NIEMAN REPORTS Why all reporters need to understand how science works

How coverage of Native American issues is changing—for the better

Obstacles and opportunities facing journalists with disabilities

The Trump campaign gives journalists a comeuppance: There’s no substitute for listening to voters FACE THE NATION

nr_spring_2016_covers_spine_032916.indd 1 4/1/16 4:28 PM Contributors The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Juliet Eilperin (page 28) www.niemanreports.org is The Washington Post’s White House bureau chief. An 18-year veteran of the Post, she covered the 2008 presidential campaign and fi ve congressional publisher campaigns. She is the author Ann Marie Lipinski of two books, including editor “Fight Club Politics: How James Geary Partisanship is Poisoning the senior editor House of Representatives,” Jan Gardner published in 2006. researcher/reporter Jonathan Seitz Tatiana Walk-Morris (page 34) is a Chicago- based journalist. Her work has appeared in editorial assistant DNAinfo Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business, Eryn M. Carlson the Chicago Reader, The Chicago Defender, and The New York Times. design Pentagram editorial offices Michael Blanding (page 8) is a Boston-based One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, author and investigative journalist whose MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, work has appeared in The New Republic, Slate, [email protected] The Nation, and Wired. His most recent book, “The Map Thief,” was published in 2014. Copyright 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Periodicals postage paid at Paul Raeburn (page 16) writes the Tracker, Boston, Massachusetts and a column critiquing science journalism, for additional entries Undark magazine, based at MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program. He has been the science subscriptions/business editor at the AP and at BusinessWeek. 617-496-6299, [email protected]

Subscription $25 a year, Jon Marcus (page 22) is higher-education editor $40 for two years; at The Hechinger Report, a foundation-supported add $10 per year for foreign airmail. nonprofi t news organization based at Columbia Single copies $7.50. University. His last article for Nieman Reports was Back copies are available from “Rewriting J-School.” the Nieman offi ce.

Please address all subscription Genevieve Belmaker (page 40) is currently correspondence to: covering the confl ict in Israel and the West One Francis Avenue, Bank. She spent the past three years as a metro Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 reporter in New York City. Her work has appeared and change of address information to: in MediaShift and the Poynter Institute. P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Michelle Hackman (page 48) is a politics and Postmaster: Send address changes to breaking news reporter for Vox.com. She is a 2015 Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, graduate of Yale University and has written for Manchester, NH 03108 the Yale Daily News and The Wall Street Journal. You can fi nd her tweeting @MHackman. Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published in March, June, Michael Fitzgerald (page 51) is a 2011 Nieman September, and December by Fellow who writes about innovation for The the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, Boston Globe, The Economist, Fast Company, One Francis Avenue, MIT Sloan Management Review, The Wall Street

Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 Journal, and other publications. BOTTOM: CALO IMAGES; AUBREY OPPOSITE TOP: TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/GETTY

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd A 3/30/16 12:41 PM Newsrooms are working to stay relevant as social media platforms proliferate and political campaigning undergoes big changes Contents Spring 2016 / Vol. 70 / No. 2

Features Departments storyboard cover From the Curator 2 Adjusting the Frame 8 By Ann Marie Lipinski How journalists and artists are fi nding On the Trail 28 Amid public disaff ection with the press complementary ways to tell stories Live@Lippmann 4 By Michael Blanding and the rise of social media, newsrooms The Marshall Project’s Gabriel Dance are rethinking campaign coverage By Juliet Eilperin Research and Reporting 16 Niemans@Work 6 Understanding how science works is The Future of Fact-Checking 34 Examining the aftermath of war, pushing By Tatiana Walk-Morris important for all journalists the Pulitzers forward, designing a survey By Paul Raeburn tool that delivers fast, accurate results Becoming Visible 22 How mainstream and tribal outlets are nieman journalism lab covering Native Americans—for the better The New Media Monopoly 54 Atul Gawande, By Jon Marcus With news outlets concentrating in major a surgeon cities, journalism faces a new imperative and journalist, watchdog By Joshua Benton is critical of science journals Neither Heroes Nor Victims 40 page 16 Covering the disability community with Books 56 sensitivity—and without sensationalism “Saving the Media: Capitalism, By Genevieve Belmaker Crowdfunding, and Democracy” By Julia Cagé Seen and Heard 48 The obstacles, opportunities, and latent Nieman Notes 60 prejudice facing journalists with disabilities By Michelle Hackman Sounding 62 Mónica Guzmán, NF ’16 Access for All 51 Making news sites easier to navigate cover: By Michael Fitzgerald Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 1 3/25/16 10:31 AM From the Curator

these editors didn’t simply fail to foretell The depth of Trump’s the rise of Trump. In deciding for the vot- support eluded modern ers rather than covering them, they missed the story hiding in plain sight, the biggest measuring tools of this campaign. That same month, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos was deep into reporting a piece that would turn out to be one of the most Statistician Nate Silver’s mirror-to- Loathing on the prescient of the season. In “The Fearful and America election forecasts lent a scientifi c the Frustrated,” he documented a six-state polish to coverage of our last two presiden- Campaign Trail journey through Trump country and his en- tial races. So precise, so accurate, so com- Once again, the counters with “a confederacy of the frustrat- forting. I recently reread a talk by a leading ed—less a constituency than a loose alliance national political columnist given at Harvard media discover of Americans who say they are betrayed by in the fall of 2007, 12 months before the elec- that there’s politicians, victimized by a changing world, tion and Silver’s laser-sharp predictions. She and enticed by Trump’s insurgency.” All spoke about the campaign and described the no substitute for the themes we now know to have fueled country as “one year away from the corona- talking to voters Trump’s run were ripe for harvest and ar- tion of the warrior queen.” Another pundit is rayed in his August story: economic despon- later recorded as concurring, asking rhetor- dency, toxic views of immigrants, hunger for ically: “Can an African-American man with a “hostile takeover of the Republican Party.” two years experience in the Senate be more “Over the last nine months, I was baffl ed electable than Hillary Clinton?” Big data and as reporters continued to treat the Trump Silver’s poll aggregation methods were a wel- phenomenon as a joke, even after he and his come assault on the guessing class. if casting for an act one in this supporters had provided abundant evidence But then came Trump and Bernie inglorious season of American political of their beliefs,” Osnos told me. “Recently, Sanders, the surprising socialist who would journalism, a mid-July moment in The that’s become a story, but it’s very late.” be president. Silver’s FiveThirtyEight called Huffi ngton Post newsroom might do. Instead, proof of Trump’s staying pow- Sanders’s victory over Clinton in Michigan “After watching and listening to Donald er combined with his escalating bigotry the “biggest primary polling upset ever.” Trump since he announced his candidacy focused the media on the question of how A post-mortem podcast by Silver and his col- for president, we have decided we won’t best to characterize a demagogue. Having leagues reminded me of childhood interro- report on Trump’s campaign as part of largely sat out the story that would ex- gations by my parents to determine which of The Huffi ngton Post’s political coverage,” amine the roots of his dark appeal, many their four children was responsible for some announced two senior editors. “If you are journalists turned to denouncing him and household calamity; so much fi nger-pointing interested in what The Donald has to say, his voters. If you were building a time cap- but no clear culprit. At one point in the pod- you’ll find it next to our stories on the sule of Campaign 2016 journalism, you cast, an exasperated staff er ventures: “There Kardashians and The Bachelorette.” would want to include this media writer’s were a whole bunch of things.” The imperial post was remarkable for its tweet about an internal newsroom memo: The limits of modern measuring tools effi cient dismissal of what we now know to “BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief: Fair to call were underscored for me by a riveting recent be millions of voters. Like so many others, Trump ‘mendacious racist.’” Guardian story quoting anonymous Trump

Many journalists dismissed Trump’s candidacy instead of talking to voters to understand his appeal ABITBOL OPPOSITE: LISA PRESS; STEVE HELBER/ASSOCIATED

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 2 3/25/16 10:31 AM voters at length, many of them describing themselves as “secret” or “closet” support- “saying ers, some fearful of being discovered. “Not what needs even my wife knows,” said one man. to be said” “The data revolution had relied on assumptions about how people behave— Yang Jisheng, this year’s evangelicals do X, liberal Acela-riders recipient of the Louis M. do Y—and it was enormously eff ective in Lyons Award for Conscience a conventional race,” Osnos wrote me. “But and Integrity in Journalism, when the political weather changed from paid tribute to fellow moderately cloudy to a hurricane, the model journalists in China, who, failed, and it wasn’t updated to keep pace.” he said, have “reported Osnos recalled leaving his fi rst Trump the truth, chastised evil, event in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he’d in- and moved Chinese society terviewed a young mother who approved forward.” Banned from of the candidate’s views on Mexicans and traveling to Cambridge to a “genial” Vietnam veteran who defended accept the award on March Trump’s mockery of John McCain because 10, the veteran Chinese From left: Eva Song, Louisa Lim, and Stacy Mosher at the McCain had “betrayed” him and other journalist sent remarks that Lyons Award ceremony honoring Yang Jisheng’s journalism Republicans. What he heard that day from were read at the ceremony “ordinary, otherwise likable people” both by Stacy Mosher, co-editor and co-translator of Yang’s book “Tombstone: The Great alarmed Osnos and confi rmed that there Chinese Famine, 1958–1962.” The English translation was published in 2013. Writer was a signifi cant story unfolding. Eva Song accepted the award on Yang’s behalf. “These interactions were dispiriting but The Nieman Class of 2016 that selected Yang for the honor cited him as a “role model also revealing,” he said. “Something was to all who seek to document the dark and diffi cult struggles of humankind.” happening.” “Tombstone” chronicles a manmade famine in which 36 million Chinese people In her cover story for this issue, The died. “Although it could only be published in Hong Kong and remains banned in China, Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin writes truth-loving people have found various means and channels to distribute it throughout that for journalists to avoid irrelevancy, they mainland China,” Yang wrote in his statement. “Pirated editions of ‘Tombstone’ are must adapt new digital strategies and tech- being sold from the hinterlands of the Central Plains to the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau to nologies, just as the campaigns have, but also the Xinjiang frontier. I’ve received letters from readers all over China expressing their “return to some of the basics of campaign fervent and unwavering support. This shows the power of truth to break through the coverage.” The comment recalled for me bronze walls and iron ramparts constructed by the government. Fact is a powerful bomb a recent Shorenstein Center talk by Harvard that blasts lies to smithereens.” historian Jill Lepore detailing both the rise Yang also wrote, “Insisting on being a journalist with conscience and integrity carries of political polling and data science and the risks. When giving a lecture to a class of journalism students, I passed along a tip for crumbling architecture on which much of avoiding danger: ‘Ask for nothing and fear nothing, and position yourself between heaven it is built. She quoted Edward R. Murrow’s and earth.’ By asking for nothing I mean not hoping for promotion or wealth; by fearing response to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s defeat nothing I mean examining one’s own behavior and not exposing a ‘pigtail’ for anyone of Adlai E. Stevenson in 1952: “Yesterday the to grab. Don’t rely on the powerful, but rather on your own character and professional people surprised the pollsters, the prophets, independence. These three methods greatly reduce risk.” and many politicians. They are mysterious In closing, he stated, “May the sunlight of conscience and integrity shine upon the desks and their motives are not to be measured by of all journalists and writers. May more works be published that awaken the conscience of mechanical means.” humanity and allow the light of justice to shine on every corner of the earth.” Vox Pop. Voices. Person on the Street. In her speech at the ceremony, Louisa Lim, a journalist who reported from China for A tradition of patient voter pulse-tak- a decade, said, “Journalism is facing an existential crisis in today’s China. The nation’s ing is still known in many newsrooms by assault on freedom of expression and freedom of information is of a magnitude not seen the quaint names that long-dead editors in decades.” attached to it. It’s a different skill than “This climate has not left Yang Jisheng unscathed,” she continued. “His work building “friends” and followers, one that is under new attack from famine deniers.” One symposium of academics, she said, values hearing over collecting. stated, among other accusations, that “his work has caused greater damage than Say what you will about the mendacious bribery or corruption.” racist. He heard a crack in the earth when “When I looked back through our conversations, one of Yang Jisheng’s favorite none of us was listening.  phrases is ‘saying what needs to be said.’ These accusations also ‘need to be said’ to fully convey the landscape that Chinese journalists now navigate. ‘Saying what needs to be said’ means refusing to self-censor, refusing to collude in silence, knowingly taking moves that could make you a target, it means not turning away from history exploding before your eyes.”  Ann Marie Lipinski

nieman reports spring 2016 3

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 3 3/30/16 12:41 PM Live@Lippmann

don’t feel threatened by another person Gabriel Dance of The Marshall coming in saying, “I want to do work with you.” The last group I met I call the Fearful. Project: “We don’t care That’s a dangerous group to be in. The where you see our content” Fearful operate from a place of fear. They’re not sure what’s going on, they’re not sure The Marshall Project’s how they’re going to keep their job, they’re managing editor on the not sure of the new technology. On creating platform-specifi c content imperative of platform-specifi c The video landscape is hyper-competitive nowadays. Video also has one of the few stories, the supremacy of advertising schemes that is still paying divi- dends. The problem is, it’s super hard to crack. video, and why he likes to work There are two things I fi nd interest- with Collaborators ing about video. One is virtual reality, such as Oculus Rift. It’s very immersive. That’s going to be a tremendously inter- esting place for video. The other thing is social media. Video is going crazy on so- cial media, which is dominated by things like Facebook, and I can’t overemphasize or a guy with a bachelor’s with streaming video, interactive graphics, how important Facebook is right now to degree in computer science and and user-generated content, the people journalism. Websites get huge amounts of a master’s in multimedia jour- I met fi t in one of four categories, techno- their traffi c through Facebook. It can turn nalism, you might think Gabriel logically speaking. The Natives—like Aron switches off and on that either reduce that Dance wouldn’t be all that enam- Pilhofer, Derek Willis, Scott Klein, and traffi c to a trickle or open the spigot to Fored of nonfi ction prose. But he still ranks the Andrew DeVigal—are people who already a fi re hose. written word above other means of communi- understood the implications of technology. The Marshall Project, in partnership cation. “Writing is our most fl exible, fastest, and The second group is the Naturals, people with ProPublica, recently published “An most dynamic form of storytelling,” he says. like Jim Roberts. When I arrived, Jim, who’d Unbelievable Story of Rape,” written by Ken Dance began his career at The New York already been there for 20 years, was head of Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. It was an Times in 2006 before moving to The Guardian, the digital newsroom. He was as old school interesting, long, complicated, wonderfully where as interactive editor he was part of the journalist as you could get. Jim was not written investigation into a woman who team that received a Pulitzer Prize for cover- operating from a place of fear; he was op- said she was raped, then said she wasn’t age of the U.S. government’s secret surveil- erating from a place of excitement. He saw raped, and the subsequent police investi- lance program. He is now managing editor of the potential in everything, even though he gation around that. We built a 30-second The Marshall Project, a nonprofi t investigative didn’t understand almost any of it at the be- video teaser for Facebook, which got very journalism site focused on the criminal jus- ginning. He surrounded himself with smart little attention. Yet the story got crazy good tice system. “Technology and journalism right people and people who he thought would traffi c. I think the story is probably the most now are so intertwined that they’re kind of this help him learn. popular thing The Marshall Project has ever spinning comet that is sailing into the future,” I like to call the third group the Collab- published. It happens to be one of the best he says. “We don’t know where one will take the orators. They are my favorite group to work other, but they’re both driving one another right with. They are not necessarily interested in now.” Dance spoke at the Nieman Foundation learning how to program, do databases, or in January. Edited excerpts: do the interactives themselves, but they’re If a business reason excited about working with people who are came along to change how On the four types of people good at those kinds of things in order to do encountered in newsrooms better projects. They often cause me to have Facebook treats At The New York Times, where I was on the ideas I never would have had. Collaborators journalism, Facebook

team that did some of the fi rst experiments are often very good at what they do so they wouldn’t hesitate SEITZ JONATHAN

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 4 3/25/16 10:32 AM At The New York Times, Gabriel Dance enjoyed working with Collaborators—reporters excited to work on digital projects

things we’ve published, but things get crazy doing with his social media team at AJ+ is person has to be somebody like Jigar, who traffic for a variety of reasons. What we the envy of the industry. A video they post- has a deep background in documentary fi lm- took away from the experience is that cre- ed called “Flint’s Drinking Water Poisoned making and traditional video. ating content for Facebook or Snapchat— Kids” has over two million views. If you had or whatever—needs to be content for that shown me that video a year ago, I would On Facebook particular platform. People on Facebook have been like, “What the hell is going on? Facebook doesn’t make a ton of money off didn’t engage with our video in a way that Why are they printing all the copy? Why ar- of the journalism business. They’re worried says, “Oh, here’s a teaser. Let me follow that en’t they talking? Where is the voice over? about much bigger things. If a business reason teaser back to the website.” They will watch Where is the narrative?” Facebook started came along to change how Facebook treats your video on Facebook, and they want to auto playing videos when you’re in your journalism, Facebook wouldn’t hesitate. stay on Facebook and fi nish consuming it feed. What’s happening is people don’t have To be honest, Facebook is 90 percent of there or stay on Snapchat and fi nish con- their headphones in, and they’re not listen- what matters. Twitter is a wonderful place suming it there. That’s fine, especially ing to their Facebook while they’re scrolling to chat with our friends, to have infl uenc- for a nonprofi t like The Marshall Project. through it, so the audio appears as text on ers tweet your story. It drives extremely We don’t care where you see our content the screen. little traffic, especially in comparison to because we don’t do advertising. Jigar has a few rules. One is that you have Facebook. We run a lot of analytics on what What we’ll need to do is hire somebody to catch somebody’s attention in the fi rst stories do well on our Facebook and, unsur- to produce content specifically for these fi ve seconds, which is terrifying. Two is that prisingly, it’s policing, race, and rape. We can platforms. That is a real skill, and it’s not you have to use these short, punchy captions publish a story on policy that aff ects way the same skill as writing an 800-word sto- in order to get people to continue to watch more people, and nobody’s going to read ry or a 5,000-word story. It’s not the same them. This is what they’re doing on proba- it. Nobody’s going to engage with it in the skill as producing a 10-minute documentary. bly 80 percent of their videos. This video is same way. It’s not the same skill as doing an interac- built for Facebook. AJ+ doesn’t even have tive graphic. It’s a skill of knowing how to a website. Writing for the ear is much diff er- On why there is no “template” for engage people, knowing how to quickly get ent than writing for print. My understanding great graphics their attention and maintain it, by knowing is that these videos with the copy on them A lot of people will look at excellent graph- what they’re interested in. are going gangbusters. They’re usually 45 to ics and say, “OK, this is great. What’s the 90 seconds long. template for this, or what tool do you use On the success of AJ+ Video editing is like copy editing. You to build that?” I say, “Show me the template One place that’s doing wonderfully with this can take something that nobody would or the tool for that Pulitzer Prize-winning right now is AJ+. This part of AJ+ is under want to watch and make it beautiful just by investigation. Show me the tool you used the leadership of Jigar Mehta, who was at being technically very good at it. Then you to build that “Unbelievable Story of Rape” The New York Times while I was there. [He need a video editor on the content side to piece. There isn’t one. These are all works since was hired by Fusion.] What Jigar is make sure the story is being told well. That of journalism, crafted things. 

nieman reports spring 2016 5

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 5 3/30/16 12:42 PM Niemans@Work

talking about war, the impact it has on peo- A Marine-turned-journalist ple, and the gap that exists between civilians is building The War Horse back home and those who have fought over- seas on their behalf. to examine war’s aftermath Back then, Brennan saw me—the report- er and photographer—as the bridge con- necting military and civilian worlds through my stories and pictures. Now he has left his struggles in a moving series of articles No Veteran the Marine Corps and has himself become for The New York Times’s At War blog, a journalist, one devoted to covering the and wrote about what it feels like to kill, Left Behind aftermath of America’s recent wars. and about his downward spiral to a suicide Finbarr O’Reilly, He is building an online investigative attempt. Despite his personal challenges, journalism initiative and community called Brennan last year earned a master’s degree NF ’13, joins with The War Horse, aimed at addressing the from Columbia Journalism School, where a Marine to drive need for a public discussion about the so- he was a Stabile Investigative Journalism conversation about cial impact of America’s post-9/11 confl icts. Fellow. His work has won a handful of I will be The War Horse’s advisor on vi- awards and, six years after we started talking war’s impact sual storytelling, ensuring the quality and about war, we’re still discussing its impact authenticity of the site’s images and videos. as we work on our book, “Shooting Ghosts” Brennan’s transition hasn’t been easy. (Penguin Random House, 2017), about the I was with him on a combat operation when psychological costs of war. an explosion from a rocket-propelled gre- There are lots of things Brennan and nade injured him during a Taliban ambush. I disagree on—gun control, smoking, and when i met sgt. thomas james We remained in contact upon his return the merits of Fox News—but we do agree Brennan at a remote combat outpost in home to the U.S., and through his strug- on the need for a lively debate about war Afghanistan’s Helmand Province in 2010, gles with a brain injury caused by the blast. and trauma, and the need to hold to account I was an embedded Reuters photographer Brennan, who also served a combat-heavy a dysfunctional government bureaucracy and he was the leader of Third Platoon, tour during the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq in that has failed to deliver adequate health Fourth Squad, Alpha Company, First 2004, was diagnosed with post-traumatic care to those who have served. It may be an Battalion, Eighth Marines. stress disorder and medically retired from unusual twist for a Marine who I met on an The rails of my camp cot were inches the Marine Corps in 2013. Afghan battlefi eld to have turned the tables from Brennan’s bunk under an open des- Forced to confront diffi cult realities as and become embedded in the media, but ert sky and, for several weeks, we spent the a civilian, Brennan turned to writing as a way who better to drive the conversation about long hours before falling asleep each night to process his experiences. He documented the aftershocks of war? 

The War Horse intends to cover the social impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where this Marine was photographed in 2010 FINBARR O’REILLY/REUTERS

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 6 3/25/16 10:32 AM Eyes on the Prize keeping up with emerging social media. The Pulitzer job drew me back into a world Administrator that does. Mike Pride, NF ’85, In the competition for journalism priz- es, we encourage entrants to use new tools. balances past, We have a new and more dynamic website. present, and future Social media are important in communicat- in the Pulitzers ing who we are and where we’re headed. Fortunately, my newspaper career taught centennial year me to enjoy working with people who know more than I do. My younger colleagues today are clueless about pica poles and pneu- jurors and board members have set and matic tubes but savvy about social media. raised standards for books, drama, music, Even when I don’t quite grasp what they say, and journalism; and hundreds of entrants I trust them. each year aspire to these standards. two e-mails in my in-box today await I brought three qualities to the job: a his- This year, because of the centennial, response. One is about Periscope, the other tory of running things, experience with the several interviewers have asked whether about Bitly. Before answering, I will have to Pulitzer Prize process, and respect for the the prizes will be around a hundred years Google Periscope and Bitly to see what they prizes’ place in our culture. from now. All I can say is that the Pulitzer are. I’m a digital fossil stuck in the tar pit of As we prepared last year for the centen- Prizes have grown into their times and will yesterday. nial of the Pulitzers, which is now underway, continue to do so. Hundreds of events are Oh, I e-mail and blog, but when I was I set out to mine the prize-winning work of being held around the country in 2016 to cel- hired nearly two years ago to administer the a century and create a content stream for ebrate the values and work that the prizes Pulitzer Prizes, the job came with a nudge to the website. This task heightened my sense represent. The board that oversees them is raise my digital profi le. I started tweeting, of how the prizes evolved from humble adapting to changing technology, new plat- but now my grandchildren tell me tweet- beginnings. It made me appreciate anew forms, and the tumult in journalism. ing is ancient. I’m ancient, I stick with it. Joseph Pulitzer’s genius in linking literature Shortly after I arrived at Columbia I like the company of the journalists and and scholarship with journalism. University, home of the prizes, Nick Lemann writers there. It would be foolish to suggest that when stopped by to welcome me. As a former col- I retired as a newspaper editor in 2008 the prizes debuted 100 years ago, journalists league on the Pulitzer Prize Board, Nick and devoted my retirement to writing his- suddenly abandoned questionable practices gently reminded me that the prizes don’t tory books. My work benefi tted from the and historians seized on better sourcing and need much fi xing. The challenge, I’m learn- ever-deepening store of primary docu- clearer narrative techniques. But two trends ing, is to respect this proud Pulitzer tradition ments on the Internet, but it did not require are undeniable: by their choices Pulitzer while helping to steer the prizes forward. 

