a data-driv- model to propel the future of journalism syllabi, off ering feedback on courses, and en reporting class off ered at the University education forward. performing an annual curriculum audit. of Texas-Austin includes subjects like data One concern is accreditation council The courses off ered within journalism analysis; identifying data needed to test hy- and committee membership. From an out- programs are not marketed aggressively potheses; how to gain access to needed data sider’s perspective, and certainly mine when enough to others around the university. sets; how to clean, analyze, and compare I fi rst started my research, the council may “What’s taught in a journalism program data; and how to synthesize the information seem oddly staff ed. Any organization with should translate into all domains,” says Lee into an impactful story. What’s taught in an interest in journalism or mass commu- Rainie, director of Internet, science, and this class is unique to journalism but could nications can apply for membership on the technology research at the Pew Research be applicable to students elsewhere at the council, which is why some groups such as Center and a former U.S. News & World university, including those studying at the the American Press Institute, the Public Report managing editor. “Any organization College of Pharmacy, the McCombs School Relations Society of America, and the is now its own broadcaster, its own media of Business, and the Lyndon B. Johnson National Association of Hispanic Journalists enterprise. A central business function is School of Public Aff airs. have representatives on the council. The being able to fi nd information and explain it Accreditation in journalism education ACEJMC was designed to serve the profes- in a way that’s compelling and makes sense is a paradox, simultaneously making pro- sion fi rst and parents second—not the uni- to others. The right kind of journalism grams stronger and stifling momentum. versity system—making sure that schools degree should be highly desirable by any There are currently 114 journalism and mass produced the kinds of students news orga- organization.” communication programs fully accredited nizations wanted to hire. From a practical

nieman reports winter 2015 23

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 23 3/31/15 11:08 AM standpoint, the ACEJMC is serving its in- ized to continue learning, collaborating, and A New Blueprint tended purpose. experimenting, which they can do on cam- Previously, a journalism degree had been But the members holding those seats— pus, at conferences, or via MOOCs off ered viewed as an asset to new journalists en- those charged with determining what’s by companies like Coursera. Departments tering the workforce. That is no longer the “current”—are not themselves working in must carve out enough time and budget case. In my survey, fewer than 25% of those the forefront of professional practice or in each year to pay for training and continuing working in media said that a journalism de- emerging pedagogical research. Currently education. Likewise, a condition of ongoing gree is necessary for the profession. Instead, the Accrediting Council meets only twice a membership within a department must in- degrees in computer science or data science year—once to discuss policies and require- clude ongoing learning and collaboration. are in demand. Executives and hiring manag- ments and once to discuss accrediting de- There are numerous options, from au- ers interviewed at a number of newspapers, cisions. Accrediting Committee members, diting courses around a university to par- magazines, and websites indicated that a who are voted on by the Council, meet once ticipating in hands-on training sessions or journalism degree does not impact their de- a year to review reports from observations simply enrolling in a Coursera class. Last cisions about hiring new employees. If we by accreditation site visit teams. Council summer, I created a Summer School for agree that in order to thrive, journalism pro- and Committee members serving current Journalism Professors syllabus and released grams must become more visible and pow- terms have strong leadership and academic it online. It was a simple, self-directed eight- erful within their universities, then we must experience, but none are working on future week course intended to help tenured facul- also agree that the programs themselves of news projects or within the digital media ty better understand the evolving nature of must be recast with three key components: space. In many ways, the ACEJMC’s chal- media and technology, a low-touch, high-im- a foundation of exceptional liberal arts schol- lenges mirror the professional-academic pact way to catalyze ongoing learning. arship; robust, forward-thinking specialized divide of the communications departments Overcoming these complex challenges concentrations in journalism; and a compul- they serve. requires a dramatic, internal shift within de- sory experiential learning component. It is vital to recalibrate membership partments, but that shift is necessary for the model so that those determining accredi- future of journalism education to thrive. In Rigorous liberal arts coursework tation standards also include professionals “Immunity to Change,” a book about orga- Among all groups surveyed and interviewed, with a deep understanding of the future of nizational change leadership, Robert Kegan, courses centering on critical thinking, academia, the future of journalism, and the professor of professional development at emerging social structures, and writing were future of the workforce. the Harvard Graduate School of Education reported as top priorities. Required gener- (HGSE), and co-author Lisa Laskow Lahey, al studies courses for a journalism major also of HGSE, write: “The memories of most should include a semester each of macro he number of tenured and higher education institutions are littered and microeconomics as well as a proba- non-tenured j-school faculty causes with failed eff orts and broken dreams on bility and statistics course taught within additional tension and cultural di- the school-wide reform front, as one ideal- the journalism department. Rather than vision within departments. Because istic aspiration after another runs into the the general math requirement, which only journalism departments struggle for reality that it is far easier for small factions requires three credits of any math course, T funding, they must rely on a very to impede a process of change than for a the degree should require empirical and large number of adjuncts to teach larger, like-minded group to bring it about.” mathematical reasoning, so that students classes. There is widespread agreement that However, in the case of journalism schools, learn how to apply abstract principles and adjuncts are seen as a connection to the pro- Kegan told me that change is indeed pos- theories to diffi cult problems. They should fessional world, relieving tenured faculty of sible: “To unlock the potential for change, be exposed to coursework that mandates the need to stay current with the changing deans must create a revolution, a sense of challenging writing while broadening their media landscape. While adjuncts may have a urgency and motivate their departments worldviews: three credits each of compara- fi rmer grasp on what’s happening in modern towards the horizon.” tive religions/cultures, cultural anthropolo- journalism, they lack pedagogical training. That revolution must begin within de- gy, and comparative literature. In addition, Worse, they may have come to the profes- partments, but it cannot be fully realized the degree should require three credits each sion without any formal training in ethics, without a new blueprint for the practice of of American politics or public policy. law, and history. journalism education. The Internet is redefi ning international Many in the profession blame tenure as boundaries and opening up new commu- a primary source of journalism education’s nication channels to anyone with a con- problems. Tenured faculty who have spent nection. Coursework to help students gain their whole lives in academia and have never perspective on other nations is essential. worked in a newsroom are often chided for A three-credit course on international poli- their lack of professional experience. What TENURE ITSELF IS NOT tics or public policy should replace the for- we forget is that those faculty have a wealth eign language requirement at many schools. of institutional knowledge about how uni- Because of the rigorous demands of college versities work. Just as adjuncts are valued THE PROBLEM. THERE coursework, it is highly unlikely that a col- for their newsroom experience, we must lege student will gain enough fl uency to use value tenured faculty for their ample expe- SHOULD BE INCENTIVES the language studied. The time is better rience in academia. Tenure itself is not the spent learning about the histories, religions, problem. Instead, faculty must be incentiv- TO KEEP LEARNING and political structures of other societies.

24 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 24 3/31/15 11:08 AM how to practice their craft. It is hard to be- lieve that there is no journalism education program in America using a fully developed 2 SEMESTERS version of that same model.” Newton’s as- sertion is right, and there is a way to advance his theory by adding in a mandatory co-op component to journalism majors. In this new blueprint, each journalism OF NEWSROOM department would be responsible for cre- ating and maintaining a “newsroom,” a hy- perlocal digital publication or digital news broadcast. The purpose of the newsroom would be threefold: to transfer real-world CO-OP skills within a meaningful environment to students; provide the community with a local publication, and to catalyze external KEY COMPONENT OF THE partnerships through research and devel- opment work. JOURNALISM SCHOOL BLUEPRINT While some in the academic community will be quick to argue that such a program already exists, the Newsroom Co-op does not mirror what’s currently being off ered. Students and professors would be required to work full time in the newsroom for two Journalism coursework of medium. (Many schools use newspaper semesters. Successful co-op models in other These courses should include work on the writing as the basis for this instruction.) subject areas are already in eff ect at many following subjects specifically geared to- What’s taught doesn’t always translate to universities: Drexel University is just one of ward journalists but should not be segment- the Web, to mobile, or to continuous digital the schools requiring at least one six-month ed by distribution medium (such as print or coverage across devices. The class I’m pro- co-op for nearly all of its majors. At these digital). There are far fewer required tech- posing isn’t about leads and nut grafs, but schools, the co-op is taken off campus at a nical skills courses in this model because rather about mastering the fundamentals local employer. This model can be applied that material is covered by the Newsroom of great journalistic writing. The general internally to the newsroom. In practical Co-op below. reporting requirement should be replaced terms, this replaces the internship require- Mandatory courses for a journalism with a mandatory investigative reporting ment for some schools and adds in the ex- degree should include a history of Silicon techniques class: students should learn periential learning component missing from Valley and the philosophy of the Internet how to fi nd sources; obtain data sets and so many curricula. Tenured and adjunct fac- as a stand-alone class, as well as a class on documents; file Freedom of Information ulty would work together, mentoring stu- the First Amendment and mass communi- Act and public information requests; con- dents and ensuring continuity of coverage, cations law with up-to-date case studies. All duct research and interviews; obtain and even during the summer. students should be required to take busi- understand property records, court records, The newsroom model requires a vastly ness-side classes: fi nance for newsrooms search warrants, and police records; and or- different approach to existing programs: (includes basic finance, accounting, and ganize large amounts of data and reporting Students would be required to rotate discussion of revenue models) and audience so that it can be used for whatever story is through key divisions of the newsroom, just engagement (discussion of the attention produced. as medical students make rotations through economy, A/B testing, search, and social op- Advanced courses on design, interactivi- specialties. In two semesters, newsroom timization). All students in the major should ty, and data-driven reporting as well as sub- students would spend equal amounts of take courses to give them a more holistic ject-focused reporting and writing (gender, time in the following departments: editorial, foundation in journalism: design for news science/medical, the arts) should be off ered business, production, PR/marketing/adver- (principles of design elements across all as electives within the department. tising, and management. Rotating students mediums); deep research (methods for data through these disciplines not only ensures mining, evaluating sources, and investigat- Two semesters of newsroom co-op that they develop practical skills required ing algorithms); introductory programming For many years, Eric Newton, the Knight to fi le on deadline, but in learning all of the (in a modern language). Foundation’s senior adviser to the presi- roles of a news organization they will have Finally, the standard reporting and writ- dent, has been advocating for a “teaching gained invaluable perspective and empathy ing requirements should be replaced with hospital” model for journalism education. before starting their careers in earnest.  much more focused courses that will apply “People learn by doing,” he says. “Law across the entire fi eld of journalism as it schools have clinics, where students learn This is an excerpt from Amy Webb’s evolves. All students should take a nonfi c- to handle cases. In teaching hospitals, med- forthcoming e-book about a new blueprint tion writing class: the fundamental meth- ical students work alongside real doctors to for the future of journalism education od and practice of storytelling, regardless learn about disease, how to deliver babies,

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 25 3/25/15 2:20 PM nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 26 COVERING THE COMMUNITY As regional titles retreat from outlying areas, local weekly newspapers matter more than ever BY BARBARA SELVIN 3/31/15 12:57 PM ntermission was over and the I house lights were about to go down for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s per- formance of Brahms’s “German Requiem.” It was Saturday, October 4, 2014. Rebecca Rivas, a reporter for The St. Louis Ameri- can, was in the audience, her camera ready. She’d been tipped off by a source active in the protests that had erupted after an un- armed teenager was shot and killed by a po- lice offi cer in nearby Ferguson. Singing began, but it wasn’t coming from the stage. A man in the rear of the hall sang, in a clear, strong voice: “What side are you on, friend, what side are you on?” Then a woman stood, a few rows away, and joined in. One by one and then more each mo- ment, some 50 people rose, singing “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all.” Some in the audience clapped, as did some of the musicians; other audience members looked stunned. Rivas captured it and posted a vid- eo on the American’s website. It was picked up by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, NPR, CNN, and MSNBC, among other outlets. Rivas and her colleagues on the weekly newspaper’s tiny staff had an advantage over the journalists who fl ocked to Ferguson in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown Pastor Charles on August 9, 2014. The African-American Burton lies in community of greater St. Louis already a chalk outline on knew and trusted the paper, which has cov- the driveway of ered that community since 1928. Missouri the Ferguson, State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who Mo., police station represents Ferguson, calls The St. Louis last October as a memorial to American “the only source of information Michael Brown, we have that’s balanced and of interest.” who was shot and And Adolphus M. Pruitt II, president of killed by a police the St. Louis City chapter of the National offi cer in August Association for the Advancement of Colored People, says, “They cover those things that CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/ASSOCIATED PRESS CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/ASSOCIATED

