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NIEMAN REPORTS

ISSAAC BAILEY The SuS n Newsw , Myrttlel Beae ch, S.S C.C

nr_spring_2015_covers_spine.indd 1 6/22/15 10:49 AM nr_spring_2015.indd A Cambridge, MA02138-2098 FrancisOne Avenue, at HarvardUniversity, the NiemanFoundation September, by andDecember is publishedinMarch,June, #430-650) (USPS Reports Nieman Manchester, NH 03108 Nieman ReportsP.O. Box 4951, Postmaster: addresschangesto Send ISSN Number 0028-9817 P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 and changeofaddressinformationto: Cambridge, MA02138-2098 FrancisOne Avenue, to: correspondence Please addressallsubscription the Niemanoffi Back copiesareavailable from Single copies$7.50. add $10peryearforforeignairmail. $40 fortwoyears; Subscription $25ayear, 617-496-6299, [email protected] subscriptions/business additional entries and Boston, Massachusetts Periodicals postagepaidat Fellows ofHarvardCollege. Copyright 2015 by the President and [email protected] MA 02138-2098,617-496-6308, FrancisOne Avenue, Cambridge, editorial offices Pentagram design Laura Mitchell Tara W. Merrigan Eryn M.Carlson editorial assistants Jonathan Seitz researcher/reporter Jan Gardner senior editor James Geary editor Ann MarieLipinski publisher www.niemanreports.org for Journalism atHarvardUniversity The NiemanFoundation ce. Contributors on video games, feminism, and online abuse. on videogames,feminism,and onlineabuse. and isacontributor to extensively TheGuardian. Shehaswritten Helen Lewis Economist, ViceNews, andelsewhere. Abroad. Hisworkhasappeared inTheBoston Globe,The John Dyer Future, andothers. forScientifiBrooklyn. She’swritten c American,TheAtlantic,BBC 8)isawriter andproducerbasedin Rose Eveleth(page “In America”documentaryunit. and later wasaseniorproducerforthe covered stories into networkcoverage, identifi in 2007to launchEngage,aunitthat editor atCNN.com. ShejoinedCNN Nieman Fellow, mostrecentlywasan Alicia W. Stewart Tribune, andTheSacramento Bee. at The Texas Observer, the Chicago inequality inthecity. Shehasworked that focusesonrace,poverty, andincome nonprofi publisher ofTheChicagoReporter, a a 2003NiemanFellow, is theeditor and Susan SmithRichardson ed andincorporated under- t investigative news organization t investigativenewsorganization (page 14)isthedeputyeditor forAssociated(page Reporters (page 46) isdeputyeditor(page ofTheNew Statesman worked attheTampa Bay Times. a Nation.”BeforejoiningNPRin2013,Deggans How theMedia Words WieldsDangerous to Divide television criticandtheauthorof“Race-Baiter: 30)isNPR’s fiEric Deggans(page rst full-time (page 34), a 2015 34),a2015 (page exhibited inToronto andParis. in 2014.Imagestheserieshave been Notions ofBlackFatherhood,” published “Father Figure: ExploringAlternate photographs isthebasisforhisbook in 2009.HisFather Figure seriesof photographer whopicked upacamera Zun Lee revamped theway ithandlessuchcases. protection case.Thestate subsequently Journalism forstories aboutachild of aCaseyMedal forMeritorious South Carolina.Hewasa2011recipient writer forTheSunNews inMyrtle Beach, Fellow, isametrocolumnist andsenior 18),a2014Nieman Issac Bailey(page (page 26), 26), (page Radio, basedinBoston. Association of Independents in Nieman Fellow, work at the 32),a2013 O’Donovan (page Adriana GallardoandBetsy (page 26)isaself-taught(page 6/22/15 10:52 AM

OPPOSITE: MICHAEL DWYER/ASSOCIATED PRESS A demonstrator in Boston protests against police killings of black men on New Year’s Eve 2014 Contents Spring 2015 / Vol. 69 / No. 2

Features Departments storyboard cover From the Curator 2 Now You See It 8 By Ann Marie Lipinski Exploring the rise of live journalism Not So Black and White 18 Facing racism in the age of Obama By Rose Eveleth Live@Lippmann 4 By Issac Bailey ProPublica president Richard Tofel Solutions Journalism 14 Making Black Lives Matter 26 Focusing on what’s working Changing media portrayals Niemans@Work 6 By John Dyer By Susan Smith Richardson Showcasing photojournalism from around Stop Segregating Stories 30 the world, chronicling the battle over Make race part of the news mix same-sex marriage in Iowa, sharing stories By Eric Deggans of craft at NPR Sounds Right 32 nieman journalism lab The arrival of Public radio and the voices of America the Apple Watch By Adriana Gallardo & Betsy O’Donovan Something Up Your Sleeve 52 underscores the What the future of news might look like on Why Diversity Works 34 importance of smartwatches and who stands to benefi t customized news Solutions for inclusive newsrooms By Joshua Benton page 52 By Alicia W. Stewart Books 54 watchdog Excerpt from “Television Is the New Use It or Lose It 46 Television” Fresh questions about publishing hacked, By Michael Wolff stolen, or leaked documents By Helen Lewis Nieman Notes 56

Sounding 60 Gabe Bullard, NF ’15

cover portrait of issac bailey: Gary Knight

nr_spring_2015.indd 1 6/22/15 10:55 AM From the Curator

Risky, Important Conversations On issues of race and reporting, soul-searching by journalists is imperative South Carolina columnist Issac Bailey, right, writes forcefully about domestic social issues. In 2009, he called for then-governor Mark Sanford to resign over his extramarital aff air

whom were worried about job security in Issac recalled a Poynter workshop on the face of recession layoff s that thinned the race where Keith Woods, now NPR’s vice ranks of minority journalists. president for diversity, cautioned against Given the perceived risks, we are espe- the “failures and festivals” approach char- “where are the women?”—last cially grateful to those who wrote and spoke acterizing much race coverage. “On an is- year’s cover story on the decline of women candidly for this issue, most importantly sue as complicated and important as race, in senior journalism roles—did not lack for Issac Bailey, columnist and senior writer soul-searching by journalists is imperative, sources. Women were overwhelmingly will- for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South the kind of soul-searching an arm’s length ing to talk candidly about their careers and Carolina. Issac was a 2014 Nieman Fellow approach simply doesn’t allow,” Issac ob- frustrations and eager to wrestle publicly and in our year together, other fellows and served. “I’m not talking about debates about with questions of gender bias in our news- Nieman staff came to know him as a coura- affi rmative action or who you eat dinner or rooms. Typical was this observation from geous voice on domestic social issues and lunch with; I’m talking about something longtime editor and journalism school dean a powerful narrator of his own story. Still, much deeper, which is scary, and risky.” Geneva Overholser: “Newsrooms are aller- I was not expecting the e-mail that arrived White managers, he added, faced a dif- gic to cultural conversations like this, but early spring, accompanied by a brief note: ferent challenge. “They’ve seen what hap- they really are essential. Folks have to quit “When you get time, take a look at this pens when a white person takes the risk to thinking of diversity as a wearisome duty and rough draft I’ve been working on.” speak openly and honestly about this issue start understanding it as a key to success.” The essay I opened was a sharply ob- …. The response is often hostile, with little There was another cultural conversa- served account of a black man reporting or no nuance and tends to shut conversa- tion we thought essential to journalism, in the age of Obama. “The shift in envi- tions down. That’s one of the reasons I’ve but it has been more diffi cult. Talking about ronment from pre- to post-Obama wasn’t publicly defended the likes of Bill O’Reilly, race and newsrooms proves complicated, subtle,” Issac wrote. “The messages I began Don Imus, and Rush Limbaugh in print, not even for people laboring on diversity issues. receiving from readers went almost over- because I agree with them or think they are When senior editor Jan Gardner enlisted night from respectfully, if bitingly, confron- insightful on this issue—I don’t—but be- industry leaders on diversity for help iden- tational … to overtly racist and demeaning.” cause I want there to be space for us to be tifying contributors for this issue, some said Even before Issac followed up with a re- able to publicly unpack this stuff together.” they were struggling to fi nd journalists will- quest to “let me know of places that might Issac landed where many of the women ing to talk openly. One cited a fear among be interested in things like this,” the answer from last year’s Nieman Reports did: eager minority journalists of damaging their re- was clear: Nieman Reports, where his essay to lead on the issue, but not alone. “For lationships with their editors. Another was is our cover story. the record: I believe managers, particular- turned down by fi ve journalists, some of I asked Issac why many journalists, ly white managers, have a duty to deal with whose job is speaking truth to power, still this publicly, in all its messy complexity, de- struggle with a vocabulary for talking about spite the risk. Those with the most power,” race. “I’ve been thinking about this for a he wrote, “have the most responsibility.”  Why do journalists who while now, silently frustrated, but decided speak truth to power to fi nally do it after having an uncomfort- able discussion with someone I respect a still struggle with a great deal and realized that even that per- vocabulary for talking son’s view of my work in the Obama era had

about race? changed,” Issac wrote me. Ann Marie Lipinski PRESS GOLDMAN/ASSOCIATED DAVID

2 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 2 6/22/15 10:54 AM recognizing investigative projects in newspapers & books