FINDING WISDOM reality is that we never president, received a diversify our sources. IN THE CROWD really knew what the public $450,000 grant through the We will be that much closer MOLLY BINGHAM, thought and public opinion Knight Foundation’s Knight to knowing—quickly and NF ’05, PRESIDENT surveys were too expensive News Challenge on Data. inexpensively—how a AND CEO OF THE D.C. for most news outlets. It will support Orb and its subset of the public views NONPROFIT ORB, In the last few years partners, Datassist and an issue. IS PART OF A TEAM companies like Facebook, Cognite Labs, to develop For example, when DEVELOPING A Twitter, and SurveyMonkey a tool that will allow people a local school district is TOOL TO CREATE have put survey power in to generate surveys and considering merging two SCIENTIFICALLY the hands of anyone who automate the complex elementary schools, the SOUND DIY SURVEYS wants to “hear” the opinions statistical computations survey tool will empower of a digitally active subset needed to deliver accurate, local journalists to get of the population. But properly weighted results. an accurate picture of the there’s a catch. Responses Orb will augment the community’s views on to digital surveys need to use of free surveying apps the issue. be appropriately weighted— with a set of software tools We’re now looking for as journalists, we’ve a fi rst step in any statistical and online services that journalism outlets to help all heard an editor say “get analysis. Otherwise frame proper sampling us test the tool. The fi rst some vox pop in this piece.” what the survey “says” can questions and help embed release of the free tool is For decades, we’ve used be inaccurate. them into existing survey expected this summer with informal polls to gauge what In January Orb, the D.C.- platforms. Orb’s tool will a full version available the public thinks about based nonprofi t journalism empower journalists to later this year. Alpha and a particular topic. Yet the organization of which I am meaningfully expand and beta testers are welcome. 

nieman reports spring 2016 7

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 7 3/25/16 10:33 AM Nieman Storyboard

carrie roy saw it in her head before the conversation was even over—a giant wooden sculpture of the back half of a cow, atop a square brown plinth of manure. She was sitting in a bar in Madison, Wisconsin, talking over beers with Kate Golden, who at the time was multimedia director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Golden was lamenting the diffi - culty of representing statistics in ways that get people to pay attention, like the fact that Brown County, Wisconsin is home to more Cthan 100,000 cows (more than half a cow per acre of farmland), which each produce up to 100 pounds of manure a day. That waste threatens to pollute private wells in the area. “These numbers can have astonish- ing impact when you encounter them for the fi rst time, but they don’t translate well into the story,” says Golden. “Too many numbers make people’s heads swim.” Roy, an artist who grew up in rural North Dakota and concentrated in visual and environmental studies at Harvard, cre- ates work that helps people navigate num- bers. In the spring of 2015, she and Golden packed a half-dozen artworks—including the aforementioned cow, a wool sculpture in the colors of a brook trout depicting the “fuzziness” of climate change statistics, and a farm faucet mounted on a pedestal of dif- ferent-colored woods to represent pesticide contamination—into a U-Haul for a sev- en-city Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism roadshow. Roy and Golden went to Madison, Eau Claire, Green Bay, and La Crosse, among other cities, where Roy’s visu- alizations of the state’s water issues sparked conversations about pollution, conservation, and other environmental problems. The exhibits brought in people who may never read through an investigative piece— or go to a typical art show for that matter. Roy and Golden found themselves talking with a retired water engineer, a veterinari- an who was also a woodworker, and a beer brewer concerned about clean water, among others, each spurred by the art to talk about the issues around water use in the state. “We ended up getting a lot of people who were How journalists and thoughtful about these issues,” says Golden. “I’m interested in media that people can feel artists are fi nding and see in person because it makes things complementary ways more real for them. Sometimes charts and to tell stories and graphs can really lack an emotional con- nection. When [Roy] turns them into art, engage audiences it helps connect those numbers to what is

Adjusting the Frame BY MICHAEL BLANDING really happening and aff ecting people.”

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The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Art and journalism began converging Journalism project is one example of how sometime around the French Revolution, To present journalists are employing the arts to get im- when images representing contemporary portant issues off the page and screen and social conditions and politics began to ap- statistics in into people’s lives. At the same time, artists pear in the work of artists like Francisco a way that are beginning to employ reporting tech- Goya and J.M.W. Turner. For his 1819 oil niques, using interviews, public records, painting “The Raft of the Medusa,” depict- fosters public documentary footage, and photo captions ing with savage realism the wreck of a French to create work addressing social, economic, frigate and subsequent stranding of the crew, engagement, and political topics that usually fall within in which all but 10 of the 150 people onboard the purview of journalism. perished, Théodore Géricault exhaustively hire an artist In the early 2000s, the Russian art interviewed two of the survivors. And, of collective Chto Delat (“What Is To Be course, political cartoons have been a staple Done?”) published a newspaper filled of American journalism since Ben Franklin with trenchant political commentary on published a fractured snake with the caption post-Soviet Russia. Since 2008, Chicago- “Join, or Die,” creating a mashup of art, sat- based Temporary Services has produced ire, and politics that has been distilling com- social and political topics. In a project at the over 100 booklets, pamphlets, and news- plex issues down to pithy images ever since. Museum of Modern Art, Haacke set up two papers—through its publishing house, Half In the 20th century, photographers Walker plexiglass ballot boxes and, using the lan- Letter Press—that frequently criticize the Evans and Dorothea Lange documented guage of newspaper polls, asked museum- art world’s exploitation of unpaid labor. the poverty of the Great Depression for the goers to voice an opinion about the fact that More recently, Dushko Petrovich, a surre- Farm Security Administration with bleak but New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who alist painter and adjunct professor at Yale, highly stylized images, while Henri Cartier- was a museum trustee, had not denounced released a one-issue satirical newspaper Bresson made pictures that are works of both President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia. In called Adjunct Commuter Weekly (subse- art and reportage. Even Norman Rockwell— another show, this one at the Guggenheim, quently relaunched as the webzine ACW). best known for his saccharine lithographs of Haacke used public records to expose the The publication highlights the predica- rural Americana for The Saturday Evening real estate and fi nancial networks behind ments of legions of part-time professors Post—painted a series of canvasses in the one of the Lower East Side’s biggest slum- who travel between campuses by plane and early 1960s exploring the civil rights struggle. lords, presenting the information with pho- train to make ends meet. Through projects By the 1960s and ’70s, conceptual artists tographs of buildings, captions, charts, and like these, journalists and artists alike are like Hans Haacke and Dan Graham were graphs. The museum cancelled the show be- fi nding complementary ways to tell stories using the language and structure of investiga- fore it opened, deeming it “inadequate” for and engage audiences. tive journalism to comment on controversial an art institution. “All art bears witness in some way to his- tory or individual experience,” says Jennifer Liese, director of the writing center at Rhode Island School of Design and editor of “Artists Writing, 2000–2015,” a collection of writing by contemporary artists due out this sum- mer. The diff erence between journalists and artists, she argues, is “art does this explicit- ly and intentionally” while journalism tries to take a more objective, or at least dispas- sionate, view. “Journalists and artists in a lot of ways play a similar role in society,” says Heather Chaplin, director of the Journalism + Design program at the New School in New York. “They are both supposed to be telling us the truth about our society even if it’s truth we don’t want to hear.” While journalism in its most traditional sense may have focused on factual report- age, there has always been an artfulness to the craft, from how reporters order their material to narrative storytelling techniques. Chaplin argues that digital technology and increased competition have led journalists to employ more creative techniques to capture

Molly Crabapple's sketches, based on photographs, portray wartime scenes from Aleppo, Syria viewers’ attention, including multimedia OPPOSITE: CARRIE ROY FAIR; PUBLISHED IN VANITY CRABAPPLE/ORIGINALLY MOLLY

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 10 3/30/16 12:49 PM storytelling, stylized visuals, and interactive techniques to create a more personal and emotional experience. “It’s no longer possi- ble to say people are going to read this just because it’s important,” she says.

uch “aesthetic journalism” has dovetailed with a burgeon- ing activist impulse by artists to engage with politics and world events. If journalism marshals its Stechniques to provide a view on the world, then art provides a “view on the view,” a way to question our assumptions about how we perceive the world, says Alfredo Cramerotti, director of MOSTYN, a publicly funded art gallery in Wales, and author of the book “Aesthetic Journalism.” “Journalism pro- poses a certain perspective and uses a num- ber of elements to make it valid. The work of an artist and the value of artistic practice is in taking a perspective and shifting it slightly so it becomes something else.” In creating that shift in perspective, argues Cramerotti, artists have long assumed the tools and techniques of journalism without making them apparent—or per- haps without even realizing it themselves. Cramerotti had fi rsthand experience with this when, in 2003, he was commissioned to make a work about a bridge in Istanbul connecting Europe and Asia, and produced a sound installation involving interviews with residents. “I realized I was commis- sioned to make an artwork, but came back with a journalistic installation,” he says. The same digital technology that has allowed journalists to experiment with new artistic forms has also propelled artists to Carrie Roy’s sculpture draws attention to the link between cow manure and water pollution experiment with new means of documen- tary production and dissemination. One and police—then put them together in an Mostyn’s work was commissioned by artist who has played with such forms is art piece called “Double Take: Istanbul’s Creative Time Reports, a Web-based plat- Santiago Mostyn, who was born in San Streets Then and Now,” which juxtaposes form for artists to comment on national Francisco, grew up in Zimbabwe, Grenada, images of relaxed crowds shopping in ur- and world aff airs. The publication—a proj- and Trinidad, studied at Yale, and is cur- ban markets with riot police hosing down ect of Creative Time, an organization that rently based in Stockholm. Back in 2012, protesters with water cannons. As much has commissioned public art in New York Mostyn was in a month-long residency in as it foregrounds the familiar scenes of City for decades—has partnered with The Istanbul, and asked people what places in violence, the contrast equally draws the Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera, the city were special to them. By chance, viewer’s attention to the normalcy of the among other titles, to publish articles, on they coincided with places the Turkish gov- previous footage, humanizing the scene in everything from government surveillance ernment monitored via security cameras, a way most media reports of the Middle to mass incarceration to racial discrimina- which could be viewed online. Mostyn went East and surrounding areas don’t. He is tion, by artists like Ai Weiwei and Marina to those places and was fi lmed himself. currently at work on a project in which he Abramovic. “We’ve always believed in the In 2013, he was back in Stockholm rowed an open boat across the sea from power of artist’s voices to weigh in on when the Gezi Park protests broke out in Turkey to Greece, a treacherous crossing society and bring something unique and Istanbul. He immediately went to the sur- for migrants, changing the view of that area engaging to the public,” says Marisa Mazria veillance websites again and began editing from the one we are familiar with from Katz, a journalist who has been published footage of the battles between protesters news footage. in The New York Times, Financial Times,

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and elsewhere, and has edited the site for While Paglen follows journalistic ethics in one on a gallery wall. “When something is four years. fact-checking information and not misrepre- on the wall, the scale changes,” she says. Another artist the organization has com- senting himself during reporting, he doesn’t “You have to move and approach it. It’s a missioned is Trevor Paglen, who has used see himself as journalist. “Art doesn’t neces- more physical experience. You are meant to photography and filmmaking to investi- sarily have to give you an answer. Images don’t lose yourself in the work.” gate surveillance and security issues. For explain themselves really. For me, it’s more That’s certainly the feeling of a new “Watching the Watchers,” Paglen fl ew a heli- about developing a way of seeing rather than art exhibit at the Whitney Museum of Art copter over the headquarters of the National a way of understanding,” he says. In fact, he in New York by journalist and filmmaker Security Agency (NSA) and other U.S. govern- sees his role more as raising questions in the Laura Poitras, who directed the documen- ment surveillance agencies to capture night- minds of his audience than providing any kind tary “Citizenfour” about NSA whistleblow- time aerial photographs of their campuses. of answer or explanation. er Edward Snowden. The exhibition “Astro He published the images on The Intercept, Others have seen art photography and Noise,” on view through May 1, pulls viewers

a news site—created by Glenn Greenwald, photojournalism as less in opposition to one into the last decade and a half of the “war on TIMES/REDUX NEW YORK NAUGHTON/THE JAKE Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill—that fo- another so much as on a continuum. “The cuses on government secrecy. Paglen’s land- image has an uncanny authority which can scapes are moody and deliberately sinister, cut both ways,” says Susan Sterner, a former revealing the massive size of the agencies at staff photographer for the Associated Press the same time failing to provide any glimpse who heads the New Media Photojournalism at what goes on inside. program at the Corcoran School of the Arts The artworks present a view of the U.S. & Design in Washington, D.C. On the one surveillance apparatus dramatically diff erent hand, a photo can seem like a much more than the one that would appear in a strictly authoritative vision of reality; on the other, journalistic work, says Katz: “A journalist can a photograph always includes an element of write about the billions of dollars these agen- contrivance that moves it toward the realm cies are receiving and unpack a trove of rare of art “through the lines you are choosing documents, but what [Paglen] strives to do and what you decide to photograph.” is create a visual culture around something Sterner’s program consciously works that is so obscure.” to break down distinctions between art and journalism, helping journalists to experiment with new ways to make their n past work, paglen partnered images stand out. As a successful example with investigative journalist A.C. of that trend, she points to Washington Thompson, then with SF Weekly and Post journalist Dave Burnett, who shot now with ProPublica, to research and the 2004 presidential campaign with an photograph sites related to the U.S. old-school 4x5 black-and-white camera. Igovernment’s “extraordinary rendition” pro- With the large-size negatives he was able gram, in which suspected terrorists were held to produce photos with much greater detail without charge and interrogated at secret lo- and contrast in a way that seems to slow cations outside the United States. That work down and isolate the subject in space. “You was published in 2006 in “Torture Taxi.” can create more nuanced work when you allow yourself to think outside the profes- sion’s boxes,” says Sterner. More recently, Dallas Morning News photographer Mona Reeder set out in a photo essay called “The Bottom Line” to illustrate Texas’s skyrock- An art exhibit eting youth incarceration rate and other statistics with provocative, highly stylized by Laura Poitras photos of children in prison and inmates on death row. builds on her Outside of some ethical guidelines—for example, that photojournalists in general print and document events as they transpire, while fi ne art photographers are more apt to com- documentary pose and orchestrate the subjects of their work, but in images—Sterner says that the diff erence be- tween the genres has much more to do with a more personal audience and intent, and sometimes, simply the venue in which it’s shown. We look at and physical way a photo very diff erently in a newspaper from

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 12 3/30/16 12:50 PM terror” in a visceral way, starting with video of other museumgoers lying on the bed are de Toulouse-Lautrec, who hung out in ca- footage of Ground Zero following the 9/11 at- broadcast to them, and coded information fes with writers and anarchists and painted tacks and interrogations in Afghanistan put from their own cellphones scrolls down the demimonde of Paris. “I always dreamed side by side in harrowing confusion. Visitors a screen. The end result is an experience that about this role for artists as very much in- continue through darkened hallways peering covers much of the ground of Poitras’s print volved in the world and as documentarians through thin slats at classifi ed NSA and CIA and documentary work, but in a more phys- of it,” she says. “I am much less interested documents, or lying down on a bed to stare ical, personal, and emotional way. in art that is of someone’s internal state but up at the sky as drones fl y by. They view im- That’s also true of the arresting draw- impenetrable to others.” ages of Poitras’s own surveillance, obtained ings of Molly Crabapple, an artist who has Back in 2011, Crabapple was living across through Freedom of Information Act re- travelled from Gaza to Guantánamo Bay from Zuccotti Park as the Occupy Wall quests to the government. And at the end of to write and illustrate pieces for The New Street protests broke out. Her apartment the exhibition, they discover that they too York Times, Vice, and Vanity Fair. As a teen, became an ad hoc pressroom for reporters have been subject to surveillance, as images Crabapple was drawn to the work of Henri who needed a place to plug in their laptops.

Visitors to the Laura Poitras exhibit are invited to gaze at a video of the skies over Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan where drone wars are conducted

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 13 3/25/16 10:35 AM “The more time I spent with journalists,” crisis. Crabapple sketched subjects while to green—and by sketching scenes she can she writes in her recently published mem- Penny interviewed them. cause a viewer to look diff erently at them- oir, “Drawing Blood,” “the more their tech- “It’s much easier to disarm people when selves and the issues. niques rubbed off on me—like glitter, or you are sketching,” Crabapple says. “People a rash.” Her work became increasingly polit- feel very alienated when they have a camera ical, and she spent weeks researching dense shoved in their face. I am kind of quiet when rabapple’s latest project allegorical works taking on topics from the I am doing a sketch, and people will really for Vanity Fair involved tak- Tunisian revolution to the global fi nancial talk to me.” She also feels her artist’s eye ing cell phone photos of dai- crisis. In 2012, she started practicing jour- allows her to notice details other journalists ly life in Syria and Iraq from nalism herself, travelling to Greece with might miss—like a chart at Guantánamo an anonymous source in British journalist Laurie Penny to create the Bay encouraging guards to rate their “spir- CRaqqa and Mosul and transforming them e-book “Discordia,” about the Greek debt itual health” on a fi ve-color scale from red into colorful sketches. “Usually what they focus on process, not product Journalists are using “social practice art” to inform and engage audiences

while journalists have Center for Investigative use. When Mobile Arts whether these tools should experimented with reader Reporting (CIR) and Platform’s Chris Treggiari be used or not used,” says collaboration through the Oakland-based social was invited to participate Goins, “but the public citizen journalism practice art collective, in an art exhibit at the has a right to know how and crowdsourced news, Mobile Arts Platform. For Oakland Museum of they are being used “social practice art”— several years, CIR had California under the theme and what they are being which emphasizes working been reporting on “Who Is Oakland?” the used for.” with communities, often the increasing use of two groups saw a unique While the project was those marginalized or surveillance technology opportunity to collaborate. a collaboration among disenfranchised—off ers an at the Port of Oakland. The team outfi tted artists and journalists, avenue through which What started as a network a van as a sort of mobile ultimately the biggest readers can engage with of cameras at the port newsroom, parking collaboration was with news stories on a more had “ballooned,” according it in locations in the members of the public. personal and emotional to CIR’s reporting, into neighborhood and at Rather than the one-way level. In many cases, the art a citywide network commercial centers. Cole mode of transmission lies as much in the process comprising closed-circuit Goins, a CIR senior typical with an article, of creating the piece as cameras, license-plate manager for engagement participants actively in any product resulting readers, microphones to and community created the story as they from it. detect gunshot locations, collaborations, greeted contributed their own That was certainly the cell phone calls, and social visitors with a clipboard, experiences. “We were case with “Eyes on media into a unifi ed asking them to take a quiz giving people information Oakland,” a collaboration police database, with little to test their knowledge in a way that they can between the Bay Area’s public debate about its of surveillance technology. process it and internalize Participants could also use it and create something a screen-printing station with it,” says Goins. in the van to make signs “We are not telling people reading, “Surveillance what to create. We are is …” and write in their providing the pieces and responses, which included the platform so they lines like “A tool that cuts” can create and respond and “In my pocket.” and act for themselves. The reactions ranged from If you think of journalism outrage over the extent as the collection and of surveillance to support in dissemination of the name of public safety. information, we were Treggiari photographed doing that. That participants with the signs information is going to they’d made and displayed stick with them much more the images as part of the than just another thing “Who Is Oakland?” exhibit. they read online.” Artists and journalists went mobile to engage with Oakland residents “I am not advocating for —michael blanding LEFT: BIBIANA BAUER;LEFT: BIBIANA PAGLEN OPPOSITE: TREVOR

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 14 3/25/16 10:35 AM are documenting is violent and graphic, and very often there is not a lot of dignity to them,” she says of the material with which she worked. By taking a fl eeting image and turning it into a studied—even beautiful— work of art, she hopes to restore some of that dignity and cause readers to look longer at images from which they might ordinarily be inclined to look away. Each sketch took more than eight hours for Crabapple to make; each has only a few colors, with some parts fi nely detailed and other parts hastily sketched, with ink blotches scattered across the page. Since publishing the fi rst part of the series in the fall of 2014, however, Vanity Fair story edi- tor Kia Makarechi says the publication has been overwhelmed by the positive response, with many people sharing the images on so- cial media. “Many people remarked on how beautiful the package was,” says Makarechi, a strange response for what is essential- ly a piece of war reporting. The contrast between the ugliness of the subject mat- ter and the attractiveness of Crabapple’s art, however, helped draw readers into the package, including the accompanying text by Crabapple’s source, who wrote a heart- Trevor Paglen intends to provoke questioning with his images of the NSA’s campus breaking essay about how rebel rule has transformed life in Aleppo. been asked to fi t within these boundaries,” as a nurse during the Civil War, to play with While artists like Crabapple, Mostyn, and she says. “I straddle them somehow.” the contradictions and complications of Paglen use journalistic techniques to cre- For the Alabama Media Group, she American identity. “Walt Whitman is seen as ate their unique views of the world, some crossed boundaries, literally and figura- the American writer, and yet he’s a Yankee,” news outlets are using artistic techniques to tively, as she traversed the state, recruiting she says. “I wanted to cheekily co-opt that.” change the way they connect with audienc- Alabamians for a video project about their As the Alabamians—young and old, black es. Hoping to expand the scope of its sto- state and Walt Whitman. Participants read and white—read the words, they let down rytelling, the Alabama Media Group, which one of the 52 sections in Walt Whitman’s their guard revealing a more vulnerable runs The Birmingham News, The Huntsville “Song of Myself,” which Crandall invited side of themselves, at the same time the po- Times, and Mobile’s Press-Register, as them to do in the way they wanted and in an et’s words off er a grand celebration of hu- well as statewide news website AL.com, environment of their own choosing—from manity—making the videos feel individual hired its fi rst artist-in-residence—Jennifer high school football games to horse farms and universal at the same time. Crandall, a video journalist who produced to living room easy chairs. Crandall chose The Alabama Media Group plans to re- a successful series of short profi les for The Whitman, a white Northerner who worked lease the 52 sections serially over the next Washington Post called onBeing, featuring year, as a collaborative project among the a diverse range of Washingtonians sharing artist, the journalists, and citizens. The their “musings, passions, histories, and project “allows this to feel so much bigger quirks.” Each video features a person— than when people narrowly speak from their a Muslim beauty pageant winner, a 7-year- own experiences,” says Michelle Holmes, old fan of rap and metal, a white guy in vice president of content at Alabama Media a blazer talking about his pet peeves—pre- Jointly hiring Group, citing Whitman’s exhortation that sented against a white background simply his readers, “not look through my eyes” talking to the camera about what his or an artist-in- but “listen to all sides and fi lter them from her life is like. In the aggregate, they are yourself.” By asking readers to step outside touching, intimate, surprising, and strange- residence is their comfort zones, Holmes and Crandall ly addictive. It’s no surprise, meanwhile, to a fi rst for hope viewers will be inspired to consid- hear that, although she attended journal- er, even re-consider, what it means to be ism school at the University of Missouri, three Alabama an Alabamian, an American, and a human Crandall never quite felt at home as a jour- being—something both great art and great nalist. “I’ve always been someone who has newspapers journalism do especially well. 

