Reinventing Local TV News
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NIEMAN REPORTS Reinventing Local TV News Innovative stations push to attract younger audiences Contributors The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Sara Morrison (page 14) www.niemanreports.org has been an assistant editor at Columbia Journalism Review and a senior writer for Boston. com. Her work has appeared on Vocativ, Poynter, The Guardian, The Atlantic Wire, and The Wrap. Her media reporting often focuses on newsroom diversity publisher and innovation. Ann Marie Lipinski editor Marites Dañguilan Vitug (page 8), a James Geary 1987 Nieman Fellow, is editor at large of senior editor Rappler, a leading online news site in the Jan Gardner Philippines. She is the author of several editorial assistant books on Philippine current aff airs. Eryn M. Carlson Previously she was editor in chief of Newsbreak magazine. staff assistant Lesley Harkins Mary Louise Schumacher (page 22), design the 2017 Arts & Culture Nieman Fellow, Pentagram is the art and architecture critic at the editorial offices Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, currently at work on a documentary MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, fi lm about art critics in the midst of [email protected] technological and cultural transformation. Copyright 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Michael Blanding (page 34) is an author Periodicals postage paid at and investigative journalist whose work Boston, Massachusetts and has appeared in publications including additional entries The New York Times, Wired, The New Republic, Slate, and The Nation. subscriptions/business His most recent book, “The Map Thief,” 617-496-6299, [email protected] was published in 2014. Subscription $25 a year, $40 for two years; Ricki Morell (page 42) is a Boston- add $10 per year for foreign airmail. based journalist who has written for Single copies $7.50. The New York Times, The Boston Back copies are available from Globe, The Wall Street Journal, the Nieman offi ce. WBUR’s CommonHealth website, Please address all subscription and the Hechinger Report, an online correspondence to: education newsroom. One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 and change of address information to: Writer for Nieman Reports honored by SPJ P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Glenn Jeff ers is the winner of the 2017 Postmaster: Send address changes to Sigma Delta Chi Award in the magazine Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, writing—national circulation category for Manchester, NH 03108 “A Mass Shooting, Only in Slow Motion.” The piece, which appeared in the Fall 2017 Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) issue of Nieman Reports, examines how is published in March, June, newsrooms are moving away from a focus September, and December by on mass shootings to tell more nuanced stories about the people and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, communities marred by gun violence. The Sigma Delta Chi Awards One Francis Avenue, are presented annually by the Society of Professional Journalists to Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 recognize excellence in journalism. OPPOSITE, TOP: JOHN RENIGAR/WRAL BOTTOM: ROB STOTHARD/GETTY IMAGES Monitors in WRAL-TV’s production control room offer a view of the station’s augmented reality set for coverage of the Winter Olympics Contents Spring 2018 / Vol. 72 / No. 2 Features Departments “It’s a Fight for the Ideals 8 cover Live@Lippmann 2 We Strive For” Matthew Caruana Galizia on threats Despite the obstacles in an increasingly Reinventing Local TV News 14 to investigative journalism in Malta hostile environment, independent Filipino To attract young viewers, stations news outlets are doing vital work are going digital-fi rst, crowdsourcing Elena Milashina on the challenges By Marites Dañguilan Vitug reporting, experimenting with of reporting in Chechnya augmented reality, and injecting The Artistry of Visual Arts Writing 22 more personality into the news Niemans@Work 6 From heady journals to Tumblr By Sara Morrison and Eryn Carlson Teaching buisness journalism, creating manifestos, innovation in art criticism new revenue streams out of journalistic is happening outside the mainstream Against All Odds 30 research, off ering a place for media By Mary Louise Schumacher Hyperallergic is a digital standout entrepreneurs to incubate startups in the world of arts journalism By Mary Louise Schumacher Books 50 The work of “Frenemies: The Epic Disruption of the New York Times watchdog Ad Business (and Everything Else)” photography Can Extreme Transparency Fight 34 By Ken Auletta critic Teju Cole Fake News and Create More Trust? is proof that arts journalists can From posting raw footage to explaining Nieman Notes 52 be inventive at a reporting methods, more journalists