The Nieman Foundation this “brought a big dose of fairness news media coverage of State’s College of Communi- spring named the winners of two to an incredibly unfair signifi cant subjects or issues. cations, at the National Press journalism awards and, in concert situation,” said judge Ellen The magazine was recognized Club in Washington, D.C. with the Columbia University Gabler, a reporter at the for its four 2014 cover stories, in May. Graduate School of Journalism, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which focused on censorship in “The work was clearly the honored two authors and the who shared the Taylor China, the state of journalism best among the fi nalists, and author of a work-in-progress. Award with a colleague in education, the future of foreign the kind of work that provides 2013. Kidwell and Richards’s news, and the lack of female perspective and can make an the miami herald won the reporting prompted federal newsroom leaders. impact,” said Steve Geimann, 2014 Worth Bingham Prize for authorities to issue bribery The award was presented an editor for Bloomberg News, Investigative Journalism for its indictments against the by Marie Hardin, dean of Penn who was one of three judges.  meticulously researched and program’s overseers. reported “Innocents Lost” series, Jenny Nordberg, Harold which examined the deaths of Holzer, and Dan Egan are the hundreds of children who were 2015 winners of the Lukas Prize victims of abusive or neglectful Project awards. The awards, caregivers and of a fl awed established in 1998 to recognize Florida child welfare system. the best in American nonfi ction Reporters Carol Marbin writing, are bestowed in honor Miller and Audra D.S. Burch, of journalist J. Anthony Lukas, lead reporters for the series, a 1969 Nieman Fellow. included a comprehensive Nordberg won the database of the young victims Lukas Book Prize for “The as part of their coverage. Underground Girls of “It wasn’t enough to report Kabul: In Search of a Hidden statistics, as horrifying as they Resistance in Afghanistan,” were,” said Burch. “We decided her groundbreaking reporting that each one of these children, on bacha posh, the practice we would write a story about, of girls being raised as boys. all 477 of them. We wanted to Judges called her work “a book mark not just their deaths, but through which readers emerge their lives.” both challenged and changed.” The Bingham Prize, Holzer is the winner of the established in 1967, honors Mark Lynton History Prize reporting of stories where the for “Lincoln and the Power public interest is being ill-served. of the Press: The War for Public The Chicago Tribune won Opinion.” In the book, judges the 2014 Taylor Family Award noted, Holzer “demonstrates for Fairness in Journalism that there are still sides to for “Red Light Cameras,” the 16th president we haven’t a comprehensive series that appreciated.” exposed the corruption and Egan, who covers the Great mismanagement of a traffi c- Lakes for the Milwaukee monitoring program that has Journal Sentinel, received the raked in hundreds of millions Lukas Work-in-Progress Award of dollars from unsuspecting for “Liquid Desert: Life and Chicago motorists over the Death of the Great Lakes,” his course of 10 years. upcoming book on how The purpose of the award, invasive species threaten the established by the family lakes. Judges cited Egan’s work that published The Boston as a “reaffi rmation of the need Globe from 1872 to 1999, for intensive beat reporting.” Top: Dan Egan (left), Jenny Nordberg, and Harold Holzer, recipients is to encourage fairness in of J. Anthony Lukas book prizes. Above: from left: Chicago Tribune news coverage by American nieman reports has been reporters David Kidwell and Alex Richards, who received the Taylor journalists. awarded the 2014 Bart Richards award; Bingham prize recipients and Miami Herald reporters Carol Tribune reporters David Award for Media Criticism, Marbin Miller and Audra D.S. Burch; and Jason Grotto, a 2015 Nieman Kidwell and Alex Richards which honors work evaluating Fellow who moderated a panel discussion among the winners

nieman reports spring 2015 3

nr_spring_2015.indd 3 6/22/15 10:55 AM Live@Lippmann

ond time we came back at the subject, it was Mission Driven a story about a guy named Clarence Aaron, and some misconduct in the pardons offi ce, ProPublica’s Richard Tofel on in which information was withheld from sustainable journalism, news President Bush’s staff , resulting in Aaron not getting pardoned. That time, we pitched partnerships, and measuring impact this story quite directly to the black commu- nity—in terms of how we used social media, how we used our public relations eff orts. In the mainstream press it got less at- tention, but in the African-American com- munity it got quite a lot more. I think the ichard tofel, president ing in California. Arnold Schwarzenegger president began to sense in the spring of of ProPublica since 2013, was then the governor. The next morning 2012 that this could turn into a problem joined the nonprofit investi- he reportedly walks in brandishing the pa- with the base, and he eventually commuted gative news organization as per and says, “I want this fi xed today.” They Clarence Aaron’s sentence in 2013. general manager at its found- come back to him an hour or two later and If we’d been super smart, I guess we ing in 2007. Two years after say, “Can’t be done.” He says, “Why?” They would have figured that out in the first Rit started publishing, ProPublica’s Sheri Fink, say, “Because it turns out you appointed place. Instead of going to The Washington in collaboration with The New York Times the entire nursing board.” Because he was Post, maybe if we’d given this whole thing Magazine, received a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Arnold Schwarzenegger he says, “I don’t to BET [Black Entertainment Television] the coverage of the life-or-death decisions doctors in care, fi re them,” and that afternoon, boom, president would have had to fi x it in the fi rst New Orleans made during Hurricane Katrina. half the board is gone. Our lead funder Herb place. I don’t know but that is part of how The following year two ProPublica staff ers won Sandler goes, “This is great. We published we think about it, and you try to get smarter a Pulitzer for exposing Wall Street practices this thing, and the next day it’s all fi xed.” over time. that contributed to the nation’s fi nancial crisis. We go, “Herb, it doesn’t work that way. One thing we did learn early on is that Previously Tofel was assistant publisher at When you don’t have action heroes as polit- sometimes reach really matters. The New The Wall Street Journal and held a number of ical chief executives, it’s less frequent.” York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR corporate jobs at Dow Jones & Co., the Journal’s The example on the other end of the are great and frequent partners of ours. But parent company. He’s written several books, spectrum is the story we did about three and sometimes a niche player can make a very including “Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, a half years ago that ran on the front page big diff erence with the story. The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of of The Washington Post. It proved that the We did some reporting a few years ago Modern Journalism,” published in 2009. presidential pardon system in this country on brain injuries to the troops in wars and Tofel spoke at the Nieman Foundation in is deeply racially biased. It was a lot of hard some unfairness in the way the Pentagon April in conversation with Wahyu Dhyatmika, work and took us a long time. We were really was dealing with brain injuries. We did that a 2015 Nieman Fellow. Edited excerpts: thrilled with it, and Steve Engelberg, who’s story with NPR. It got a lot of reach and now our editor in chief, and I were quite got the Pentagon plenty annoyed, but they On measuring ProPublica’s impact smug. We go, “This is a layup.” The presiden- weren’t doing anything about it. It’s because Our mission is to spur change through tial pardon power may be the only, essen- they don’t like to change. Then we had the journalistic means. We try to quite rigor- tially royal prerogative in the Constitution. opportunity to partner on those stories with ously track all the pick-up of our major It is completely unreviewable, and the pres- Stars and Stripes. At that point, the joint work and what kind of change we are pro- ident has total power. But, three and a half chiefs completely turned around. It didn’t ducing. There’s a big temptation to say that years later, we are still waiting. I think this a Congressional press release is change, will eventually change, and we clearly lit the a news conference is change, or a hearing fuse that’s going to change it. is change. It isn’t. It can lead to change, al- One percent of the though frankly, most of the time it doesn’t. On the importance of partnerships philanthropic dollars Change is when something actually changes. Now, with that presidential pardon story, in the U.S. would fund Sometimes it takes a very, very long time. we did learn something about framing that We wrote a series published in the Sunday speaks to reach. We wrote that story as a re- public radio and TV, Los Angeles Times, our fi rst or second year form story. There aren’t really two sides to and 10 outlets the size

in business, about the lax oversight of nurs- whether there should be racial bias. The sec- of ProPublica SEITZ JONATHAN

4 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 4 6/15/15 5:38 PM make them angry, it made them concerned, it. We’ve reported it out, and we think we’ve you think about giving money away you because they were being challenged at the proven it. We then don’t hesitate to cam- fi nd things that motivate you, that touch level of every PX around the world. The mass paign about it. you, that you’re passionate about. If they of enlisted personnel was reading the story. remain at the same level of quality that That’s not a huge number of people—it’s On achieving sustainability moved you in the fi rst place, you may write nothing like the audience of NPR—but it’s all At the outset, our initial funders, the Sandler them a check for 20, 40 years in a row, until of their people. We’ve had similar experienc- Foundation, provided 85 to 95 percent of you die. es with The Chronicle of Higher Education, the money. We had them down last year to Then we come to the issue of earned and other fairly small publications that reach a third of the money. This year it’ll be a quar- income. We’ve taken advertising for four perfect audiences. ter. In the long run, I’d like to get it to about years. Our monthly pageviews were up al- 15 percent. I think we can get there. Last most 60 percent in the fi rst quarter of this On joint reporting projects year we had about 40 funders of $50,000 year. The advertising revenue was down. What’s it going to take to get editors at dif- or more. We had 2,600 donors altogether, if Why? Because of supply and demand. The ferent reporting partners comfortable? It’s you include small donors. demand for advertising is not rising at any- something diff erent for every editor. You We have built up a reserve of $5 million, where near the number of pages that are have all seen this in your careers. You write but we think a healthy organization should being created every day. exactly the same story. You submitted it to have a reserve of funding for at least a year. It would be great to get readers to pay. editor A, and you get one reaction, and with We’ll spend more than $12 million this year, I think it’s very, very diffi cult, unless you editor B, you get another. Top editor A wants so we’re not anywhere near where I would have an enormous amount of highly dif- to do some kinds of things to it, and top ed- like us to be in the long run. We’ve run oper- ferentiated, high-quality content. I think itor B wants to do diff erent things. ating surpluses every year, so we are slowly the surest proof of this is that digital sub- getting there. Occasionally, we fi nd some- scriber growth at The New York Times— On journalism versus advocacy body who’s willing to contribute money to which probably has the highest amount Our journalism is diff erent from advocacy our reserve, but it’s very rare. of high-quality, highly diff erentiated con- because we start with questions and we end When the next recession happens, tent—seems to have fl attened out at levels with answers, instead of starting with an- there’s going to be a shakeout in American above 800,000 people. This is happening in swers and ending with questions, and also newspapers. I think you will see scores, may- a country of 320 million people. because we just use journalistic means. We be hundreds of newspapers, that will either Where we draw the line is we let funders don’t lobby. We report. The one place where disappear or go to one day a week in print support beats—like education, or even I think some traditional journalists get very and dramatically reduce digital operations some nontraditional beats such as in- uncomfortable is when we get to the end of by the other side of the recession. equality and race—but that’s it. When the What does that mean for us? We’ve never Carnegie Corporation supports our beat had a down year. I expect that when we get on education, they have no idea that we’re to the recession, we probably will. We’ll have going to use it to write about restraints in to manage through that. public schools for a year. One of the points made in the Federal On sources of funding Communications Commission’s report, Small dollars—both in the mail and on- “The Information Needs of Communities: line—came to almost half a million dollars The Changing Media Landscape in a for us last year so that’s not trivial. Probably Broadband Age,” was that one percent of the next best thing is rich people giving you all the philanthropic dollars in America large sums of money. Living donors oper- would throw off enough money to fund ating through family foundations are far many initiatives, including nonprofi t news preferable, in the long run, to institutional organizations. When I took a sharp pencil foundations, which are staff ed by people and translated it, that number would have whose job it is to give away other people’s been enough to pay for all the public tele- money. The reason is that in an institution- vision stations, all of the public television al foundation, if they don’t change what programming, all the public radio stations, they’re doing every once in a while, they all the public radio station programming, don’t need their staff . and 10 organizations the size of ours. That’s Individuals are exactly the opposite. one percent. If we can eventually convince By and large, it’s my experience that when Americans to do that, we’ll all be fi ne. 