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 27 3/31/15 12:57 PM are truly emotionally charged for the black terest play in people’s lives through social “We will let a lot of negative stories pass or community, in ways that go into detail on media. “As we spend more time with com- do them in brief only.” the subject and the issue.” munities of interest, do we spend less time Freivogel adds: “I have a very high level In addition to its news reports, editori- with communities of place, and does that re- of trust in their standards and in their ac- als, and widely read “Political Eye” column, duce the interest in, and demand for, news curacy, so it’s not like they’re just purely an the American’s coverage of churches, com- of that place?” he asks. “I think it does.” advocacy organization. They’re very much a munity organizations, and social events has In that sense, The St. Louis American news organization.” helped keep the African-American commu- may be luckier than most weeklies be- nity tied together as it dispersed from the cause of its dual role as a local paper and central city to the suburbs, says University as one that covers a community of inter- dvocacy is often integral of Missouri journalism professor Earnest est. It engages its readers not only with its to the sense of mission at weekly L. Perry Jr. “Say you grew up in one part of 70,000-circulation paper, which is free on newspapers, such as The Mountain St. Louis that was heavily African-American newsstands, but also through its website Enterprise, based in Frazier Park, and moved to another part that wasn’t, and active presence on social media. California. Though the Enterprise you’d still have a link back to that commu- Chris King, managing editor of the A covers nine hamlets in a remote nity” through the weekly paper, Perry says. American, declines to discuss the paper’s fi - area 75 miles from Los Angeles, That kind of connection is a hallmark nances in detail but calls the paper “a strug- Patric Hedlund, a documentary fi lmmaker of the community journalism that weeklies gling family-owned business” and allows turned newspaper co-owner and editor, says provide. Often, local newspapers are the that owner and publisher Donald M. Suggs she never runs short of news and intrigue. top source for news about a community, “pitches in on payroll.” Its small editorial Hedlund shares many instances in which a source that has grown in importance as staff —seven full-timers plus two part-tim- her paper’s coverage made a major splash— regional papers have pulled back from cov- ers—produces up-to-the minute Ferguson how confl icts of interest among local gov- ering outlying communities over the past coverage online, though some stories never ernment officials were uncovered, how 15 years. Weeklies with a strong editorial see print as events outpace them. community reporters she coached found ev- voice bring communities together—or stir Not surprisingly, Martin Luther King idence that proposed housing developments debate—over issues of great local import. Jr. Day, Jan. 19, was a charged holiday in St. would deplete the area’s water supply, how Some weeklies, like the American, cover not Louis. Both the American and the St. Louis neighbors call her to witness and record only a geographical community but also a Post-Dispatch covered it closely but with events that no one else will cover, wheth- “community of interest,” the term of art for signifi cant diff erences. The American’s cov- er it’s “sheriff ’s deputies running down the groups with a shared orientation, whether erage included a detailed nearly 1,900-word street with drawn guns” or a crew cutting racial, ethnic, occupational, or otherwise. account of tensions throughout the day. down 300- and 400-year-old trees that the Often overlooked in discussions of the Those tensions, between people who want- community had thought were protected. future of newspapers, U.S. community ed to focus on Dr. King’s legacy and protest- A newspaper like The Mountain weeklies still matter to millions of readers. ers, many of them younger, who wanted to Enterprise “belongs to the community,” The total circulation of the nation’s 7,000 honor his revolutionary spirit, resulted in Hedlund says, and the experience of hav- non-daily community newspapers is about a chaotic confrontation on a state univer- ing her work read each week by people 65.5 million, according to a 2010 National sity campus within city limits. The Post- she knows well has been profound after a Newspaper Association (NNA) study. Seven Dispatch ran a 900-word story. career spent producing documentaries in out of 10 weeklies have a circulation of less Margaret Wolf Freivogel, a longtime Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and across the than 15,000, according to NNA fi gures. Post-Dispatch staffer who now runs the U.S. “Working on a national or internation- While major daily papers have expanded newsroom at St. Louis Public Radio, which al basis is not as personal as working in a their online presence, there is a robust de- has a content-sharing agreement with the community environment,” she says. “Every bate as to whether, or how quickly, weeklies American, notes that the American consid- single thing you say here has a ripple eff ect should attempt to move their communities ers itself an advocate for the community on your neighbors.” online. Penelope Muse Abernathy, a for- it covers. King freely admits this. “We can And in a region where wealthy, well-con- mer newspaper executive and author of the count on everyone else to do all the bad nected outsiders wield considerable infl u- 2014 book “Saving Community Journalism,” news about the black community,” he says. ence over the future of Frazier Mountain argues for now. But sentiment on the communities, the Enterprise amplifi es the 265-member listserv of the International voices of those locals who stand up for Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors runs themselves. “People are trying to have a strongly in favor of maintaining an emphasis voice, and when there are issues, to have a on print for reasons of revenue and commu- way to articulate and investigate what those nity service. ADVOCACY IS OFTEN issues are,” she says. Hedlund has held “The weekly newspaper business is trainings and workshops for area residents, the healthiest part of the American news- “helping people develop their capacities to paper business,” says Al Cross, director INTEGRAL TO THE be good reporters of their own lives,” she of the Institute for Rural Journalism and calls it. One such reporter was soil scientist Community Issues at the University of SENSE OF MISSION AT Doug Peters, whose fi rst involvement with Kentucky. Yet he sees trouble ahead due to the paper was writing letters to the editor

the growing role that communities of in- WEEKLY NEWSPAPERS opposing the proposed Frazier Park Estates PRESS JEFF ROBERSON/ASSOCIATED

28 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 28 3/25/15 5:33 PM development. Subsequently, on the paper’s “In the end,” says soil scientist Peters, now, and it is vital to respect that fact.” behalf, Peters read 15 volumes of environ- “a really bad project was killed and I’m glad Now, the website off ers breaking news for mental impact reports for that develop- to have helped.” free, but everything else is behind a pay- ment and two others. With Peters’ help, the Hedlund gives her readers much of the wall. Street sales and subscribers have in- Enterprise revealed what had been buried credit. Community members made 100- to creased and ad inches “are holding steady,” in the developers’ report: groundwater lev- 120-mile round trips to show up and testify Hedlund says. els at the proposed development site had at hearings again and again, and raised mon- It’s the rare newspaper that doesn’t de- fallen precipitously in the previous decade. ey to hire a lawyer. A California Superior pend heavily on advertising, but one such “The whole experience was satisfying,” Court judge ruled for the community plain- paper exists in the foothills of the Berkshire Peters says, “as I saw the results of my re- tiff s, and the developer dropped his appeal. Mountains in Massachusetts, just 20 miles search and education published and appre- “By seeing their story considered important east of the New York border. The idea for ciated by readers. I was able to get across enough, seeing it on the front page—and The Sandisfi eld Times was born at a dinner my message to the community that ade- it never faded—people were able to car- party in 2009 among former weekenders quate water supply for the development was ry forward with their needs,” she says. In who now live full time in the rural com- doubtful.” Working with Hedlund wasn’t 2007, The Mountain Enterprise’s Frazier munity. At fi rst, the monthly paper had no always easy, he said: “It got more challeng- Park Estates coverage won the California ads, relying on donations. To this day, most ing [as she] demanded more and more sup- Newspaper Publishers Association’s fi rst- of its staff is volunteers. In the beginning, porting information. It became downright place prize for environmental reporting. none of them wanted to sell ads; but as grueling with e-mails and phone calls as Hedlund and her husband initially lav- its audience grew, local businesses asked deadlines approached.” ished their production expertise on the for the opportunity to reach readers. The In the case of Frazier Park Estates, pub- paper’s free website, but then their print paper, which became a nonprofi t in June lic hearings amid continued coverage by The circulation dropped, putting an end to that. 2013 and prints 1,000 copies a month, pays Mountain Enterprise led the county plan- “The better our website became, the more its sole employee, a graphic designer, with ning department to force the developer to our street sales diminished,” Hedlund says. its advertising income, and uses donations redo its submission. The battle culminated “The numbers kept telling us that the print from its annual appeal to cover other costs. in a decision by the state parks department product”—the paper has a paid circulation Its website is free, and it has no social to acquire the land in question. of 2,550—“is still the bread and butter for media presence.

Community members hold a vigil last October for Vonderrit D. Myers Jr., 18, who was shot and killed by an off -duty police offi cer in St. Louis

nieman reports winter 2015 29

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 29 3/25/15 5:32 PM The 53-square-mile Sandisfi eld has no Longtime Sandisfi eld residents, many of village green, town center, general store, them hardworking farmers, found little to coff ee shop or diner; in short, there are few like in the paper at fi rst. But over time, that places to hang out and gather local tidings. has changed. Before the birth of the Times, “it was really With Manhattan less than a three-hour hard to fi nd out when the dump hours were, drive from Sandisfi eld, “you’re going to have for example,” says Setsuko Winchester, a the city folks that are going to come in and former producer of NPR’s now-defunct want to change everything,” says Barbara Patric Hedlund, editor, The Mountain “Talk of the Nation” and the paper’s fi rst Riiska, an orchard owner who was born one Enterprise in Calif.; Simon Winchester, photo editor. Her husband, journalist and town over and married into an old-time founder, The Sandisfi eld (Mass.) Times author Simon Winchester (“The Professor Sandisfi eld family. “ ‘Wait a second: What and the Madman,” “Krakatoa,” “The Map did you move out here for in the fi rst place?’ ” not that we tried to campaign, but simply That Changed the World”) was its prime Now, though, she’s glad she can follow what because we covered the town rather well.” mover and founding editor. happens at town meetings. The largest pa- The lead story in the paper’s inaugural Winchester, a tall, smiling Englishman per in the region, the daily Berkshire Eagle, issue in April 2010 launched the newspa- with a direct gaze and approachable man- “has no idea that we exist,” she laments. per’s campaign to do something about two ner, has lived full time in Sandisfi eld, pop- A relative, A.J. Riiska, says that at fi rst, ruined houses along a main road, houses ulation about 900, since 2002. He works he felt the paper was “kind of all about what “out of a ’50s horror fi lm,” Winchester says. from his studio, an 1812 granary with win- the summer people were interested in. They The houses were eventually demolished, dows that wash his two-story work area in didn’t even cover the Memorial Day parade” and Winchester counts this as the paper’s light. The main elements of the décor are in 2010, he says in disgust. Over time, how- fi rst success. framed maps, photographs, and books— ever, the paper has earned Riiska’s grudging The Sandisfi eld Times has continued to thousands of books, lining shelves and piled respect. He reads it regularly. “It’s not a bad crusade on local controversies, but it also everywhere. He came up with the newspa- old newspaper now,” he says. routinely publishes stories about town offi - per’s mottoes (“Tribunus Plebis,” or “The Winchester acknowledges that initially, cials and the town budget, the state of town Guardian of the People,” and “Reliable. “we were widely condemned as being elitist roads, obituaries, columns on gardening, Regular. Relevant.”), edited the paper for its and further dividing the community,” but and photos of the community as the sea- fi rst year, and still writes for it. says that has changed, “grudgingly, slowly— sons change. Its fi rst issue had eight pages.

“you own everything about the paper” Four lessons from buying and running the Outer Banks Sentinel by mark jurkowitz when i informed friends free from much of the be vast diff erences among particularly important to and colleagues I was leaving overhead and mission community news outlets— me, as a newcomer, as associate director of tension that can plague circulation numbers, that the paper seemed the Pew Research Center’s metro dailies. Indeed, distribution platforms, in sync with its readers. Journalism Project to buy a 2014 Pew staffi ng levels, I learned early on, for a weekly in North report identifi ed and even editorial example, that there was Carolina’s Outer Banks 438 smaller new mission—here squeamishness about there were a number of digital news are four lessons writing and talking about reactions. One went this organizations, I’ve learned since suicide in this area. It way: “You just spent eight many of them buying the Outer helped inform the way we years at Pew studying launched to Banks Sentinel covered one important the newspaper industry fi ll gaps left by last August that story—and the community and now you’re buying legacy layoff s. my work at appreciated it. And at a one?” (Unstated, but clearly More than Pew didn’t fully time of coarse political implied was the question— half—231, to be Jurkowitz prepare me for. debate in this country, “Do you think you should exact—were there is a certain bipartisan schedule an MRI?”) primarily covering Understand Local Culture gentility that moderates At Pew, we spent many news at the local or Without hedging on public discourse in Outer hours analyzing the U.S. hyperlocal level. the core missions of Banks politics. That newspaper industry. And Yet there are important accountability and prompted us to write a what we learned helped things you pick up at unbiased reportage, it is story on that phenomenon, convince me, in theory ground level that are journalistically important which stood in sharp at least, that solid, credible harder to see from the view to get a handle on contrast to the mudslinging community weeklies can be at 30,000 feet. And with community standards that defi ned the state’s

pretty strong franchises— the caveat that there can and mores. It was U.S. Senate race. PELCZYNSKI/THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE HOLLY ENTERPRISE; RIGHT, MEYER/THE MOUNTAIN GARY TOP LEFT, LOUIS AMERICAN BOTTOM: ED MULLINS; OPPOSITE, WILEY PRICE/THE ST.

30 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 30 4/1/15 5:32 PM her grievances against the Select Board. In the next issue, Barrett responded point by point, acknowledging the justice of some of her zingers while clarifying the context of others. “It’s been a vehicle for me to set the record straight,” Barrett says. In the epilogue to his 2013 book, “The Men Who United the States,” about the knitting together of a disparate population, Winchester writes, “The paper is now pop- ular, needed, and ceaselessly written to, and it’s brought to Sandisfi eld something the village has never truly enjoyed in all of its 250 years of incorporated existence: a sense of community, a common sense of unity.” And that sense of unity may be, in the end, what accounts for the resilience of the community newspaper. “In many towns in this country, people don’t say, ‘I read that in the paper’; they say, ‘I read that in our pa- Chris King, managing editor of The St. Louis (Mo.) American per,’’’ says Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues Now, it regularly fi lls 20, covering not just “The paper has been able to bring light at the University of Kentucky. “This shows the Select Board but also Sandisfi eld’s fi - into what’s going on in town government,” that people have a very strong identity with nance, strategic planning, technology, and says Patrick Barrett, a high school history their local newspaper as [their] tribune and cemetery committees, its board of health, teacher and Select Board member. In one in- advocate, and also as a journalistic enter- and the local arts center. It’s a robust local stance, a member of the town’s fi nance com- prise that holds up a mirror and doesn’t su- report in a place that lacked anything like it. mittee wrote a letter in which she detailed garcoat things.”