are legacy outlet— showing their work Sounding 56 but it’s a rarity By Michael Blanding Dustin Dwyer storyboard What Journalists Need to Know 42 About Writing Screenplays Narrative writers on the similarities and diff erences between journalism and screenwriting By Ricki Morell live@ no evidence in plain sight that anything bad lippmann is going on here, then nothing bad is going on.” There was no instinct to look further. “There are crooks everywhere you On why Malta is so little covered. I think it’s a combination of things. It’s a very small look now. The situation is desperate” country that people aren’t used to paying attention to. Malta has this image as a hol- Maltese journalist Matthew Caruana iday destination. People aren’t looking at it in the same way that they look at, for ex- Galizia on the assassination of his ample, Sicily, where there’s a lot of orga- nized crime. The second thing is that it’s investigative journalist mother, threats been very easy for the current government to the free press, and a new investigative of Malta to project an image of the country that is very different from the reality. outlet in Malta I think that the current prime minister is a kind of populist in disguise. It’s very easy to look at countries like Poland now and see atthew caruana galizia is a The situation is desperate.” She meant that, that something is going wrong there, be- data journalist and software engineer as an investigative journalist, she was stand- cause they fit the model of being far-right, at the International Consortium of ing alone. The institutions of the state had homophobic, anti-Semitic, and anti-media M Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). He is been captured, compromised, and rendered freedom. They fit this model that we’re very a founding member of ICIJ’s data and ineffective, so even though she was putting used to, whereas Malta’s prime minister is a research unit, which was key to the organization’s the results of her investigations out there, little different. While he’s unfriendly to the Pulitzer-winning investigation of the Panama no action was being taken. She didn’t have free press and xenophobic and so on, he’s Papers in 2016. Prior to joining ICIJ, Caruana the backing of any institution. projected this image of Malta as a country Galizia worked at the Financial Times’s FT Labs If you look at what’s happening in that’s pro-gay rights, for example. That cre- and was a member of the investigative team at La Israel now with Prime Minister Benjamin ates a smokescreen for the country, and it’s Nación newspaper in Costa Rica. Netanyahu, at least the police haven’t been very effective. It’s hard for people outside Caruana Galizia is the eldest son of Daphne compromised and they’re still pushing for the country to look beyond that. Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who prosecution. Whereas, when my mother I was in Paris around the time of the was assassinated in a car bombing near her was alive and now currently, that wasn’t the last elections in Malta in June 2017, and I home on October 16, 2017. Her blog, “Running case. There was no one pushing for any kind was speaking to someone from the OECD Commentary,” was a leading source of investi- of action on any of the things that she was [the intergovernmental Organisation for gative journalism in the island nation, which, revealing. This meant that she was alone Economic Co-operation and Development]. with a population of under 450,000 people, is and exposed. She told me, “Well maybe it’s good that this the smallest—and most densely populated— She had no one in parliament, no one prime minister wins the election again—he member of the European Union. Caruana within the police, no one within the judi- seems like quite a good guy.” It was a real Galizia—who long faced libel suits and physi- ciary who was willing to take any action. shock to me to hear this, because all his out- cal threats for her work—single-handedly in- [This] meant that, if you wanted to stop this ward propaganda of being in favor of some vestigated everything from abuses of power and pressure, then all you had to do was get rid civil rights has worked, and no one could ethical failures to money laundering, corrupt of her. Even the opposition party had been look beyond that to see all the corruption politicians, and the influence of the Azerbaijani completely compromised. that was happening below it. government on Maltese politics. She uncovered the many Malta connections in the Panama On his mother’s approach to reporting. On the investigation into his mother’s Papers investigation—even prior to the April Malta has no system for teaching critical murder. The past couple of months have 2016 publication of stories based on the leaked thinking in the way that a country like the been like watching two disasters unfold documents—including those of politicians U.S.