nieman reports spring 2015 5

nr_spring_2015.indd 5 6/22/15 10:56 AM Niemans@Work

Then the question: How to fund it while advertising, agency commissions, syndica- digital journalism is still fi nding its way as tion, and licensing puts us in a position to a business? We needed to think globally. build what we believe can be a self-sustain- Even before we launched the digital mag- ing photojournalism business. azine in February, The Stand was commis- We’re still in our infancy, raising mon- sioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature ey to hire tech, sales, and marketing staff , (formerly the World Wildlife Fund) to shoot but we’re hopeful, especially because of the the People’s Climate March. Using our net- quality of our images and the response from So Many Images, work of contributors, we provided coverage the photography community. for the fund in New York, Seoul, New Delhi, I brought in about 40 contributors pri- So Little Space Santiago, Nairobi, and Rome. The Stand be- or to the site launch in mid-February. The Greg Marinovich, came a photo agency. number of contributors has since doubled. We are now in discussions with a news To me, it shows that our basic premise is NF ’14, joins website to syndicate our images, and more correct: there are photojournalists out with fellow of these types of deals are in the works. there with stories to tell. All they needed photographers Taken together, anticipated revenue from was a platform.  to showcase more of the pictures they create

a couple years ago, just as i was starting my Nieman year, the “War/ Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath” exhibit curated by Anne Wilkes Tucker of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston was traveling across the U.S. Having just seen it in Los Angeles, my friend Jonathan Diamond called me. Why, he asked, when photojournalists shoot so many images on an assignment, are we lim- ited to seeing just one or two in a newspaper or magazine? Why not showcase 10 or 20? There was, I said, no reason, other than the limitations of print. And so The Stand started as a digital photojournalism magazine, one that would draw photographers from around the world, transcend borders by relying on images rather than text, and treat photojournalists and their work with respect. In an eff ort to bring in new voices and expand our reach— as well as acknowledge the ubiquity of cell phone cameras—we decided that an active citizen photojournalism component was in- tegral both to building an audience and to expanding our ability to cover news.

The Stand, a digital magazine, transcends borders by relying on images rather than text Haiti’s Le Saut waterfall is an important religious site on the island

6 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 6 6/15/15 5:38 PM Equal, At Last Tom Witosky, NF ’92, collaborated with a fellow sportswriter to chronicle the battle over same-sex marriage

The book “Equal Before the Law” tells the story behind the 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that same-sex marriage is legal, a decision that made possible this marriage ceremony in Des Moines

the journey to write “equal before do it, walk away from the project early on. only the third state in the nation to permit the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to We conducted many of our interviews gay and lesbian couples to marry. For three Marriage Equality” began April 3, 2009, together, but we understood our separate years, I pestered Justice Mark Cady, who when the Iowa Supreme Court granted gays strengths. As an investigative reporter with had written the Varnum decision, to tell the and lesbians the right to marry in Iowa. It years of experience covering politics and story behind the court’s opinion. Finally, in ended June 1, when University of Iowa Press law, I wrote about how the law restricting 2012, he agreed. published the book, which I co-authored marriage to a man and a woman was ap- Ironically, our biggest break to write the with my friend and longtime Des Moines proved and why a court order overturned it book came from our employer, Gannett. For Register colleague Marc Hansen. 11 years later. Hansen, a most artful writer, a year’s pay and benefi ts, they told us we Some have asked why two veteran writ- provided vivid portraits and insight into the could leave after more than 30 years each at ers who spent most of their careers in the major participants in the struggle. The Des Moines Register. sports department would tackle this issue. Our daily routine was talk early and then “I hear you want to write a book about It’s simple. Sportswriters know a great sto- write. On completion of a chapter, we would the Varnum decision,” Hansen said to me ry when they see one. I realized that this is ship it to the other writer for editing and re- while we considered taking retirement. a story of how people overcome adversity, writing. Our goal was to blend all of the ele- “You want to work together on it?” just like Jackie Robinson, who made history ments into a story of tenacity and courage. About then, a top newsroom manag- when he joined Major League Baseball, did. On the day of the Iowa Supreme Court’s er walked up and said, “You guys look like Sure, we faced hurdles on the way to pub- ruling in Varnum v. Brien, I watched The Des you’re talking about something important.” lication. We even had an agent, who told us Moines Register newsroom go into over- “We are,” I replied. The journey to write she didn’t think two daily journalists could drive. The surprising decision made Iowa our fi rst book had begun. 

MAKING THE training unit, Editorial marketers in this new age It’s also a chance to give CRAFT VISIBLE Coaching and Development. of tweets. But how do you journalists something they ALISON MacADAM, Still NPR, but no logo. No market something as un-sexy don’t hear enough: praise. NF ’14, HELPS NPR name recognition. Now, my as the training team? One Specifi c praise. COLLEAGUES job is to wave the fl ag for the solution we came up with is Recall that story you DEVELOP AND SHARE best audio storytelling. the NPR Storytelling Tumblr. reported or wrote or STORYTELLING To coach, create curriculum, It’s a blog where we share produced, and think of TECHNIQUES and facilitate training. quick, digestible lessons all the little decisions you My fi rst challenge was that emerge from NPR made along the way. So more basic: To let the content, along with audio, much of the best work roughly 350 journalists at images, and video. Each journalists do is invisible. NPR News know we exist. post features one story and Now I realize my quest Sitting in my cubicle on one storytelling technique. for visibility is not only for 11 years, i worked week one, I could just barely (A sample headline: “Make about my new training somewhere famous. glimpse the busy staff of a promise in your intro, team, but about everyone Now, I work somewhere “ATC” across the warehouse- and deliver on it.”) This is at NPR and its member virtually unknown. sized newsroom. I could not revolutionary. But the stations. In the course of In January, I left “All throw a ball and almost hit Storytelling Tumblr gives us raising the profi le of the Things Considered” the “Hub”—the center of something we were lacking: un-sexy training unit, we’re (“ATC”)—seven months NPR’s news operations. So A public platform where we making our craft visible. after my Nieman fellowship close, yet still so distant. can say, “We’re listening! And that, of course, is ended—to create a position Of course, most And we are thinking about the far more important

OPPOSITE: LES STONE/THE STAND; ABOVE: CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/ASSOCIATED PRESS CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/ASSOCIATED ABOVE: OPPOSITE: LES STONE/THE STAND; at NPR’s newly rebooted journalists have become self- our craft every day.” mission. 

nieman reports spring 2015 7

nr_spring_2015.indd 7 6/15/15 5:38 PM Nieman Storyboard

in 2001, while interning at the Exploring the rise Associated Press bureau in Rome, Samantha of live journalism Gross started working as a guide, giving BY ROSE EVELETH walking tours of the Vatican, meandering through St. Peter’s Basilica with visitors, tell- ing them stories about the artworks around them. Over the next 10 years, Gross bounced among AP postings from Tallahassee to New York City, covering courts, city hall, politics, crime, and more. But she never lost her taste for tours. “Probably my favorite part of the [AP] job was getting to enter into the lives of so Imany people whom I wouldn’t have met otherwise and hear them tell their stories,” Now says Gross. That piece of her job, though, was the part that her readers never really got to experience. “I never felt that I was able to fully convey that to the people who would then read the stories. They were always missing out on some piece of that experi- ence. Why couldn’t we share the best of our jobs with them?” So last year, Gross founded StoryTour, You a live, experiential magazine comprised of guided stories that take place in New York City. In one recent story, “The Land of the Slow Food Startups,” the tour guide took the audience to an old Pfi zer building deep in South Williamsburg to meet the entre- preneurs behind the burgeoning slow food See8 nieman reports spring 2015 It Illustration by Alex Nabaum nr_spring_2015.indd 8 6/15/15 5:39 PM nieman reports spring 2015 9