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 16 3/25/16 10:35 AM RESEARCH AND REPORTING Why understanding how science works is important for all reporters, not just science journalists BY PAUL RAEBURN

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 17 3/30/16 12:51 PM condition nothing.” Yet the hospital’s press release the luxury of such narrow beats. Most cover called ductal car- quotes Narod as saying that DCIS “has multiple fi elds, writing about a NASA exper- cinoma in situ more in common with small invasive can- iment one day and a toxic waste controver- (DCIS) is—or is cers than previously thought” and “there’s sy the next. Yet they must quickly translate not—a precursor an inherent potential for DCIS to spread the science behind these stories, while also of breast cancer. to other organs.” In fact, nothing in the being wary of mistakes and fabrications. It does—or does study supports the broad assertions made The task is made more diffi cult by recent not—require in many stories. And few stories focused on diffi culties within science itself. During a pe- treatment. Doctors diff er on these questions the clearest fi ndings: Age and ethnicity are riod of sometimes severe budget constraints, because defi nitive scientifi c evidence doesn’t risk factors. scientists are under increasing pressure to Aexist. Some women with DCIS, a collection of Coverage of the DCIS study highlights get results. Failure to do so can jeopardize abnormal cells in the milk ducts of the breast, what is perhaps the biggest challenge fac- careers and future funding. As a result, stud- choose to have a mastectomy. Some a lumpec- ing today’s science journalists: Evaluating ies finding an effect for an experimental tomy and radiation. A few watch and wait. and interpreting complex and sometimes drug, for example, are far more likely to be So when a study addressing this issue contradictory results at a time when so published than unsuccessful trials—even appeared in JAMA Oncology last August, many news stories—from climate change though negative results can sometimes be it drew widely divergent coverage. Gina and health reform to energy and environ- just as important. A study that fi nds a prom- Kolata at The New York Times wrote that mental regulation to political polling and ising eff ect of a drug against a tumor might DCIS posed little or no risk: “Patients with economics—rely on a fairly sophisticated sound exciting, but the reception of the fi nd- this condition had close to the same likeli- understanding of science. That makes jour- ing might change if a dozen other papers hood of dying of breast cancer as women in nalism’s role in developing public science were published on the same drug and none the general population.” Alice Park in Time literacy more crucial than ever. “We need found any eff ect. came to a diff erent conclusion: “DCIS may a science-literate world because, as science In addition, there’s been an increase in not be as benign as doctors once thought.” and technology change the environment we retractions of research papers, either due And Jennifer Calfas at USA Today cited live in, we need to understand how we can to errors or to fabrications. Data needed to dueling experts, drawing no conclusion at be smart in navigating those changes,” says assess a study’s validity is sometimes kept all. The study, she wrote, “sparked a debate Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning sci- confi dential, either for commercial or com- on the importance of treatment options for ence writer, director of the Knight Science petitive reasons. Plus, the way research is women diagnosed with the earliest stage of Journalism program at MIT, and publisher funded—and who funds it—further com- breast cancer”—if, in fact, DCIS is an early of Undark, a new science magazine based plicates the search for truth. Much of the stage of breast cancer. there. “How do we do that if we don’t funding for academic research comes to uni- Confused? The study, as well as com- understand how it works?” versities from the government. Universities ments from lead researcher Steven A. That was part of the challenge posed by encourage a publish-or-perish model in Narod and his hospital, was confusing, too. the DCIS story. Even science writers who which researchers have incentives to pub- Narod, of the research institute at Women’s specialize in medical coverage—or, more lish every time they collect a sliver of new College Hospital in Toronto, told the Times narrowly, cancer coverage, or even breast data—because they get promoted based that after a biopsy to remove the abnormal cancer coverage—had trouble navigating partly on the number of studies they’ve pub-

cells, “the best way to treat DCIS is to do the subject. And few science writers have lished and where they’ve published. HU OPPOSITE: JASU

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 18 3/25/16 10:35 AM The legitimacy of scientifi c research is due to animal models not translating to often said to depend upon rigorous peer re- humans, for example, or differences in view; that is, when a paper is submitted to methodology. That point was underscored a journal, other experts in the fi eld are asked in early March, when a paper published to review it for accuracy. But confi dence in in Science found that the study that suc- peer review is waning. Sometimes, inferior ceeded in replicating only 39 of 100 exper- or fraudulent work slips through. iments had statistical errors of its own. Peer review can fail even when applied Reporters, Brookhart argues, should view to important papers by respected scientists. research papers as part of a process, not as In a recent multi-year project, for example, an outcome with a fi rm conclusion. a group of researchers tried to replicate Sometimes peer reviewers don’t prop- 100 psychology studies. They succeeded in erly do their jobs. But the sheer number of confi rming only 39. In March of 2015, the papers being published has created another British journal BioMed Central, after fi n- problem: there are not enough reviewers ishing its investigation, retracted 43 articles with the time to give each study a thorough involving efforts to “positively influence vetting. Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Boston’s the outcome of peer review by suggesting Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a staff fabricated reviewers.” According to Ivan writer for The New Yorker, suggests journal- Oransky, co-founder with Adam Marcus of istic fact checking may sometimes be more the blog Retraction Watch, science writers thorough than scientifi c peer review. “The have plenty of reasons to be skeptical. He peer review process is helpful,” he says, “but argues that they should be as wary of scien- when I’m being fact-checked in The New alleged that e-cigscigs were a gatewagatewayy to anaana-- tists as political reporters are of politicians. Yorker … The New Yorker doesn’t just look log cigs,” Aschwandenwanden wrote. wrote It was a large “When we think about holding politicians at my footnotes. They look to see whether study, but the key misreported fi nding relied accountable, companies accountable, we I cherry-picked my footnotes. They read on only a handful of the participants. look for fraud, corruption, and dishonesty,” the article and see: Did I quote something The fault, according to Aschwanden, lay Oransky says. “But the accountability metric out of context? Are there fi ve other articles in confusing correlation with causation. for science is whether or not what scientists that suggest otherwise? They’re doing peer Though there was an increased risk are claiming is going to hold up.” Given the review for me.” Given that some 2.5 million associated with those who smoked e-ciga- uptick in retractions, journalists can no lon- scientifi c papers are published each year, rettes, there were so few e-cigarette users ger rely on peer review to be confi dent of Gawande acknowledges that that kind of surveyed—just 16—that the sample is too a study’s legitimacy. rigorous fact checking just isn’t possible for small for defi nitive results. “It’s a perfectly Of course, failure to replicate results most peer-reviewed journals—or most news fi ne piece of research,” Aschwanden says, doesn’t mean the original fi ndings were publications, for that matter. “but it seemed like a hypothesis-generating wrong or that the research was fraudulent. Smart and careful reporting can, how- study rather than one we can actually con- Science involves trial and error. In fact, ever, get around some of these problems. clude anything from. You had to read the part of the challenge for science writers is Christie Aschwanden, lead science writer fi ne print to see that they were looking only to express the nuances and uncertainties in for the data-journalism site FiveThirtyEight, at a small subset.” even the best-performed experiments. “It’s demonstrated this last fall when she ana- Another challenge for science writers, pretty complicated to replicate fi ndings,” lyzed a study claiming young users of e-cig- is that reporters, like scientists, cannot says Sarah Brookhart, executive director of arettes were eight times more likely than be experts in everything. In a recent two- the Association for Psychological Science. non-users to start smoking traditional cig- month stretch, for example, New York “There are always issues of reproduc- arettes. Brian Primack, a professor at the Times columnist Carl Zimmer wrote about ibility, replication, and generalizability” University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, warming oceans, the emerald ash borer (an was the lead author. The study, which Asian beetle that attacks ash trees), animal appeared in JAMA Pediatrics, surveyed mimicry, the paleo diet, vaccines, a salaman- 694 participants between the ages 16 and 26, der fungus, and the passage of fetal cells to and then surveyed them again a year later. mothers. The trick to covering such a broad Sixteen of those surveyed had smoked terrain, Zimmer says, is not to be an expert electronic cigarettes at the beginning of the in each of these areas, but to track down the study. Aschwanden found that the paper’s people who are. That’s not always easy, and headline-making fi ndings—the Los Angeles many outside experts have their own bias- RESEARCH PAPERS Times: “Teens who vape are more likely to es. That’s why a quick call to one authority smoke later, study says”; Time: “E-cigarettes might not be enough. In complicated stories, SHOULD BE REGARDED AS are a gateway to tobacco, study says”—arose Zimmer, who also is national correspondent from the fact that six e-cigarette users had for Stat, Boston Globe Media’s new online PART OF A PROCESS, become traditional smokers between the science and health publication, might talk to fi rst and second surveys. Six. “So because half a dozen sources, even though only one NOT A FIRM CONCLUSION six people started smoking, news reports or two appear in the story.

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 19 3/25/16 10:35 AM The idea that reporters must use outside sources to help evaluate research might sound obvious. But the remarkable thing is how few do it, especially when science forms a key part of another type of article, say, a political story. Zimmer urges all reporters, whether they are science writers or not, to report out the science when it’s a central factor in a story. Find credible sources to help vet the research. Reporters who don’t have a virtual Rolodex fi lled with scientists should ask colleagues on the science desk.

ecause so many scientific results are provisional, sometimes the challenge lies in explaining to readers what is certain and what is speculative. Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker, faced that problem in her July 2015 story B“The Really Big One,” in which she detailed the massive earthquake predicted for the Pacifi c Northwest. If the Cascadia subduc- tion zone, the 700-mile fault line running from northern California to near Canada’s Vancouver Island, gives way completely, the resulting earthquake could have a magni- tude of up to 9.2, according to seismologists. That would be greater than the 2011 earth- quake and subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan that caused massive devastation. Researchers agree that an earthquake will occur—Cascadia subduction zone quakes happen on average every 243 years; it’s been 316 years since the last one—but it’s impos- sible to say exactly when it will happen or precisely what the consequences might be. Given the scientifi c evidence for a quake, Schulz wrote the piece in the future tense rather than the more cautious conditional: “The area of impact will cover some hundred don’t stray from the facts,” Goldfi nger says, and forty thousand square miles, including “I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem a way to get people’s attention, to get people (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the to talk about it. If you write the exact same capital of Washington), and some seven information in a dry, dusty way, it wouldn’t million people … Water heaters will fall and have gone viral, and it wouldn’t have done as smash interior gas lines. Houses that are not much good as it’s done.” bolted to their foundations will slide off … Schulz’s article generated massive pub- Unmoored to the undulating ground, the lic interest—and distress. Forums were held homes will begin to collapse.” Things will across the Pacifi c Northwest about the re- TO COVER DIVERSE only get worse when the tsunami hits. gion’s lack of preparedness, and measures to Chris Goldfi nger, a seismologist at Oregon reverse that neglect—from creating tsunami SCIENCE TOPICS, State University whose work was featured in evacuation routes to updating older build- the piece, says Schulz may have used a bit of ings so they can withstand high-magnitude CARL ZIMMER CALLS showmanship in her writing (the article won earthquakes—are being discussed by poli- a 2016 National Magazine Award for feature cymakers, if not already being undertaken. ON THE KNOWLEDGE writing) but she got the science right. “Adding Gawande says he tries to address some of

a little color and a little humor, as long as you the challenges inherent in science journalism OF EXPERTS REVIVE & RESTORE

20 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 20 3/30/16 12:51 PM Science reporter Carl Zimmer was among the speakers at a 2013 TEDx gathering in Washington, D.C. called to discuss reviving extinct species

by waiting on a story to see whether it holds science editor at BuzzFeed News, decided not from a university that does a lot of clinical up. “I’ll tend to sit on it for a while and say, to cover it. “It’s a ridiculous study,” she says. trials? Maybe they’ve left less dramatic data ‘How’s it going to look in three months or “It was eight people, I think, and very, very unpublished. Find out what proportion of six months? Where is this evolving?’ If you’re speculative. We knew it was going to make their previous trials has gone unreported.” in short-form reporting, that means circling huge headlines.” A day later, Kelly Oakes, Oransky believes journalists should back on the stories you did six months or science editor at BuzzFeed UK, did decide completely change the way they think about a year ago and saying, ‘Okay, now how does it to do the story, but not in the conventional published papers. Reporting “shouldn’t look from that perspective?’ and developing way. She wrote a story that knocked down the stop when a paper is published … You have it as a beat. That’s your way around getting study and the wild headlines it had generated. to treat every paper like a living document. caught out in the moment by whatever the The point is that reporters shouldn’t You have to treat every fi nding as provision- current hype is.” accept anything at face value. “Journalists al”—especially those that invite big head- Veteran science journalists quickly learn should be covering the problems in sci- lines. Adds MIT Knight Science Journalism that decisions about what not to cover are as ence as a matter of routine,” says Dr. Ben director Blum: “Science is a process and important as decisions about what to jump Goldacre, who used to write a Bad Science every study is a data point in that process. on. Last September, for example, the journal column in The Guardian. “A big dramatic You have to fi gure out where it is in the arc Nature published a study claiming to have new fi nding on a new treatment? Cover the of that process.” found evidence for infectious transmission work showing that early fi ndings tend to of Alzheimer’s disease. But Virginia Hughes, overstate benefi ts. A positive clinical trial With reporting by Eryn M. Carlson

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 21 3/25/16 10:36 AM Mainstream and tribal news outlets are changing the ways they cover Native American issues—for the better BY JON MARCUS

22 nieman reports winter 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 22 3/30/16 12:52 PM Teens ignore the threat of a summer storm in Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Reporters are trying to move beyond the stereotyping of Native Americans

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 23 4/1/16 4:27 PM few days in Rapid City calling for better treatment by University of Illinois. His 2010 review of the before Christmas police of Native Americans. “Hands up. Don’t top 20 Internet news sites by traffi c, from 2014, a few min- shoot,” the protesters chanted under gray the Daily Beast to The New York Times, utes after 6 p.m., skies and in chilly temperatures. There is, one found that Native Americans accounted police in Rapid speaker at the rally said, “an undeclared race for .6 percent of the people portrayed in City, South Da- war here in South Dakota.” news coverage on those sites. According kota were called Police kill Native Americans at almost to the 2010 census, the 5.2 million Native to a house where the same rate as African-Americans, ac- Americans make up 1.7 percent of the U.S. Allen Locke and his family were living. cording to the Centers for Disease Control population. When they were mentioned in Locke, 30, was intoxicated, his wife said, and Prevention (CDC). Between 1999 and stories, Josey says, Native Americans were and she wanted him out of the house until 2013, an average of .29 per 100,000 Native often portrayed in stereotypical situations— he sobered up. Americans were killed by police, compared as workers in casinos, for example. “By The responding offi cer, Anthony Meirose, to .3 per 100,000 for blacks and .11 per neglecting them in coverage and showing found Locke on the kitchen fl oor. As Locke 100,000 for whites. “America should be them in stereotypical ways when they do,” stood up, the offi cer noticed a steak knife in aware of this,” argues Chase Iron Eyes, a law- he says, “news media are communicating his hand. Meirose told investigators that he yer and a leader of the Lakota People’s Law that Native Americans are not a vital part of heard Locke say “It’s a good day to die,” and Project, which runs a publicity campaign the national conversation on race.” that he told Locke several times to drop the called Native Lives Matter. But for the most There is plenty of bad news to report. knife, according to a report from the South part, America is not aware of this. However, The exploitation and oppression experi- Dakota Division of Criminal investigation that may be changing, albeit slowly, as both enced by Native Americans has translated (DCI). When he didn’t, Meirose fi red fi ve mainstream media and Native American- into incontrovertible health, psychological, shots at him. Locke was pronounced dead run digital outlets begin to cover American economic, and social challenges. According at the hospital. The South Dakota DCI Indian issues more robustly. to a 2009 report from the National Council determined that Locke had lunged at the In some ways, Native American cultures on Crime and Delinquency, Native offi cer, though his wife says she witnessed are worlds unto themselves, but increasing- American men are imprisoned at more TRIBUNE JOLES/STAR DAVID the incident and disputes this. No charges ly they are part of bigger issues that tran- than four times the rate of white men, and were fi led against Meirose. scend their borders. Take energy, especially Native American women over six times The killing of Allen Locke received little with the extensive drilling of oil on Native as often as white women. (Black men are ; OPOSITE: attention outside Rapid City. Nor was there American land in North Dakota and else- imprisoned at nearly six times the rate of much widespread coverage of the killings where. National energy issues are Native white men and black women at four times of Paul Castaway, shot in Denver in July American issues, too. According to Mary the rate of white women.) by police who said he was threatening his Hudetz, a former president of the Native CDC data paints a bleak picture for mother, though she argues that deadly force American Journalists Association (NAJA) Native Americans. Sixteen percent of Native was unnecessary in this incident; William and the former editor of Native Peoples Americans—their Census designation is J. Dick III, a 28-year-old suspected armed magazine, there is an urgent need for more “American Indians,” and most advocates robber who died in Washington State after investigative reporting on Native American say both terms are acceptable—have dia- a U.S. Forest Service agent shocked him with issues, but such projects are hampered by betes, the highest rate of any U.S. ethnic or a Taser; or Larry Kobuk, 33, who died after a lack of press freedoms on Native American racial group. The incidence of alcohol-relat- being restrained by officers booking him lands and a shortage of journalists—Native ed deaths is three times that of the broad- into the Anchorage Correctional Complex American and otherwise—who understand er population. The rate of drug-induced

on charges that he stole a car and drove it the culture as well as the politics and legal death is the highest of any minority group. GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE AARON HUEY/NATIONAL with a suspended license. intricacies of Native American life. Native Americans are more likely to ex- All of these people were Native Americans. Stories that mention Native Americans perience sexual assault. And according to The day before his death, Locke, a member remain comparatively rare, according to Census data, about 25 percent live in pover- of the Oglala Lakota tribe of Pine Ridge, and Christopher Josey, who conducted research ty, whereas the poverty rate for the general

about 100 other people took part in a march on this topic as a doctoral candidate at the population is about 15 percent. According to PREVIOUS SPREAD:

24 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 24 3/25/16 10:42 AM a federal report, in 2012 Native Americans’ reservation may have been cheated out of high school dropout rate was more than money for oil rights. Kaiser Health News NATIVE AMERICANS double the average—14.6 percent compared covered how Native American health ser- to 6.6 percent across all races. According to vices are benefiting from the Affordable ARE KILLED BY POLICE the Labor Department, the unemployment Care Act. Student journalists at the Stabile rate for Native Americans who don’t live on Center for Investigative Journalism at AT ABOUT THE SAME tribal lands is roughly double the nation- Columbia University reported on the al average, at 11 percent in 2014, the most exploitation of Native Americans by payday RATE AS BLACKS recent fi gure available. lenders, a project for which they received an One reason Native issues get so lit- Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. tle attention is that editors worry about Cronkite News, a service of the Walter retelling the same old story about poverty, Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass alcohol, and drugs on reservations, says Communication at Arizona State University, Scott Gillespie, editorial page editor at the has produced more than 70 stories relat- Sari Horwitz, whose beat is the U.S. Justice (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. Many Native ing to Native Americans since 2011, one of Department. “It’s hard to get interest in Americans, in turn, mistrust journalists, which, about potential commercial develop- a newsroom for stories that most people tired of the “poverty porn” they say depicts ment on Navajo Nation land in the Grand don’t feel affect them. Native Americans the places in which they live as all but hope- Canyon, was picked up by PBS NewsHour. and Native American issues are invisible in less. The setting for these stories is often Mic.com, a website aimed at millennials, this country.” the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation is among the handful of outlets that have re- Horwitz persuaded her editors to let her in South Dakota, the nation’s poorest, ported on the high rate of killings by police do these stories, in part, by making the argu- where mortality, depression, alcoholism, of Native Americans. ment that they were about a compelling sub- drug abuse, diabetes, and other problems The Washington Post’s award-winning ject outside the usual Beltway bubble. More are prevalent. “There’s the idea that you’re series about injustice on Native American than a quarter of Native American women perpetuating that story line,” Gillespie says. lands and the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune’s have been the victims of rape or attempt- “That isn’t helping anybody, and I think it editorials outlining the deplorable condi- ed rape and almost half have experienced might be one of the things keeping editors tion of many federally-funded reservation some other sexual violence—slightly more from saying, ‘Let’s go do it.’” schools demonstrate the challenges of cov- than the average for women in the U.S.— Still, some news outlets are pushing ering Native issues. according to the National Center for Injury to address crucial Native issues. Pacific The impetus for the seven-part Prevention and Control. A 2008 report sub- Standard, published by the nonprofit Washington Post series on crimes—includ- mitted to the Justice Department found that Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media ing domestic violence and sexual assault— two-thirds of female Native Americans who and Public Policy, ran an investigation into against Native Americans in Alaska, Arizona, were the victims of rape or sexual assault sexual violence against Native American and the Dakotas came from conversations described their perpetrators as white or women in the booming oil towns of North with criminal justice experts. “Someone said African-American—many of whom would Dakota. ProPublica has reported on how to me, ‘No one’s writing about what’s going therefore go unpunished because up until Native Americans living on a North Dakota on with Native Americans,’” says reporter March 2015 tribal courts couldn’t prosecute non-Natives. (Tribal courts can now try The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune ran a series of editorials about limited resources at tribal schools non-Natives for crimes of sexual violence thanks to the Violence Against Women Act.) Covering the Native American com- munity in depth requires resources that are in shorter and shorter supply—time, mon- ey, and patience. Newspapers rarely will give journalists months off for special projects. For many reporters, getting their news or- ganizations to back ambitious stories about Native Americans is only half the battle. The biggest, they say, is gaining the trust of their subjects—especially for white journalists who come to reservations as strangers. “The trust issue was a huge one,” Horwitz recalls. “I am basically another white female journal- ist calling and saying, ‘I want to come and study you.’ There have been so many stud- ies and so many eff orts to fi gure out what’s going on, and this is just one more person coming, and then nothing changes.” People on reservations are reluctant to talk about

nieman reports spring 2016 25

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 25 3/25/16 10:42 AM taboo subjects like sexual abuse and suicide, appear, other Native Americans began to In these circumstances, Burcum says, while bad experiences with outsiders in gen- trust Horwitz, too. reporters from the outside have to fi nd a trust- eral—and journalists, in particular—make Gillespie’s colleague at the Star Tribune, ed person on the reservation who will advo- many suspicious. “People feel like they’ve Jill Burcum, faced similar challenges when cate for them. “You have to have a sponsor, been lied to before and promised things that she began work on what would ultimately and the superintendent acted in that capacity didn’t happen,” says Star Tribune editorial become a series of editorials called for us,” she says. “We were sort of under her page editor Gillespie. “Separate and Unequal,” about the abys- wing. People felt that they could talk to us.” Horwitz’s breakthrough came when she mal conditions of under-heated, sparse- Burcum and her photographer took oth- found a Native American woman, a victim ly equipped tribal schools, at least one of er steps to gain their sources’ confi dence. of sexual abuse, who had become an activ- which was infested with rodents. Burcum They spent hours at one school over fi ve or ist and knew that sharing stories in a paper had one thing going for her, though: some six visits, requiring a four-and-a-half-hour like the Post could help get people to care experience on reservations, since she’d cov- drive each way. They stayed in a hotel on about these issues. “It was freezing cold,” ered the story of a 16-year-old who killed the reservation, part of a tribal casino, where Horwitz remembers. “I sat at her kitchen nine people and injured fi ve on a shooting they got to know the hotel staff . They made table, and she told me a story about how spree at the Red Lake Reservation in 2005. sure to eat at tribal restaurants and shop her mother had been sexually abused, Native Americans “feel—fairly, I think— in tribal stores. They tipped well. Burcum how she had been sexually abused, how that we parachute in, often in tragic situ- even sometimes brought along the harp she her daughter had been raped. She started ations, or come up to document problems plays. “Then they kind of remembered me,” telling me all these diff erent stories about that refl ect poorly on them,” Burcum says. she says. “It was part of letting people know the legacy of boarding schools and how “They feel, not wrongly, that we’re there for that you’re a real person. By being there and that had led to so much sexual abuse on our benefi t, and then we go away. So why me having my crazy little personality quirks, reservations. Each story led to the next would you open up your home to a journal- we set ourselves apart.” Finally, she says, one.” As the stories in the series started to ist or talk to them?” “People felt that they could talk to us.”