Put the Public in Publisher response. As for the role of publications and brochures call. My second was that this Having bought the Sentinel the publisher, this is not a for our merchants. And then was defi nitely my problem. from an out-of-town job for introverts. there is the incalculable So armed with a Wiffl e ball publisher who was not benefi t of having an bat and a can of industrial well-known here, I quickly Print has its Virtues editorial insert—like the strength bug killer, I recognized the need to sell Sometimes the debate about four-page Voter’s Guide managed to rout the colony myself and the paper to the print versus digital seems section we produced in of angry insects. This community at the retail to take on an almost October—handed out at anecdote speaks to a bigger level. That meant speaking ideological tone. The reality local events. We contract truth. Like many community before the Chamber of can be a little diff erent. In out the printing of our paper weeklies, we have a modest Commerce and at Rotary our case, the older-skewing and those costs are not staff at the Sentinel—six Clubs, lunching frequently demographics of the Outer inconsiderable. But after full-timers (including my with people in the private, Banks make it a more just switching our printing wife and myself), one part- public, and nonprofi t inherently print-friendly work to the large regional timer, and two drivers—so it sectors, and involving the environment. (Our local daily, The Virginian-Pilot, I almost goes without saying: newspaper as a sponsor of competitors include a can say there’s a nice buyer’s There is virtually no matter everything from the YMCA digital-only and a print-only market for that service. too trivial for your attention. to the Martin Luther King news outlet. We have a You own everything school essay contest. In print and digital platform, Kill the Bees Yourself about the paper—from its the Christmas season, we although the latter is getting One afternoon this past reputation to the safety of even opened our offi ces a much-needed upgrade.) summer, I got a somewhat its customers who buy it. to host people getting their Our print product allows frantic call from my editor During the negotiations to pets’ pictures taken with us to publish revenue- telling me that an unlucky buy the paper, one wise Santa Claus—winning some generating “special pubs” customer at a local mall observer told me I wasn’t new friends in the process. throughout the year, to was stung when a swarm of simply buying a news outlet, Indeed, our eff orts to handle the retail advertising bees emerged from inside I was buying a “lifestyle.” re-establish the paper as inserts that are an increasing the Sentinel newspaper Running a community paper an active civic citizen have part of our business and box he had opened. My fi rst isn’t just a job; it is a way generated a very positive to earn money producing impulse was to ignore that of life.

nieman reports winter 2015 31

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 31 4/1/15 5:33 PM THE OFFENDING ART

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 32 3/25/15 2:23 PM Philadelphia Daily News cartoonist Signe Wilkinson off ered a multiple-choice test in 2010

Political cartooning after the Charlie Hebdo attacks BY JONATHAN GUYER

black-robed, bearded fi gure hovers above Europe sprin- A kling drops of water, or maybe seeds, from a heart-shaped pouch. A white aura illuminates him against a starry sky, but his feet are rooted fi rmly in the earth. The title of this cartoon reads: “Prophet Muhammad.” The Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida published the drawing in February. The next day Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ordered an investigation into the image and its creator, Muhammad Sabaaneh. Abbas, who after the Charlie Hebdo attacks three weeks earlier had joined world leaders in a march against terrorism and in support of free speech in Paris, described the cartoon’s publication as “a terrible mistake” and stressed that “sacred religious symbols,

USED WITH THE PERMISSION OF SIGNE WILKINSON, THE WASHINGTON POST POST THE WASHINGTON OF SIGNE WILKINSON, USED WITH THE PERMISSION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. WRITERS GROUP AND THE CARTOONIST GROUP. especially the prophets and messengers” should be respected.

nieman reports winterwinter 22015015 33

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 33 3/31/15 11:08 AM Palestinian Authority police questioned because of his caricatures of Hamas senior Sabaaneh, who apologized for the drawing political leader Ismail Haniyeh. IN THE POST-CHARLIE and explained on Facebook that despite “We should oppose everything that is the title the robed fi gure was not intended forced on us, by governments or dicta- HEBDO ERA, POLITICAL to be a depiction of Muhammad, forbid- torships or the authority of religion,” says den by Islamic authorities, but “a symbol- Sabaanah. And as for respecting religious CARTOONING REMAINS ic fi gure for Islam and the Muslim’s role in symbols, Sabaanah claims that’s exactly spreading light and love for all humanity.” what his cartoon was intended to do: “The A COMPLEX AND Al-Hayat al-Jadida launched an inquiry, too, way to defend Islam is through art. When briefl y suspending Sabaanah and other staff Islam is criticized through art, we should CONTESTED PURSUIT involved in the cartoon’s publication, and respond through art.” issued its own apology. Sabaanah’s experience illustrates just Sabaanah, whose satirical illustrations how complex and contested political car- have criticized everything from Palestinian tooning remains after brothers Said and political parties to the Israeli occupation, Chérif Kouachi killed 12 at the offices of had been in trouble before. In 2013, Israeli French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on authorities sentenced him to fi ve months January 7. The Paris attacks brought fresh Muhammad many Muslims considered in prison because one of his cartoons ap- urgency to longstanding questions around offensive, a month later in Copenhagen, peared in a book published by his brother, the limits of free speech, the role of satire focused attention on the threat to Western Thamer Sabaaneh, a member of Hamas, the as a form of dissent, and the relationship be- satirists. But political cartoonists around Palestinian resistance movement governing tween political cartooning and journalism. the world are at risk. Gaza that Israel considers a terrorist organi- The Charlie Hebdo murders, and an In Turkey in 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, zation. A few years earlier he received a se- attack aimed at Swedish cartoonist Lars who was then prime minister, brought a ries of death threats from Hamas members, Vilks, who had drawn images of the Prophet criminal complaint against cartoonist Musa In 2013, when the pope stepped down, Kevin Siers of The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer mused on possible replacements OPPOSITE: © 2015 ZAPIRO - REPRINTED WITH RIGHTS RESERVED. WORLD SYNDICATE, © 2013 KEVIN SIERS - KING FEATURES 21, 1871 OCT. WEEKLY, HARPER’S BOTTOM: THOMAS NAST. - FOR MORE ZAPIRO CARTOONS VISIT WWW.ZAPIRO.COM; PERMISSION

34 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 34 3/25/15 3:09 PM Kart, who in the midst of a corruption in- vestigation into Erdogan’s inner circle depicted a hologram of Erdogan standing watch as thieves stole money from a safe. Lawyers sought nine years imprisonment; Kart was acquitted but Erdogan has ap- pealed. In Ecuador, one of the best-known cartoonists in Latin America, Javier Bonilla, whose pen name is Bonil, is accused of “so- cioeconomic discrimination” for mocking the stutter and questioning the suitability for offi ce of Agustin Delgado, a congress- man from President Rafael Correa’s ruling party. In Singapore, the government charged Leslie Chew with sedition for the cartoon- ist’s criticism of state discrimination against ethnic minorities in his strip “Demon-Cratic Singapore.” And in Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s government also accused car- toonist Zulkifl ee Anwar Haque, known as Zunar, of sedition, for a cartoon criticizing a corrupt judiciary. “He points out corrup- In Jonathan Shapiro’s 2015 cartoon, South Africa’s leader kept smiling despite the nation’s woes tion,” says John A. Lent, editor in chief of the International Journal of Comic Art, of Zunar. found that about 80 percent of “The Daily outlets are appearing to take their place. “He’s what a political cartoonist is supposed Show” and “The Colbert Report” viewers John Oliver’s show, “Last Week Tonight,” to be: a watchdog on government.” were aged 18 to 49, compared to only 40 has stormed HBO as well as YouTube, where percent of network evening news viewers. his channel boasts nearly 1.5 million sub- Twelve percent of adults surveyed by Pew scribers. The Huffi ngton Post is launching olitical cartoonists have in 2014 said they received news from “The “The Huff Post Show,” a weekly Web-only sa- long served a watchdog function. Daily Show” in the previous week, putting it tirical news program that will stream online In the 1870s, Thomas Nast’s car- on a par with USA Today and The New York in prime time. In the U.K., satirical puppet icatures of William M. “Boss” Times. Another 2014 study, this one by the show “Newzoids” is being viewed as a suc- Tweed in Harper’s Weekly went University of Delaware, showed that view- cessor to the classic ’80s program “Spitting P a long way toward helping topple ers of the “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Image,” which skewered the Margaret Tammany Hall’s crooked political Report,” and John Oliver’s “Last Week Thatcher government. And the Web is cre- machine, which siphoned some $6 million Tonight” were much more familiar with net ating new spaces for the distribution and from public funds. The New York Times neutrality laws than viewers of mainstream debate of political cartoons. “The fact that had published a series of investigations into networks. comedians are becoming main sources of Tammany’s extortion, but it was Nast’s cari- The icons of American political satire— news only tells you what a failure our media catures, including one of a corpulent Tweed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—may be outlets are,” says Bassem Youssef, who last with a money bag for a face, that embold- moving on, but new satirists and satirical June discontinued the satirical Egyptian TV ened the public outcry against the crooked show he hosted as tolerance for dissent in boss’s malfeasance. the country shrank. (For more from Bassem Tweed’s furious plea—“Stop them Youssef, see “The Joke Is Mightier Than the damned pictures. I don’t care so much what Sword” on page 37.) the papers say about me. My constituents In many countries in the Middle East, can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pic- tolerance for satire has decreased since the tures!”—may be apocryphal but it nonethe- upheavals of the Arab Spring. Consider the less aptly describes the task of the political case of Syria’s Ali Ferzat, one of the Arab cartoonist. “Our job is to create either some world’s most prominent political cartoon- doubt in your mind about an issue or cre- ists. For decades, the Hafez al-Assad regime ate a discussion,” says Christopher Weyant, tolerated his veiled visual barbs, published a cartoonist whose work has appeared in in the state-run newspaper Tishreen. After The New Yorker, The Hill, and on the cover al-Assad’s son Bashar took power in 2000, of this issue of Nieman Reports. “We want Ferzat launched the satirical newspaper you to think. We want you to react.” al-Domari. But in 2011, the fi rst year of the Reactions provoked by the Charlie Syrian uprising, members of the regime’s Hebdo attack come at a time when satirists masked security forces kidnapped and beat are increasingly seen as sources of news, es- In 1871, Thomas Nast’s drawing of “Boss” Ferzat, dumping him on the road to the pecially by young people. A 2012 Pew survey Tweed fueled outrage over corruption airport with two broken hands. Ferzat’s

nieman reports winter 2015 35

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 35 3/25/15 2:29 PM colleague, Syrian cartoonist Akram Raslan, has been missing for nearly two years. “I sur- vived an assassination attempt,” says Ferzat, who just days before his abduction drew a caricature of a lanky Assad hitching a ride with Libyan autocrat Muammar el-Qaddafi , “so freedom does not come for free.” For Ferzat, the price of freedom has been exile. He now lives in Kuwait, where he draws for the pan-Arab daily Al-Quds Al- Arabi. Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar has also opted to work outside his home country. Back in 2000, Kowsar drew a car- toon of a crocodile choking a reporter with its tail. In Farsi, “Professor Crocodile,” as the reptile was labeled, rhymes with the nickname of Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, then one of the country’s top clerics. Kowsar ended up spending six days in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and In Iran in 2000, Nikahang Kowsar’s drawing of a crocodile strangling a journalist raised a furor was charged with insulting a religious fi gure and undermining national security. In Iran, Kowsar notes that, despite the risks, po- Arabs has featured over 500 bloggers, in- Kowsar says, “We have freedom of speech; litical cartooning is alive and well in Iran, cluding an array of secular and progressive we don’t have freedom after speech. You are with more illustrators addressing touchier voices from the Middle East, and gives pride free to draw a cartoon, but you are arrested subjects, like poverty and water shortages, of place to political art and satire. It also the next day if they don’t like your cartoon.” largely online. produces “The Fatwa Show,” a Web video The intimidation continued: Kowsar’s Ahmed Benchemsi, a native Moroccan series lampooning Islamic clerics, and “The phone was tapped, his e-mail hacked. who founded and edited the best-selling Horrifi c 4,” a collection of sardonic columns Subsequent death threats pushed him to Arabic news weekly Nichane, has followed mocking fears around taboo topics like “the Canada and then to Washington, D.C. After a similar path. Benchemsi left Morocco af- Jew,” “the Atheist,” and “the Independent leaving Iran, he founded Toonistan.com, ter advertiser boycotts depleted the maga- Woman.” “The fi rst thing to do if we want a cartoon-oriented social media platform, zine’s fi nances. He now edits and publishes the Arab World to go forward is to look at and Khodnevis, an alternative Farsi news Free Arabs, an online outlet he co-founded ourselves in the mirror and criticize what source that prominently features cartoons. in 2012, while at Stanford University. Free deserves to be criticized,” says Benchemsi.