nr_spring_2015.indd 9 6/15/15 5:39 PM Nieman Storyboard

businesses there. “Our nonfiction story of the neighborhood and a soundtrack with tours are like an equivalent of walking into Instead of having a mix of hip-hop and traditional Jewish the pages of a narrative feature in a maga- chants. “You could describe Anna Deavere zine,” Gross explains. Whereas in a feature, people read Smith as a documentary fi lmmaker who has the journalist might describe the row of tall about a business, simply decided to dispense with the cam- silver machines lining the walls of the Kelvin era,” wrote David Richards in a 1992 review Natural Slush Co. or the building’s bricked- StoryTour brings for The New York Times. up windows, in a StoryTour the audience By that defi nition, Pop-Up is a magazine sees all that for themselves. Once inside, them inside it that has simply decided to dispense with the they watch as the journalist interviews the paper. Over the past six years, Pop-Up has staff of Dinner Lab, a pop-up dinner club, built a loyal (not to say, fanatical) follow- and they eat pasta made by Sfoglini, an arti- ing and has sold out shows in minutes. Its sanal pasta company. founder, magazine writer Douglas McGray, The piece is more than a walking tour, realized that he had never met the pho- according to Gross; it’s journalism that uses tled in dark, pillow-padded rooms. “This tographers who shot images for his pieces. many of the same narrative techniques any American Life” also puts on live variety McGray launched Pop-Up Magazine to bring magazine feature might. “The StoryTour be- shows, with performances by comedians and together all the creative people who make a gins with a narrative focusing on the seismic musical acts. magazine and have them show their work shifts many work-obsessed New Yorkers Some events—cruises with contributors on stage, and then go out for drinks with have faced in the wake of the economic and the like—are not journalism per se but the audience afterward. (McGray also re- downturn, and the ways that many people eff orts to augment or replace failing revenue cently launched a print/digital publication, began re-examining their priorities and streams. The boundary between journalism The California Sunday Magazine, which is fi nding the motivation to start something and entertainment with a journalistic ve- inserted once a month in the Los Angeles new,” Gross says. Zack Silverman, founder neer needs to be clear and respected. But Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and The of Kelvin Natural Slush, left behind a prom- audiences do seem interested in real jour- Sacramento Bee.) ising legal career to start his business. The nalism presented live. Pop-Up Magazine’s Most Pop-Up events are not recorded in audience hears him speak about the ups and early shows fi lled a 360-seat theater; today, any way, and that’s a big part of the appeal. downs of leaving a stable job to start some- it sells out a 2,600-person venue. “Radiolab” “The audience is very committed,” says Pat thing new and risky. They can even ask ques- and “This American Life” fi ll theaters across Walters, a Pop-Up senior editor. “They buy tions. “It’s not just seeing a list of places or the country. (“This American Life” has in: ‘I’m just going to be here.’ ” Stories hap- hearing interesting facts or tasting interest- streamed its variety show into movie the- pen in the moment. As soon as they’re done, ing food,” Gross says. “It’s really an experi- aters.) And start-ups like StoryTour can they’re gone. ence that’s guided by narrative and story.” exist on ticket sales alone. Journalism out- In 2011, Walters produced something Gross fondly recalls her experience as lets are experimenting with all kinds of new that highlighted what a Pop-Up experience a tour guide in Rome. “It was thrilling to formats and technologies to enhance story- can be. During a show produced in part- look directly into the eyes of my audience telling and engage audiences. Now is a good nership with ESPN the Magazine, Walters and see them react as I told them stories,” time for the art of live storytelling. made a “weird little short story, half anima- she says. “Having experienced that allowed tion, half radio story, half playful moment” me to envision how StoryTour could work, about a time when record-breaking free div- and how exciting it could be.” n the early 1990s, anna deavere er Tanya Streeter nearly died. Gross is just one of an increasing number Smith, whose background is in the- Before beginning, Walters asked the of reporters looking to take their work be- ater, explored complex political top- audience to take a deep breath and hold it. yond the paper or the screen or the speaker ics on stage, interviewing people They then heard from Walters that Streeter in the form of “live journalism.” The format involved in a series of controversial packs enough air into her lungs to fi ll four is fl exible, and the boundary between jour- Ievents, like Brooklyn’s Crown Heights riot basketballs, and then from a scientist who nalism and journalism-adjacent forms— in 1991 and the Los Angeles riots in 1992. studies free divers about how one’s heart fi rst-person storytelling, theater, lecture—is She interviewed people on all sides of each rate slows down to as few as 10 beats per blurry, but live storytelling events like The conflict then edited the transcripts into minute during a dive. They heard from Moth and ideas festivals like TED could pro- monologues, playing each character herself. Streeter herself about how the pressure vide news organizations with viable models In “Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, of a deep dive bends her eardrums in. The for moving stories from page to stage. Brooklyn, and Other Identities,” the perfor- piece also discusses how on one dive, Tanya Outlets like The Texas Tribune and The mance that recounted the Crown Heights may have suff ered from nitrogen narcosis, Atlantic now put on events that bring togeth- riot, a three-day span in which the neigh- a condition that induces disorientation and er experts and journalists to talk about ev- borhood’s black and Jewish communities potential loss of consciousness from the ef- erything from higher education to national clashed, Deavere Smith played 26 differ- fects of breathing nitrogen under pressure. security. Pop-Up Magazine, a live show that ent people, from Rabbi Joseph Spielman, During the dive she became confused and started in San Francisco, sells out in min- a spokesperson for the Lubavitch communi- nearly didn’t make it back up to the surface. utes. “Radiolab” has done a number of pop- ty, to an anonymous young black man who As the audience listened, they saw a pro- ular events. “The Heart,” a podcast about lived in the neighborhood. The televised jection screen fi lled with Caribbean blue

love and sex, hosts live listening events nes- version integrates black-and-white images slowly darken, paralleling Streeter’s descent, OPPOSITE: BRET HARTMAN/TED

10 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 10 6/15/15 5:39 PM During “Truth and Dare,” for which Pop-Up Magazine teamed up with TED, Dawn Landes performed a song from her musical called “Row”

until at the bottom, where Streeter almost frankly, if we could just ask somebody who Kaitlin Prest, host and creative director died, the room went black. As Streeter re- was there, an eyewitness,” Abumrad said of “The Heart,” came to live events looking covered and rose, the blue returned. When during the show, unaware that the dinosaur for ways to have her work live on beyond the the story ended, about four minutes later, is on stage, cocking its head at the audience one-time broadcast. “How can you appreci- roughly the duration of one of Streeter’s in a distinctly bird-like way. Abumrad and ate something culturally that is only listened dives, Walters invited anyone still holding Krulwich, with the help of a “dinosaur trans- to in transit?” she wonders. At one event for their breath to exhale. lator,” then asked the beast what exactly “The Heart,” in partnership with an expe- In a more recent Pop-Up event, the audi- happened to its friends. riential travel organization, seven couples ence enjoyed a dinner in which the elements “What we’re trying to do is something travelled to an abandoned honeymooners of the meal connected to the stories they that’s creative-feeling,” says “Radiolab” resort in the Poconos full of heart-shaped were being told. Water glasses were fi lled to executive producer Ellen Horne. “We try bathtubs and round beds below mirrored a line that illustrated how low Lake Shasta to create a system where there’s a lot of re- ceilings. They were told to call the front had dipped during the drought. The napkins porting and facts and storytelling but there’s desk when they arrived. When they picked had word art describing “topics of conversa- also this opportunity to rehearse and play.” up the receivers of the old phones on the tion” for the diners. The plates were made of She also says live shows allow producers bedside tables, they heard a special audio clay pulled up from an oil well. The dessert and performers to improvise, something piece by “The Heart.” Other “Heart” events was made of fruits bred by a rare fruit collec- that’s much harder to do in a studio: “With have included a kissing booth and the blind- tor. With live journalism, “the possibilities ‘Apocalyptical,’ we wrote maybe 20 endings folding of participants. are virtually unlimited,” Walters says. “You for that show. Every night we’d go out and “My secret goal is that every radio piece can do everything you could do in radio, on try something new.” I make will live in the real world,” says Prest. TV, on the stage, and the people are there. She and the other producers are consider- You’re talking to them.” ing how to take their work from earbuds The creative possibilities are what bring and speakers, listened to while closed off many journalists to live events. When from the rest of the world, and make people “Radiolab” put on “Apocalyptical,” staff interact with those same stories in person, combined the music of Noveller with co- together with other listeners. medians like Reggie Watts and Ophira Live shows give The desire to bridge the gap between Eisenberg, and puppetry. As hosts Jad isolated listeners and shared space is one Abumrad and Robert Krulwich started “Radiolab” more of the driving forces behind a new series a segment about the long history of scien- opportunity to produced by WBUR, one of Boston’s pub- tifi c debate over what, exactly, took down lic radio stations, called “Listen Up,” which the dinosaurs, a large dino puppet crept out improvise than pulls together radio pieces around a theme onstage. “It would be so much easier, for and plays them for an audience gathered at the scientists, and for you and I right now, when in the studio the Institute of Contemporary Art. With the

nieman reports spring 2015 11

nr_spring_2015.indd 11 6/22/15 10:57 AM Nieman Storyboard

lights down, audience members hear radio to do another listening event, this time stories without any visual component. They pegged to Valentine’s Day. Listeners are can close their eyes or look out onto the And advocacy groups are embracing the invited to interact Boston Harbor through the theater’s vast power of live events as well. In September, windows, but there is nothing specifi cally the California Institute for Rural Studies in real life with designed for them to see. (CIRS), a social justice organization, will The audience at the first “Listen Up” take about 100 people on a train along the stories they hear event heard the story of a woman whose Capitol Corridor Amtrak line, from Oakland family communicated with her kidnapped to Sacramento. Along the way, riders will on the radio father in Colombia through a radio pro- hear three live stories about the history of gram that was broadcast into the jungle. California agriculture. “We picked this neat They listened to the viral “bad haircut” sto- and vibrant swath of the state,” says Ildi ry, where a reporter interviews his daughters Carlisle-Cummins, the project director at about the terrible makeover one gave to the Cal Ag Roots, a new set of programs from other. They heard Abumrad and Krulwich CIRS. “About two million people ride that ing industry. Tens of thousands of farmers of “Radiolab” discuss the story behind the route a year, and its past is full of all kinds were out of work, and the university system Golden Record sent fl oating out into space of stories.” was sued. on the Voyager spacecraft. One story riders will hear is of the inven- “I am wading into this world of put- The stories are all powerful celebrations tion of the mechanical tomato harvester, ting on this storytelling project and then of the human voice, but Lisa Tobin, senior a long-running collaboration between sci- recording these stories because I have lis- producer of innovation at WBUR, wasn’t entists at University of California, Davis. tened to so many episodes of The Moth sure the format would work. “Asking people “They were the laughing stock of UC Davis, and ‘Radiolab’ and ‘This American Life,’” to focus on audio as a lone sensory expe- because they had so many prototypes that Carlisle-Cummins says. “I just fi nd listen- rience was one of the most exciting things failed,” Carlisle-Cummins says. But when ing to things, fi rst-person perspectives to be about it, and also the thing that terrifi ed they fi nally designed a machine that could really powerful and just an interesting way me,” she says. “Are they going to be bored pick the tomatoes, and a strain of tomatoes to go through the world.” out of their minds?” They weren’t. Tobin that were hardy enough to survive picking, Live events have potential financial says audience reaction was positive enough they completely changed the tomato farm- as well as storytelling benefits. In some

“Rabiolab” co-host Jad Abumrad explores the science of extinction during his show’s “Apocalyptical” tour stop in Oakland JARED KELLY JARED