native american news oulets A sampling of websites that off er news and commentary on Native American issues

Indian Country Today relevant to Native American Native Health News Alliance Native Sun News Media Network and indigenous communities. An independent nonprofi t A weekly newspaper based in A national platform for Native The show can be heard news organization launched Rapid City, South Dakota, voices and issues, Indian online and on radio stations in partnership with the the Native Sun News covers Country Today is a news across the U.S. and Canada. Native American Journalists local news and events around service owned by the Oneida Association, Native Health the Northern Plains region, Nation of New York, Native America Calling News Alliance produces which includes the Pine Ridge with coverage of breaking A production of the Native- multimedia news and feature Reservation. Its “Voices of news, politics, arts and operated Koahnic Broadcast stories focused on the the People” section features entertainment, business, Corporation, this live call-in health and wellness of Native editorials and opinion pieces education, and health. program is streamed online communities and their on national issues that aff ect and broadcast on nearly governments. Media outlets Indian Country. Indianz.com 70 public, community, and that register with NHNA can A product of the Winnebago tribal radio stations in North publish the organization’s Trahant Reports Tribe of Nebraska and the America, bringing callers articles for free. Mark Trahant, University of Native American-owned Noble in conversation with guests North Dakota journalism Savage Media, this website about a wide range of issues. Native News Project professor and former editorial posts a mix of original news Reported, written, page editor for the Seattle reporting and aggregated Native Appropriations photographed, and edited Post-Intelligencer, posts news reports about subjects relevant Founded by Adrienne Keene, by journalism students about federal Indian policy, to Indian Country. a member of the Cherokee at the University of health care reform, and elections. tribe and an assistant Montana, the Native News He also writes a number of

Project features long-form opinion columns reprinted POST THE WASHINGTON National Native News professor of Native American / Funded in part by the studies at Brown University, stories from Montana’s by outlets such as the Indian Corporation for Public Native Appropriations seven reservations. Country Today Media Network Broadcasting, National Native is a blog highlighting In 2015, the theme was and High Country News. News is a headline news radio misrepresentations of “Intertwined: Stories program, providing listeners Native people and racial of Detachment and —eryn m. carlson, with coverage of local and insensitivities toward them Connection from Montana’s jon marcus,

international current events in mainstream culture. Reservations.” and jonathan seitz POST WASHINGTON MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WILLIAMSON

2626 niemannieman repreportsorts springspring 20162016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 26 3/25/16 10:42 AM he series of editorials was published at the end of 2014 and was a fi nalist for a Pulitzer Prize. In response, the Minnesota legislature increased state funding for Native American education. Burcum testified before a congressional Tcommittee about problems at reservation schools. The series remains prominent on the paper’s website. “We’ll keep it there un- til the problem’s solved,” Gillespie says. As for her sources on the reservations, Burcum says, she thinks they feel progress has been made, “but they’ve been around long enough to know that things don’t change that quickly.” In April, U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minnesota and chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, visited one of the schools spot- lighted by the series, and so did Burcum. Her reception then was diff erent from the fi rst The Sac and Fox Nation in Oklahoma raised concerns about the impact of the Keystone pipeline time she’d set foot on the reservation: “I got hugs from the tribal elders. The kids were Reports covers Native American issues, ing at U.S. daily newspapers, according to glad to see me. The teachers stay in touch.” would include pieces about the Alaska 2015 data from the American Society of Instead of focusing on unemployment, Native Medical Center (ANMC). The ANMC News Editors. That’s .36 percent of all U.S. which is more than 50 percent in some focuses on services to prevent illness and has newsroom employees. Native American ac- tribal areas, the Native News Project at the achieved impressive outcomes, including tivists say there needs to be more newsroom University of Montana School of Journalism a 40 percent reduction in emergency room internships and training programs for aspir- looked at the entrepreneurial things people visits and a more than 35 percent decrease in ing Native American journalists. Hudetz says did to earn money, from a tribal ranch on admissions, despite historic health dispari- the NAJA’s summer internship program, the Fort Peck reservation to a fl ower and ties between Native Americans and other established in 2014, has already made a dif- coffee shop on the Northern Cheyenne groups. “It does amazing, innovative work ference. At least six of the 10 college stu- Reservation to an electronics manufactur- at far less cost, and yet it’s uncovered,” he dents who participated that fi rst summer ing business on the Flathead Reservation. says. “That amazes me.” have gone on to a journalism internship “We’re not necessarily focusing on the Tristan Ahtone, a member of the Kiowa or graduate studies in journalism. “Native shadows and the sadness,” says Jason Begay, tribe of Oklahoma who used to report for students don’t always get what they need in a Navajo who grew up on a reservation and Al Jazeera America, has won a following a college journalism program,” Hudetz says, runs the Native News Project, “but on how among Native Americans and others for “or they might need some mentors on the people are persevering.” Other Native News writing about new topics, such as how one outside who can support their education Project stories have examined sexual and tribe is invoking treaty rights to stop anoth- from afar and who understand and appre- gender identity among Native youth, how er oil pipeline, the rethinking of the militant ciate their cultural heritage. Without that, Christianity and Native traditions coexist American Indian Movement that grew up they don’t feel supported, and they don’t on a Crow reservation, and the possible alongside the Black Panthers in the 1960s, pursue it, and they feel discouraged.” impact on Native populations of the legal- and an international indigenous basketball “Native media content creators are es- ization of marijuana. tournament. His approach: “Stop looking at tablishing themselves and could function Many Native Americans applaud this Indian Country as a foreign place with for- as the eyes and ears on the ground in part- approach. “We are really struggling to fi nd eign people doing foreign things. It keeps nership with mainstream media,” says law- ways to change the narratives in our com- us apart from each other, and reinforces yer Chase Iron Eyes. “We just need to build munities, that we’re lifting ourselves up, and the idea that these people are diff erent, that those bridges so the people in the main- we need others to work with us on that,” they’re victims, that they’re helpless. They stream know what’s going on.” says Jacqueline Pata, part of the Tlingit get covered when there’s doom, gloom, or Journalists in the mainstream need to do tribe and executive director of the National there’s blood. The cumulative eff ect is that their part, too, Trahant says: “I don’t think Congress of American Indians. “My con- you’ve got communities that are isolated new media is ever going to replace what cerns have always been, and continue to be, from the rest of the country and generally a national network could do. On its worst about balance.” distrustful of journalists, and that just cre- day, a network newscast still has an audience More balanced coverage, argues Mark ates a continuing cycle.” bloggers only dream about. When the main- Trahant, a member of the Shoshone tribe Ahtone is one of only a handful of stream does something, it still matters.” And and former editorial page editor at the Native American journalists. There are when it doesn’t, says Horwitz, “Those stories Seattle Post-Intelligencer whose Trahant 118 self-identifi ed Indian journalists work- fl oat away.” 

nieman reports spring 2016 27

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 27 3/25/16 10:43 AM Donald Trump is a master of the social media universe whose candidacy foregoes the expense of traditional political campaigns

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 28 3/25/16 10:43 AM CAMPAIGN THE COVERING

ON THE TRAIL

Having failed to foretell Trump’s rise and facing mounting public disaff ection, newsrooms are rethinking how to cover campaigns BY JULIET EILPERIN

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 29 3/25/16 10:43 AM CAMPAIGN THE COVERING

ven in his first big presidential campaign, in a milieu where few people were short on confi dence, Ted CruzE stood out for his self-assurance and conviction that he knew what was best for those who surrounded him. He was a fresh face on the scene—as we all were—and he was full of promises. Cruz asked for people’s votes within moments of meeting them. And he spread word of his candidacy, complete with the image of his face, in the most modern, effi cient way around: a photocopied fl ier. Tacked to a tree. Or in some cases,

to a dorm room door. IMAGES SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY OPOSITE: BRENDAN PRESS; PREVIOUS SPREAD: BRANDEN CAMP/ASSOCIATED

30 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 30 3/25/16 10:43 AM It was 1988. Cruz was 17 years old, a skinny kid from Texas who want- ed to be president of the Princeton University Class of 1992. As a fellow class member, and aspiring journal- ist, I watched the race with passing interest. But it was not to be. Cruz was one of 12 candidates on the ini- tial ballot, but didn’t make it past the primary. Michael Goldberg, an aff able, smart kid from Cleveland, eventually won the election. Undaunted, Cruz sought the same position the next year and was again eliminated in the fi rst round of voting. Another conser- vative Texan—Chad Muir, a popular lacrosse player everyone assumed would eventually run for the nation’s highest offi ce—got more than three times as many votes. Cruz did eventually make it onto student government, in 1990, and joined the committee on campus safe- ty, the fi rst of many prominent politi- cal posts he would hold over the course of his career. And over time his tools of voter outreach became increasing- ly sophisticated, to the point where in December of last year his current cam- paign for president mined the data of supporters who posed with Santa Claus in a dozen cities. Tacking up fl iers is ancient history. BERNIE SANDERS And, given the technological upheaval of the past four years, to say nothing of the past quarter century, so may be some of the conventions the stage at a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio, Trump of traditional campaign reporting. tweeted that the man was affi liated with ISIS. When In a year in which there’s been a sprawling presiden- Percentage of party Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” told Trump it wasn’t tial race (at least on the Republican side), a fractured members who say true, Trump said, “All I know is what’s on the Internet.” media landscape, and unprecedented opportunities the 2016 campaign Trump more than any other candidate has “managed for candidates to appeal directly to voters, campaign- has not been focused to fulfi ll a vision, long predicted but slow to material- ing and campaign coverage are being transformed. on important policy ize, sketched out a decade ago by a handful of digital Candidates like Cruz and others are using sophisticated debates campaign strategists: a White House candidacy that data-mining techniques to identify and target messages to forgoes costly, conventional methods of political com- increasingly refi ned demographic groups. Marco Rubio’s % munication and relies instead on the free, urgent, and campaign curated and posted short video clips visceral platforms of social media,” reporter Michael to appeal to specifi c demographics, and he encouraged Barbaro wrote in The New York Times back in October. voters to consult their second screens during debates. 63 This new kind of campaign is prompting news organi- Hillary Clinton used Snapchat’s Live Story feature OF DEMOCRATS zations, both legacy and digital, to rethink how to cover to send highlights of her fi rst offi cial rally to millions political candidates. of the platform’s users. Clinton and Bernie Sanders % Social media platforms like Twitter were a factor four —unfi ltered by a television moderator—have conducted years ago, too. But what is diff erent this time around, an entire line of debate on Twitter about the meaning argues Jill Abramson, a visiting lecturer at Harvard and of “progressive.” 44 former executive editor of The New York Times, “is the Donald Trump’s triumphant use of social media OF REPUBLICANS brutality of minute-by-minute competition and cover- has allowed him to reach enormous audiences to start age. There’s this wild chase for scooplets. News breaks and settle feuds, make observations both frivolous and SOURCE: PEW that no one remembers two days afterwards.” And that frightening, and drive the news cycle into the ditch of RESEARCH CENTER frenetic search for news, Abramson argues, has come his own choosing. In March, after a protester rushed SURVEY DEC. 2015 at a cost.

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 31 3/30/16 12:53 PM CAMPAIGN THE COVERING

Though the volume of coverage has grown signifi - standards for what counts as a worthwhile contribution cantly, no small portion of it has been either hastily as- to the public debate.” sembled, trivial, or, like so much coverage of previous The charged rhetoric around Trump’s campaign campaigns, focused exclusively on the horse race. The erupted into violence in early March, when his sup- nanosecond news cycle incentivizes reporters to pub- porters clashed with protesters at multiple venues. lish as soon as possible and often to elevate snark over On March 9, as Rakeem Jones, an African-American substance. Trump’s infl ammatory rhetoric guarantees protester, was being escorted out of a Trump rally, in traffi c, so his statements garner more attention than Fayetteville, North Carolina, John McGraw, a 78-year- crucial policy issues. old white man, punched him in the face and said Jones A recent study by two Penn State Ph.D. students Percentage of adults might be an Islamist extremist because “he’s not acting found that between July and mid-October of 2015 the learning about the like an American.” Trump has suggested he may pay the New York real estate magnate received between 40 and presidential election legal bills of McGraw, who now faces assault charges. 50 percent of the coverage among all GOP presidential from these social The controversy did little to slow Trump’s momen- candidates from the three major cable news networks media platforms in tum: in the March 15 primaries he walloped Rubio in and a selection of local news stations. And that was at a given week Florida, forcing him from the race, and lost just one, a time when so many Republicans were vying for the John Kasich’s home state of Ohio. nomination they couldn’t fi t on a single stage. According During what is incontrovertibly a pivotal election, to the Tyndall Report, which tracks the airtime devot- the press faces a genuine risk of being displaced from ed to various subjects on nightly newscasts, ABC, NBC, % its role as a crucial source of insight and information for and CBS during 2015 dedicated a total of 1,031 min- 37 the electorate. Avoiding this fate will entail a return to utes to the 2016 presidential campaign. Almost a third, some of the basics of campaign coverage, while simulta- 327 minutes, was devoted to Trump-related story lines, neously adapting new digital strategies and technologies nearly six times more than the next most newsworthy FACEBOOK to remain relevant and accessible. And all of this must Republican, Jeb Bush (57 minutes), and more than the be accomplished at a time when most Americans are entire Democratic fi eld combined. Coverage of Clinton’s not enamored with the Fourth Estate. A Pew Research campaign clocked in at 121 minutes, while Sanders only Center survey published in November 2015 found that received 20 minutes. only the federal government and members of Congress For years critics of the mainstream media on the % ranked lower than journalists in the public’s esteem. left and right have argued that the consolidation of the 11 Sixty-five percent of respondents said the national industry, especially among television networks, and the news media had a negative eff ect on the country, as fact that a handful of wealthy businessmen now control opposed to 25 percent who described it as positive, these outlets, has led to myopic coverage that fails to YOUTUBE while Congress had a ratio of 75 percent negative to capture the experience of ordinary Americans. For liber- 14 percent positive. als like Sanders, The New York Times’s Jason Horowitz Even as more and more journalistic outlets are cov- wrote, “the profi t-hungry billionaire owners of news ering campaigns—Vox with its explainers, BuzzFeed media companies serve up lowest-common-denomina- % News with its quirky videos and ambitious investigative tor coverage, purposefully avoid the income-inequality pieces, The Huffi ngton Post with its long-form docu- issues he prioritizes and mute alternative voices as they 9 mentaries—consumers are increasingly getting their take over more and more outlets.” Conservatives, mean- news elsewhere. In some cases, the campaigns them- while, say legacy media companies try to bait their can- selves are crafting their own content and distributing it didates into attacking each other but fail to convey the TWITTER to voters through social media. anger many voters feel toward the federal government In the 2000 campaign, the Pew Research Center and offi cials serving in Washington. found that reporters, commentators, and other jour- Trump’s name in a headline may lead to additional nalists generated 50 percent of the narratives about the traffi c, but there is a chorus of voices now calling on % candidates, while candidates and their surrogates drove the media to take a strong stand against him, including 6 37 percent. In 2012, those percentages were reversed: Vox’s Ezra Klein, whose video declaring, “He’s so fun to Pew estimated that candidates and their allies drove watch that it’s easy to lose sight of how terrifying his rise roughly half of the narratives in the press about the cam- really is,” garnered hundreds of thousands of shares on GOOGLE PLUS paigns, with the press itself generating roughly a quarter. Facebook. Harvard University political theorist Danielle “In the 2012 [election], campaign reporters were acting Allen went even further, suggesting that “when journal- largely as megaphones, rather than investigators,” says ists cover every crude and cruel thing that comes out Jesse Holcomb, associate director of research at Pew. of Trump’s mouth,” even those reporters purporting “What we found was a striking lack of journalistic inter- to deliver objective coverage are fueling his political vention in that conversation.” ascent. “Perhaps we should just shut the lights out on As politicians and their surrogates dictate more and off ensiveness,” she wrote in The Washington Post (Full more of the campaign conversation, John Harwood, disclosure: I’m an 18-year veteran of the Post and now who covers politics and the economy for CNBC and The SOURCE: PEW serve as its White House bureau chief), “turn off the mic RESEARCH CENTER New York Times, notes that even when journalists try to

when someone tries to shout down others; re-establish SURVEY JAN. 2016 hold candidates responsible for some of their most out- BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

32 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 32 3/25/16 10:43 AM rageous claims, they face the challenge that another suite of media outlets— along with the campaigns themselves— can tell targeted audiences why those stories should be ignored. “The infl u- ence that was wielded by a small num- ber of news outlets has given way to an inordinate number of competitors,” Harwood says. “Accountability for one is amplifi cation for another … The process is fraught and fractious, and due to the polarization in the country, many people are not susceptible to factual argument.” Perhaps the most surprising as- pect of this phenomenon isn’t that it has happened, but the pace and scale of the change. In 2013, while a fel- low at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, then-CNN national political report- er Peter Hamby wrote a report titled “Did Twitter Kill the Boys on the Bus?” outlining how social media was degrad- ing the quality of campaign coverage. Invoking “The Boys on the Bus,” the classic account of the coverage of the 1972 campaign by then-Rolling Stone reporter Timothy Crouse, Hamby used Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign as a case study of how social media—particular- ly Twitter—had produced shallower political journalism. Hamby argued TED CRUZ that, as campaigns have become more choreographed, the value of being a re- porter on the bus has diminished, and pressure to feed Every day, some 20 million people watch one of the social media beast has distracted both reporters Snapchat’s Live Stories, and it has become a coveted and audiences from producing and consuming more audience because, according to the fi rm, more than in-depth coverage. “Put down Twitter and slowly back 60 percent of smartphone users between 13 and 34 iden- away,” he advised. “ tify themselves as users of the app. BuzzFeed, CNN, Due to the Mashable, Vice, Vox, and The Wall Street Journal, among polarization others, are all part of the Discover program, which gives few people—including hamby in the selected publishers a dedicated channel to which they himself—have heeded that advice. can push curated stories that refresh every 24 hours. Hamby now serves as head of news country, Snapchat is increasingly getting into the content F for Snapchat, an app on which the many people publishing business itself, curating video from users to recommended length of a video is less create Live Stories, which last longer than 10 seconds than 10 seconds. Hamby’s conver- are not and also remain accessible on the site for 24 hours. The sion from social media skeptic to leading practitioner susceptible best ones convey scenes from the campaign trail with mirrors the push on the part of news organizations to to factual a sense of intimacy and immediacy. Using geo-fencing, reach audiences, especially younger audiences, where which identifi es users in a specifi c location at a specifi c they are. And where they are is typically not on news argument time, Snapchat’s editorial team can capture video from sites. Speaking at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center last everyone at, say, a Sanders rally, edit together the best September, Hamby emphasized that “millions of fi rst- ” moments, add graphics, and then publish it to their 100 time voters” use Snapchat. “These are people who are —John Harwood, million users. “At CNN, we would cover an event with one not watching television; they’re not reading The New CNBC, The New York or two cameras,” Hamby said in his Shorenstein talk. “At York Times; they’re not reading The Washington Post; Times Snapchat, we have everyone’s cameras at our disposal.” they might not even be using Facebook that much,” The videos provide a pithy, informal look at what’s Hamby said. “But they are living on Snapchat.” happening on the trail. One of its more popular stories,

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 33 3/30/16 12:53 PM PolitiFact founder Bill Adair wants to integrate live debates with the results of real-time fact-checking

inaccurate and infl ammatory.” or very unfamiliar with the THE FUTURE OF So PolitiFact ended up practice. Those who were more designating Trump’s collective familiar with fact-checking falsehoods as Lie of the Year had more favorable attitudes FACT-CHECKING rather than singling out one as toward it, as did individuals well especially egregious. informed about politics more New fact-checking projects use advanced Campaign seasons are always generally, especially Democrats. technologies to automate and accelerate the process busy times for fact-checkers, The API study, released last by tatiana walk-morris but this presidential campaign spring, found that 59 percent has been particularly intense. of politically well-informed in awarding its lie of the no evidence for this claim, and According to the Reporters’ Democrats had very favorable Year title to Donald Trump last Trump has not put forth any to Lab at Duke University, there views of fact-checkers, versus December, the staff at PolitiFact support it. are 96 active fact-checking 34 percent of well-informed had a lot of material from which On November 22, Trump projects in the U.S. and abroad, Republicans. For less politically to choose. retweeted an image that up by 50 percent since last year. well-informed Democrats, During the fi rst GOP contained the following And many are using advanced 36 percent considered fact- debate on August 6 in statistics: “Whites killed by technologies to automate and checkers favorably, compared to Cleveland, Ohio, the front- whites—16%. Whites killed accelerate the process. “The key 29 percent of less well-informed runner for the Republican by blacks—81%.” FBI statistics to the future of fact-checking Republicans. presidential nomination said show that in 2014, 82 percent is getting the fact-checks Fact-checking is increasingly the government of Mexico of white murder victims were virtually instant and making it being bolstered by tools sends “the bad ones over,” killed by whites, and the number so the fact-check is presented on like ClaimBuster, an automated referring to the undocumented of whites killed by blacks the medium that the claim is platform designed to help immigrants entering the U.S. was approximately 15 percent. made on,” says Bill Adair, identify which claims by from that country. There is “We did have a long director of The Reporters’ Lab politicians should be checked. nothing to suggest the Mexican discussion about if there was and founder of PolitiFact. A collaborative project among government encourages one [lie] that was more Research suggests that journalists, academics, and criminals to enter the U.S. signifi cant than the other, but at people do care about the computer scientists from On November 21 in the end of the discussion it just facts—sort of. An American the University of Texas Birmingham, Alabama, Trump seemed like it was a tough Press Institute (API) study, at Arlington, Duke University claimed “thousands of people call,” says Angie Drobnic Holan, which measured public views (including Adair), Google were cheering” in Jersey City, editor of PolitiFact, the 2009 on fact-checking during the Research, and The Dallas New Jersey as the World Trade Pulitzer Prize-winning fact- 2014 campaign season, found Morning News, ClaimBuster is Center towers collapsed on checking wing of The Tampa that nearly half of those programmed to give political September 11, 2001. There is Bay Times. “They were all pretty surveyed were somewhat statements a check-worthiness

from the fi rst GOP presidential debate in Cleveland on in addition to the main one, how the candidates are August 6, features quick cutaways of Jeb Bush and his arranged on the stage according to their standing wife attending church and Governor Kasich welcom- in the polls) and includes kitschy moments like a ing everyone to Ohio. At diff erent intervals Hamby shot of Cruz’s daughter with a caption dubbing her

gives rapid-fi re explainers (why there’s a “JV debate” “debate coach.” ALAN DIAZ/AP