he web has enabled kowsar and Benchemsi to engage new audiences and sidestep both cen- sorship and self-censorship, as it has for Wang Liming, a Chinese T cartoonist better known as Rebel Pepper. Wang began publishing his cartoons via microblogging services in 2009, accumulating over 1 million followers. But a year later, when he decided to quit his post at a Shanghai advertising company to focus full time on drawing, he discovered no Chinese publication would run his work. Each time the government shut down one of his microblog accounts, he opened another, something that happened 200 times. “Even some of my readers were detained because they shared my cartoons,” he says. He now lives in Japan and publishes exclusively via social media accounts. While in Japan last summer, he mocked the mainland government for busing in demonstrators to a counter-protest against

Syndicated cartoonist Jeff Danziger took aim in 2014 at President Obama’s style of governing the democracy marches then taking place TIMES SYNDICATE NEW YORK ARTS INTERNATIONAL/THE BOTTOM: DANZIGER/CARTOON TOP: NIK KOWSAR OPPOSITE: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY/REUTERS

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 36 4/1/15 10:15 AM cartoons they consider insulting to our prophet and our religion. However, these same people don’t become angry when other Muslims seriously tarnish our religion through their actions—ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and many other lunatics whose actions are not worthy of belonging to any part of human history, not even the Dark Ages. For me, satire should be directed at the two biggest Bassem Youssef, in 2014 at a news conference, announced the end of his Egyptian satirical TV show authorities: the people in power and the people in media. There is absolutely the joke is mightier than the sword no courage or chivalry in The enduring role of satire in free—and not-so-free—societies mocking people who cannot by bassem youssef answer back. As poetic as it is to think that satire can when i was hosting The persecution of attacks some interpreted as topple governments and my political satire show, satirists, directly by anti-U.S. change regimes, it can’t “Al-Bernameg” (“The governments or indirectly We would like to think do this. All it does is bring Program”), on Egyptian TV, through public pressure that violations of free more people to the table. I thought that making jokes and workplace intolerance, speech belong to a diff erent Whether change happens made you immune to the has a long history. In “The and distant era. But after is up to the people, not risks many in the media Off ensive Art: Political the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the satirists. faced. The Charlie Hebdo Satire and its Censorship French police arrested Satire is an off ending killings proved me wrong. around the World from comedian Dieudonné on art. There will always be We would like to tell Beerbohm to Borat,” charges of condoning satirists who break taboos ourselves that accepting Leonard Freedman details terrorism because of a and make jokes that hurt satire is a sign of progress. how, during World War Facebook post interpreted and off end us and make us But the truth is, even I, Robert Minor, who as expressing sympathy for uncomfortable. You push free societies don’t always drew anti-war cartoons the terrorists. Dieudonné the limits, but you have celebrate free speech. for the New York Herald, was the most prominent of to be careful not to alienate In 1962, Chicago police was fi red when the paper at least 54 people arrested people from your cause. arrested Lenny Bruce on began supporting the in France on the Wednesday And there will always be obscenity charges for his war. After World War II following the attacks. He people who, in the name stand-up act. He was found newspaper editors dropped was found guilty in March. of some higher power— guilty of violating state Bill Mauldin’s syndicated The question of whether the God, national security, obscenity laws, a verdict cartoon over his criticism comments of Bruce, Carlin, freedom—will try to decide that was reversed by the of postwar America. and Dieudonné are free for us what should be Illinois Supreme Court. A Mauldin’s syndicate, speech, hate speech, or just accepted as free speech, decade later, in Milwaukee, responding to a wave of bad taste has been and will even as they themselves George Carlin was arrested canceled subscriptions, continue to be answered violate the teachings of for his now iconic “Seven censored and altered parts according to which side of God, the pillars of national Words You Can Never of his work—covering up the joke you fi nd yourself security, and the tenets of Say on Television.” The a swastika in a cartoon that on. But it is always healthy freedom. They forget that obscenity charges against compared Congress’s anti- to have this kind of a debate. those who try to tame satire him were dismissed, but communist investigations Western countries always end up being the the battle over his “Seven to fascism, for example— aren’t the only ones being biggest source of material Words” monologue went before parting ways with selective about what for satirists. to the U.S. Supreme Court. him. Bill Maher, the host of constitutes free speech. Satire will never cease, FCC v. Pacifi ca Foundation HBO’s “Real Time,” lost his Muslims do their fair share not because humans are so established the federal show “Politically Incorrect” of picking and choosing, creative, or because freedom government’s authority to in 2002 after sparking too. As a Muslim, I have will fi nally prevail, but regulate the broadcast of controversy by making seen people of my faith because humans themselves “indecent” speech. comments about the 9/11 become angry about are one big joke. nieman reports winter 2015 37

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 37 4/1/15 5:33 PM in Hong Kong. He shared a cartoon of red- faced Chinese citizens—all dressed the DESPITE DEATH same, some holding Chanel and Prada shop- ping bags—walking on their knees; a woman THREATS, ZAPIRO HAS holding a portrait of Mao yells, “Let’s show Hong Kongers what it means to kneel for NO PLANS TO LEAVE your country.” A website linked to the Communist Party SOUTH AFRICA newspaper The People’s Daily and its sister publication Global Times, as well as other outlets, labeled Wang a “pro-Japan traitor,” and a fresh batch of his microblog accounts was shut down. Fearing for his safety, Wang decided to remain in Japan, where he con- tinues to draw cartoons and share them Zapiro got in trouble for his cartoons online. “I decided to throw away self-cen- of South African President Jacob Zuma, sorship,” he says of his decision not to re- whom he always renders with a showerhead turn to China. “It is such a wonderful feeling sprouting from his scalp, a reference to that I can create cartoons freely.” Zuma’s 2006 claim that showering after un- South African cartoonist Jonathan protected sex minimizes the risk of trans- Barry Blitt’s cover for July 21, 2008 Shapiro, better known as Zapiro, has de- mitting HIV. Zuma made the statement depicted innuendoes about the Obamas cided to stay put, despite death threats he in court, prior to being elected president, received for a 2010 cartoon depicting the while on trial for rape, a charge of which the cartoonist for defamation, but dropped Prophet Muhammad on a psychiatrist’s he was acquitted. Zuma currently faces the suit in 2012. Zapiro continues to depict couch saying, “Other prophets have follow- corruption charges for allegedly spending Zuma with a showerhead sprouting from his ers with a sense of humor!” Tolerance for some $20.5 million in public funds on his scalp. “I’ve got this platform to be contro- satire is a pretty good indicator of the gener- private home. versial, to be irreverent, to be rude … and to al health of a democracy, according to Carol Zapiro has chronicled it all in his car- help people see things in a diff erent way,” he Hills, global cartoons editor at Public Radio toons. In one 2008 drawing, he depicted says. “In most instances, the kind of intim- International’s “The World.” “Repressive Zuma preparing to have sex with a blind- idation that I might feel from politicians or governments don’t tend to have a sense of folded Lady Justice, who is restrained by their henchmen just emboldens me.” humor,” she says. But even in democracies men wearing shirts labeled with the logos “Punching up”—ridiculing the power- there are red lines cartoonists cross at their of various South Africa political groups. “Go ful rather than kicking people who are al- own risk. for it, boss,” one of the men says. Zuma sued ready down—is one of the unwritten rules of political cartooning. For some, Charlie Hebdo’s satirical style seemed to be “punch- ing down,” more about demeaning specif- ic religious or ethnic groups rather than dismantling discrimination and prejudice. “We’re a nation without heroes,” says Khalid Albaih, a Romania-born Sudanese cartoon- ist based in Qatar, referring to people in the Muslim world. “The only hero for a lot of these people is The Prophet … When I look at Charlie Hebdo, I don’t understand the

FOR SOME, CHARLIE HEBDO SEEMED TO BE MORE ABOUT DEMEANING GROUPS THAN DISMANTLING

In August, Chinese cartoonist Wang Liming lampooned pro-Beijing protesters in Hong Kong DISCRIMINATION PERMISSION. BLITT ARCHIVES. USED BY NAST TOP: ©2008 BARRY & THE NEW YORKER/CONDÉ BOTTOM: REBEL PEPPER

38 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 38 3/25/15 2:30 PM SAYING IT WITH SATIRE Around the world journalists and cartoonists take aim at the powerful through satire. As is the case with Private Eye and The Clinic, the satirical humor is sometimes accompanied by fi rst-rate investigative reporting. — laura mitchell, jonathan guyer, and tara w. merrigan

The Onion, U.S. Private Eye, U.K. The Clinic, Chile Andeel, Egypt Founded in 1988 by two Since 1961, British magazine Born out of frustration with In Egypt where “insulting college students, satirical Private Eye has been mainstream media’s timid the president” is illegal, newspaper The Onion off ending readers and coverage of former Chilean cartoonist Andeel pushes stopped its print edition attracting libel suits with a President Augusto Pinochet’s boundaries. After military and has been online-only mix of satirical columns and arrest at The London Clinic leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi since December 2013. It has cartoons, faux news reports, in 1998, The Clinic started ousted President Mohamed often done daring satire on and genuine investigative out as an underground Morsi in 2013, Andeel’s editors sensitive subjects, but it reporting. Off ense was so pamphlet but evolved into at the popular daily Al-Masry also has angered some with great to its cover following the country’s leading satirical Al-Youm grew reluctant to its treatment of traumatic Princess Diana’s death in 1997 magazine. Crude humor and publish his cartoons. So he events. In 2011, The Onion that some stores refused to photoshopped images grab took them elsewhere—to published a spoof news story sell the issue. The magazine’s as much attention as The his Facebook page, the reporting that Congress had post-9/11 cover, headlined Clinic’s sharp investigative independent online outlet taken schoolchildren hostage, “Bush Takes Charge,” mocked reporting, such as a special Mada Masr, and Tok Tok, portraying John Boehner President George W. Bush’s issue on Pinochet’s reign an alternative comics zine holding a gun to a child’s response to the attacks. It of terror. In 2010, The he helped launch in 2011. head. In several instances, depicted an aide informing Clinic beat back a boycott “You have to make sure your media outlets and politicians Bush of “Armageddon” by conservative Catholics, work is strong and speaks for have mistakenly cited its and him responding, angered by The Clinic’s itself,” says Andeel, “and you satirical reporting as fact. “Armageddon outahere!” criticism of the pope. can stand an argument.”

concept. You’re just calling people ignorant While the pressures on cartoonists work- violence. It’s fear of losing money in some and inciting violence, for absolutely no rea- ing under repressive regimes may be largely cases, too, fear of stirring people up and of- son at all.” political, in the West those pressures can fending people.” Nicolas Vadot, vice president of also be social and economic. Like other Writing for the Creators Syndicate, Ted Cartooning for Peace, an organization journalists, political cartoonists have been Rall, a Los Angeles Times cartoonist whose founded in 2006 by French cartoonist laid off as legacy titles retrenched after the work appears in papers across the country, Plantu after violent protests prompted by twin shocks of the fi nancial crisis and the attributed the decline of print cartooning to caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad collapse of old business models. a perception that cartoonists are not serious published in a Danish newspaper, off ers a Mark Fiore, whose Web animations journalists. “Corporate journalism execu- diff erent reading. The aim of the Charlie for the San Francisco Chronicle’s website tives view cartoons as frivolous, less serious Hebdo cartoonists “was to put criticism won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial than ‘real’ commentary like columns or ed- about Islam on the same level as criticism Cartooning, suggests one reason newspa- itorials,” Rall wrote. He noted that gunmen of other religions,” Vadot says. “They were pers have slashed space for cartoonists is could never kill four editorial cartoonists at always punching up rather than down. They reluctance to offend advertisers. Online, an American paper, as the Charlie Hebdo at- never made fun of regular people praying or Fiore feels less fettered taking on big oil tacks did, because none of the papers have going to the mosque (or rarely). They most- fi rms like Shell and Chevron or big banks two, let alone four cartoonists still on staff . ly made fun of those who use religion to gain like Citigroup. “A lot of it revolves around Signe Wilkinson at the Philadelphia Daily power and threaten others.” fear,” Fiore says. “It’s not always fear of News says she and her fellow cartoonists

nieman reports winter 2015 39

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 39 3/25/15 2:30 PM provide important entry points into com- interface worth preserving, according to Jeff Danziger, a cartoonist whose work plex stories. “I completely rely on the re- Ellen Clegg, interim editorial page editor is distributed by The New York Times porting of everyone else, not just at my at The Boston Globe: “At their best, edito- Syndicate and who has published 11 books papers but in the entire profession,” she rial cartoons are satire in the classic sense. of editorial cartoons, believes “American says. “I certainly don’t know as much as a They provoke an immediate, visceral reac- cartoonists have become victims of polit- specialist in any of the fi elds, but neither do tion. And when you add in the fact that on- ical correctness”—at least when it comes our readers. Cartoons are sort of an inter- line publishing is a highly visual medium, to hot button issues like race relations or face between hard journalism and the opin- editorial cartoons are an important part of immigration or war in the Middle East. He ions where most people live.” And that’s an the mix.” cites last year’s Thanksgiving cartoon by