12 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 12 6/22/15 10:57 AM fail fast, fail small learn to listen and we learn from it Famed Chicago comedy group Second City is There’s a reason people all. Live events can create teaching journalists how to engage audiences from Tribune staff ers safe spaces for failure. through improv to Twitter’s CEO have Some companies hold taken classes at Second award ceremonies, by laura mitchell City. In improv, you’re highlighting the year’s constantly listening and worst decisions. when leaders at the The comedy organization reacting. You’re engaged Chicago Tribune wanted to also collaborates with with someone. Everyone bring a brick, not fi nd new ways to engage Tribune journalists understands the need a cathedral their audience, they turned through Second City to go to a gym to work out We use an exercise called to an unusual source: Works, which helps muscles. You need the same One-Word Story. People local comedy group The professionals apply time to work out social gather to tell an original Second City, starting point improv methods to their skills and listening skills. story. Each person for iconic comedians own work. Kelly Leonard, Improvisation does that. contributes only one word such as John Belushi, Bill executive vice president at a time. Sometimes, Murray, and Amy Poehler. of Second City, and Tom don’t fear failure you have to supply “and” Together, the two Yorton, chief executive Companies need to fail, or “the,” and other times organizations developed offi cer of Second City but they don’t need to you get to supply a big, “Chicago Live!” a stage and Works, shared some of fail in a big way. It’s juicy adjective. You don’t radio variety show that those methods in a book important to create models know where the story’s retold the city’s stories in they co-authored, “Yes, that will allow you to fail going, and you have to surprising ways. Programs And: How Improvisation fast and to fail small. contribute your part. brought newsmakers Reverses ‘No, But’ If you are encouraged to There’s this great improv and entertainers, from Thinking and take risks and have the saying: “Bring a brick, Rahm Emanuel to Cookie Improves Creativity opportunity to fail not a cathedral.” If you’re Monster, to the stage. Each and Collaboration.” small, you’re learning building something, and you event included a Second Tips for journalists stuff along the way walk in with the entire City-produced satire and media that will prevent design in your head, no one on the evening’s topics and organizations the big failures. else is going to be brought news of the week. At the were culled At Second City, into that process. If you’re end of the night, the from that book performers working with a group, you audience was invited and from an fl ounder just need to bring a brick, to mingle with the show’s interview with onstage, new and someone else is going performers over drinks. Leonard. shows fl op— to bring a brick, too. 

cases, the events themselves make money. The community aspect is also one of the or radio or television, but live theater is Pop-Up tickets generally go for $25 to $55 reasons live events are so popular. “There’s a whole new set of skills. Reporters aren’t a pop. StoryTour’s ticket sales pay Gross’s been this incredible rise in all of our lives of necessarily used to blocking things out on- salary, and her storytellers get paid based virtual experience and virtual community,” stage, thinking about lighting and live pacing on a profit-sharing model. “Radiolab” Horne says. “One of the things that interests and the set, fi guring out the motions of their breaks even on its live events. Other publi- us in doing these live events is that it satis- storytellers, the facial expressions, or work- cations have managed to turn their events fi es a need for the ‘Radiolab’ creative staff ing with audio and visuals and music. The into moneymakers. According to a recent and the audience to have a real physical ex- arc of a print story might hinge on a quote or study, The Wall Street Journal’s series of perience together. It’s almost palpable this a phrase or a description, where the narra- live events—in which journalists interview hunger for these real experiences.” tive of a stage show might pivot on a turned invited guests on stage—earns over $10 mil- StoryTour’s Gross agrees. When she was back or some other movement. Turning lion a year. doing market research for her venture, she a story from a print or radio piece into a Even if the events themselves don’t make went to Moth events and asked audience stage performance means learning all those money, they can still be a net gain for the members why they were there. “What al- skills. If done well, though, live events can outlet. According to “Radiolab” ’s Horne, most every single one said to me was some bring a whole new level of interest and im- live shows are a way to grow audience and variant on, ‘I care about these stories be- pact to narrative nonfi ction. foster community, which can then be mon- cause I recognize a piece of myself in them.’ “Journalism can be really eff ective when etized, if necessary. “A lot of people are Which is, as writers, the reason we all think it actually entertains people,” says Pop- brought to a ‘Radiolab’ show by a ‘Radiolab’ stories are important.” Up’s Walters, “and they don’t feel like it’s fan,” Horne says. “It seems to be a way that Ultimately, doing a good live show is something they should be paying attention fans are able to introduce ‘Radiolab’ to peo- hard. Journalists often excel in their cho- to but it’s something they want to pay at- ple who aren’t listening to podcasts.” sen medium, whether that’s print or online tention to.” 

nieman reports spring 2015 13

nr_spring_2015.indd 13 6/15/15 5:39 PM L I SO U (T) {ONS} Solutions journalism focuses on what’s going right in the world rather than what’s going wrong BY JOHN DYER

ournalists make careers doing things right,” wrote Seattle Times ed- giving up on school entirely. Kent schools out of covering the symptoms itor Kathy Best when she launched the Lab went from battling an NAACP lawsuit for and causes of bad urban pub- with the Solutions Journalism Network in handcuffi ng and pepper-spraying students lic schools, writing tragedies October 2013. “Our hope is that rigorously to cutting suspensions by more than 30 per- about students falling through examining the elements of success might cent, The Seattle Times reported. the cracks, scoring scoops from help spread them.” In another story, Big Picture High School school board investigations, Answering that mandate, Education Lab instituted a policy called “restorative jus- and chasing scandals along- reporter Claudia Rowe dove into classroom tice” that showed great potential to reduce side concerned parents, angry discipline—a large part of most teach- discipline problems. Under restorative jus- teachers unions, and others. ers’ jobs—and discovered how a few local tice, suspended kids remain in school but The Seattle Times and the schools had cut suspensions by engaging don’t just go to study hall. They answer for Solutions Journalism Network took a dif- closely with students who behave badly their infractions in person before a special ferent approach. rather than ostracizing them. forum of teachers and students, a meet- JReporters and editors at the Times’ The Kent School District in suburban ing that’s a combination of a group inter- Education Lab team felt their audience was Seattle adopted a softer touch in disciplin- vention and peer counseling session, and desensitized to the laundry list of challenges ing students, for example, opting for in- complete reading and writing assignments facing schools in Washington State. Unruly school suspensions where students study that force them to refl ect on their behavior. teenagers, poor performance among low-in- instead of kicking them off school property, Teenagers opening up emotionally to adults come students, and high dropout rates and training security guards to act as medi- and peers improves their behavior dramat- weren’t news to anybody anymore. ators as well as rule enforcers to cut down ically, according to educators. The Seattle So the team fl ipped the script on edu- on the extreme behavior that leads to harsh Times reported that Big Picture High had cation reporting. Instead of identifying the discipline. One Kent middle school brought only assigned eight days of suspension as of worst schools in the region and explaining in two new assistant principals to deal with January, compared to 700 a year before they why they were failing, they set out to fi nd student behavior, and now calls its detention implemented restorative justice. the schools that were improving and ask hall the “Focus Room,” to refl ect an empha- The numbers were only part of the story, how their educators and students excelled sis on students keeping up with classwork. however. Rowe portrayed a school where despite poverty, crime, and other challeng- Critics said the new policies amounted to teachers and administrators genuinely es. Instead of reporting on the problems warehousing students, but advocates of the touch students’ hearts. One Big Picture stu- in the schools, they would cover the solu- new approach cited national research that dent wept in front of her teachers and class- tions. “[W]e’ve committed to … telling you found that draconian out-of-school suspen- mates as she discussed her marijuana use. about some of the places that appear to be sions resulted in the worst students often “It’s a lot harder than a regular suspension,”

14 nieman reports spring 2015

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the 18-year-old girl, who had been kicked off explosion of online information that allows future of news, Best says. She and other ed- campus for discipline at other schools, told people tired of negative news to avoid the itors were growing tired of duds—the epic Rowe. “You can’t run from anything, and to mainstream media; and journalists’ desire to journalism projects that take long periods have people talking good about you, telling cover positive social change and reach more to complete but more often than not de- you they’re truly disappointed—it hurts. readers. “For journalism to help society liver little social impact when they hit the It was kind of overwhelming, actually.” self-correct, it’s not enough to be a watch- newsstands. “There’s been for years this Big Picture High School reducing its sus- dog to increase awareness or produce out- definition of investigative reporting: ‘We pension rate through the restorative justice rage about problems,” says Bornstein. “We will spend a year so that we can tell you in program is what the nonprofit Solutions need new and better recipes. For society and full and fl orid and depressing detail about all Journalism Network calls a “positive devi- also for journalism to thrive, it needs to be of the aspects of this major societal problem ant”—an example of people or policies that regularly highlighting with rigor new ideas and maybe on the very last day we’ll do a defy trends with benefi cial results. The term and models that are showing results against 30-inch story on how we’re going to fi x it,’” plays a key role in so-called solutions jour- our most pressing problems.” says Best. “That hasn’t worked necessarily. nalism, a concept that’s gaining currency, as Founded in New York in 2013, the For many people, they start reading it and evinced by work being done at the Network Network’s function is largely educational. they become too depressed and they stop.” in partnerships with the Education Lab and Its staff of 12 held training seminars for 370 Best acknowledges that hardcore inves- others. Advocates defi ne it as the opposite journalists in 20 newsrooms last year, ac- tigative reporting is still central to journal- of negative news, but hesitate to label it ex- cording to its annual report. But the group ism’s role as a watchdog. She never intended clusively as positive. Rather than pointing also has secured grant funding for projects Education Lab to ignore the problems facing out solely what’s wrong with the world— like Education Lab, surveys on readers’ re- Seattle-area schools. She wanted to show- think political gridlock, war, terrorism, and ceptiveness to solutions journalism, and new case the successes in tackling those prob- catastrophic climate change—solutions initiatives to compile reporting and data on lems to jumpstart conversations among journalism aims to show how people are successes in reducing violence and improv- parents, teachers, and policymakers. “We making things better. ing healthcare. Early this year, the group did not get into this because we thought David Bornstein, a co-founder of the received funding for a schools coverage there were too many negative stories,” says Network and coauthor of the Fixes blog in project with The Boston Globe that’s in its Best. “We did get into it because we thought the Opinionator section of The New York early stages. there were too many negative conversa- Times, cites three trends that illustrate why The approach is not a call for feel-good tions. People had become too polarized over solutions journalism has come of age: the stories. The motivation for The Seattle education issues.” proliferation of businesses, nonprofi ts, and Times’s Education Lab, for example, Bornstein doesn’t want good news for other institutions alleviating social ills; the stemmed from serious concerns about the good news’ sake, either. Stories have to pass