34 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 34 3/30/16 12:53 PM rating that fl ags which ones they can already embed tweets. merit verifi cation. During the A recent post on PolitiFact’s Democratic and Republican North Carolina site, run in debates, the ClaimBuster team partnership with The News & of footage, and it doesn’t attempt to provide a rich anal- fed closed-captioning text Observer in Raleigh, rated as ysis of what’s happening. And the very fact that Snaps into the prototype, and posted “Half True” Trump’s statement disappear underscores their limited utility, according some of the most check-worthy that NASCAR had endorsed to Leonard Steinhorn, professor of public communi- statements on Twitter. While him. While he did receive cation at American University: “You see it, and it goes the system now only identifi es the endorsement of its CEO, away.” When it comes to his own students and their statements, researchers hope NASCAR itself did not endorse friends, Steinhorn says, “They are informed. But with ClaimBuster will eventually be Trump. The posting included [Snapchat], and the way they seek out information, it is able to monitor live streams, the embeddable widget, showing almost a block, for even the most sincere, to becoming social media feeds, and websites Trump’s remark, the date and more knowledgeable.” to not just instantaneously occasion on which the claim was detect factual claims but also made, and PolitiFact’s veracity to match identifi ed statements rating, which ranges from news outlets are not ceding with a repository of existing “True” to “Pants on Fire” false. the social media space but moving fact-checks from outlets like Michelle Ye Hee Lee, a aggressively to seize it, crafting con- PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. reporter on The Fact Checker N tent specifically for platforms like The nonprofi t digital library at The Washington Post, is Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Internet Archive is also working extending fact-checking to A signifi cant portion of Vox’s overall to advance fact-checking. Its Snapchat. Because Snapchat traffi c is mobile, so when it creates graphics or other dis- searchable Political TV Ad prioritizes images over text, Lee play-oriented pieces, the social media platforms people Archive uses algorithms to selects fact-checks that can be use on phones guide their eff orts. “When we’re making identify and categorize political quickly explained without a lot these cool graphics, if they don’t work on the phone, it’s advertisements in 20 markets, of prose. For example, when just a wasted eff ort,” says Sarah Kliff , who oversees the including those in Florida, Iowa, Ted Cruz claimed during site’s graphics and data team. “It can feel constraining Ohio, and Virginia, and make the March 3 GOP debate that as a newsroom, but it’s really important to meet readers them available to fact-checkers, he spent much of his life in law where they are.” as well as others interested in enforcement, Lee posted Cruz’s Accomplishing that entails not just engaging in the the material. claim above an illustration of platforms people are using, but telling stories in ways The Archive has partnered the candidate. When users that hold their attention. Vox helped pioneer the use of with the Reporters’ Lab at Duke, swiped right, they saw the Post’s “social cards,” which allow reporters to capture a sin- The Washington Post’s Fact brief debunk of Cruz’s claim: gle, telling quote and pair it with an artist’s sketch of Checker, FactCheck.org, and the “not rly … He’s exaggerating. the candidate. The cards convey one powerful idea in Center for Public Integrity to He was a lawyer for Texas & an instant and can be easily shared. scrutinize political ads from defended criminals in private Vox organizes its coverage differently, too. the 2016 primary season, and, practice.” Snapchat fact-checks Reporters cover policy areas rather than individual to date, outlets ranging from like these have garnered the candidates. Yet Laura McGann, who leads Vox’s pol- Fusion to Fox News have used most views of any Post political itics-and-policy team, acknowledges that the chaotic the data in stories. Andrew story on the platform. primary season has led to a juggling of resources to McGill, senior associate editor at As journalists and computer explain some unexpected story lines. “A lot of other The Atlantic, and colleagues scientists work to refi ne and outlets are competing to predict who is going to win,” mined the archive to visualize a streamline the process, Adair she says. “They look at the micro news events—‘She typical Iowan’s television screen thinks the growth of the practice bought a burrito!’—and ask, ‘Does that mean she will on January 29, two days before marks “a wonderful moment win?” My question is not, ‘What happens next in the the caucuses, when an average in accountability journalism. campaign?’ The question is, ‘What kind of president of one ad aired every 45 seconds. Fact-checking provides a critical would this candidate make?” At Duke, Adair is also service to democracy that many, Vox’s “gaff esplainer” is a case in point. Back on July developing Share the Facts, many people do, in fact, rely 8, Bush made a controversial remark during an inter- a widget allowing journalists, on to shape what they believe to view with the New Hampshire Union Leader’s editorial bloggers, and columnists be true.” board, which was live streamed on Periscope, a platform to embed summaries of fact- that wasn’t around last election. He said that Americans checks in their articles the way With reporting by Eryn M. Carlson would have to work longer hours in order to meet his objective of achieving an annual 4 percent growth rate. Democrats pounced on the comment, and the media narrative focused on whether it was a “gaff e.” The piece does offer a variety of perspectives— Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, by contrast, analyzed the including protesters chanting “GOP, out of touch!” economic theory and statistics necessary to inform an and a brief commentary from Democratic National assessment of Bush’s argument. The number of hours Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz— people work in a prosperous country tends to decline but it’s impossible to tell who has shot the diff erent bits over time, Yglesias noted, because they become more

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productive and don’t have to compensate with extra The Huffington Post has produced several cine- hours. He also noted that the last time the U.S. experi- matic-quality video series, including “’16 & President” enced that level of growth, during the 1990s, Americans and “New Hampshire,” publishing some directly onto were putting in longer hours. Yglesias’s conclusion: Facebook rather than its own site. In some instances, the Americans already work unusually long hours for those raw content resonated with the public. Scott Conroy, se- in the developed world and Bush had no specifi c pol- nior political reporter for The Huffi ngton Post, says that icy proposals outlining how the U.S. would be able to he and his team had shot footage of an emotional Chris reach his ambitious goal of sustained, robust economic Percentage of Christie discussing the overdose of a law school class- growth. Vox has done similar work analyzing Rubio’s Americans mate who had become addicted to painkillers. The foot- plan to combat the Islamic State and Clinton’s infra- who said these U.S. age didn’t make the fi nal cut of “’16 & President.” “On structure-spending plan. institutions have a slow Friday night, I thought to myself, ‘That was actu- Vox’s Kliff , in addition to heading the site’s data and a negative effect on ally a great moment,’” Conroy recalls. He put it online, graphics team, has spent years covering health care the way things are and it has attracted more than 8.6 million views so far. policy. She has published pieces about how Sanders going in the country More importantly, “New Hampshire” gave viewers has revived the issue of single-payer coverage with his a sense of how that state’s primary actually works, and “Medicare for All” proposal, which led to a spike in why it is diff erent from other early contests. Everyone readership of the content Vox already had on the issue. talks about how intimate the interactions can be be- Seeing the rise in interest, Vox’s Dylan Matthews report- % tween candidates and voters, but “New Hampshire” ed how the numbers on Sanders plan panned out. 75 captured those moments in real time. And they weren’t Matthews explained how the cost was equivalent to just the obvious town hall scenes. A makeup artist who spending an additional 8 percent of U.S. gross domes- had lost her stepdaughter to a heroin overdose explained tic product (GDP) on health care, in addition to the how she brought up the issue with every presidential 8.1 percent of GDP currently spent and would give CONGRESS hopeful who sat in her chair; a young digital reporter America “about the same level of government spending for CBS, who dropped everything to chronicle the race relative to the economy as you see in the Netherlands, for nearly a year, got to know John Kasich well enough and more spending than you see in the United Kingdom, to tease him about his basketball moves. Germany or Spain.” Sanders’s plan includes a “premi- % The campaigns’ treatment of the traveling press is um,” which Matthews called what it is: a 2.2 percent 67 nearly comical at this point—if it wasn’t so tragic. At fl at income tax. Vox’s coverage is noteworthy because one point, Clinton’s handlers put reporters behind it takes candidates’ ideas seriously, scrutinizing where a rope line as she walked, making the press corps look they come from and where they would lead us if they FEDERAL like a herd of cattle. She decided to answer a couple of were actually executed. GOVERNMENT questions from the media right after Super Tuesday, the fi rst time in nearly three months she had done so. Most Republican campaigns aren’t much better. Trump buzzfeed news has a team of has banned BuzzFeed reporters from his events as cre- 17 reporters and editors focused on % dentialed media, though they often attend as members the campaign, producing everything 65 of the public. Trump expelled Jorge Ramos, an anchor B from quick takes to investigative sto- for the nation’s leading Spanish-language network, ries and profi les. In recent years, the Univision, and the host of a weekly, English-language Clintons have repeatedly claimed that current aff airs program on Fusion, when Ramos tried one of the reasons Bill Clinton signed the Defense of NATIONAL to ask him about his illegal immigration plan without Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, which denied feder- NEWS MEDIA being called on. He let him back in a few minutes later al marriage benefi ts to same-sex couples even if their and allowed him to ask questions. marriages were recognized in individual states, was to As a result, even the idea of access itself is coming stave off what they said would have been far worse— into question. “The candidates are now so shrink- a federal constitutional amendment. BuzzFeed’s Chris % wrapped and programmed,” says Washington Post Geidner dug through thousands of documents the 56 national political correspondent Karen Tumulty. “You Clinton Library had released on the law and LGBT rights rarely hear anything spontaneous out of their mouths.” and determined that there was no evidence for the idea Adam Nagourney, who served as The New York that the signing of DOMA was, in the words of Hillary LARGE Times national political correspondent between 2002 Clinton, “a defensive action.” CORPORATIONS and 2010 and covered Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign And, after a reader tweeted that Trump had voiced for USA Today, says in past elections reporters have opposition to the Iraq War on Howard Stern’s radio been able to see candidates evolve on the campaign show—a position he has trumpeted on the campaign trail. “A candidate learns to be a better, smarter, trail—BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan more informed candidate,” says Nagourney, who now McDermott went through old recordings of the show to serves as the Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief. “Then determine that he had, in fact, voiced tepid support. “Are it really helps to be on the plane. But I don’t know SOURCE: PEW RESEARCH you for invading Iraq?” the shock jock asked him. “Yeah, CENTER SURVEY if that’s as valuable anymore. People are much more

I guess so,” Trump replied. AUG.-OCT. 2015 risk-averse.” BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

36 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 36 3/25/16 10:44 AM Yet traveling with candidates re- mains essential to in-depth cover- age. Nate Cohn of The Upshot, a New York Times section that cov- ers politics and policy, predicted the demise of both Trump and Cruz in 2015. Both he and FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver urged readers to dis- count Trump’s standing in the polls, suggesting he would inevitably de- cline. Reporters regularly on the trail thought diff erently. For months The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson traveled with Trump, capturing the massive crowds he attracted as well as their intense an- ger. Johnson discovered something at the endless rallies that doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet: the devotion of Trump’s supporters. There were some who came to gawk at the spectacle, of course, but they were the exception. “The overwhelming number of people I talk to love him, and adore him, and plan to vote for him,” Johnson says. In October she wrote about the billion- aire’s “super fans,” people like Paulette Del Casale, who not only attended four rallies in three separate states in short succession but moderated a private Facebook page dubbed “Trump Defeats the Establishment.” Reporters and producers of the HILLARY CLINTON Reveal podcast, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, found the same when they traveled to Trump events in in November 2014. When the current site launched, Nevada, Iowa, and South Carolina. Reporter Katharine Silver wrote that his ambition was to “make the news Mieszkowski interviewed a down-on-his-luck man, Mike a little nerdier” by bringing a data-centric approach Augustine, who said Trump makes him feel rich inside. to journalism. His support for the billionaire is so fervent, in fact, that FiveThirtyEight has more than two dozen-full time he’s willing to set aside his top political issue—the legal- writers and editors and another couple dozen regular ization of marijuana. However, if Trump doesn’t get the “ contributors. The site’s approach is rooted in a critique GOP nomination, Augustine plans to vote for Sanders. The of horse-race political journalism in which news blips The “Pumped on Trump” episode of the Reveal pod- question is, are presented as key turning points. “FiveThirtyEight cast is full of surprises about Trump backers. As a fol- got started out of a very specifi c critique of political low-up to the January episode, Reveal partnered with ‘What kind journalism, which was that a lot of it was false, basi- online polling company YouGov to paint a picture of of president cally, that it was overhyped,” says politics editor Micah the typical Trump supporter. The results: the average would Cohen. “FiveThirtyEight sometimes gets tagged as Trump backer is white and older than 44; nearly half anti-traditional journalism, which isn’t really true. It’s have a high school education or less, and half make less this candidate just, there are some questions that are answered with than $50,000 a year. Twenty-seven percent of respon- make?’ this tool—data—and there are other questions that are dents said they were independents, while 21 percent said better answered with other tools—reporting and that they were Democrats. kind of thing.” Rigorous on-the-ground reporting and newer da- ” One question easier answered with data has to do ta-driven techniques can be powerful allies. Nate Silver’s —Laura McGann, Vox with endorsements—namely, which ones are, or used to FiveThirtyEight came to prominence when it correct- be, most valuable to candidates. In presidential prima- ly called the 2008 election results in every state but ries, when the party establishment, especially governors Indiana. It later became a licensed feature for The New and members of Congress, agree on the best person for York Times, before coming to its current home at ESPN the nomination, rank-and-fi le voters have tended to

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follow suit—something FiveThirtyEight has mapped study are still very new. Nevertheless, he says, “Digital with its 2016 Endorsement Primary, which assigns technologies have completely revolutionized the public weighted point values for endorsements based on the sphere, and journalists haven’t yet done as much as they offi ce held by the endorser. As of March 1, Rubio, who Percentage of might with that. We have a lot to learn about ourselves, has since dropped out of the race, was in the lead with TV news mentions about the candidates, and about the issues from this in- 168 points, much more than Cruz (50) or Trump (29). of Democratic credibly rich trove of data.” The endorsement tracker off ers a diff erent take on the candidates While it is often diffi cult to point to discrete turning race than conventional polling, one that highlights the (AS OF MARCH 20) points in how campaigns are run, two recent landmarks currency political outsiders hold in this race. And while stand out: the January 21, 2010 Citizens United ruling many media outlets consistently treated Rubio like % by the Supreme Court, and the D.C. Circuit Court of a front-runner because he was favored by many party 66.866 Appeals decision in Speechnow.org v. FEC on March elites, the primary and caucus results showed that Cruz CLINTONCL 26 of that same year. Citizens United lifted the restric- was Trump’s main rival. tions on political contributions by corporations and unions as long as they did not contribute directly to can- 29.9% didates or parties, and SpeechNow allowed individuals SANDERS even as many journalists fault to pool their money to spend it independently, which social media for making political spurred the creation of Super PACs. coverage more superficial, others Those decisions have unleashed a torrent of cash E are using data gleaned from those Percentage of into presidential and congressional campaigns, much of platforms to enhance and deepen TV news mentions which fl ows through shadowy third-party groups that reporting. The Laboratory for Social of Republican are diffi cult to track. This spike in spending comes at Machines, an initiative of MIT’s Media Lab, is using candidates a time when the wealth disparity between rich and poor Twitter’s entire database of tweets going back to the (AS OF MARCH 20) Americans has grown even wider, bolstering the appeal platform’s launch in 2006 to explore connections of Sanders on the left and Trump on the right, since among the campaign’s three main players: the candi- both candidates can make the case that they cannot be % dates, the media, and the public. The MIT team hopes 46.8 easily bought. the data can help journalists show how campaign cov- TRUMP In the new world of campaign finance, journal- erage, candidate messaging, and the public’s response ists play a critical role in monitoring who is donating converge to shape the election’s most important nar- to politicians and how that money is spent. “A lot of ratives as well as its outcome. 12.7% reporters are always looking for what’s illegal,” says The project, dubbed The Electome, has the poten- BUSH Carrie Levine, a politics reporter for the Center for tial to spur “a new kind of journalism about the elec- Public Integrity. “But, sometimes, the most interesting tion, somewhere on the border of what polling used to story is what’s legal. This is classic reporting, and you do and what journalism has always done,” says William 10.5% want to think about the things you think about with any Powers, a research scientist at the Lab and former staff RUBIO story: Who’s benefi ting? Who’s getting rich? Who has the writer for The Washington Post, “a view of the elec- ear of the people in power, and how are they infl uencing tion that is more issue-oriented than we’ve gotten in the decisions?” the past and also that includes the public voice having 6.5% The New York Times’s Nicholas Confessore and his CRUZ a peer role.” colleague Sarah Cohen answered some of these ques- One of the fi rst things the Electome team set out tions on February 5 when they scrutinized the spend- to learn was how journalists can tap into public opin- ing practices of Trump, who has boasted about the fact ion to better cover what Powers calls “the horse race Number of that he’s funding his own campaign. Looking at the of ideas” rather than the horse race among candidates. mentions by cable most recent federal election disclosures, they discov- In December, the Lab teamed up with The Washington news networks ered that of the $12.4 million Trump’s operation spent Post to publish an analysis of what topics Twitter us- (AS OF MARCH 20) in 2015—much less than any of his competitors—more ers were interested in during this election cycle. Using than half of it was covered by donations from supporters The Electome’s algorithms to comb and sort hundreds who have either sent him checks or bought campaign of thousands of daily tweets mentioning election is- 358K merchandise. Equally important, nearly $2.7 million of sues or candidates, the researchers found that tweets TRUMPT the spending went to at least seven fi rms Trump either related to foreign policy and national security were thehe owns outright or are owned by people who work for part most prevalent, followed by conversations centeredd of his business empire. “What remains is a quintessen- on immigration. 196K tially Trumpian endeavor that blurs the line between Twitter obviously represents only a small subset of CLINTON campaigning and brand building and complicates Mr. the American population, and a not very representa- Trump’s claims that he is funding his own White House tive one at that. But if The Electome’s methods can be campaign,” they wrote. applied to other social media platforms, the technology Along with Confessore, The Washington Post’s could provide an important way to capture the public’s SOURCE: GDELT Matea Gold has emerged with one of the clearest voic- PROJECT, WITH DATA FROM voice and point of view. Powers urges caution when THE INTERNET ARCHIVE es on the beat. A presidential-campaign veteran, Gold

analyzing such data, though, given that these areas of TELEVISION NEWS ARCHIVE knew little about campaign fi nance when she took on PRESS ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED

38 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 38 3/30/16 12:55 PM the beat in the wake of the Citizens United ruling. She quickly realized that the topic “is something so tech- nical and arcane that it’s hard to keep a sense of expertise unless you’re in it all the time.” Yet she thinks it’s vital for voters to know who’s giving money and building infl uence with the can- didates, and says she has noticed, via reader feedback, “the number of peo- ple who say they care about big money in politics has grown exponentially.” Roughly every other week, Gold sends out a briefi ng to all Post report- ers covering candidates. She includes what updated campaign-fi nance num- bers she may have cobbled together as well as intelligence about super PACs worth watching. She might include observations about “how political op- eratives take advantage of loopholes in law,” she says, or “what outside groups are aligned with which candidates, to make sure all the trail reporters know.” Working with Tom Hamburger and Jenna Johnson, Gold exposed how offi - cials at a super PAC had ties to Trump even though he had decried the idea of these quasi-independent fundraising ve- hicles. After they wrote about it, the su- per PAC was shut down. In September, Gold and Hamburger wrote about how both parties have been pursuing wealthy JOHN KASICH donors, now that limits on contribu- tions have been loosened. “A lot of this can be seen as an esoteric, academic debate,” says Gold. “Right now, a reporter might e-mail me or someone on “But if you connect it to a voter in Akron—why you’re my team and ask for all contributions from the fashion in- seeing your airwaves bombarded by ads from all these dustry to members of Congress,” Bryner explains. “We’ll groups you’ve never heard of—that’s a really important write some queries and deliver that data directly to the re- part of the story.” porter.” In a post-PDQ world, though, the reporter would Looking forward, Gold hopes technology can bring just need to go to PDQ and select her options, setting up campaign fi nance reporting into the 21st century. The a recurring request to get new data whenever she wanted, FEC website doesn’t post donations in real time, and The“ big a process the Center hopes will provide more timely data Senate campaign committees are not even required to and, ultimately, get more data into more news stoes. submit their fi nancial disclosure reports electronically. hole we “Our mission is to increase the visibility of money “The big hole we have is how money is being spent and have is how in politics,” Bryner says, “and we hope that by making seeing quickly who is making money from diff erent enti- [campaign] it easier for the public to keep a watchful eye on their ties,” she says. “If I had a wish, it would be for a killer app elected officials, we provide one more roadblock to to see instantly who is profi ting.” Some technologists money is politicians taking advantage of their power.” are working to make her wish come true. being spent All of these techniques—scrutinizing FEC reports, At the Center for Responsive Politics, a team of re- crunching data from voter files, reporting from the searchers is developing a new data query tool that will fi eld—share one quality: They take time to produce. It’s give reporters access to real-time campaign fi nance data. ” so noticeable when talented beat reporters are “given Prompt Data Query (PDQ) is an automated, interactive —Matea Gold, the time to really work on something,” Jill Abramson tool that will allow users to build custom data sets using The Washington Post observes. “It’s amazing, and it’s revelatory. Those are the Center’s up-to-date campaign fi nance and lobbying the kind of pieces that I’m hungry for.”  data. Sarah Bryner, the lead on the PDQ project, says this will bring a new level of effi ciency and accessibility to With reporting by Eryn M. Carlson, Jeff Chu, and Sridhar making customized data requests in real time. Pappu

nieman reports spring 2016 39

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 39 3/30/16 12:55 PM Nieman Watchdog Neither Heroes Nor Victims Covering the disability community with sensitivity— and without sensationalism BY GENEVIEVE BELMAKER WITH REPORTING BY ERYN M. CARLSON ANDY LAUBANDY