Jen Sorenson’s 2014 cartoon for Fusion contrasted fears about contracting Ebola with the lack of urgency around global warming ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AND THE CARTOONIST GROUP. OF ANN TELNAES ©2014 JEN SORENSEN OPPOSITE: USED WITH THE PERMISSION

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 40 3/25/15 2:30 PM Gary Varvel in The Indianapolis Star: The family patriarch, holding a turkey on a plat- ter, welcomes everyone by saying, “Thanks to the president’s immigration order, we’ll be having extra guests this Thanksgiving,” as three people, including a dark-mustachioed man, climb in through the window. Bloggers called the cartoon racist for its depiction of an immigrant who appeared to be Latino. The Star took down the cartoon from its site, and executive editor Jeff Taylor apol- ogized, saying the paper “off ended a wide group of readers” and erred by publishing it. Another case in point is Barry Blitt’s 2008 New Yorker cover showing Michelle Obama, outfi tted as a 1970s black power radical, and Barack Obama, dressed in tradi- tional Muslim attire, exchanging a fi st bump in the Oval Offi ce; an American fl ag burns in the fi replace below a framed portrait of Osama bin Laden. During the presiden- tial campaign, political opponents depict- ed Obama as un-American and a secret Muslim. New Yorker art editor Françoise Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes commented on the post-Ferguson racial justice debate Mouly wanted a cover that encapsulated the tensions, and asked Blitt to give it a try. “All on your taboos and where they come from Last July, as Israel pounded Gaza in ret- those innuendoes, can’t you do something and what things we wouldn’t say and why.” ribution for rocket attacks, resulting in the with them?” she remembers asking Blitt. The Web may be more welcoming to po- deaths of seven Israeli civilians and over “All of it was being said, but just not being litical cartoons that cut closer to the bone as 1,400 Palestinian civilians, according to shown as a picture.” well as off ering cartoonists the opportunity the U.N., Telnaes produced an animation Intended as a mockery of Republicans’ to push the form itself further. Jen Sorensen, showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin characterizations of the Obamas, the illus- a nationally syndicated illustrator who has Netanyahu punching a baby while staring tration was interpreted literally. The Obama also drawn for The Nation and The Austin at a masked militant, all of which played campaign and many New Yorker readers crit- Chronicle, heads the daily comics page on out against a soundtrack of staccato thuds. icized the cover. But, for Mouly, the illustra- Fusion, a website geared toward millennials. Telnaes received sexually violent and misog- tion was a turning point: “It held up a mirror The outlet publishes cartoons on issues im- ynistic e-mails in response to the cartoon. to what the country as a whole was doing, portant to young people, from unemployment For Christopher Weyant, political car- making visible the very dangerous insinua- to homelessness to marijuana legalization. tooning provokes such strong reactions be- tions and innuendos, and providing a vacci- One of Sorensen’s latest comics is a graphic cause it has a kind of primal force, in part nation—to take a drop of poison but put it novella treatment of a woman who talks about because of its ability to condense complex in a place where we could all look at it and having been raped in college. “It certainly feels issues into simple yet potent images. “Our deal with it.” Says Blitt, “Finding the line and like I’m freer to publish probably more con- targets are always those who have power putting one foot over it … makes you refl ect troversial subjects in Fusion than I would in and especially those who are using their a daily newspaper that’s trying to be very safe power unjustly,” he says. “If you’re walking and non-controversial,” says Sorensen. on the edge of those boundaries, that’s a Ann Telnaes, who trained as an animator good place to be.” and worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, For the Philadelphia Daily News’s brings a digital native sensibility to her an- Wilkinson, the most eff ective political car- BARRY BLITT, A COVER imations, illustrated GIFs, and Vine videos toons may initially provoke outrage and on The Washington Post website. And she’s condemnation but ultimately promote di- upbeat about the potential for political car- alogue, an exchange—in comment strands, ARTIST FOR THE NEW tooning in the digital age: “Depending on on letters pages, at kitchen tables—through my idea, I choose the best medium for it, which “people actually start talking about YORKER, FINDS THAT which is a whole diff erent opportunity open it and both sides soften up a little bit. The to editorial cartoonists now.” In response cartoon isn’t the end. The cartoon is almost CROSSING A LINE to reports that Hillary Clinton used her the beginning.”  private e-mail as secretary of state, Telnaes “MAKES YOU REFLECT published a GIF of the potential presidential With reporting by Jieqi Luo, Tara W. Merrigan, candidate digging her own grave; the head- Laura Mitchell, Jonathan Seitz, and Eugenia ON YOUR TABOOS” stone reads: “Hillary 2016.” Williamson

nieman reports winter 2015 41

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 41 3/25/15 2:30 PM Nieman Watchdog NEED TO

imagine that the water in your home Why in-depth runs more slowly in the morning, when you coverage of net most need it. Cooking, drinking, showering, neutrality is crucial and watering the garden are all possible, but they take longer because the fl ow has been BY MICHAEL FITZGERALD reduced to a trickle. You could shower late at night when water pressure seems to be higher, or you could pay more to the private water company, which regulates fl ows, for higher pressure around the clock. A handful of communities off er a public alternative to private water where the fl ow is the same for everyone, all the time. The media doesn’t cover “slow fl ow” par- ticularly often or particularly well, despite the obvious public interest. Water pressure makes for a diffi cult story. Most people don’t understand how it works; it uses specialized and complex technology; and it involves ar- cane rules. Plus, some of the private water companies also happen to own some of the biggest news outlets. Replace water flows with Internet speeds, and you capture some of the chal- lenges journalists face in covering “net neutrality,” the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to limit the speed at which data fl ows through their networks or be permitted to charge more to heavy users. Those against net neu- trality—including some ISPs, Republican legislators, libertarians, and free market advocates—object to regulation rather than

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 42 3/25/15 2:31 PM KNOW

favoring slower speeds. But that opposition These concerns are not just theoretical. pits them against large bandwidth users When you post to Facebook or watch a vid- like Netfl ix, Google, President Obama, free eo online, your access to the Internet fl ows speech advocates, some prominent mem- through an ISP, which gives it the potential bers of the media, and most consumers. to act as a chokepoint. According to a 2014 The points of contention are many and study by M-Lab—a research fi rm funded by complex. The Federal Communications sources that include Internet companies Commission (FCC) and President Obama such as Google—at least a few ISPs may believe that if some website operators have have done just that. Between spring 2013 to pay extra money to get their content to and late February 2014 while Netfl ix was you, that could make it harder for start-ups in dispute with ISPs, the study found, cus- and small businesses to get off the ground. tomers in New York and a number of other Free speech advocates and some media cities with Internet service from Comcast, experts worry that without net neutrality Time Warner Cable, and Verizon received ISPs could restrict speech. ISPs argue that unusually poor Internet service, especially they should be free to create “fast lanes” for compared with service from Cablevision. those who will pay for it, and they also say it The slowdowns ended when Netfl ix agreed would be harder to invest in infrastructure if to make payments to Comcast. (It made broadband service is reclassifi ed as a public similar deals with Time Warner Cable and good. They say they will not throttle access Verizon in the following months.) for those who don’t pay. Net neutrality is a fascinating story Publishers of video and animated con- “masked with acronyms and bone-crush- tent, from Netfl ix to video game makers, ing technicalities,” says Susan Crawford, are concerned since they use a high level of a Harvard Law School professor and net bandwidth. Media companies worry because neutrality advocate. Juggling these angles the Internet is increasingly where the audi- and competing interests creates challenges ence is, and some have said they support net for reporters, including, given the potential neutrality. TV news outlets face an addition- free speech issues, whether to advocate for a al confl ict. NBC is owned by Comcast, a cor- particular outcome. Journalists who are not poration that also owns an ISP. ABC, parent activists when it comes to free expression, company of ESPN, is streaming sporting including preserving the open Internet, events, and CBS has said it wants to deliver “can’t really call themselves journalists,” programming via the Internet. according to Dan Gillmor, a professor at ©YONG HIAN LIM/VEER ©YONG

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Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Not everyone agrees. Lucas Graves, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s journalism school, says approaching the story as an advocate could mean missing important nuance. “It’s a tremendous opportunity for explanatory journalism that really pushes past net neu- trality as a black and white issue,” Graves says. “This does have to be understood, in part, as a public aff airs question: What is our vision for the kind of information society we want to live in?” Journalists will get plenty of opportuni- ties to dig into that question. The FCC on February 26th enacted rules that allow it to regulate Internet service like telephone ser- vice. It banned fast lanes as well as the throt- tling and blocking of data. But the story isn’t over for journalists. There may be lawsuits, eff orts by Republicans in Congress to pass legislation overruling FCC regulation of ISPs, or perhaps an overhaul of telecommu- nications policy. The FCC also overturned laws in two states preventing cities from expanding their own broadband networks, which could add competition in a fi eld that FCC chairman Tom Wheeler published the net neutrality rules—all 400 pages—online lacks it. Brian Fung, technology reporter at The is,” he says. After FCC chairman Tom people, so if you haven’t been following the Washington Post, doesn’t consider himself Wheeler proposed net neutrality regula- story, no big deal: Here’s what you need an advocate. “My fi rst duty is to explain to tions in early February, for example, Fung to know.” the best of my ability,” says Fung, the main wrote a piece headlined “Everything you Though Fung’s online coverage is some- FCC writer for The Switch, a vertical within need to know about net neutrality now, in times adapted for the print edition of the Washingtonpost.com dedicated to explain- plain English,” which consisted of a Q&A Post, he thinks Web and print audiences are ing how government and technology inter- between Fung and an imaginary reader. diff erent. Fung believes the print audience sect. “I don’t think necessarily my role is to The reader asked, for example: “What’s net is more concerned than the Web audience advocate for one position or another.” neutrality, and why would the FCC want with the specifi cs of policy-making. It is not The Post has done more stories on net to preserve it?” And Fung answered: “Net uncommon to see stories refer to the po- neutrality over the last year than any other neutrality is an idea about fairness. It holds tential of regulating Internet service like a major media outlet, and its coverage was that Internet providers should treat all utility, but to the Washington insider crowd, the most infl uential, according to a study Web traffi c equally and not speed up, slow Fung says, “utility-like regulation” means by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet down or otherwise manipulate Internet price controls, which are, in fact, not part of & Society. content in ways that favor some business- the net neutrality discussion. If Fung uses Fung’s focus on consumers has led him es over others. It means Internet providers those words, he hears from angry consumer to periodically pen quick primers, writing shouldn’t slow down services like Netfl ix, advocates, who don’t want to give fodder to in an informal voice and using humor to and they shouldn’t off er Netfl ix a ‘fast lane’ the ISPs. “It’s often a very delicate dance to lighten things up. “It’s kind of great be- in exchange for a fee.” explain it in a way that doesn’t necessari- cause of how complicated [net neutrality] Fung took a diff erent tack in “Congress ly provoke one side or another, but makes wants to regulate net neutrality. Here’s what sense to readers,” Fung says. that might look like,” a piece of straight re- His reporting has led to stories like the portage looking at why Republicans wanted one on the split in the civil rights commu- to use legislation to bypass the FCC while nity over net neutrality. While many major imposing many of the same rules the FCC civil rights groups are strongly in favor of would likely set. The piece laid out how the regulating Internet service providers, oth- THE VERGE AND OTHER industry would accede to consumer protec- ers worry that strict regulations will lead tions against having Internet traffi c blocked ISPs to stop investing in poor neighbor- TECH PRESS EMBRACED or slowed in exchange for avoiding ongoing hoods and that they might discontinue regulation. Fung calls these kinds of pieces “zero rating,” which means certain data

AN ACTIVIST ROLE “milestone stories, a way to check in with don’t count against bandwidth caps. Civil PRESS MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PABLO