nieman reports spring 2015 15

nr_spring_2015.indd 15 6/15/15 5:39 PM a threshold to qualify as solutions journal- solvers and let’s do traditional journalism To Collins, the section is less about solu- ism. At a minimum, they need to identify stories about them. Let’s look at them with tions and more about progress. “Looking at social ills and potential remedies to them. caution and scrutiny. Let’s evaluate their it through a progressive lens is more than They need to include the voices of people claims,’” says Zuckerman. “Is it enough that putting a happy face on the news,” he says. who have seen those remedies at the ground we fi nd a solution if it is a solution that our “We are changing from becoming a straight level. They must include evidence about viewers or our readers can’t be a part of? information broker to providing tools and whether the remedies work, and report any For me, that’s the most challenging feature relevance to this global community that is caveats or limitations associated with them. of this. Can we give our readers something interested in the advancement of human The Network even put together a list of “im- positive and constructive they can do?” progress as we are.” poster” solution stories, like “hero worship” Collins might be right in thinking stories pieces that glorify individuals but pay too about positive social change engage readers. little attention to causes or animal rescue host of new media ventures has The Solutions Journalism Network collabo- stories that are entertainment. sprung up in recent years that blend rated with the Engaging News Project at the Bornstein stresses that journalists must Bornstein and Zuckerman’s visions. University of Texas-Austin to conduct a sur- obtain data that shows how a solution is The Christian Science Monitor vey on how readers responded to solutions working. Data inoculates reporters against launched its Take Action section stories compared to ones that focused only charges they’re giving favorable coverage last year. Upworthy, founded three on problems. The survey found that readers to a group because of its political affi lia- years ago, claims to reach 50 million of solutions stories were more likely than tion, for instance. The only bias in solutions Apeople per month through stories shared readers of problem-oriented stories to say journalism should be toward evidence, says on social media that inspire readers. The they felt inspired, and more likely to say they Bornstein, and the facts should speak for Huffi ngton Post now has an Impact section wanted to learn more. Those readers also themselves like in any other news story. “We that sports the theme “What’s Working.” said they were more likely to share solutions feel very strongly that you can report on re- Editors hope to appeal to readers who want stories on social media, an important metric sponses to social problems in a very rigor- the news to be empowering—not necessar- today for measuring performance. ous manner without telling readers, ‘This is ily to tell people which causes or programs At The Huffi ngton Post, editors are keen the best response’ or ‘You should go out and they might support, but to provide models for stories that readers share on Facebook do something about this,’ ” he says. “I don’t for discussions about fi xing community ills. and elsewhere. They view sharing as the best feel comfortable with journalists necessarily In many cases, readers were already fi lling measure of impact. “Sharing is you thinking urging readers to act.” comment sections with requests for more about what other people should know about That line can be hard to distinguish. information about becoming involved and it, so much so you want to brand yourself Media coverage grants legitimacy and au- helping with issues covered in stories. with it on social media,” says Jessica Prois, thority to solutions, potentially to the ex- At the Monitor, editors say the Take executive editor of HuffPost Impact and clusion of other fi xes that reporters or their Action section’s intended audience is read- Huff Post Good News. “Sharing is more pow- sources never encountered—an easy over- ers who have expressed an interest in vol- erful than liking.” sight on big, complicated topics like health- unteering with, contributing to or sharing Upworthy’s focus is getting readers to care, clean water and other global issues, their professional experiences around the share the content it creates and curates. says Arizona State University journalism globe, either through letters to the editor Backed by venture capitalists that include professor Dan Gillmor. Gillmor wonders or reader surveys. That audience wants to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and if journalists might compromise their ob- read about including the poor in the so- working with partners like Pulitzer Prize- jectivity when they approach a story with lar energy boom and education for girls in winning investigative outlet ProPublica, the goal of proving that a specifi c solution Afghanistan, for example, because they are the website considers itself the antidote to is valid. “The journalist goes into the topic passionate about income inequality and hu- regular news outlets that bombard audienc- with some sort of outcome in mind,” says man rights, according to Susan Paardecamp es with depressing stories about faraway Gillmor. “That’s fi ne if you are looking for Hackney, chief strategy and marketing offi - places they are powerless to change. “We examples of agreement.” cer at The Christian Science Monitor. They have so much news that we have this sense The MIT Center for Civic Media’s Ethan want to see how their progressive interests of learned helplessness,” says Amy O’Leary, Zuckerman believes the proponents of might advance in the world rather than read Upworthy’s editorial director and a former solutions journalism are trying too hard a litany of the obstacles they are up against. to distance themselves from advocacy. He “They care more than the average news co-founded a citizen journalism website, reader about the human condition,” says Global Voices, in part to advocate for free- Paardecamp Hackney. “They care more than dom of expression. To Zuckerman, purpose- the average news reader about wanting to fully motivating readers to act on the issues see something happen and maybe actually raised in stories is perfectly respectable— doing something themselves.” THE ONLY BIAS IN indeed, necessary. As confi dence in the main- The newspaper’s weekly edition ed- stream media ebbs, why shouldn’t top-notch itor, Clayton Collins, thinks of the Take SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM journalists tell audiences how they might Action section as living up to the goals become involved in an issue that energizes of Christian Science founder Mary Baker SHOULD BE TOWARD them. “What Bornstein is actually doing is Eddy, who called on the newspaper “to

essentially saying, ‘Let’s fi nd the problem injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” DATA-DRIVEN EVIDENCE PRESS ASSOCIATED

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nr_spring_2015.indd 16 6/15/15 5:39 PM Solutions-oriented news outlets have covered the Afghan Institute of Learning’s success in educating females across Afghanistan

reporter for The New York Times and public coined the term “constructive journalism” ented. There is a huge lust for positive, uplift- radio’s “This American Life.” to describe their version of reporting along ing, inspirational content.” Upworthy’s critics consider it a news the lines of O’Leary, Bornstein, and others. Balancing inspiration and gumshoe re- aggregator that purveys clickbait and lulls Recently Gyldensted worked with De porting was a challenge the journalists at readers into thinking they’re changing the Correspondent, a Dutch online news start- The Seattle Times’ Education Lab worked world by posting an article on Reddit. But up that launched in 2013. The website has hard to achieve. Rowe knew she needed O’Leary thinks that complaint ignores the a “progress” reporter, Rutger Bregman, who emotional moments like the 18-year-old’s website’s success in drawing large audienc- writes constructive journalism on issues in suspension meeting to demonstrate the es. People absorb negativity by themselves, the Netherlands and around the world. One stakes of school discipline policies. She also O’Leary argues, while uplifting news ex- of his stories, “Why we should give free ended the piece with a moving quote from cites people and draws them together into money to everyone,” cites experiments in one teacher, the son of two New York State a community, especially on social media giving large sums of money to the home- correctional workers, who appears convert- platforms. “The real diff erence at Upworthy less in London, the poor in Uganda and ed to restorative justice: “‘It’s a way,” he is that we are interested in stories that move elsewhere with no strings attached. Rather said, “to turn the most negative thing into people, stir their hearts, stir a strong emo- than squandering the money, as many might possibly the most positive thing you’ve ever tional drive,” she says. “Those are stories expect, the majority of recipients used the done in school.” that traditional news organizations shy away funds to improve their lives and lessen their She and the Education Lab labored, from often. At Upworthy we say it’s ok to dependence on public assistance. however, to report straightforwardly on have feelings about this.” De Correspondent received $1.7 million in restorative justice and other policies. They Positive emotional responses that build launch funding from nearly 19,000 people via included the voices of critics who didn’t inclusive communities, including news audi- crowdsourcing. Its website now claims it has believe the softer disciplinary procedures ences, is at the heart of the work of Cathrine 34,000 subscribers who pay about $65 a year. really improved student behavior. They Gyldensted, a former Danish Broadcasting To Gyldensted, stories like Bregman’s leave spent time reporting on how restorative Corporation correspondent who founded a readers with a sense of hope about tackling justice fared in other cities. They pulled no media consultancy after receiving a gradu- problems that many readers refuse to accept punches in their reporting but still man- ate degree in positive psychology from the as insoluble: “Journalism is detective work. aged to pull the heartstrings of readers. University of Pennsylvania. Gyldensted We need to understand who did what, where, “Readers are fairly sophisticated, and they conducts seminars for journalists in the how to identify who is responsible. I get that. know when they are being force-fed some- U.S. and Europe seeking to break out of I think we should still do that. But I think we thing,” says Rowe. “They believe from nu- the doom-and-gloom reporting that turns should ask what are the consequences if we ance. The idea is not to change minds; it’s to off audiences. Gyldensted and colleagues are not facilitating a debate that is future ori- show possibilities.” 