40 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_PG40_040416.indd 40 4/4/16 2:28 PM Juli Windsor completed her fi rst Boston Marathon in 2014

nieman reports spring 2016 41

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 41 3/30/16 12:56 PM ne day back in what it described as the “house of horrors” the spring of 2013, where the men had lived. Barry felt the story New York Times was too compelling and had too many un- reporter Dan Bar- answered questions, and he was intent on ry was looking for giving the men a voice. a topic for “This He began by tracking down the men and Land,” his column methodically conducting interviews. First, about American he got a third-party introduction from a life, when he came across a newswire story caretaker. When he initially met the men in about a labor case involving a group of men person, he didn’t take any notes; they just Owith intellectual disabilities. The facts of talked. The second time he met them, he the case: 32 men with disabilities, working had a notebook. The third time there were for the same wage for 35 years, $240 million cameras. Along the way, he verifi ed infor- in damages. “What the heck are we talking mation by circling back to caretakers and about here?” Barry recalls thinking. the attorney on the case. The result: “The The men had been rescued from living ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse,” a multimedia in squalor and working in abusive and ex- report centered around Barry’s 7,000-plus Before Dan ploitative conditions at a turkey processing word column, in which he painted a vivid plant in tiny Atalissa, Iowa. They had spent portrait of the men themselves and the hor- Barry asked, decades working for just $65 a month, living rible conditions in which they had lived. An in a house infested with bugs and infused accompanying short documentary, “The no journalist with a rank smell. Roaches fell from the ceil- Men of Atalissa,” a collaboration between ing as they ate. They slept on dirty mattress- the Times and PBS’s POV, was produced had sought es and used metal trashcans to catch water by Barry and his colleague, video journalist from melting snow on the roof. Kassie Bracken. to interview Barry called the lawyer on the case to “I just wanted him to be a guy in a bus,” fi nd out more—and also to ask about speak- Barry says of his depiction of Clayton Berg, the men at ing with the men. The lawyer’s response was one of the men, on his way to work at his surprising: Not a single reporter had ever new job after leaving Atalissa. “The mun- the heart of a asked to speak with the men before. dane nature of that is kind of extraordinary When the turkey processing plant bunk- because of where he came from.” $240 million house was closed down in 2009, some local Barry didn’t want the men’s former media in Iowa reported the news. But by circumstances or their disabilities to dis- lawsuit then the men had already been relocated to tract from the fact that they were, fi rst and other places around the state and the coun- foremost, human beings—something that try. Some coverage included interviews with seems obvious but, too frequently, seems one of the men’s sisters. The Des Moines forgotten in depictions of people with dis- Register published photos and videos of abilities. Stereotypes and even prejudices

42 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 42 3/30/16 12:57 PM No reporters had talked to Clayton Berg, one of the workers in a $240 million abuse case, before Dan Barry wrote “The ‘Boys’ in the Bunkhouse”

about disability persist, and those stereo- can lead to a number of health complica- There are nearly 57 million Americans types can creep into media coverage in the tions. “One extreme is portraying people with disabilities (nearly 1 out of every 5 peo- form of clichés. People with disabilities are with disabilities as people who are helpless ple), according to U.S. Census data, with viewed as heroes for accomplishing ordinary and deserving of pity. That reinforces the conditions ranging from the physical— tasks, as victims, or—in cases of violent stigma of disability as something that is bad blindness, deafness, paralysis—to the men- crime involving the mentally ill—as villains. and that would need to be changed. On the tal and psychological, including depression “There are two extremes,” says Gary other extreme, you have the overly heroic and anxiety. Most newsrooms don’t have Arnold, president of Little People of portrayal of disability, where the person is reporters specifi cally focused on covering America, which advocates for the approx- portrayed as a superhero for doing things people with disabilities and many activ- imately 35,000 Americans with dwarfi sm, that a non-disabled person does on an ists and support organizations say Barry’s

NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK TIMES NICOLE BENGIVENO/THE NEW YORK a condition that results in short stature and everyday basis.” sensitive, non-sensationalistic story is the

nieman reports spring 2016 43

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 43 3/30/16 12:57 PM exception rather than the rule. Even ranging from AIDS and migraine head- research on stories depicting people with aches to diabetes and complications from disabilities is hard to come by. pregnancy, and also includes people with Arnold, of Little People of America, can a range of mental and psychological disor- cite plenty of examples of coverage that ders, certain learning disabilities, and intel- people with disabilities consider off ensive. lectual disabilities, like those of the Atalissa He says Little People of America stopped men in Barry’s story. For “The ‘Boys’ in the making itself available as a source to The Bunkhouse,” The New York Times team Huffi ngton Post, for example, because the was careful to portray the men as real peo- publication consistently placed stories with ple who could help tell their own stories. their interviews in the website’s “Weird Photographer Nicole Bengiveno and vid- News” section. A search of the word “dwarf” eographer Kassie Bracken spent about on the site does turn up a number of head- a year reporting the piece—researching, lines under that section: “Dwarf Stripper Kat interviewing, photographing, and traveling Hoff man Finds Love With Army Sergeant,” to the diff erent states where the men had “Jahmani Swanson Is ‘Michael Jordan of settled in the time since the house closed Dwarf Basketball’” and “Ritch Workman, down in 2009. “I do not view Florida Lawmaker, Says Yes To ‘Dwarf- Tossing,’ No To Gay Marriage.” Huffi ngton my life as a life Post spokeswoman Lena Auerbuch says the ne of the key elements of publication has “spent years developing their reporting was patience. of challenges a respectful relationship with the little peo- Initially, they were barred from ple community,” though she acknowledged taking photos or video. As the team and limitations. that stories about people with dwarfi sm that earned trust, the restrictions were involve pop culture and fringe entertain- eased. “We had to put the story That’s not ment “do sometimes appear in our Weird together in a very sensitive way,” News vertical, a vibrant community that Osays Bengiveno. “It was like detective work, how I want to examines counterculture.” In September meeting the men and learning their stories. 2015, The Huffi ngton Post added a disabili- Sometimes, there were scrapbooks, and be portrayed.” ty news section to its website after pressure we looked at their pictures. We saw them from advocates. over and over again, because we had to get —Juli Windsor, Boston “What the disability community wants is to know them.” Bengiveno spent time with Marathon runner attention to our issues,” Arnold says: access the men without Barry, working to take to health care, education, and government photographs as unobtrusively as possible. services, as well as the right not to face dis- She captured the men watering the garden, crimination. riding the bus, making dinner—mundane The Americans with Disabilities Act domestic tasks they were denied during (ADA), passed in 1990, was designed to their lives in Atalissa. address precisely these issues. The ADA pro- To tell the men’s stories, Barry relied tects against discrimination on the basis of on his own reporting as well as public re- disability in employment, public services, cords, court documents, and testimony by transportation, and telecommunications. an expert who interviewed all the men for It defi nes disability as anything that inter- the trial. Sometimes, a caretaker helped him feres with an individual’s reasonable access communicate with the men, since some of to and accommodations in public places them had hearing and speech impediments. and services, including the ability to be em- The greatest challenge was nailing down the ployed and educated. Many journalists are timeline of events, since the men’s develop- unaware of just how wide this defi nition is. mental and intellectual disabilities—which That, argues Beth Haller, journalism profes- impacted their reasoning and learning—of- sor at Towson University in Maryland and ten aff ected their sense of time. Barry says author of two books on people with disabil- there was “no trick or special approach” to ities and the media, has limited coverage. his reporting; he just talked to the men and “People just presumed that all the [ADA] asked them to tell their stories. covered is people who are deaf, blind, or That approach—treating people with use wheelchairs,” she says. “If the media disabilities as sources, not just subjects—is understood how broad the defi nition was, what advocates want more of. The National that would help.” Center on Disability and Journalism (NCDJ) Crucially, this definition of disability off ers interviewing tips and a style guide covers a diverse list of physical conditions, for reporters covering disability. One of

44 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 44 3/30/16 12:58 PM the most important things to remember Dup15q syndrome, a rare chromosome dis- Horizons as well as The Huffi ngton Post when interviewing those with intellectual order. He wanted a single community where and The Independent. “For true inclusion,” disabilities: Speak directly to the person you people with disabilities could share their ex- Sibley says via e-mail, “we do need inspira- are interviewing, not their companion, and periences and connect with others. “There tion stories, but also everyday achievers who regard that person as the expert. is a lot of medical information on the Web, ‘happen’ to have a disability.” Also crucial is to not group all people but not nearly enough stories of personal Juli Windsor, a Boston-based physician’s with similar disabilities together, assuming experiences that can often be far more help- assistant, considers herself an everyday how one person’s disability aff ects their life ful, insightful, or empowering,” says Porath, achiever who happens to have a disabil- is universal for all people with the same who worked for ABC, NBC, and The New ity. In 2013, she e-mailed Boston Globe handicap. This, according to journalist York Times before founding The Mighty in reporter David Abel to pitch a story about Mike Porath, extends to writing about the 2014. “We need more stories from the per- her eff ort to become the fi rst dwarf to run disability. “Ask the individual who is being spective of individuals with disabilities.” the Boston Marathon. “My initial intent interviewed how he or she would like to The Mighty has produced more than was that I wanted there to be more stories be referred to in the story,” says Porath, 6,000 stories since it launched, including of people with disabilities being out there who founded The Mighty, a media compa- ones that have been syndicated in outlets doing worthwhile things,” says Windsor. ny focused on sharing stories—many from such as The Huffi ngton Post and Yahoo. However, she stressed that she didn’t want a fi rst-person perspective—of people with Members of the disabled community are to be depicted as a runner who was some- diseases and chronic illnesses. “One person increasingly telling their own stories else- how overcoming her disability or defying may want to be called ‘autistic’ and another where, too. Martyn Sibley, a Brit with spinal expectations by logging those 26.2 miles. may want to be called ‘a person with autism.’ muscular atrophy who uses a wheelchair, “I do not view my life as a life of challenges It should be up to the interviewee, not the decided to do that by writing a blog about and limitations,” Windsor says. “That’s not interviewer.” accessible tourism, technology, health, and how I want to be portrayed.” Porath conceived the idea for The Mighty personal relationships. He co-founded and At the time, Abel was spending a year as

ANGEL FRANCO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX ANGEL FRANCO/THE NEW YORK after his young daughter was diagnosed with writes for the online magazine Disability a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, but decided to work on a documentary about Dan Barry’s story about newlyweds who met at a shelter workshop focused on their joy her for a class. He was waiting at the fi nish line on April 15, 2013 when two bombs went off . The race was halted soon after the ex- plosions, and about 5,700 participants were never able to cross the fi nish line—includ- ing Windsor. She was less than a mile away from the end. Abel was part of the Globe team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the bombing, but he came back to Windsor for a Runner’s World article in 2014. She ran the marathon for a second time, with Abel by her side. The pair crossed the fi nish line together, holding hands. The experience was grueling for Windsor, not just physi- cally—at 3-foot-9, she takes roughly twice as many steps as the average runner, and, since dwarfs often suffer problems with their spines, she can experience signifi cant back pain after long runs—but mentally, as well. Running past the spot where she was stopped the year before, Windsor had tears in her eyes, remembering the collective and personal trauma stemming from the bomb- ings; her mother, who had been standing near the fi nish line, sustained face injuries and a shattered shoulder when she was trampled in the tumult. It was this characterization of Windsor, as a Bostonian personally impacted by the bombing and persevering despite the heightened physical and mental obstacles, that Abel focused on in his article. For Abel, Windsor’s stature was only part of the reason

nieman reports spring 2016 45

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 45 3/30/16 12:58 PM he wanted to write about her. “If there’s and his “jagged journey to stability,” start- a compelling story, my sense is we shouldn’t ing from his fi rst psychotic break, in college, focus on the disability as much as the per- until his diagnosis today, as a man in his son and what their story is,” he says. “The early 30s who is able to live a relatively in- disability is just a piece of that.” dependent and productive life. That appears to be more challenging Six short vignettes about people with when addressing people with mental dis- schizophrenia and their family members, abilities. “In recent years, the time you who were all granted anonymity because see mental illness covered the most is the stigma of a diagnosis is still so great, when there’s a violent act,” says Shannon accompany the two stories. The package was Heffernan, a broadcast journalist with illustrated with work by a local artist with WBEZ radio in Chicago who has reported schizophrenia, and ran as a special, ad-free extensively on the subject. “I think mental section in the Sunday paper in November. illness and violence are linked in people’s Seidman’s account brought a poignant and minds. What that does is it further stigma- intimate dimension to the topic, humaniz- tizes mental illness.” ing those with mental illness. This was certainly the case in August af- Many advocates consider rights for ter journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward, people with disabilities as the next fron- of Roanoke, Virginia’s CBS affi liate WDBJ, tier for civil rights. Stories on the subject were shot and killed during a live television sometimes bear a striking resemblance to broadcast. Soon after he fl ed the scene, the coverage of women and minorities from gunman uploaded a cell phone video of the only a few decades ago. “It really is not so incident, recorded from a fi rst-person per- diff erent from ‘fi rst woman’ stories,” says spective, to his social media accounts, which Kristin Gilger, director of the NCDJ and an were suspended soon after. Hours later, he associate dean at Arizona State University’s shot and killed himself after a car chase with Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and police offi cers. Mass Communication. “For several decades, Many stories about the gunman focused there were always newspaper articles about largely on his mental state. One CNN story the fi rst woman to do this and to do that. alleged that his mental state was unknown, Just like with women and minority groups, yet still referenced mental illness and fi re- it takes time for journalism to mainstream arms control in the same paragraph. The it into their coverage.” gunman had a history of confl icts with for- The NCDJ administers the Katherine “ The best mer colleagues, and media conjecture about Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence mentally instability was never verifi ed; the in Reporting on Disability, and Gilger cites killer was never clinically diagnosed with some recent winners as representative of the thing news a mental disorder. The portrayal of shooters way coverage is changing. Ryan Gabrielson as “crazy” perpetuates stereotypes of men- of California Watch won in 2013 for “Broken organizations tal illness as being to blame for a whole array Shield,” his series of stories about the Offi ce of societal problems, including gun violence, of Protective Services, a California police can do to taking culpability away from other possible force designed to protect developmentally factors—including how easy it is to acquire disabled patients, and its failure to inves- improve their a weapon in the U.S. tigate the horrifi c abuse of patients, even when they died under mysterious circum- coverage stances. Despite federal audits, investiga- here is little training for tions by disability-rights groups, lawsuits, is to hire journalists on how to avoid stig- and thousands of pages of case files and mas. Sarasota Herald-Tribune government data showing facility caregivers people with reporter Carrie Seidman decided and other staff choking, hitting, and sexually to address the situation head-on. assaulting patients, hundreds of abuse cases disabilities.” In “The S Word: The Stigma of went unprosecuted. Gabrielson’s 18-month Schizophrenia,” Seidman—who is investigation led to greater protections for —Mike Porath, founder Tthe Florida paper’s dance critic, but occa- the patients. of The Mighty sionally does special projects—wrote two ProPublica won in 2015 for a story by separate stories about two diff erent men Heather Vogell about a boy with autism navigating their mental illnesses with help whose hands were broken when he was re- from their mothers. The fi rst of those two strained by educators and about the broader narratives was Seidman’s own story, written use of restraint on hundreds of thousands in the fi rst person, about her son, Keaton, of other schoolchildren every year. The

46 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 46 3/30/16 12:58 PM The Americans with Disabilities Act turned 25 years old in 2015, the year of the inaugural Disability Pride Parade in New York

article, “Violent and Legal: The Shocking relates the smallest details, such as picking journalist who has been deaf since birth, Ways School Kids are Being Pinned Down, up balloons for the wedding party that don’t in 1991; for 23 years, Meyer’s regular on-air Isolated Against Their Will,” detailed the fi t into the car and a nervous bride fretting reports addressed everything from issues common practice of educators to isolate over shoes that hurt. about wheelchair accessible playgrounds to and fetter uncooperative—and often, dis- One simple way to improve coverage protests in D.C. demonstrating against the abled—children, sometimes with hand- would be to train and hire more journal- fact that there were no statues of President cuff s, bungee cords, and even duct tape. ists with disabilities. “I think the issues Franklin D. Roosevelt in his wheelchair. The New York Times’s Barry was hon- stem from ignorance, not intent,” says The Having reporters on a disability beat re- ored with the 2014 award for “The ‘Boys’ in Mighty’s Porath. “The best thing news orga- mains rare, but ABC7 has remained commit- the Bunkhouse.” After the story was pub- nizations can do to improve their coverage ted to Meyer’s legacy of pioneering disability lished in March of that year, Barry decided is to hire people with disabilities. There are coverage, even after she retired in 2014. The to spend the rest of the year reporting on a lot of great eff orts to diversify newsrooms, station appointed anchor Hosea Sanders the disabled community. It wasn’t diffi cult but too often those initiatives are focused and special projects producer Sylvia L. Jones to find untold, or incompletely-told, sto- on gender and race alone. The best news- to the disabilities beat after Meyer left, and ries. For one, he focused on the marriage of rooms will have people from all walks of life, the station broadcasts special reports on a couple who are both disabled and met in including those with disabilities. All these a disability issue each week. a sheltered workshop, where people with life experiences and perspectives make “Sometimes reporters—as a refl ection intellectual disabilities work in isolation at newsrooms stronger.” of society in general—will write about the repetitive jobs for very low pay. Barry took That’s certainly the case for Chicago’s poor, or people with a disability, or people this contentious issue and brought out the ABC7, where, for more than two decades, with some kind of challenge, with a hint most human of elements: a happy couple in disability issues have been covered as of condescension,” The New York Times’s love, a bride and groom on their wedding a beat rather than an occasional side story. Barry says. “You have to clear your head of

SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESS SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED day, and their joy at fi nding a life partner. He The station hired Karen Meyer, a broadcast prejudices.” 

nieman reports spring 2016 47

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 47 3/25/16 10:47 AM Michelle Hackman covers politics for Vox

Nieman Watchdog Seen And Heard The obstacles, opportunities, and latent prejudice faced by journalists with disabilities BY MICHELLE HACKMAN

48 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 48 3/25/16 10:48 AM “Yes,” he said. “It’s right here. I’m Senator Blumenthal.” The senator was very gracious about our chance encounter. He asked me which media outlet I was with and even personally helped me set up my mic on the podium. Doubtless, within several minutes, he—and everyone around us—had forgotten the whole debacle. But I couldn’t rid myself of it. As a kid, I’d always dreamed of this day: when I, as a profession- al reporter, would be sent chasing after politicians to reveal some as-yet unspecifi ed injustice. (Doubtless my childhood reveries cen- tered far from the grassy, humid places of that day’s press confer- ences, let alone from the treatment of Lyme disease.) Before the Blumenthal run-in, I’d honestly never pondered just how I would pull it off in real life. Ten years earlier, the little vision I’d grown up with, the kind of vision where I’d have to hold a book inches away from my face to make out the letters on the page, one-by-one, washed away. Offi cially, the doctors said my retina had detached, and no amount of surgery could re-glue it in place. But to my young mind, a world that had once taken on fuzzy outlines simply grew hazier. I was to- tally blind, yes, with not so much as the ability to detect faint traces of light. But I’ve always found the metaphor of darkness inadequate. I didn’t see darkness so much as I projected, through my other sens- es, the outlines of spaces I was moving through—the wide boxiness of a classroom with its sound-muffl ing carpeting; the echoes of a skinny hallway stretching far ahead. It was perhaps because of the sudden onset of blindness, not in spite of it, that I fi rst fantasized about journalism. Because I need- ed others’ hands to guide me across a street or to the bathroom, I wanted nothing more than an adulthood of everything I couldn’t have then: independence, adventure, respect. So, I did what seemed instinctual. I became a journalist, writ- ing fi rst for my high school monthly and then the college paper. Naturally—this was my escape route, after all—I never dwelt on disability in my writing. I was lucky in this regard: politics compelled me as much as disability repelled me, and my wonky niche distract- ed editors from the fact that I could instead be writing compelling disability narratives. I refused to think of myself as a “blind journalist” or a “disabled journalist.” Though I knew of exactly zero blind people who’d become successful roving reporters before me, I’d already conclud- ed that the path for me was not only possible but inevitable. Before I’d really gotten into the nitty-gritty of the profession, I would have y first real mishap as a blind journalist never thought to write this article. I would have believed it unnec- happened during my fi rst reporting internship at a small essary and perhaps even unseemly if tied to my name. public radio station in southern Connecticut. It was a Today, thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), languid summer afternoon, and my editor, desperate to journalists with disabilities fi nd the path to employment better fi ll airtime, sent me out to an inconsequential press con- paved than ever before. But that doesn’t mean disabled journalists ference about Lyme disease research featuring Richard fi nd themselves by any means on equal footing with their non-dis- Blumenthal, Connecticut’s then-junior senator. abled counterparts. Those who make it in the fi eld are the standout MThe event was held on a grassy agricultural research campus go-getters who seek out work-arounds to lessen the burden of their several acres wide, a devilish labyrinth to navigate on deadline. disabilities on employers. They are the few willing to pour extra I showed up 20 minutes early and started wandering aimlessly in eff ort into their stories in the hope that audiences will view their re- search of the press conference. Just when I was ready to declare porting as equal to that of non-disabled journalists. And they are the defeat on this most unimportant of assignments—the phone was ones willing to tolerate relentless, if latent, prejudice from sources already in my hand, ready to dial my editor—I heard a gaggle of and editors alike who often have trouble squaring disability with chattering fi gures ahead. Reporters! I jogged right at them. competence. “Excuse me!” I practically shouted at one of the men. “Do you Half a decade before the ADA’s passage, a forward-thinking news- know where the press conference with Richard Blumenthal is hap- room hired a young blind college grad named Elizabeth Campbell,

DERMOT TATLOW pening?” We collided as he turned to look at me. now a veteran reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. While she

nieman reports spring 2016 49

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 49 3/25/16 10:48 AM never faced outright discrimination, she did need to coax editors come with no easy fi x. The moment when an editor assigns a story into accommodating some of her unique needs. They were unwilling that’s rightfully yours to another reporter, because he or she thinks to hire Campbell a driver, for example, until she pointed out that the the other reporter can more easily carry it out; debating whether paper reimbursed other reporters by the mile when covering stories. to reveal to a source that you have a disability; the pain of having Lisa Goldstein, a deaf freelance journalist living in Pittsburgh, someone do a double-take when you identify yourself as a journalist. uses e-mail or chat programs to conduct the vast majority of her All of these experiences, in one way or another, weave themselves interviews, avoiding the inaccuracies of lip reading or the caption- inextricably into the fabric of our work. Campbell knows that when ing on her telephone. “It’s great for accuracy,” she told me over she’s out in the fi eld she might be met with a brief pause of surprise Facebook Messenger. when she introduces herself as a representative from the local paper. Reid Davenport, a documentary fi lmmaker in California who has Goldstein says she now expects some momentary confusion when cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, employs a 96-button keyboard, she requests to conduct interviews over messenger programs. called IntelliKeys, that functions as both a keyboard and a mouse. Davenport, the journalist who uses a wheelchair, also has im- Despite editors’ suspicions to the contrary, Davenport told me, the paired speech due to his cerebral palsy. His words come out slowly, only small adaptation he requires for a work computer is software slurring together. When he was working as a daily reporter, both that allows him to connect the computer to his keyboard. for his college paper and as an intern for publications, his speech Like Campbell, Goldstein, and Davenport, I have found that it’s proved more devastating for his work than his use of a wheelchair. helpful during job interviews to casually explain how I might han- When he left messages requesting calls back, he often wouldn’t get dle a story, volunteering details about my computer (I can install a response. When he did manage to get someone on the phone, screen-reading software on almost any computer, which will read they would routinely hang up on him in frustration. “If I had clear aloud what I read and write) or my travel habits (I rely heavily on speech,” he says, “my life would be totally diff erent.” Uber for spot news and interviews; cheaper than a cab and easier After two internships did not lead to full-time employment, for me to hail). Every editor I’ve worked for has asked how I include Reid changed his strategy. He started producing documentary fi lms, such vivid visual details in my stories, from descriptions of rich car- which allow him to develop deeper, longer-term relationships with peting to the details of a character’s facial expression. The answer his sources. That helps work through the initial awkwardness of pre- is simple: I ask, and then record the details in quick voice notes on senting himself as a journalist. my cell phone. In the years I’ve been doing journalism, my own streak of embar- These work-arounds are certainly not easy to come by. “I fi nd rassment and shame has shown little sign of slowing. I’ve needed that I have to be my own IT person,” Campbell told me. She attends help from security guards (sometimes even guiding me by the hand) conferences to stay on top of the latest adaptive technology. Harder to fi nd important offi ces or meetings. I’ve asked editors for help read- for journalists like me to stomach are the small daily aff ronts that ing the most basic charts embedded in reports, swallowing any pride I had about independence. And I’ve routinely been subtly passed over to cover breaking or spot news because, as far as I can tell, editors don’t trust me to be as fast as my peers. With all that said, nearly everyone who spoke to me also brought up the same, unexpected bright side to working as a disabled jour- nalist. So much of the job, they argue, is attempting to capture peo- ple at their most unguarded moments—to break through public relations noise or overcome an individual’s fear of speaking with the media. A journalist approaching strangers with their disabili- There’s an ties plainly visible, be it the cane they’re holding or the hearing aid they’re wearing, can be disarming. unexpected bright Will Butler, another blind journalist, put it best. Sources are “im- pressed with your abilities, so they want to give you more, and they want to make your job easier,” he says. “Whereas if you are some side to being a hotshot reporter who looks like you know what you’re doing, a lot of people’s guard will shoot right up.” journalist with a Granted, that advantage is not great enough to push anyone with a disability into journalism, but the frustrations, for a select few disability: Holding people at least, don’t appear to be harsh enough to push disabled individuals out of journalism, either. What we all share is an unadul- a cane can be terated, idealistic love for the profession that comes independent of our disabilities. disarming, helping Since that encounter with Senator Blumenthal, I have reported on a whole range of more consequential political stories, ones that you connect with have sent me on travel and, just as in my dreams, running through the halls of Congress. Those opportunities haven’t come because of a source in an my blindness or in spite of it. They are a direct product of my deep interest in political events. I have just tolerated many small slights unguarded moment along the way. 