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 44 3/25/15 2:31 PM rights groups worry the FCC might regard of satire that no news anchor could, such as these services as a kind of paid prioritiza- ON HIS TV SHOW, JOHN comparing cable companies to mob thugs or tion and could call for their elimination. describing the Internet as “an electronic cat The story showed how what seems like an OLIVER COMBINED database.” At the end of the segment, Oliver impenetrable policy debate could impact asked his viewers to submit comments on people’s lives. REPORTING AND HUMOR net neutrality, and by the next day the FCC’s Some journalists, especially in the online online commenting system had stopped world, have embraced an activist role. The TO POWERFUL EFFECT working due to heavy traffi c. It turns out Verge, which has run stories with headlines that there had been a record number of pub- like “Wrong words: How the FCC lost net lic comments received for an agency issue. neutrality and could kill the Internet” and TV news shows could learn a thing or two “We won the Internet back,” both written by from Oliver. editor in chief Nilay Patel, is home to some There had not been much TV coverage of the most infl uential. These Verge articles in 2014 before Oliver did his segment. A Pew were among the most linked to of any jour- e-mail and e-commerce pay the same rates Research study found that between January nalistic pieces on net neutrality, according as heavy users? 1 and May 12, on 30 programs across eight to the Berkman Center’s analysis. One writer who takes the ISPs’ ar- major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN, The Verge’s coverage is far from objec- guments seriously is Jon Brodkin of Ars MSNBC, PBS and Al-Jazeera America), net tive—one article compares the heads of Technica. In a piece headlined “Making neutrality was covered only 25 times, six of Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T to 19th-cen- the Internet a utility: what’s the worst that them on Al-Jazeera America. tury robber barons—but off ers astute (if could happen?” he detailed the industry’s Suzanne Lysak, who spent more than 20 profane) analyses of the regulatory issues. arguments about how regulating Internet years as a producer, reporter, and anchor In “Wrong Words,” Patel outlines how the connectivity could hurt profi ts. He noted and is now assistant professor of broad- FCC created problems for itself when the where industry concerns about regulation cast and digital journalism at Syracuse agency classifi ed ISPs not as telecommu- could be valid, as with certain regulations University’s Newhouse School of Public nications carriers but as “information ser- that might be vaguely worded. He also found Communications, says television cover- vice providers.” He cites one judge who public comments from ISP executives eff ec- age has increased as the news has gained in January 2014 agreed with the FCC that tively refuting their own concerns. Despite momentum, particularly after President “broadband providers represent a threat their concerted campaign to raise fears Obama in November called for strong net to Internet openness and could act in ways about regulation, at times ISP executives neutrality regulations. that would ultimately inhibit the speed and have suggested that FCC regulations would But she also says one challenge with net extent of future broadband deployment,” not signifi cantly aff ect their business. “Each neutrality is that it lacks elements that TV but ruled against the FCC’s ability to reg- side says it’s Armageddon if they don’t get producers like, such as good video. “It’s a ulate them because the information service their way,” Brodkin says, “but, of course, little bit on the esoteric level in terms of the provider classifi cation put them outside its that’s not true.” audience,” says Lysak. “In the daily news regulatory purview. Brodkin, who started his career at print meeting, it might be labeled as ‘not a TV newspapers, says net neutrality is an easier story.’” But Oliver used graphics eff ective- story to cover at a tech site since he can as- ly in his segments, especially a damning n reporting on net neutrality, sume his readers already know a lot about one showing how Netfl ix download speeds it can be easy to fall into David-versus- technology. But while Brodkin is not writ- progressively worsened on Comcast’s net- Goliath clichés that gloss over import- ing for a general audience, much of what work for months, until Netfl ix agreed to pay ant nuances. Comcast and Time Warner he is doing refl ects the nuts-and-bolts re- Comcast a fee. Cable are the lowest-rated compa- porting any journalist should follow. For Oliver also used an Internet entrepreneur I nies in the 2014 American Customer stories involving regulatory agencies, read to discuss the issues faced if net neutrality Satisfaction Index, but that doesn’t the documents, or at least read summa- did not become reality. The entrepreneur mean they may not have a point in suggest- ries of the court cases, know the import- happened to be himself, with a made-up ing that Netfl ix and other big bandwidth ant regulations, and become familiar with company, but plenty of real entrepreneurs users should pay more for access. “Why the vocabulary, says Lucy Dalglish, dean of sent open letters to the FCC and made com- [does the press] focus on ‘big companies vs. the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill ments in other news coverage and reports. consumers’?” asks Neil Sequeira, manag- College of Journalism. She also suggests The reaction to Oliver’s show shows that ing director at venture capital fi rm General talking to people from all sides of the story many Americans care deeply about Internet Catalyst Partners and former head of AOL/ to gain context. regulation, if the story is presented in a way Time Warner’s technology investments. “It Covering net neutrality in a way that’s that makes the potential impact clear. Diving is easier to point the fi nger at providers,” yet accessible to the general public is a chal- into the details to make the seemingly com- Sequeira points out that video products take lenge. In fact, some of the best reporting plex understandable to a typical reader has up a lot of bandwidth. In other regulated in- lessons don’t come from a journalist at all, always been the job of the journalist. As the dustries, like electricity, companies do pay but from comedian John Oliver’s HBO show debate over net neutrality continues—in more during peak usage periods. Why not “Last Week Tonight,” which ran a 13-minute public, in Congress, perhaps in the courts— for bandwidth? Should consumers who use segment on the subject last June. Oliver, of journalists will have plenty of opportunities the Internet for lightweight purposes like course, can get away with things in the name to tackle that challenge. 

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The Triumph of the creasingly moving to social platforms where • NowThis, a touted start-up that cre- publishers’ old tricks don’t work any more. ates short videos designed for social Social Platform “I think there’s a good chance that in fi ve platforms, abandoned eff orts to build a Distributed to 10 years the Internet is going to look really website audience in February in a rather diff erent, just like it did fi ve or 10 years ago,” direct way: It killed its traditional home- content—editorial BuzzFeed Distributed head Summer Anne page. “We were having an easier time get- distributed solely Burton told a reporter from journalism. ting people to consume our video if it was through social co.uk in August. “And one of those trends placed in-feed, rather than linking them might be that people consume media with- back to our website,” said Ashish Patel, its media—off ers news in the places where they’re also networking vice president of social media said. outlets new ways with their friends. We just want to fi gure that out and fi gure out what people like and • Facebook, arguing that linking out to news to build audience people share, and establish an audience in stories provides a bad experience for us- and revenue those places and show that we’re the best ers, is currently trying to convince news BY JOSHUA BENTON at making things that people love to share.” organizations to publish their stories di- If you’ve watched for it, you might have rectly on Facebook, not only on their own seen a few other steps in a similar direction websites. The lure: Facebook will use its in recent months: advanced data and technology to make more money selling ads against their con- • Reported.ly, the new start-up from Pierre tent than publishers could on their own— Omidyar’s First Look Media, was born in and they’ll each share in the take. ast august, when buzzfeed December without a website of its own. announced a new $50 million It has something like a core home on You can see the common line through all round of venture capital invest- Medium, but its work lives primarily on these: The triumph of the social platform. Lment, a lot of journalists heard a social platforms. “We don’t try to send In one sense, nothing new—Facebook col- new phrase for the fi rst time: dis- people away from their favorite online onized the world’s eyeballs some time ago. tributed content. The company announced communities just to rack up pageviews,” But the pitch to publishers has changed. It it would be spending some of that new editor in chief Andy Carvin wrote in its used to be: Spend some time cultivating a money to start a new division, BuzzFeed fi rst post on Medium. “We take pride in following of our network—we’ll send you a Distributed, which it described as a team of being active, engaged members of Twitter, ton of traffi c. That’s now evolving into: Give 20 staff ers who would “make original con- Facebook, reddit — no better than anyone up some of your independence and step in- tent solely for platforms like Tumblr, Imgur, else there.” side our walls—we promise we’ll make it Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and messaging worth your while. apps.” In other words, a team of people pro- • In January, Snapchat, the visual chat app This shift is a predictable result of the ducing content that will never even appear mega-popular among teens, debuted rise of mobile devices. When I started us- on buzzfeed.com. Snapchat Discover, a new space where ing the Web in the 1990s, every website— Being on social platforms isn’t new to around a dozen publishers publish stories whether NYTimes.com or someone’s food publishers, of course. But most news sites directly into the app, specially designed blog—lived, in a technical sense, on the use Twitter and Facebook as marketing and formatted to look Snapchatty. Offi cial same level. Each had a URL I could enter tools, to drive traffi c back to the mothership. numbers are hard to come by, but all in- into any Web browser. The largest megacorp BuzzFeed Distributed lives only in social dications are that Discover is reaching and the smallest site could live in browser streams. It’s an imperfect analogy, but imag- huge audiences and successfully charging tabs side by side, and the link—the humble ine if The Seattle Times hired 20 reporters astonishingly high ad rates. blue underline that defi ned the medium— whose only job was to write stories for the connected them all as equal citizens of an Miami Herald. open platform. Why would BuzzFeed spend millions on But the iPhone and the rise of smart- producing content for other people’s plat- BuzzFeed Distributed phones that followed it repackaged the forms, with no obvious fi nancial benefi t? is one of the leaders Internet into apps. The open Web became Well, VC fi rms do keep handing them mon- just another app, living alongside all the ey—they have to spend it somewhere. But in creating content others. Of every hour an average American more importantly, BuzzFeed wants to follow specifi cally and solely spends on his or her smartphone only about

its users’ attention. And those users are in- for social platforms seven minutes are spent in the Web browser. PRESS BEN MARGOT/ASSOCIATED

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And teens and young readers increasing- for you, and we’re not going to shape it to there. Native is only going to get bigger in ly aren’t just digital natives but smartphone you needs. the near term. natives. Social platforms are their centers So you have these apps and platforms of attention. And newer platforms are—in- that draw a huge share of user attention. • Focus more energy on the platforms tentionally—not designed to be friendly to Fewer people are seeking out a news source that are still open. Why have we seen a news or anything else that wants a share of directly; they stumble across news in social boomlet in e-mail newsletters? One rea- that attention. streams that are decreasingly aligned with son: E-mail is still an open platform, and Facebook and (especially) Twitter are the interests of news publishers. That’s no one controls access to your in-box. built around links—they’re hubs that point the context in which distributed content— Podcasts? An open standard that anyone you elsewhere. That’s what can make them publishing under someone else’s roof—is can publish to. In both cases, the custom- such great engines of promotion for news. happening. er gets to decide the relationship with the Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and others are What’s a publisher to do? There are no publisher, not a middleman. all about keeping you contained inside easy solutions, but here are a few ideas. the experience. Instagram, for example, • Consider going premium. Competing doesn’t allow linking; the only way to add • Bet on native advertising. This is for attention (and ad dollars) on the open a link to an Instagram post is to buy an ad. BuzzFeed’s edge; its argument to adver- Web will keep getting harder. Figuring out Snapchat doesn’t do links either; the only tisers is: We know how to make content where you can create high-value products way to direct its users to news stories is to for social better than anyone else. Not you can charge a small audience for is key. strike a business deal to become part of that relying on banner advertising means not Discover platform. relying on pageviews. If it can build suc- • Go for scale. The reason so much ven- Even apps that might seem more friend- cessful editorial content on Instagram, it ture capital is pouring into the BuzzFeeds ly to publishers typically aren’t interested can build successful advertising content and Vox Medias and Business Insiders of in optimizing for their needs. A few news the world is that investors believe they outlets have experimented with WhatsApp, have the chance to be the next generation the popular chat app, using it as a sort of Time Inc. or NBC or Reuters. Navigating breaking-news broadcast service. But the Publishers should the world created by these social plat- app doesn’t make that easy, limiting mes- consider adopting forms is a task made easier when you’re sages to small groups of users and just big enough to get noticed. generally being a pain. When asked about strategies aimed at the complaints of publishers, a WhatsApp seeking more eyeballs Joshua Benton, a 2008 Nieman Fellow, is the spokesman said, essentially: This app isn’t from the social stream foun ding director of the Nieman Journalism Lab

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of worthwhile journalism, but a key element Data Is News was missing: enabling readers to explore the data themselves. In the digital era that basic Data-driven expectation of interactivity has become one projects and news- of the most essential components of eff ec- tive journalistic engagement. based games should Aron Pilhofer, executive editor of dig- ital for the Guardian in London, remem- be presented bers precisely when his mind-set in regard to data journalism changed. In May 2005 as journalism, not the pioneering journalist-developer Adrian Holovaty launched chicagocrime.org, a web- frilly add-ons site that combined Google Maps with data BY JAKE BATSELL from the Chicago Police Department to cre- ate interactive block-by-block crime maps. The site gave Chicago residents the ability to easily track crimes in their neighbor- hood, regardless of whether the incidents made television news or the metro briefs he texas tribune launched in a blog post outlining their philosophy. “It column in the Tribune or Sun-Times. “It to- in late 2009 with a newsroom aligns with our strategy of adding knowl- tally changed the way I thought about jour- of veteran journalists and edge and context to traditional reporting, nalism ... the idea that data itself, presented Trising stars. And while that and it helps you and us hold public offi cials to readers in a format that they, then, could respected crew of reporters, accountable.” Embracing that mentality, investigate, could itself be an act of journal- editors, and columnists would go on to the Tribune created what almost instantly ism,” Pilhofer said during a 2012 training unearth their share of political scoops, it became its most popular calling card, a da- webinar sponsored by the Knight Center wasn’t traditional reporting and writing that tabase listing the salaries of nearly 700,000 for Journalism in the Americas. That’s the propelled the Tribune to early prominence. public employees. The salary database drew hallmark of eff ective data journalism. No Instead, the Tribune quickly made its name a fl urry of complaints from state employees matter how artfully an interactive project as an interactive resource for readers to do who considered it an invasion of privacy is designed, the ultimate test is whether the their own exploring. and from readers who called it the digital public can use it. During its fi rst year the Tribune’s biggest equivalent of “water-cooler gossip.” But “If something’s useful, it’ll live in the traffic magnet was a series of more than ultimately it was an easy-to-use tool that wild,” said Matt Stiles, who left the Texas three dozen interactive databases that en- connected readers with publicly available Tribune to join NPR’s news apps team in abled readers to scour their neighborhood’s information. That ethic of accessibility in- Washington, D.C. With every app the NPR school rankings, look up an inmate in the forms all the Tribune’s interactive news or apps team creates, for example, Matt Stiles state prison system, or snoop on their of- apps. The databases also bring in revenue. and his colleagues strive to solve a problem fi ce mate’s salary. The databases connected For example, each salary listing has its own for readers—“not just dump it [data] but to readers to more than one million public re- digital page with several ads placed by cor- let them explore it with a good experience cords they otherwise might not have known porate sponsors. .... What story are we trying to tell? What is how to fi nd. Collectively these databases The Tribune is part of a growing tide someone going to bookmark and use again? were an unexpected hit, drawing three times of newsrooms that are creating interactive What is someone really going to want?” as many page views as the site’s stories. platforms for readers to use in whatev- For example, NPR’s mobile Fire Forecast “Publishing data is news,” the Tribune’s er ways matter most to them. Major U.S. app synthesizes data from the U.S. Forest Matt Stiles and Niran Babalola told readers newsrooms have long employed a handful Service with interactive mapping technol- of computer-assisted reporting specialists ogy to give users a personalized current This is an edited excerpt from “Engaged who acquired data through public records assessment of the wildfi re danger based on Journalism: Connecting with Digitally requests, sorted and analyzed the databases, their location. Empowered News Audiences” by Jake Batsell and summarized the most attention-grab- News outlets can appeal to readers’ (Columbia University Press) Copyright 2015 bing fi gures in their stories (or highlighted competitive instincts by pulling them into Columbia University Press them in accompanying sidebars and graph- digital “gamifi ed” experiences that are even ics). The approach certainly produced a lot more immersive. The Telegraph in London