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NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE Confronting racism as an African- American reporter in the age of Obama BY ISSAC BAILEY

PORTRAIT BY GARY KNIGHT

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won’t be sad when another white alone kill or imprison, Osama bin Laden, and that had family moves into the White House. about 50 million people without health insurance. If Hillary Clinton becomes the next presi- A country where inequality had been on the rise for de- dent, after a few years, there might be plenty cades. On most of those measures, not all, he’s helped of women looking forward to the day a man steer us to a better place. History will likely look fondly retakes the reins of the world’s most powerful upon him. nation. The image of Obama as an involved, doting father I didn’t know I’d feel this way more than and faithful spouse during an age in which black men six years ago when I drove to a former plan- are often stereotyped as deadbeat, undisciplined sexual tation in Georgetown, South Carolina—the beings; his overcoming the struggles associated with the town where fi rst lady Michelle Obama’s family instability of a single-parent home, and forgoing a lucra- tree has roots—on the night Barack Obama had done tive career in corporate law to serve poor people on the what had been considered improbable, if not impossi- streets of Chicago only enhance what he represents. By Ible. I wanted to share the historic news with the ghosts objective standards, the country did well when it made of slaves who had toiled and endured long enough to him the fi rst president since Eisenhower to twice re- make that night possible. ceive at least 51 percent of the popular vote. This isn’t about Obama’s performance as presi- Despite that, I’m longing for a change because I’m dent. He took over a country involved in two ground just … tired. wars and beleaguered by the worst downturn since I’m tired of having to explain again and again—and

the Great Depression. A country that couldn’t fi nd, let again—that I’m capable of complex, rational thought CHRISTOPHER MORRIS/VII

20 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 20 6/15/15 5:39 PM Bailey voted for concerning policy and politics in the age of Obama. I’m handwritten letters marked KKK, most unnamed, many Bush over Gore in tired in a way I wasn’t before November 2008. with crude threats about knowing where I live and shot- 2000 but, after the The shift in environment from pre- to post-Obama guns with my name on them. WMD debacle, wasn’t subtle. The messages I began receiving from read- In the days before Obama’s anticipated 2008 win, chose a third-party candidate in 2004 ers went almost overnight from respectfully, if bitingly, white friends and fellow church members accidental- confrontational, the kind any journalist, particularly ly copied me on a number of forwarded chain e-mails a columnist, should expect, to overtly racist and de- they would have immediately deleted in prior years be- meaning. The shift was taking place as many members cause they were so tasteless and racially tinged. Obama’s of the media were talking about a nebulous post-ra- emergence seemingly gave them freedom to dip into a cial world no one could clearly defi ne because Barack well of racial ugliness they’d refused to partake of before Obama was about to become the nation’s fi rst black him. One of the messages depicted an imaginary Obama president. The post-racial talk didn’t make room for victory party, complete with a passed out homeless black another reality or the reason why Obama called a press man lying next to a dumpster, an overturned bucket of conference to prove he was fully American. fried chicken, and scattered pieces of watermelon. I had received messages from the dark side of race Those who once supported Obama but have been relations before 2008, including threats for which the disappointed began to question my integrity and pro- police had to get involved, as the fi rst black dude to hold fessionalism in ways subtle and not, sometimes open- my position in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, at the only ly wondering if a form of race loyalty had blinded me. daily newspaper in an area that is primarily white and Critics who once challenged me to better explain my conservative. But those came from a clear fringe: some positions, and respect theirs, in healthy, if passionate,

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back-and-forths, stopped dissecting my arguments and ter how many times those white writers agreed with largely refused to take them seriously, capable of view- the white guy in the White House, no matter how many ing me only through an Obama-tinged lens. times they patiently tried to explain the fellow white They would take me seriously if I joined others in dude’s position, or impatiently tried to dispel myths slamming or disagreeing with Obama, the fouler the lan- about the man with whom they shared a skin tone, in an guage I could muster to criticize him the better. Being eff ort to create space for honest debate that could get the black dude who took the black dude in the White us beyond talking points and exaggerated fears. They House to task, no matter the substance or merits of weren’t driven by a purposeful racism, but rather a pas- a position, was the quickest way to confi rm I wasn’t race sive ignorance, a refusal to grapple with any uncomfort- blind. It is as though many believed that sometime in ableness that challenged their deeply held views. November 2008 I had undergone a lobotomy. They were Political scholars have noted that there’s been either incapable or unwilling to consider that the dif- a marked shift in ideology toward hyper-partisanship ference between pre- and post-Obama could lie within that has intensifi ed in recent years. They’ve also con- their own brains, and hearts, that a new racial reality had ducted research showing that in this new reality, politi- fl ushed to the surface unintentional racial stereotypes cal bias sometimes outpaces the ethnic and racial kind, they had allowed to fl ow through their minds undis- though this may be in part due to the greater social turbed for years. acceptability of political bias. Unknowingly, they had reduced me to just another There’s little doubt that’s true. But it doesn’t explain black guy agreeing with the black guy in a White House it all. Race is a still an under-explored factor in the shift. Before Obama, Bailey had only voted that up to that point had been reserved for white men My politics and perspective didn’t change because Obama for white candidates, in ways they had never reduced white writers to being was elected. Even if they had, that would still have not most of them race-inspired cheerleaders of what had been the coun- explained why the number of times I’ve been called nig- conservative men, try’s uninterrupted parade of white presidents, no mat- ger—directly and indirectly—had increased exponentially. for high offi ce

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nr_spring_2015.indd 22 6/22/15 10:58 AM Obama was the fi rst black person for high offi ce for that he was a fellow child of God, that pushing conspir- whom I had ever voted. I don’t know if I would have acy theories about his role in the 9/11 attacks and the voted for Jesse Jackson in the ’80s, the fi rst black man lead-up to the Iraq war would only push us further away to make real noise in a presidential campaign by win- from the kinds of discussions and debates that were ning multiple primaries, had I been old enough. But a must if we were going to be able to honestly determine I did not even consider voting for Democrat Al Sharpton which policies made sense, which ones didn’t, which when he was challenging the likes of John Kerry and ones had to be improved upon. John Edwards, or Republican Alan Keyes or a handful I wrote about race in the same terms, highlighting of other black candidates whose names I’ve forgotten. how Bush programs were doing wonders for those suf- Since Obama, I had a chance to vote for Tim Scott, fering from an AIDS and HIV epidemic in parts of Africa, who became the fi rst black man elected to the Senate how his cabinet was one of the most diverse in history from a Deep South state since Reconstruction, but and included the nation’s fi rst black secretary of state, chose not to. His ideology too closely resembled that and how he appointed the fi rst black woman to be na- of ultra-conservative Jim DeMint, a white man who tional security adviser. During those years, I defended gave up his Senate seat and supported South Carolina Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice against charges of Governor Nikki R. Haley’s appointment of Scott. Uncle Tomism, which were coming from civil rights I considered Herman Cain’s “9-9-9” campaign, a fl ash- icons such as Harry Belafonte. I took Kanye West to task in-the-pan 2012 presidential run that briefl y saw the when he said Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” former pizza chain executive atop of early polls before I defended the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus a predictable fl ameout, more of a stunt than worthy of and Bill O’Reilly against claims of racism and refused to serious consideration. jump on the bandwagon that became the Duke lacrosse rape case, in which three white players were accused of raping a black woman. The incident was held up by Duke efore obama i had only voted professors and others as an instance that highlighted for white candidates—for governor, racism and sexism on campus, before the state attorney the U.S. Senate, and the presidency— general declared the young men innocent and said they B almost all of whom were men. Not only had been falsely accused by an overzealous prosecutor. that, most of those for whom I pulled I would repeatedly do the same for Tea Party members the lever were conservative. during the Obama era, reminding people not to label an Republican George W. Bush, not Al Gore, got my entire movement by its worst, fringe elements, which vote in 2000. In 2004, a third-party candidate (I forget were made up of people at Tea Party rallies with home- which one, maybe Ralph Nader) received my protest made signs depicting Obama as a bone-through-the- vote against a second Bush term after the Iraq-WMD nose African witch doctor. And I began writing about debacle. I didn’t give Kerry a second thought. how the health care system had been leaving too many What do most of the people for whom I voted before people behind—black, white, Latino. Obama for the most powerful seats have in common? As a lifelong battle with a severe stutter had taught Not gender, not political ideology, but race. me to do, I looked for silver linings in dark political, Each of them is white. racial, and economic clouds. That’s the way I thought, Despite that, in 2008 I, and millions of black voters, and wrote, long before Obama took his fi rst oath, but were accused of being incapable of seeing beyond race. after he took offi ce, it became evidence of my supposed Never mind that black voters had spent their entire race loyalty. adult lives crossing racial lines to vote, while the white Before Obama, those things generated “thank yous” people accusing black voters of a perverse racial loyalty and “you’re a credit to your race” and “more black peo- to Obama had never found reason to vote for anyone ple should listen to you” from countless white readers. who wasn’t white like them. I was a man of reason, deep thought, and fairness, in It reminded me of my days at Davidson College, an their minds, as I used my little perch to make the way elite, mostly white liberal arts school in North Carolina. for reasonable debate about the white dude in the White After Obama was Many white students were quick to note the all-black House and his policies. Since Obama, adhering to that tables in Vail Commons but never noticed the over- philosophy brought me cries of “you’ve changed” and elected president abundance of all-white ones, never realizing those “race card” and “blacks need to get off the plantation” in 2008, the black students chose to challenge themselves by de- and “you aren’t doing your people any good.” ciding to attend Davidson, knowing they’d be in the mi- Some of it, no doubt, had to do with naked politics. messages I nority for four years, while it likely crossed the minds of Rank hypocrisy in politics is a feature, not a bug. But received from not one white Davidson student to consider challeng- that’s not the full story. None of that explains why con- ing themselves in a similar fashion at a predominantly servatives felt comfortable passing around a depiction readers almost black institution. of the White House lawn as a watermelon patch, a joke overnight became As a journalist, pre-Obama, I spent years recounting that compared Obama’s father to a dog, and a food overtly racist my voting history and explaining to Bush critics that stamp with pictures of ribs and fried chicken. It doesn’t they could disagree without hating him, could dissect explain why so many people who knew me long before

DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX WINTER/THE NEW YORK DAMON and demeaning his policies without subterfuge, needed to remember Obama popped onto the scene unconsciously—and