50 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 50 3/25/16 10:49 AM Nieman Watchdog

How newsrooms are trying to design sites that are easier for everyone to navigate Access For All BY MICHAEL FITZGERALD

lizabeth campbell doesn’t see Cluttered designs stuff ed with ads and Blind that reads news content aloud. the Web; she hears it. other graphics give JAWS problems, espe- If that sounds like a cumbersome way Campbell is blind and uses a cially if a site isn’t programmed to make the to read an article, it’s also progress. “Even program called JAWS that reads text easy to interpret. So Campbell often when I have challenges with access,” aloud the text on a Web page. The tries a diff erent browser. She might also use Campbell is quick to say, “it’s just amazing problem is, JAWS reads all the text. Apple’s VoiceOver software on her iPhone, what we can do and what we can access as “I’ll be reading along and JAWS will pulling up the article on the Web or even opposed to 30 years ago.” start reading an ad right in the mid- switching over to the publication’s mobile According to Census Bureau surveys, Edle of a story,” she says. “A sighted person app. Facebook is helpful because it makes nearly one in fi ve Americans reported hav- would see the same thing, but you guys can text more accessible than many news sites ing a disability in 2010. Many are motor or skim over it and skip the ad, where we have and apps. As a last resort, Campbell, a gen- cognitive disabilities, including dementia to fi gure out how far to go down so we can eral assignment reporter at the Fort Worth and depression. But more than eight million get back to the story.” The more ads, the Star-Telegram, uses NFB-Newsline Online, Americans are visually impaired, and more more likely a site is to make JAWS crash. a service of the National Federation of the than 7.5 million have hearing issues. For

Illustration by Aude van Ryn nieman reports spring 2016 51

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 51 3/25/16 10:49 AM people with disabilities, accessing the Web sites. The Americans with Disabilities Act can devolve into the online bunny hop (ADA), a law requiring people with disabil- Elizabeth Campbell sometimes experiences. ities to be aff orded equal access in public While standards exist for creating acces- spaces, mandates things like wheelchair sible content online for those with disabil- ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped park- ities, they are entirely voluntary for news ing. No such broad-based legal protections exist for the Internet. But for news organi- What if the zations interested in reaching the widest possible audiences, and for journalists who Internet was Five tips on see it as their mission to represent readers’ accessible design interests, ensuring equal access to online treated like a content is essential. Put links in context. Text hyperlinks Campbell wants to see the government public space should say more than just “click here,” extend the ADA online, treating the Internet so that screen reader software can like a public space where companies must that needed to provide more information about what design sites the way they design build- would be found at the link. ings—to ensure access for people with dis- ensure access abilities. That means incorporating things Use headings to structure pages. like descriptive tags for photos, videos, and for people with Screen readers and other adaptive interactive graphics so blind people can software can browse a page by its know the context of a photo caption; adding disabilities? numbered heading tags:

,

, closed-captioning to online videos so deaf

, and so on. Each page should only people can follow stories, and creating basic have a single

tag; subsequent tags page designs for the Web and mobile apps through paid stenography services, because may be used multiple times, but only if that make it simple for people with various “for truly accurate captions that are easy to used logically to provide an outline of disabilities to skip over images. read, humans must still be involved,” says the page contents. Outside the news industry, much of the Freed, whose business card is also printed core technology for accessibility already in Braille. Include text descriptions of images. exists. For blind users, JAWS and other One way designers can improve Captions alone may not provide enough screen readers can read content anywhere accessibility is to use the World Wide Web context for blind users, so every on the computer, not just on the Web. Apple Consortium’s most recent version of hy- tag should include an “alt” attribute implements VoiceOver on all of its devices, pertext markup language, HTML5. This that describes the content of the photo while Android phones have a correspond- technical standard for posting information or graphic. This should also repeat ing feature called TalkBack, and Microsoft online makes it easier to put accessible cap- any text contained in the image, which Windows has Narrator. For the deaf, auto- tions on multiple images or use keyboard screen readers cannot parse. mated closed-captioning systems for video controls instead of mouse commands have improved over time. to play video or audio. The Timed Text Use landmark roles to defi ne regions What’s holding accessibility back is Markup Language won a Technology and of the page. The “role” attribute design—and awareness. Boston-based pub- Engineering Emmy this year for making can indicate which element on the page lic media outlet WGBH has devoted con- video more accessible to the hard of hear- contains the main text, or the header, siderable resources to accessibility over the ing and deaf. footer, and other information. years. The station was one of several groups Designers at digital journalism sites This allows screen readers to skip that independently developed captioning who care about accessibility usually start information repeated on every page and for television and was fi rst to use it on air, with the visually impaired, in part because go straight to the article. in 1972, during a broadcast of its Julia Child the Web is primarily a visual medium. NPR cooking show “The French Chef.” A tran- brought in a person with limited vision, who Don’t turn off visual focus. For people scriber did those captions by hand, and they showed the design team how hard it was to who cannot use a mouse, Web browsers could not be turned off . interact with the site. “It made me realize have a feature that selects the clickable Closed-captioning, which allows sighted we needed to move to a simpler experience items on the page by pressing the TAB viewers to turn off the captions, appeared in and de-emphasize the visual,” says Demian key. Some designers turn this feature 1980. Today, there are automated services, Perry, NPR’s director of mobile. As a result, off because they dislike the appearance but these are not yet consistent enough to the mobile app NPR One has larger type- of the focus box, but doing so can make be considered suitable for television audi- faces, minimal items per screen, and large it impossible for these users to navigate ences, says Geoff Freed, director of technol- control buttons for playing audio. the site. ogy projects and Web media standards at Clint Fisher, a senior Web developer at the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National The New York Times, says the paper began source: carl and ruth shapiro Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), incorporating access into its design criteria family national center for accessible media which researches and develops accessibility more than two years ago, during a redesign

technologies. Closed-captioning is still done of the site. That redesign included bringing AARON WOJACK/YAHOO

52 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 52 3/31/16 5:37 PM Sites can provide more detail about im- ages through “alt” tags, parts of the HTML code that give screen reader software replacements for visual content that it can- not otherwise parse. Alt tags were one of the biggest areas of discussion at NPR when it replaced its content management system in 2010, according to Patrick Cooper, NPR’s di- rector of Web and engagement. Questions included how many types of captions to in- clude in the CMS and what was reasonable to ask journalists to do. In the end, NPR de- cided on a single fi eld that had the caption and the alt tag together and trained staff on how to write captions that also described the context of the photo. At the Boston Globe’s website, the design team made a conscious decision to use alt tags and other HTML code to accom- modate screen readers. “We have program- matic things set up so if we write a caption, Software that reads text aloud helps people with vision problems access information online it automatically creates an alt tag for it,” says Michael Workman, the site’s design director. in people with disabilities to test how the content airs on television and then online, At least one journalism school is looking site worked with their screen readers. He sat but the same is not true for Web-only vid- to add accessibility training to its curricu- in on some of the user testing for the arti- eo or live streaming, according to Joseph lum. Last year, Andrew Mendelson, then cle pages and was startled to fi nd that using Radske, executive producer at WISC-TV3 chair of Temple University’s journalism a mouse or a keyboard was painful for peo- in Madison, Wisconsin. For a live news department, schooled faculty on how to ple with certain motor disabilities. conference streamed on its site, “the only incorporate accessibility techniques like One step Fisher took was to make sure information the hearing-impaired are go- descriptive video and audio. Mendelson, now the Times kept “focus rings,” visible boxes ing to get is what we have in the content of at City University of New York (CUNY), says that appear on screen to highlight clickable the story,” Radske says. Closed-captioning he hopes to do the same at CUNY. The New content so that people can use the website for live news events is about $250 per half School is also off ering a journalism course on without a mouse. (To see a focus ring, press hour, he says. designing for accessibility. the TAB key on nytimes.com; it moves a box There are online video sites, nota- The Department of Justice has for sev- from link to link.) However, focus rings can bly YouTube, which offer automated eral years been expected to begin a formal also distract sighted readers; Fisher notes closed-captioning, but Goldberg and oth- process for creating rules about online ac- that readers often report them as bugs in ers say automated captioning is still not cessibility, and last fall said it would not the design. good enough to guarantee accessibility. begin the rule-making process until 2017. It There isn’t a clearinghouse for acces- Radske’s station has opted to limit its use declined to comment for this story. sibility information, but a good place to of captions on streamed content to severe In the meantime, one example of what start is Yahoo, which runs a large accessi- weather situations, to comply with Federal fully compliant journalism might look like is bility lab in its Silicon Valley offi ces, with Communications Commission guidelines The New York Times 12-minute documenta- a satellite lab in Boston. Here the fi rm tests about safety. The good news, Goldberg says, ry on theologian John Hull, who lost his eye- content for accessibility on devices ranging is that costs for live captioning services have sight as an adult. This special package, “Notes from traditional desktop PCs to gaming fallen dramatically and continue to drop. on Blindness,” included a closed-caption ver- consoles to Apple TV. In October of last Photographs are another area in which sion, a version with audio descriptions of the year, Yahoo live-streamed an NFL game, many sites don’t meet the needs of disabled images, and a full audio transcript. If some- including live captioning, a step toward people. “Slideshow content is not acces- thing similar became the accessibility stan- adding live captioning to Yahoo’s journal- sible for [blind people] at all,” says Nick dard for journalism organizations, it would istic output, including Katie Couric’s show. Gomberg, an aspiring journalist who was create additional workloads for already over- Yahoo, Facebook, and other companies and born without eyes, a condition known as stretched newsrooms. The cost, in time and colleges are also launching an educa- bi-lateral anopthalmia. For the visually im- personnel, would be signifi cant. tion site on accessibility, teachaccess. paired, captions rarely provide suffi cient in- For individuals with disabilities, these org, which will include accessibility formation. When Gomberg went through a accommodations are essential. “What peo- design tutorials. Bleacher Report story on Lou Gehrig’s base- ple with disabilities want is the same thing Design alone can’t address all acces- ball record, for example, his screen reader people without want: the information,” sibility issues, though. TV stations auto- suddenly shifted from the story’s text to the says NCAM’s Freed. “Everything else is matically include closed-captioning when photo credit and a six-word caption. just dressing.” 

nieman reports spring 2016 53

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 53 3/31/16 5:41 PM Nieman Journalism Lab

The New turned out diff erent. Rather than disperse This won’t come as a shock to anyone the news business around the country, the who’s studied cluster theory, the idea that Media Monopoly Internet has concentrated it more fi rmly industries naturally tend toward concen- As online news than ever in New York and a few other major tration in one or a few places—think au- cities. And that has real impacts on the kind tos in Detroit, oil in Houston, or music in outlets concentrate of news we get. Nashville. Small geographic advantages start in New York and “The Internet doesn’t spread things to snowball; companies that want to work other major cities, apart—it pushes them together,” Richard with the big players naturally want to be Florida, the urban studies theorist, told me. near them, and talented people know that, journalism faces an “You’re seeing more of these winner-take-all if they want to do interesting work, they’d imperative to eff ects.” best go where the innovation is happening. Let’s start by thinking of the pre-Web The dispersed nature of the 20th-century think diff erently news business. Physical distribution of American news business was the exception, BY JOSHUA BENTON newspapers and over-the-air distribution not the rule; the world is spiky, not fl at. of TV signals meant location was all-import- “These highly creative, high-velocity, ant for daily news. Journalistic talent was ar- high-metabolism industries really gravitate rayed to match, with substantial newsrooms to really big cities,” Florida told me. “It’s in every city. where other companies are, it’s where the Digital changed that. I took a look re- talent is, it’s where the innovation is hap- few years back, around cently at the job openings posted on pening the fastest.” the time of the fi nancial cri- JournalismJobs.com to see how many So if the news business is becoming even sis, I remember hearing about of them were based in New York City or more centered in New York, what sort of a guy with a start-up idea for Washington, D.C. Among television jobs, impacts would that have on our news? a news site. The main expense only 8.8% were based in one of the two news For one thing, you’d expect it to make the anyA online publisher has is people, right? capitals. (The states with the most jobs? media more liberal—culturally and politi- People who stubbornly insist on being paid Texas, Ohio, and Florida.) For newspaper cally. Journalists don’t like it when conser- actual money. jobs, that number was 10.5 percent. But vatives point out that they, as a group, lean But the Internet meant reporters could among digital media and start-up jobs, nearly farther left than the country as a whole. But churn out content from anywhere. So rather 4 in 10—38.9%—were located in New York, you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to than pay 23-year-olds $24,000 a year to live D.C., or their suburbs. believe it: College-educated liberal arts grads in a closet in Brooklyn, he wanted to buy When The Washington Post looked at who live in cities—a group most American up some land in Mexico—somewhere in Bureau of Labor Statistics data last year, it journalists fit into—are more liberal as the Yucatán, on a beach—and build a little found that the share of American reporting a group than the American median. And Content Village. Rather than Williamsburg jobs that were in New York, Washington, those who live in New York or San Francisco bars, he’d tempt young journalists with great and Los Angeles went from 1 in 8 in 2004 to are going to be more liberal as a group than surfing, a sandals-based dress code, and 1 in 5 in 2014. those in Cincinnati or Knoxville. cheap cerveza. And because the cost of living Think of the most prominent digital-na- You can argue about whether that’s was so much lower in Mexico, he could pay tive news companies, like Vice Media, a good thing or a bad thing. But one element them crazy low wages, like half the American BuzzFeed, Business Insider, Gawker Media, of Donald Trump’s rise is a backlash against going rate. Mashable, Vox Media—all of them are in New the sort of cultural cosmopolitanism that I don’t believe his little experiment in York or D.C. (Vice adds a sort of geograph- lots of people who’ve never taken the Acela journalism arbitrage ever went anywhere, but ic diversity by being in Brooklyn instead of feel is on the rise. When trust in the media it fi t into a sort of thinking that was common Manhattan, I suppose. But you could still visit is at an all-time low, this shift could make it in certain circles in earlier days of the Web: a dozen of them without your Uber bill going harder to bridge those divides. The power of the Internet was to eliminate too high.) There are smaller hubs in the Bay Clustering could also change the sort of barriers to entry, and geography was going to Area (for tech reporting), Los Angeles (all people who can enter the business. Some be one of the fi rst to go. The “Publish” button about video), and even Miami (for Spanish- people don’t want to live in New York. in your content management system worked language and Hispanic-targeting media), but Twenty years ago, they might have taken a from anywhere, after all. the increase in concentration is unmistak- good job at a newspaper in Indiana and built But, like so many optimistic narratives able. Journalism jobs are leaving the middle a career there. Those jobs aren’t all gone yet,

from that era about online media, the reality’s of the country and heading for the coasts. but a lot of the ambitious college journalists GROUP OF THE SWITZER COLIN MILLER/COURTESY

54 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 54 3/25/16 10:49 AM Vice Media, with headquarters in Brooklyn, is among the prominent digital news outlets clustered in New York or D.C.

I talk to these days are all about landing becomes too limiting a factor for growth and but over time, we’ve seen that power be- something, anything that’ll get them in at smaller cities become more appealing. (A come clustered in Facebook, Google, the ground fl oor of an outlet in New York. version of this is happening now in the tech Twitter, and a handful of other tech compa- Does this trendline only move in one industry, where the insane cost of housing nies. Online advertising was supposed to let direction, toward greater concentration? in Silicon Valley is helping cities like Austin a thousand media fl owers bloom, support- There are a few forces working in the other and Seattle attract workers and companies.) ing independents and small, high-quality direction. Tools like Slack make it easier for But the larger shift will be with us for publishers. Instead, it’s led to a generation individual journalists to work outside the years to come. There’s little reason to be- of digital publishers—all those guys in New main offi ce, which has let some reporters lieve news jobs will ever again be distributed York—who chase scale and race to be as big for whom location is unimportant to their as evenly around the country as they were as possible. work get out of the city. One could imagine a a decade ago—the market forces are too America is a big, highly distributed place. point at which the cost of living in New York strong. It’ll increasingly be up to non-mar- Our democracy is structured around cities ket forces—nonprofi ts and public media— and counties and congressional districts and to fi ll the local voids. states. Our media used to be too. As an in- You see this pattern over and over again dustry, it’s our responsibility to make sure Though freed of in digital news: What was once pitched we don’t become too myopically focused on as opening up a space has led instead to a a few square blocks in Midtown Manhattan. geographic constraints, greater concentration of power in the hands media are concentrated of a few. The Web and linking were sup- Joshua Benton, a 2008 Nieman Fellow, is the in a few U.S. cities posed to expand routes of distribution— founding director of the Nieman Journalism Lab

nieman reports spring 2016 55

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 55 3/25/16 10:49 AM Books

Henry as the harbinger of a new golden age: once again, newspapers will be fl ush with resources and staff . But if the media of the future must de- pend on wealthy investors for their fi nanc- ing, many dangers lie ahead. It was in part the settlement of the estate of the Italian publisher Carlo Caracciolo that plunged the newspaper Libération into the crisis in News Is a Public Good which it fi nds itself today. That is why it is preferable for media companies to be orga- So, in this excerpt from her nized as foundations rather than joint-stock new book “Saving the Media: companies: in a foundation, heirs cannot dispose freely of capital they inherit. The Capitalism, Crowdfunding, investment is irrevocable, hence permanent. With many news outlets now mired in and Democracy,” Julia Cagé crisis, it has become imperative to think of new models for the media. The one I pro- argues that journalism outlets pose is based on crowdfunding and pow- er-sharing. I hope that it may serve as a new should be granted “nonprofi t economic and legal template for the media of the 21st century, a template that com- media organization” status bines aspects of both a joint-stock company BY JULIA CAGÉ and a foundation. Let us call this new entity a nonprofi t media organization (NMO). To begin, it is useful to recall some mistakes of the past, starting with the ex- perience of newspapers that have become publicly held corporations. Going public “There have never been as many information to France’s fi nance minister. This excerpt has proved to be a mistake both for the newspa- producers as there are today. Paradoxically, been adapted from her book, which was trans- pers themselves and for democracy. In the the media have never been in worse shape,” eco- lated from French by Arthur Goldhammer: fi rst fi ve years after the Chicago Tribune nomics professor Julia Cagé writes in her book went public, profi ts rose at the rate of 23 per- “Saving the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding, cent per year while gross revenue increased and Democracy,” published by Harvard ome observers argue that at a rate of only 9 percent; this performance University Press in April. In it, she proposes the media themselves are respon- was achieved by slashing expenditures dras- a new business model for news organizations, sible for the worrisome situation tically. The drive for higher profi ts aff ected inspired by a central idea: that news, like edu- they fi nd themselves in because not just newspapers but radio and television cation, is a public good. Her model is inspired of their many mistakes and outlets as well (some television stations in part by major universities that combine com- Stheir failure to adapt to the new world. My have operating margins above 50 percent), mercial and nonprofi t activities. A number of diagnosis is somewhat diff erent: the media and the imperative to produce quality local U.S. publications are organized as nonprofi ts have not hit on the right economic model news fell by the wayside. but Cagé advocates a change in tax rules and the because they have failed to comprehend the To put it bluntly, shares of news media stable provision of capital through long-term nature of the crisis and therefore continue companies should not be publicly traded. investments to give news organizations more to react with outdated refl exes. Most debate This is particularly true in the United States, flexibility while also decentralizing control. is focused on “the death of print,” but what where publicly held companies have a fi du- Cagé, who holds a doctorate in economics from matters is not the medium but the message. ciary responsibility to their stockholders Harvard University, is an economics professor The most important issues of quality con- to maximize profi ts. This legal obligation at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She is tent and the organizational structure of the confl icts with their moral responsibility to a board member of Agence France Presse and media have been neglected. “serve the general welfare” (as indicated in a member of the Council of Economic Advisors In short the question is not whether the Statement of Principles of the American the media should be subsidized. It is rather Society of News Editors). Similarly, because Adapted from “Saving the Media: Capitalism, whether they should be granted a favorable universities have a moral responsibility to Crowdfunding, and Democracy” by Julia Cagé, legal and tax status in recognition of their educate and engage in research, it is hard published by The Belknap Press of Harvard contribution to democracy—a status com- to imagine them as publicly traded prof- University Press. Copyright © 2016 by the parable to that long enjoyed by many oth- it-maximizing corporations. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used er participants in the knowledge economy. In the United States, the United by permission. All rights reserved. Some see the interest of billionaire investors Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany, newspa-

such as Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, and John per companies have experimented with CHARLES PLATIAU/REUTERS