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did just that during the summer of 2013 “It’s not the best, by far,” said Mark Oliver, News with an interactive feature that was fun, an online graphics editor who spent rough- organizations compelling, and wonderfully simple—and ly half a week creating the feature. “But in that empower took only a few days to build. “How to spot terms of the amount of time that we spent readers a Stradivarius,” published in connection building it, it was pretty successful, I think.” to dictate with an Oxford museum exhibit featuring Oliver and Conrad Quilty-Harper, an in- twenty-one of the world-renowned violins, teractive news editor, said they don’t have their own challenged users to listen to three short au- a fi xed formula for gauging the success of experience dio clips and see if they could pick out the interactive games. When a project goes live, follow a fairest fi ddle of them all. Users listened to they pay close attention to page views, social number of three audio clips, each less than a minute— media shares, and comment activity, as well one played with the Stradivarius, one with as more subjective factors like the tone of common an eighteenth-century German violin, and the comments. The Stradivarius test, which practices: one with a £40 (about $67) violin from the drew roughly fi ve thousand responses from supermarket. Users dragged and dropped people sharing their results, “was probably a each violin into the box that they thought midlevel-high success,” Quilty-Harper said. matched the corresponding clip. “But then, some graphics we’ve done have Whether you guessed right or not, the thirty thousand or forty thousand [shares]. Stradivarius challenge provided a brainy If we get something that does fi fty shares fi ve-minute escape and perhaps the impulse and we spent three days on it, that’s dramat- to pass the story along to a friend. Telegraph ically unsuccessful.” readers shared the game repeatedly through On the other hand, a news game that Facebook, Twitter, and other social net- catches on can attract a motivated and loyal works. When I spoke with members of the subset of users, as the Texas Tribune found Telegraph’s interactive team in London, in 2011–12 with its daily trivia game about they said they considered the Stradivarius Texas politics, Qrank. Rodney Gibbs, co- project a relative success, especially given founder of Ricochet Labs, which developed the minimal staff time spent creating it. Qrank, said the game was designed for those “microboredom moments” when you’re waiting in line or picking up your kids. Reeve Hamilton, a staff writer, was in 1 To make a newsgame, charge of updating the daily Qrank quizzes ask: Does the game with newsy nuggets and tidbits from the Treat data as inform? If it doesn’t, it is Tribune’s stories and interactive features. journalism “There were a lot of inside jokes embedded only a game. Does in it that you would only get if you were pay- it entertain? If not, it is ing attention,” Hamilton said. “It gave peo- only journalism ple a reason to come to the site.”

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Players accumulated points for correct answers and were ranked on a leaderboard as they competed for monthly prizes worth hundreds of dollars, such as dinner for two at an upscale Austin restaurant. “You basi- 3 cally have to read everything on our site to get a perfect score,” said Emily Ramshaw, the Tribune’s editor. “The facts we stick in Err on the side there sometimes are so obscure.” of simplicity The experiment worked in some ways but not others. Players found ways to cheat. And over time the game became a drain on Hamilton’s time—he spent roughly an hour every night updating the quiz. “It was quite an undertaking,” he said. explain how to avoid catching swine fl u, for Gibbs conceded Hamilton’s point: “For example, I would never do it in a game. Will all its strengths,” he said of Qrank, “it took 4 making a game facilitate understanding of constant feeding.” In September 2012 the information? That is the starting point. To Tribune discontinued the Qrank experi- Recognize make a newsgame, you have to ask two ques- ment; Ricochet Labs sold the game’s tech- that games tions: Does the game inform? If it doesn’t, it nology to another gaming company, and is only a game. Does the game entertain? If Gibbs became the Tribune’s chief innova- should not not, it is only journalism.” tion offi cer. be a chore California Watch, an investigative site Still, during its twenty-month run Qrank for the staff founded by the Center for Investigative created a sense of competition and excite- Reporting (CIR), informed and entertained ment for the roughly eight hundred to nine a younger-than-usual audience in 2011 hundred unique users who participated each with Ready to Rumble, a coloring book re- month. Realized to their maximum poten- leased in tandem with an acclaimed series tial, news games can spread the impact of that examined seismic safety in the state’s journalistic projects far beyond their orig- public schools. The nonprofi t investigative inal publication outlet. Nicholas Kristof, news outlet published a fi rst run of rough- The New York Times columnist, and Sheryl ly thirty-six thousand coloring books that WuDunn, a former Times reporter, supple- educated children on what to do when an mented their best-selling book “Half the earthquake hits. Ashley Alvarado, the pub- Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity lic engagement editor, explained that CIR for Women Worldwide” (2009) with a created the book because she and her col- Facebook adventure game in which play- leagues wanted to directly reach and inform ers complete quests to unlock actual gifts the children whose safety was the ultimate that support women and girls around the world. Kristof announced on his public Facebook page in August 2013 that the game had reached one million players and raised A Brazilian youth more than $400,000 for global women’s magazine uses simulation causes. “Games can do good,” Kristof told games based on stories to his Facebook followers. demystify the news In Brazil, simulation games aimed at 5 young people demystify the news by assign- ing players enticing roles and missions, such Be mindful as an undercover cop who poses as a traf- fi cker to infi ltrate the mafi a. The Brazilian that youth magazine Superinteressante and its interactivity publishing house, Editora Abril, have devel- can boost oped several such games. Fred di Giacomo, the bottom the former youth department editor for line finish Editora Abril, describes his editorial process in deciding which topics were worthy of a news game: “First you need to think about when it’s worth creating a game. Is the sto- ry I want to tell best told through a game, a post, or an infographic? If I had wanted to

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nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 50 3/25/15 2:33 PM interactive project is considerably more in- tense than a lighthearted attempt to engage readers through a newsy quiz or contest. But from the reader’s perspective, the end result is largely the same: journalism becomes 2 more accessible and participatory. News organizations that empower read- Keep ers to dictate their own experience follow a the data number of common practices:

fresh “Engaged Journalism: Connecting with • They regard data as journalism—so Digitally Empowered News Audiences” they treat it that way. Most news web- By Jake Batsell sites follow the conventional practice of Columbia University Press leading their home pages with a lengthy goal of the series: “While California Watch story or an embedded broadcast, not the games take work and can drain energy articles are written for adults, we recognize an interactive database. But data-driv- from other journalistic pursuits. When that oftentimes children are those most en projects can anchor home pages and it’s clear that the energy has waned, it’s aff ected by the stories we report.” Several should be presented as journalism in time to move on. media partners helped cover printing costs their own right, not extras or add-ons. for the coloring books, which were trans- Designing interactive projects to stand on • They are mindful that interactive lated into Spanish, Vietnamese, traditional their own also is important because read- features can boost the bottom line. Chinese, and simplifi ed Chinese. ers are increasingly likely to fi nd them The Texas Tribune’s public salary data- Contests also can help individual blog- through search or social media, outside base created its own digital ad inventory gers build a bigger following, as Mark their original context on a home page. by giving each salary entry an individual Luckie discovered years before he became page on the site. However, page views are Twitter’s manager of journalism and news. • They keep the data fresh. To be truly not the only way to make participatory In the late 2000s Luckie started a blog called interactive resources, data apps need to news features pay. The Tribune also seeks 10000Words.net that covered the intersect- be refreshed at least once or twice a year out sponsors for contests like Session ing worlds of journalism and technology. To with the most current information avail- Scramble and earns several thousand promote the blog Luckie began to run con- able. It’s not always possible to refresh dollars a month from Google by adding tests on Twitter, off ering prizes as modest as every app, but in those cases news orga- sponsored microsurveys to its databases, a $5 or $10 gift card. “That was the point that nizations should make clear that the apps which earn the Tribune a nickel each time I realized 10,000 Words was a business, and are not being updated. “We kind of owe it a user answers a question. When news- I needed to do something to make it more to readers to keep updating it,” said vet- rooms create interactive platforms that engaging to take it to the word-of-mouth eran data journalist Jennifer LaFleur. fulfi ll readers’ needs—practical, whim- stage,” Luckie said. sical, or otherwise—they must somehow The contests helped Luckie engage • They err on the side of simplicity. fi nd a way to capture that value. Their his core audience and attract addition- When building the Stradivarius feature, survival depends upon it. al readers to the blog. Luckie later sold the Telegraph’s Mark Oliver said the 10000Words.net for an undisclosed amount goal was to appeal to novices and experts At its fi nest, interactive journalism can to WebMediaBrands Inc. (now Mediabistro alike. Ultimately the team opted for an provide a riveting and memorable experience Inc.), parent company of Media Bistro. approach based on simplicity. that you can’t wait to share with your friends. The Texas Tribune returned to the That happened in December 2013 when The world of news games in May 2013 with the • They recognize that games should New York Times published an interactive Session Scramble, a photo scavenger hunt not be a chore for the staff . Over time, news quiz called How Y’all, Youse, and You held during the frenetic fi nal two weeks of as momentum for Qrank faded within Guys Talk. The quiz created a personal dia- the state legislative session. “Think of it as the Texas Tribune newsroom, the game lect map based on participants’ answers to Instagram with cut-throat competition in- became a burden for Reeve Hamilton. which-word-do-you-use questions, such as stead of sepia tone fi lters,” the Tribune pro- News games can whip up enthusiasm in, whether one drinks from a water fountain claimed in announcing the contest, whose and deepen the loyalty of, core users, but or a bubbler. The feature was published with assigned hunts ranged from the newsy only ten days left in 2013, but it still rocketed (taking shots of demonstrations at the cap- to the top of the Times’s list of most-visited itol) to the silly (legislators high-fi ving each stories for the entire calendar year. other). Funded by corporate sponsors, the Posted 10 days before “Think about that,” Robinson Meyer, the Session Scramble drew 1,243 photos from the end of 2013, The New Atlantic’s technology editor, writes. “A news 244 participants vying for prizes that in- app, a piece of software about the news cluded a spa retreat and three nights at a York Times dialect quiz made by in-house developers, generated Caribbean hotel. rocketed to the top more clicks than any article.” Astonishing The sheer journalistic effort involved of the list of the year’s things can happen when a news organiza- in creating a comprehensive data-driven most-visited stories tion invites its audience to participate. nieman reports winter 2015 51

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 51 3/25/15 2:33 PM Nieman Notes

1955 he was managing editor at 1977 He also had held a number the Houston Post, which won of university research posts, William Woestendiek for an exposé on government Paul Solman is one of three including one at Harvard’s died on January 16 at a Mesa, corruption in Pasadena, Texas. co-authors of “Get What’s John Fairbank Center. Arizona nursing facility. He was The second came in 1981 while Yours: The Secrets to Maxing 90 years old. he was executive director of the Out Your Social Security He got his start in Arizona Daily Star. It was for Benefi ts,” published by Simon 1982 journalism as editor of the the paper’s investigation into & Schuster in February. Alex Jones, director of the University of North Carolina’s the athletics department at the Shorenstein Center on Media, student publication, The University of Arizona. Politics and Public Policy at Daily Tar Heel. During his Woestendiek is survived by 1981 Harvard’s Kennedy School, will career, Woestendiek held top his wife Bonnie, three children, Zhao Jinglun died on January step down from his position on editor positions at several and four grandchildren. 24. He was 91. July 1 after 15 years. newspapers, including The The fi rst Nieman Fellow (Colorado Springs) Sun and 1974 from mainland China, he was The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. a columnist for the Hong Kong 1984 He served as director of Patricia O’Brien, writing Economic Journal and The Jan Jarboe Russell’s book the University of Southern under the pen name “Kate China Internet Information called “The Train to Crystal California’s journalism school Alcott,” authored a novel “A Center, a news site sanctioned City” about a secret internment from 1988 to 1994, when Touch of Stardust,” which by the Chinese government. camp in Texas during World he retired. was published by Doubleday He contributed articles to The War II was published in As an editor, Woestendiek in February. It peeks behind New York Times, Los Angeles January by Scribner. guided two papers to Pulitzers. the scenes of the classic movie Times, and The Christian The fi rst came in 1965 while “Gone with the Wind.” Science Monitor. 1990 George Rodrigue started in “deadline scholar” January as editor of The Plain Steve Oney, NF ’82, remembers the delightful erudition of Nieman Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio. classmate Piero Benetazzo For the previous few months, he had been the assistant news Piero Benetazzo, NF ’82, a longtime reporter for La Republicca, director at Dallas’s WFAA. died of cancer at his home in Rome on January 11. He was 78. Prior to making the jump to Benetazzo, who started his career as a correspondent at ANSA wire TV news, Rodrigue had been service, fi led dispatches from around the globe. He covered revolutions managing editor at The Dallas in Africa and economics on the continent. The fi rst Nieman from Italy, Morning News for 10 years. he was passionate about life, journalism, and justice.