56 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 56 3/25/16 10:50 AM Being a nonprofi t Let’s survey some existing Can we say that the non- hasn’t impeded models of nonprofi t media orga- profit form is the solution to nizations to gain a better idea of the current crisis of the media? the growth of media their advantages and limitations. Notwithstanding the excep- conglomerate One of the oldest independent tional cases cited above, most Bertelsmann foundation-owned newspapers nonprofi t media companies are is The Guardian, a pillar of the very small. Most of these orga- British press. The Guardian is nizations engage in niche jour- owned by the Guardian Media “Saving the Media: nalism, specializing in narrowly Capitalism, a variety of innovative formulas over many Group, which is itself entirely defi ned subject areas. Crowdfunding, and years. Many nonprofi t media organizations controlled by the Scott Trust, Democracy” by Although such publications have emerged. In Germany the largest me- a nonprofit foundation whose Julia Cagé (Harvard do bring welcome fresh air to dia conglomerate, Bertelsmann—number mission since 1936 has been to University Press) democratic debate and to some one in Europe and one of the largest media safeguard the paper’s indepen- extent fi ll the void left by cost companies in the world—is owned by the dence. In France, Ouest-France, the lead- cutting in the traditional media, they do Bertelsmann Foundation. This structure has ing daily in terms of circulation, has been not appear to be capable of substituting in no way impeded Bertelsmann’s growth. owned by a nonprofi t organization since the for existing newspapers, especially since Bertelsmann, with 110,000 employees, early 1990s. With this legal status, the news- most of them are pure Internet players, occupies a signifi cant place in the media paper was able to avoid a hostile takeover. which suff er from the same weaknesses as landscape in France, in Europe, and in the However, it is in the United States, where newspaper websites. The average visit to United States, where it is the majority share- philanthropy reigns supreme, that we fi nd the website of a nonprofi t publication lasts holder in Penguin Random House, the larg- the largest number of nonprofit media fewer than two minutes, half the length of est publishing house in the world. organizations. One of the best-known is the average visit to the site of a traditional Foundation status alone does not deter- ProPublica, which Herbert and Marion American paper and far less than the time mine how media companies are governed. Sandler created in 2008 with a donation of spent reading a traditional print paper. Should power be strictly proportional to several million dollars. The investigative These weaknesses are not intrinsically re- shares of capital? If so, what countervailing journalism site has already won two Pulitzer lated to the foundation status of the orga- powers can exist? In a typical joint-stock prizes. Among the more successful ventures nizations in question but are due in large company, whoever owns the most shares we fi nd are the Tampa Bay Times, which is part to inadequate capitalization. also has the lion’s share of the voting rights. owned by the nonprofi t Poynter Institute; Foundations deserve credit for putting This is a problem, because a dominant The Texas Tribune, The Christian Science readers back in the center of the picture shareholder can see to it that the company Monitor, and of course the Associated Press, … yet they have failed to involve readers serves his or her own economic or political one of the world’s leading press agencies in their fi nancing. Except for the Voice of agenda rather than the public interest. and oldest cooperatives. San Diego, which launched one of the larg- est-ever media crowdfunding campaigns (the Bigger Voice Fund), media companies have raised very little money via this route. Foundations generally favor large donations from wealthy individuals, fi rms, or other foundations over small individual contri- butions. This gives rise to two problems. First, they become vulnerable to excessive infl uence by a small number of individu- als, thus creating a risk to democracy. And second, they become equally vulnerable to economic downturns and therefore fi nan- cially fragile. One other point deserves emphasis: the tax laws pertaining to foundations are ex- tremely complex in both the United States and France, and this places strict limits on the development of foundation-based or other alternative media. In the United States, it is very difficult for a nonprof- it news operation to meet the criteria of Section 501(c)3 of the tax code, which must be satisfi ed by any organization seeking to accept tax-exempt contributions and avoid The French daily Libération faces a fi nancial crisis linked to the structure of the company payment of the corporate income tax.

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French authorities are currently consid- United States would mark a signifi cant tues of diff erent legal types. It enjoys the ering extending foundation status to media step forward. Simplifi cation of the cur- advantages of a foundation (stability of organizations, and it is to be hoped that this rent system for contributions to the media fi nancing and ability to focus on informa- comes to pass. One possibility would be to would encourage private donations and tion as a public good rather than on profi t declare the maintenance of press pluralism make state aid more effi cient. Even more maximization at the expense of quality) as a mission in the public interest. In any important, reorganizing media companies and those of a joint-stock company (di- case, it is extremely important that we begin as foundations would make it possible to versified ownership, replenishment of to think of the media as part of a much larger establish permanent capital endowments. leadership ranks, and democratic deci- ecosystem, the knowledge-producing sector Gifts to foundations are irrevocable, and sion-making, provided that the power of of the economy. a system of irrevocable investments would the largest shareholders is appropriate- My point is not to propose specifi c im- make it possible to guarantee the inde- ly limited). The NMO I am proposing is provements in French or American law. It pendence of media companies over the a hybrid model. It is inspired in part by is rather to argue that extending the tax long run. the model of the great international uni- breaks accorded to endowment funds in The type of nonprofi t media organi- versities, which combine commercial and

France and 501(c)3 organizations in the zation I am proposing combines the vir- noncommercial activities. POST VIA WASHINGTON BILL O'LEARY/THE GETTY IMAGES

Some see billionaire investors like Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos as a harbinger of a new golden age for newspapers

58 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 58 3/25/16 10:50 AM he nmo model falls a novel and extremely effi cient way for the Like universities, between the two extremes of government to increase its contribution to news media provide a foundation and a joint-stock the health of the media. The NMO model company. Like a founda- off ers numerous advantages. It combines a public good and tion, it can accept unlimited the benefi ts of the nonprofi t model with deserve a special status Tgifts. In my model, such gifts are to be tax democratized governance, bringing in deductible, as gifts to foundations current- more small shareholders while also allow- ly are. Yet they are also to be compensat- ing for the large investments that are often ed by voting rights in the fi rm: a gift to an needed. Big investors give up some of their the estate of press baron Carlo Caracciolo. NMO is a contribution to its capital and decision-making power but in return receive Since investments in an NMO are irrevoca- therefore brings “political” rights like any millions in tax breaks. ble, Caracciolo’s heirs would not have been other investment. Tax relief in exchange for democratiza- able to sell their shares and thus jeopardize In countries like the United States, tion and capital stabilization: this system re- the entire system by transferring control where existing media subsidies are insuffi - solves the inherent contradictions involved to outside investors with little interest in cient, the NMO model could also provide in giving subsidies to media owned by large quality news. profi t-making corporations or in allowing In the United States, how many layoff s of the press to be controlled by individuals journalists might have been avoided if their with deep pockets. employers had been NMOs of the type I am The solution I am proposing may seem proposing? How many newspapers might radical. But this new legal entity of a NMO have been bought out rather than forced is not all or nothing. Drastic simplifi cation to close? The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, of the existing system of press subsidies in which until the early 2000s was owned by France, a more accommodating legal and fi s- its employees, might have chosen to become cal framework for the media in the United an NMO rather than go public. It could States, extension of the value-added tax then have attracted needed fi nancial sup- reduction to online newspapers in Europe port from its readers devoted to the widely (where the tax break is currently available acknowledged quality of its investigative only to print newspapers), and, more gener- journalism, as well as from its employees, ally, granting media companies everywhere who would have received tax breaks in easier access to foundation status and the exchange for their investments rather than benefits of private contributions—all of being forced to watch as the value of their these measures would help. shares plummeted on the stock exchange. What must be recognized is that the E.W. Scripps Co., which bought the paper in news media provide a public good, just as 2015, has already shut down other papers it universities and other contributors to the has purchased, such as the Cincinnati Post, knowledge economy of the twenty-fi rst cen- The Albuquerque Tribune, and the Rocky tury do. For that reason they deserve special Mountain News. treatment by the government. Governments The NMO model would also encourage have moved gradually toward allowing me- the creation of newspapers and online news dia companies to operate as nonprofi ts and sites. Under the new model, they would therefore to solicit donations. At the same fi nd it easy to raise funds from their read- time, they have made it too diffi cult to ac- ers while at the same time soliciting invest- quire nonprofi t status because they have ments from outside investors without fear not fully embraced the idea that news is a of losing control (because the voting rights public good. of those large outside investors would be In the current media landscape, it is not limited). Existing nonprofi t media outlets difficult to find any number of troubled would also be able to expand. organizations that could be saved if they The diffi culties the media face are such adopted the NMO model. In France, for that there is no time for delay. A choice has example, the NMO model would have al- to be made. New technologies such as the lowed the employees of the regional daily Internet have opened the way to a democ- Nice Matin (then in receivership) to buy the ratization of capitalism, of which crowd- paper without having to cede ownership of funding is one sign. But pure gifts are not Corse-Matin or delegate management of the enough: contributors should receive voting paper to others (as was done under court or- rights and political power as incentives to der in November 2014). If the national daily invest and as a means reassert control over Libération had been an NMO, a third of the our collective destiny. Capitalism, crowd- staff would not have been forced to leave funding, democracy: these are watchwords in early 2015 because of problems linked to for the future. 

nieman reports spring 2016 59

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 59 3/25/16 10:50 AM Nieman Notes

Squires penned under the Movement,” published by is to buy 40 acres of land at 1951 pseudonym Crockett White. RosettaBooks. Wounded Knee, put it in trust Simeon Booker is the for all the tribes of the Great recipient of the 34th George Jack Schwartz’s memoir, Sioux Nation, and establish Polk Career Award for his “The Fine Print: My Life as 1989 a holocaust museum, cultural 50-plus years of covering the a Deskman,” was published Rod Nordland has penned center, and trading post. civil rights movement for through CreateSpace. A copy a new book, “The Lovers: Jet magazine. His coverage boy at The Daily Mirror in Afghanistan’s Romeo and included the 1955 murder of the 1950s, he later ran The New Juliet,” which was published by 2001 teenager Emmett Till. York Times’s Culture Desk. Ecco. The book tells the story Ken Armstrong is a recipient of a couple whom Nordland of the 2015 George Polk Award met while he was Kabul bureau for Justice Reporting for “An 1971 1977 chief for The New York Times. Unbelievable Story of Rape,” Jim Squires is the author Kathryn Johnson, formerly a joint eff ort of The Marshall of “West End: A Novel of a reporter for the Associated Project and ProPublica. Envy, Revenge, and Dirty Press’s Atlanta bureau, is 1991 Money,” a coming-of-age story the author of “My Time Tim Giago is president of that explores the demise of with the Kings: A Reporter’s the newly formed nonprofi t 2004 newspapers. Old Hickory Press Recollection of Martin, National Historic Site of Lizeka Mda has joined South published the novel, which Coretta, and the Civil Rights Wounded Knee, Inc. Its goal Africa’s University of the

Eight Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows Named The Nieman Foundation has selected eight journalists and media executives as Knight Visiting Nieman Fellows for 2016. Each is working on an innovative project designed to advance journalism across multiple platforms.

Maya Baratz, most recently head of Walter Frick, a senior associate editor new products at Disney/ABC Television, at Harvard Business Review, will research is experimenting with new formats for how machine learning can help news nonfi ction storytelling via text messaging. organizations better organize background She plans to design a product that off ers an information in order to provide context for immersive experience. journalists and readers when news breaks.

David Barboza, a reporter for The New Paul McNally, a radio journalist for York Times who most recently served Wits Journalism and director of The as Shanghai bureau chief, will build new Citizen Justice Network in South Africa, tools for investigative reporting in China, will develop an online tool to organize including a business and fi nancial database citizen journalism into a network for of Chinese companies. investigative reporting.

Bill Church, executive editor of the An Xiao Mina, director of product at Sarasota Herald-Tribune and southeast Meedan, is examining how language regional editor of GateHouse Media, will barriers aff ect global coverage. She will explore the organizational behavior of conduct a case study around a news event small newsrooms and examine new models to measure the impact of translations and for adaptability and innovation. social media annotations.

Fatemah Farag, founder and CEO of Tara Pixley, a freelance photojournalist, Welad El Balad Media Services in Egypt, will identify structural challenges to will research the relationship between accessing images from photojournalists community engagement and media outside the Western media network. production. Her goal is to help alternative She aims to create a platform to showcase media in Egypt and the Middle East. quality global photojournalism.

The visiting fellowship program was established in 2012 to invite individuals with promising journalism research proposals to take advantage of the many resources at Harvard University and the Nieman Foundation. In 2015, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provided a $223,000 grant to support the Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships. Those eligible to apply include publishers, programmers, designers, media analysts, academics, journalists, and others interested in enhancing quality, building new business

models, or designing programs to improve journalism. Application information for 2017 will be posted online by the middle of this year. OPPOSITE: BONNIE WELLER/THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

60 niemannieman repreportsorts springspring 20162016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 60 3/25/16 10:50 AM Witwatersrand as a lecturer in journalism practice. “acel did not do things in a small way” Former Philadelphia Inquirer editor Gene Roberts, 2005 NF ’62, recalls the dedication of Acel Moore, NF ’80 Joshua Hammer has received a National Magazine Award Acel Moore, NF ’80, a longtime journalist at The Philadelphia for reporting for his story “My Inquirer, died February 12 at his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. He Nurses Are Dead, and I Don’t was 75. The cause was complications of diabetes and chronic lung Know If I’m Already Infected.” disease. After 43 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, he retired in 2005. The article, which appeared in Matter in January 2015, detailed The headlines of Acel Moore’s impressive career in journalism are well known. From copy boy to the life and death of a globally a member of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board. A founder of the National Association renowned Ebola expert. of Black Journalists. The fi rst black journalist to win the Pulitzer Prize for reporting and writing. Acel did not do things in a small way. He even ran up the largest parking bill in the history of the paper. It came when he and Wendell Rawls were working on the story of widespread abuses 2006 at the Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. They drove a company car to the facility, Mary C. Curtis has joined parked it in a parking lot and grew so absorbed in the tales of horror that they were amassing CQ Roll Call as the media about prisoner treatment that they forgot about the car. They returned to Philadelphia by air. company’s politics editor. Three months later the Inquirer received a parking bill for more than $3,000 in 1976 dollars, more, by the way, than the car was worth. But the story Acel and Wendell did was more than worth the cost. It not only won the Pulitzer Prize, it became a textbook example of investigative reporting, 2009 laying bare the brutal treatment of mentally disturbed prisoners. It brought reforms. Graciela Mochkofsky Acel’s contributions to the Inquirer, of course, went beyond the many memorable stories and has been named director of columns he authored. He was a key fi gure in steering the Inquirer from a segregated newsroom to City University of New York one of diversity. He tirelessly recruited black journalists to the paper. And he was deeply involved Graduate School of in a program to bring minority copy editors onto the Inquirer in the 1970s when there were none Journalism’s new Spanish- in the business to recruit. The secret? Scouting colleges for students who were strong on grammar, language journalism initiative urging black English teachers to take the paper’s copy editor exam. It worked. The paper’s copy to train bilingual journalists desks were more diversifi ed than any other large American newspaper at the time. interested in working for But of all his many contributions, it was Acel’s openness, his welcoming smile, his willingness Hispanic media outlets in the to take hours and days to introduce a new staff member to his beloved Philadelphia, that will live U.S. or abroad. longest in the minds of many veteran Inquirer staff members. This was no small contribution at a time when the Inquirer was recruiting journalists from across the nation, most of them with Margie Mason and colleagues A-plus ability but with little knowledge of their new city. No one in the newsroom had an easier at the Associated Press have manner than Acel; no one knew the city better; and no one was more willing to help. been honored with USC Annenberg’s Selden Ring Alfredo Corchado has Award for Investigative joined Arizona State 2012 2014 Reporting, a George Polk University’s Walter Cronkite Anna Griffi n is Oregon Public Greg Marinovich has written Award for Foreign Reporting, School of Journalism and Broadcasting’s new news a new book, “Murder at the Goldsmith Prize for Mass Communication as editor. Griffi n spent the past Small Koppie: The Real Story of Investigative Reporting, the a professor and editor of 12 years at The Oregonian. The Marikana Massacre.” Anthony Shadid Award for the school’s Southwest An account of a 2012 massacre, Journalism Ethics, an Ancil Borderlands Initiative, a new Carlos Eduardo Huertas has when South African police Payne Award for Ethics in bilingual reporting program launched Connectas Hub, killed nearly three dozen Journalism, and two Society of in which students cover a new Spanish-language platform miners and injured many American Business Editors and immigration and border issues through which investigative others, the book was published Writers’ Best in Business Award in Mexico and the U.S. for journalists in Latin America by Zebra Press. for work on a series of stories Arizona PBS. can share information. The that showed how seafood platform is an initiative of the sold in the U.S. had been nonprofi t Connectas. 2015 produced by slaves in Southeast 2011 Maggie Koerth-Baker is Asia. The Associated Press Joshua Prager made the Jeff Young is managing editor now a senior science reporter series prompted a number of selections for a new book, “100 of Louisville Public Media’s at FiveThirtyEight. She also reforms and prosecutions, Years: Wisdom From Famous Ohio River Network, a new is writing a column for UnDark, and more than 2,000 people Writers on Every Year of Your collaboration between seven a new science publication who had been held captive have Life,” which will be published public media stations in Ohio, based at MIT’s Knight Science been released. by Norton in May. Kentucky, and West Virginia. Journalism Program.

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nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 61 3/30/16 12:59 PM Sounding

Let’s Talk White Center, the Rainier Valley, and more. discussions from toxic oblivion. Often, they I got story ideas at the meetups. I got were left by my most committed readers— By making the sources. I got context. I heard perspectives the people who came to the meetups. news a conversation, that informed my online-only reporting. Armed with this evidence, I went into my But I wasn’t there to mine people for editor’s offi ce and made my case. She let me journalists can stories. I was there to guide a good conver- keep the meetups, but to this day, I don’t better serve sation, and to make sure that everyone who know if it’s because I convinced her that the communities showed up felt valued enough to be part they were valuable to the paper, or because of it, and connected enough to come back. she saw how much I cared, and decided not they cover I was there, I later realized, not to fi nd sto- to push the issue. ries, but to build relationships. I read only one book on journalism be- The value of the meetups was obvious to fore I became a journalist myself—“The me. But not to my editors. Elements of Journalism,” by Tom Rosenstiel One day, my editor told me that I couldn’t and former Nieman curator Bill Kovach. host the meetups anymore. Instead, I should One of the nine principles they articulate in he first time i invited use those two hours a week to write another the book is the role of journalism in provid- my readers to meet up at a cof- blog post that brings more hits to the site. ing a public forum for criticism and compro- fee shop, one person came. His I was stunned. mise. What’s essential, the authors argue, is name was Jimmy. He was a fan Feeling desperate, I went to my desk and that that forum be guided by the same prin- of my geeky news and conver- pulled up my blog. I printed out several posts, ciples as the rest of journalism. Journalists Tsation blog at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and with a marker circled all the comments should work, in other words, to make sure and after we chatted over lattes at the that had been left by people who had come to the forum is truthful, diverse, productive. Uptown Espresso, I asked him a bunch of my meetups. The whole point of my blog was In the last two decades, that public questions. Would a meetup be worth doing to make Seattle news a conversation. I con- forum has grown bigger and more powerful regularly, even weekly? Sure! he said. What sidered the quality of the comments my main than many journalists could have imagined. if just a couple people come? Then a couple metric of success. We didn’t have threaded It exists in countless spaces well beyond people have a conversation. Is it OK if there’s comments in those days. We didn’t even the boundaries of journalism, on platforms no agenda except to talk about whatever’s have upvotes and downvotes. Long, more where journalists share a presence, but do on people’s minds? Sure, why not? Just try it thoughtful comments had the power to draw not set the rules. and see how it goes! other long, thoughtful comments. They saved A more expressive public presents a new I hosted the “Big Blog meetup” every set of challenges to journalism, but it also Wednesday evening, from 5:30 to 7, for near- Mónica Guzmán demands that we revisit journalism’s core ly two years, beginning in 2008. Sometimes purpose. Can our purpose be just to in- two people came. Sometimes 15 did. The form, when people are so adept at inform- meetups took place at any of dozens of cof- ing themselves? Can our purpose be just to fee shops all over Seattle. I’d announce each report facts and context, when so much of location on Twitter, and we’d talk about what drives our society are the stories peo- anything and everything: the city’s growth ple tell each other, stories a whole army of and gentrifi cation, the culture wars between journalists could never hope to find and bicyclists and motorists, our days at work, report themselves? our favorite phone apps and blogs. Journalists are feeling all this pressure Sometimes, I’d invite a special guest: to go big. Go viral. Get scale. I think most a popular local weather blogger, a South of us would do better going small. Find the Seattle breakdancing crew getting nation- communities whose conversations you can al attention, a man who criss-crossed the do the most to strengthen and get to know country to work 50 jobs in 50 states. After them. Not so they can serve you with clicks a while, readers, some of them neighbor- Starting with a meetup and shares and crowdsourcing, but so you hood bloggers, started asking if I could can serve them better than anyone else.  host my next meetup in their part of town. at which a single reader That’s how I got to know residents of parts showed up, I built a Mónica Guzmán, a 2016 Nieman Fellow, was

of Seattle I’d only driven through: Lake City, world of relationships formerly a columnist for The Seattle Times SEITZ JONATHAN

62 nieman reports spring 2016

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 62 3/30/16 1:00 PM the pulitzer centennial

Wynton Marsalis performs at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre in 2013

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism is presenting a weekend of performances, conversations, and talks highlighting the work of Pulitzer Prize winners. SEPTEMBER 10 & 11 Harvard’s Sanders Theatre presenters include: Danielle Allen, former chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Dean Baquet (Investigative Reporting, 1988), Robert Caro (Biography, 2003 and 1975), Junot Díaz (Fiction, 2008), Caroline Elkins (General Nonfi ction, 2006), Sara Ganim (Local Reporting, 2012), Annette Gordon-Reed (History, 2009), Donald Graham, former Washington Post publisher, Jorie Graham (Poetry, 1996), Yusef Komunyakaa (Poetry, 1994), Nicholas D. Kristof (International Reporting, 1990; Commentary, 2006), Wynton Marsalis (Music, 1997), Lynn Nottage (Drama, 2009), Sacha Pfeiff er (Public Service, 2003), Laura Poitras (Public Service, 2014), Bob Woodward (Public Service, 1973; National Reporting, 2002), Lawrence Wright (General Nonfi ction, 2007)

plus A performance of “On the Transmigration of Souls” by John Adams, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer for Music, conducted by Federico Cortese of the Harvard-Radcliff e Orchestra with Voices Boston and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus

and other special guests

nieman.harvard.edu/the-pulitzer-centennial KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER STAFF KRIS SNIBBE/HARVARD

nr_spring_2016_032416.indd 63 3/30/16 1:16 PM SPRING 2016 VOL. 70 NO. 2 The Neman Foundaton for Journalsm TO PROMOTE AND Harvard Unversty ELEVATE THE STANDARDS One Francs Avenue OF JOURNALISM Cambrdge, Massachusett s 02138

nr_spring_2016_covers_spine_032416.indd 2 3/25/16 10:54 AM