All through that year the parties at Lippmann House never really 1992 got going until Piero Benetazzo uncorked a bottle of Freixenet Cordon Negro. To the close-knit Charles Onyango-Obbo Nieman class of 1982, this cheap, sparkling wine summoned not only appropriately high spirits launched a Pan-African news but an equally appropriate heightened sense of purpose. At 46, Piero was the eldest in our group, site last May. The site, called and he taught us that joy could walk hand-in-hand with knowledge. Mail & Guardian Africa, A big man with an unruly moustache, swept-back graying hair, and old-world manners, Piero seeks to bring a “deeper was every inch the dashing foreign correspondent. As a reporter for ANSA in 1968, he was the understanding to Africa’s only Western journalist in Prague when Soviet tanks rumbled in to crush the anti-Communist possibilities and diffi culties Prague Spring. He had a world beating scoop. Later at La Republicca (of which he was a founder) today ... give voice to he covered the Iranian hostage crisis, Chile under Pinochet, and the Angolan civil war. perspectives that both Afro- The breadth of Piero’s work was impressive, but he was not a hard-news writer in the optimists and Afro-pessimists American tradition. Like the best European journalists of his generation, he infused all that he don’t want you to hear.” wrote with a deep understanding of history. The term that truly fi t him is deadline scholar. Part of Piero’s charm was that he did not take himself too seriously. He was light on his feet, and as the best so often are, he was humble. He was also a ham. When Rome-based NPR 1999 correspondent Sylvia Poggioli, his talented wife, needed someone to read English translations of Dimitri Mitropoulos took speeches by important European fi gures, she invariably drafted him. To a generation of “All over the helm of the Greek Things Considered” listeners, an uncredited Piero Benetazzo was Pope John Paul II. daily newspaper Ta Nea in Although Piero had been an altar boy in his hometown of Belluno, he was nonobservant. Thus May 2014. As executive editor, Sylvia arranged for his funeral to be held at the Tempietto Egizio (the little Egyptian Temple) in Mitropoulos manages 120 Campo Verano. “You’re giving him the send-off of a pharaoh,” a friend told her. To which those journalists. He was previously of us in the class of 1982 raise a glass of Freixenet. In Piero’s company, everything was possible. a political commentator with the newspaper.

52 niemannieman reports winterwinter 20120155

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 52 3/31/15 12:58 PM “mentor, teacher, and confidante” Mary C. Curtis, NF ’06, celebrates the indelible infl uence of Dori Maynard, NF ’93, on journalism

Dori Maynard, NF ’93, who died of lung cancer on February 24 at 56, was a trailblazer on the issue of newsroom diversity. She championed broadening the concept beyond racial diversity, arguing that the make- up of a newsroom staff should refl ect the communities it covers. After working at the Detroit Free Press, the Bakersfi eld Californian, and The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts, she took over as president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California. Her late father, Robert, a 1966 Nieman Fellow, had co-founded the institute in 1977. Dori became president of the institute in 2002 at a time when some people thought diversity was no longer an issue. Dori knew better and kept on pushing.

You could say I owe my life in journalism to the Maynard family—the people and the institute. As a little girl growing up in West Baltimore, I knew that my neighborhood and neighbors were stereotyped and caricatured in the newspapers and on the television. But I didn’t have a clue about how to make a life in journalism and change those images. The Maynard Institute’s Editing Program for Minority Journalists fi lled in what my college education and early newsroom supervisors left out. This grueling journalism boot camp in Tucson, Arizona honed skills and left its survivors with confi dence and direction. I returned to Tucson to teach in the years the program remained based at the University of Arizona, though my debt could never be repaid. Seeing the successive groups of leaders of every age, place, and race was exhilarating, and it was a balm for the occasional setbacks that occur, even in newsrooms proud of their inclusiveness. Take a roll call of journalists making a diff erence and you will hear a variation of my story. Maynard was our fi nishing school. I had gotten to know Dori Maynard in the years after Tucson; she bolstered the work of her father, Robert C. Maynard, NF ’66, and the institute’s other co-founders when she took over its leadership in 2002. The “Fault Lines” workshops she led across race, class, gender, generation, and geography taught, as the institute says, “an appreciation for the ways in which those lines shape our perception of ourselves, others and events around us.” Dori Maynard was mentor, teacher, and confi dante, with a combination of passion and sweetness perfect for the tough work she felt she had to do. That work is more important than ever in an America that has grown much more diverse in the years since the founding of the Maynard Institute. The institute changed the life of that little girl with dreams, and it continues to change the world—as the rest of the “family” remembers and steps up.

2001 2007 2009 Foundation for “The Richard Mark Pothier has been named Craig Welch has left The Kalpana Jain is senior Family,” a two-part narrative assistant managing editor at Seattle Times for National education editor at The about overcoming physical The Boston Globe. Pothier Geographic, where he is Conversation US, a nonprofi t challenges and living with grief now oversees the Sunday and continuing to report on the website that launched last fall after the Boston Marathon Monday opinion sections environment. to off er news and views from bombings. and has a seat on the Globe’s the academic and research editorial board. Previously he community. She works with Laura Wides-Muñoz joined was the business editor. 2008 academics on articles related to Fusion in January as director Dan Vergano has moved to research, policy, analysis, and of news practices. She had BuzzFeed News, where he is a commentary around education spent the previous eight years 2004 science reporter based in the issues in the United States. working as a reporter in the Masha Gessen’s “The media company’s Washington, Miami bureau of the Associated Brothers: The Road to an D.C. bureau. He is covering Press. She is responsible American Tragedy,” about the science politics and policy. 2010 for ensuring that Fusion’s Tsarnaev brothers, accused of Vergano previously worked at Alissa Quart’s book of journalism meets its standards. orchestrating the bombing at National Geographic. poetry, “Monetized,” was the Boston Marathon fi nish published in March by Miami 2014 line in 2013, will be published Holly Williams, along with University Press. Quart’s by Riverhead in April. the CBS Evening News team, poetry takes a hard look at Susie Banikarim has been received the Jack R. Howard the commercialization of named vice president of Award and $10,000 from the American culture. content strategy and audience 2005 Scripps Howard Foundation for engagement at Vocativ, a Joe O’Connor is the new “Holy War,” early coverage of media start-up that seeks to president and general manager the emergence of ISIS in Syria 2013 tell original stories using the of WFAE, a Charlotte, North and Northern Iraq. The judges David Abel of The Boston untapped troves of the Deep Carolina NPR news station. said, “This early reporting of Globe received the Ernie Pyle Web. Banikarim will be in O’Connor previously spent what is now an international Award for Human Interest charge of audience growth, eight years as general manager crisis is heroic, farsighted and Storytelling and $10,000 from social media, and editorial at Rhode Island Public Radio. truly a public service.” the Scripps Howard marketing.

nieman reports winterwinter 22015015 5353

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 53 3/31/15 12:58 PM Sounding

Hard Lessons we interpret what we see and hear. Our I was the youngster who hated to miss experiences aff ect what stories we pursue, school because that was where I got love Getting an how we report them, and the importance we and encouragement from teachers like Mrs. education— give certain news items in our newspapers Virginia Allen, who told me I was smart and and on our TV and radio programs. pretty. It was also my refuge, the place I was in and out of I write about education through the eyes safe from the evils that haunted my life— the classroom of the poor. I can’t help it. And, really, I think physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect. my newsroom is better because of it. Later, I was the teenager who knew little I was born into a family that was too busy about college or how to get there. I had to trying to make sure everybody ate and had fi gure much of it out on my own. In college, shoes to worry about what kind of educa- I struggled to find my direction and re- tion anyone got. My Grandpa Wamsley was lied on friends to help me navigate the of- ast fall, i sat in on a class a West Virginia coal miner with 20 children, ten-confusing world of fi nancial aid, campus at Harvard University fi lled with including my mother, who dropped out of housing, and academia. students who were working on school before the ninth grade. My dad was These are the experiences I’ve drawn L graduate degrees in higher ed- one of eight kids raised on a subsistence upon when writing about issues such as ucation. The professor posed a farm in the midst of Appalachia. As a teen- teacher quality and college access. When I simple but enlightening question. She asked ager and an adult, he almost always worked investigate problems and ask tough ques- how many of us had attended a community two or three jobs at a time to pay the bills. tions, I try to represent parents and students college, or knew someone who had. I grew up in a Florida trailer park about who don’t have the time or the courage or I was among the few in the room of 60 or 45 minutes south of Daytona Beach. In the know-how to do it themselves. so people who raised a hand. school, I was the girl who wore the same pair That was the case in late 2011, when I be- I had gone to a community college before of magenta-pink pants two or three days in a gan investigating a hazing that killed a drum earning my bachelor’s degree from a small, row. I was the kid who devoured everything major at Florida A&M University (FAMU). public university in Florida. But, apparent- on her lunch tray—even the soggy broccoli I discovered that school offi cials had been ly, a number of my Harvard classmates were and the bits of lettuce covered in watery or- unwilling or unable to control a culture of unfamiliar with the institutions that serve ange dressing—because I knew it would be abuse that had existed within FAMU’s fa- so many of this country’s poorest students, my best meal of the day. mous marching band for decades. including those who are, like I was, the fi rst Over the next year, I uncovered a slew in their families to go to college. Denise-Marie Ordway of additional problems, including fi nancial As a longtime education reporter and mismanagement and troubling admissions a mother, it was disheartening. Here were procedures that were contributing to the dozens of brilliant men and women who un- university’s low graduation rates. State doubtedly will become administrators and leaders demanded big changes at FAMU in other leaders who will help guide the futures Tallahassee. Among the results was a string of our colleges and universities. They will be of fi rings and forced resignations and re- asked to tackle problems in areas such as de- tirements, including that of the university gree completion, but lack important insights president. into a key piece of the higher-education I acknowledge that, over the course of equation—and a key student population. my career, I have worried sometimes about Earlier in the semester, I had quietly not having the same quality of training that celebrated the ethnic and racial diversity of my media colleagues have had. I didn’t go the class. I’d estimate that nearly half the to graduate school. I didn’t even go to jour- students were black, Latino, or from other nalism school. But I understand the need minority groups. The discussion about com- to hold accountable those who control our munity colleges, however, made me rethink I write about schools, colleges, and universities. I know what it means to have diversity in educa- education through firsthand that education and a positive tional leadership. the eyes of the poor. learning experience can help transform a That experience made me think about person’s life.  what diversity means in our newsrooms. As And, really, I think journalists, our backgrounds color how we my newsroom is Denise-Marie Ordway, a 2015 Nieman Fellow, is a senior reporter at the Orlando Sentinel view the communities we cover and how better because of it ABITBOL OPPOSITE: LISA

54 nieman reports winter 2015

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 54 3/31/15 12:58 PM Nieman Online

Post-Charlie Hebdo Attacks • French documentary fi lmmaker Florence Martin-Kessler, NF ’11, on the role of political cartoons in French culture • Bernard Edinger, NF ’85, on the fears and concerns of French Jews

From the Archives The departure of labor reporter Steven Greenhouse from The New York Times occasioned stories about decades past when many papers staff ed that beat. In its January 1952 issue, Nieman Reports took note of the departure of Louis Stark from the beat. President Harry S. Truman praised Stark as “the dean of all reporters on the labor scene” in the nation’s capital.

Laura Poitras, director of the Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour,” is the 2014 recipient of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. Video of the awards ceremony is online nieman.harvard.edu, awards & conferences Newsonomics News industry analyst Ken Doctor’s weekly column examines what’s working and what’s not with business models

“Don’t Try Too Hard to Please Twitter” The social media desk of The New York Times reports on what it learned in 2014

“We don’t stop being The Discovery Channel The Internet Archive has big plans to expand, thanks to a $600,000 grant from citizens if we’re the Knight News Challenge journalists. As citizens Upcoming Conferences there are certain things A round-up of narrative journalism gatherings across the U.S. and beyond

we’re obligated to 5 Questions for Jessica Stern The expert on terrorism talks about going to the “edge of insanity” to write “Denial,” speak out against, her memoir about being raped at gunpoint for instance, as a teenager “What 14 Great Writers Taught One Journalism Class” Guantanamo being an Journalism professor Matt Tullis pulls together the best advice from guest lecturers whose work appears in The obvious example.” New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The —LAURA POITRAS Washington Post, and other outlets

nr_winter_2015_32415_FINAL.indd 55 3/31/15 12:58 PM WINTER 2015 VOL. 69 NO. 1 The Neman Foundaton for Journalsm Harvard Unversty TO PROMOTE AND One Francs Avenue ELEVATE THE STANDARDS Cambrdge, Massachusett s 02138 OF JOURNALISM

nr_winter2015_covers_spine_31815.indd 2 3/25/15 2:38 PM