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sometimes purposefully—reduced me to the amount was weak, I was quick to say. His views on gay marriage of melanin in my skin. are still wrong because he claims it is a state issue, I’ve It doesn’t explain why so many are committed to told everyone who would listen. the belief that the only reason a black person would I kept the Obama-failure list for a long time, until have chosen Obama was because of race. His work in I realized I never pieced together such a list when Bush Illinois to battle racial inequities within the criminal was in offi ce. I didn’t count the ways local white pol- justice system, which appealed to me most because of iticians, who dominate Myrtle Beach area politics the my family’s experiences with prison, didn’t matter. His way they have on the national level, had disappointed work with poor people in the streets of Chicago; his me. Only for Obama did I feel the need to be able to having been editor of Harvard Law Review; his ability document, at a moment’s notice, how I disagreed with in the U.S. Senate to help usher through ethics reform; him to prove I was above race. I know now my doing that his ideas about an ailing economy or being right about did the opposite. I treated Obama diff erently because the Iraq invasion; his plans for health reform; his per- I was trying to prove I wasn’t treating him diff erently. formance in the foreign policy debate against a grizzled It aff ected me in ways I’m only now willing to admit. war hero; the fact that a once-in-a-generation recession hit during a Republican presidency; his ability to make cynical crowds stand at attention—supposedly none of hat’s why i’m tired, because that mattered to black voters, only race. even as I battled that demon, I refused That’s why I’m tired. I’ve spent the past six and to play along with the over-hyping of a half years studying and researching and interviewing T false conspiracies such as those that and listening more than I did the previous decade. For surrounded the Ebola outbreak, the so many people, none of that matters if it leads me to Benghazi tragedy, and the IRS review the conclusion that the black dude in the White House of conservative groups. I kept pointing out the dupl- has done something well. And it hasn’t just been coming icity of the Republican Party leadership, which tried from white conservatives. to thwart Obama at every turn while claiming it was Black liberals such as intellectual Cornel West seem the president’s fault bipartisanship hadn’t taken hold to have concluded that black journalists are cowed or as he promised. I loathe the Republicans’ state-level simply want to cozy up to the White House if we don’t attempts to roll back voting rights and have repeatedly adhere to their hard-left views. I never expected Obama said so. to be as leftist as West did and didn’t want him to be. And I have not been shy about my support for health I didn’t spend years voting for conservatives and liberals reform, which, while fl awed, is a major improvement. because I believe one ideology trumps the other. It has contributed to the slowest rate of health care For a long time, I kept a running list of all the ways infl ation in half a century; brought health insurance to I disagreed with Obama, ready to pull it out and re-post 16 million Americans so far; cost overall less than what on Facebook or elsewhere to show I was more than just had been forecast; has helped millions of seniors aff ord about race. I found myself repeatedly boasting about prescription drugs; and extended the life of Medicare by how Obama failed in his eff orts to rescue the everyday at least a dozen years. homeowner. His administration quickly bailed out the I don’t support the ACA because of Obama. I support banks, a necessary evil, I said, but missed a chance to the ACA because it is helping people in need and will help the middle class with a mass refi nancing and mort- put a dent in inequality by taxing those most able to gage modifi cation plan. benefi t the most needy. I support the ACA more than I began writing about the ethical problems with I support Obama. Obama’s overuse of drones, though I think they are I refused to vote for Bush for a second term because eff ective anti-terror tools and likely caused less collat- of the debacle that was the Iraq war and the false WMD eral damage than a ground war would. As I supported claims. In 2010, I declared Obama would not get my the Patient Protection and Aff ordable Care Act (ACA), vote in 2012 if he didn’t fi nd a way to push through I reminded readers about its fl aws. health reform. That support stems in part from my I documented the ways the economy was emerging knowledge that the GOP has refused to do anything to For a long time, from the worst downturn since the Great Depression truly address the country’s out-of-control health care but didn’t shy away from pointing out the lack of signifi - problems and has opposed major reform eff orts by Bill I kept a running cant wage growth. I passed along scathing critiques from Clinton and Obama. list of all the a variety of writers about Obama’s handling of privacy Only one party was willing to do something signifi - and press freedoms. cant about one of the most vexing problems facing this ways I disagreed I expressed disgust that Obama would take occasions country—rising health care costs are among the nation’s with Obama, such as Father’s Day to excoriate absent black fathers. top fi scal threats—and it was being led by the nation’s (While I was doing that, I was receiving messages from fi rst black president, not the party I voted for several ready to pull it white conservative readers lamenting that Obama never times before 2008. out to show I was talked about black personal responsibility.) For a lot of people, little of that matters, no matter more than just Obama was wrong on gay marriage, and his stiff -arm- how many times I spell it out. I’m black and Obama is

ing of the Muslim community during the 2008 campaign black and that’s all they need to know. about race PETE SOUZA/OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO

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nr_spring_2015.indd 24 6/15/15 5:39 PM Bailey supports the That’s why I’m tired. I’ve spent the Obama era trying The irony is that during 2008, I understood the Aff ordable Care to do my job the way I know I should, the way I had be- political game well enough to know that Obama’s ap- Act more than he fore him, fearlessly assessing the news and policy, while proval rating would begin to fall once the hard task of supports Obama, also trying to beat back the burden that is race. governing began. That didn’t surprise me. Being reduced shown here with his family at the Martin It hasn’t been easy. Several times, I wanted to throw to the color of my skin by even people who knew me Luther King, Jr. up my hands. I wanted to be like others who had dis- well, no matter how hard I tried to be fair and compre- Memorial tilled Obama down into his simplest parts. I wanted to hensive in my thinking and writing, did. experience the freedom a large number of columnists Though I was stubborn enough to (mostly) do my job and pundits had, not caring about nuance or fairness or the way I believed I ought to, that hurt. It wore me down. quoting in context politicians with whom they disagree I’m overjoyed that I lived through the time during instead of as though they were caricatures, not complex which the country—founded upon the contrasting be- human beings. liefs that all men are created equal and that black people Part of it stems from the parallels I noticed between are inferior—elected its fi rst black president. If another Obama’s life and mine, which made the struggle to sup- black candidate emerges in 2016 or beyond as the one port Obama policies personal in a way they never were I should choose among mostly white candidates, I’ll cast during the Bush years. my ballot for him or her and professionally will endeav- Obama was once considered too black, then not black or to treat that presidency the way I know I should. I’m enough, as have I. A man snubbed him during the 2008 stubborn that way. campaign, refusing to shake his hand, the way a white I’m tired, though. In 2008, I didn’t know a long man I was interviewing for a story about the economy hoped-for historic breakthrough could make me feel wouldn’t shake mine. Obama grew up disadvantaged but this way. eventually made his way into elite institutions of higher I’m tired, but not nearly as tired as those who were education, like I did. Some of his accomplishments were beaten on a bridge in Selma 50 years ago, or those killed demeaned by those saying they only occurred because a century before in the nation’s bloodiest war, or my par- of race in the same way some of mine have been dis- ents and aunts and uncles, who toiled and overcame ob- counted, no matter how hard I worked to achieve them, stacles and slights that make the ones I’ve experienced no matter how many obstacles I had to overcome. He’s these past six and a half years seem like child’s play. been called “uppity” and “nigger” and other disparaging So, yes, I’m tired. But because of what happened in terms, like I have. November 2008, my kids won’t be nearly as tired as I am. 

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Community members protected Cathy and Jerome Jenkins’s restaurant in Ferguson, Missouri from looters in 2014

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZUN LEE

nr_spring_2015.indd 26 6/15/15 5:39 PM Can a black beat help change the portrayal of African-Americans? BY SUSAN SMITH RICHARDSON MAKING BLACK LIVES MATTER after unarmed black teenager michael brown was shot and killed by a white police offi cer last summer in Ferguson, Missouri, a photo of Brown appearing to throw gang signs began circulating online. In response, hundreds of black people began tweeting using the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown—some posting dual images of themselves, one playing on stereotypes, the other capturing more positive depictions—underscoring the message: Which photo would the media use if I were gunned down? The social media campaign turned a critique of the mainstream media’s portrayal of African- Americans into a viral lesson about racial stereotypes. As the editor and publisher of a news organization that focuses on race, I’m painfully aware that black life is too often cast in one dimension, as the photos tweeted under the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown hashtag illustrated. Black people are soldiers and fathers, doctors and lawyers, police offi cers and teachers, and even a president and fi rst lady. I’m stating the obvious, but the truth isn’t obvious in the news. Whether by omission or commission, news coverage frequently reinforces stereotypes. A beat that covers African-Americans could help capture the breadth of black life while also shining a steady light on the persistent challenges facing black people at a time when race in America is more complex than ever before. nieman reports spring 2015 27

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In Pittsburgh between March 1 and April 30, 2011, than Dash, is more ambivalent. A beat “could be an an- 73 percent of broadcast stories featuring black men were tidote” to the limited coverage of race, he says. “What it % about sports or crime, according to the Pew Research does is pour time, resources, energy, and voices into the Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which re- reporting. If somebody is really dedicating resources, we viewed nearly 5,000 print and broadcast stories. Other can change the conversation. Now, we get the pathology 37 studies about news coverage of black men echo the stories, and we don’t get as many success stories and Percentage of fi ndings. Research shows that stories in which African- research stories.” Americans are consistently associated with poverty and But, Whitaker, who worked for major metropolitan minorities in U.S. crime increase racial animosity toward them, reinforc- dailies and Ebony magazine before joining academia, population in 2013 ing the color lines in our society. cautions, it could also become an excuse for news orga- Every journalist should share responsibility for nizations to “ghettoize” coverage. coverage of race. That’s part of journalistic excellence, A beat seems like a “great idea in theory,” says Shani the goal of all news outlets. But we also need reporters O. Hilton, executive editor for news at BuzzFeed. Race focused exclusively on the issue. If we are honest with isn’t making its way into mainstream coverage and into ourselves, we know that race won’t get covered regularly wider stories about issues such as poverty, she argues, if newsroom leaders don’t demand it, don’t support it, but the solution is many beats, not one. “What’s the and don’t reward it. And truth is, most of them don’t. black story?,” she asks. “There are several. There’s an Changing the portrayal of African-Americans in the economic story, an education story. There’s a youth and media can’t be accomplished through occasional big young women and young men story.” projects about race; it requires a sophisticated and sus- For Austin Long-Scott, a former national reporter for tained eff ort over time. That’s what a beat can do. The Washington Post, racial politics have evolved con- More than 50 years after some mainstream news siderably since the 1960s, making it now more import- organizations began hiring black reporters, a beat that ant to cover power, how it works, who has it, and who focuses on black people may appear to be the equiva- doesn’t. Rather than a beat, he thinks journalists should lent of a “Colored Only” sign. It’s a return to the “Negro cover “levers of power,” which include race and class. pages,” the section set aside in newspapers for coverage “Because of changes begun by the civil rights movement of black people into the 20th century, says Leon Dash, and continued by the changing attitudes of younger a founding member of the National Association of Black people, race [isn’t] as simple as it used to be,” he says. Journalists who is now a professor at the University of “What’s the commonality between upper class blacks Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “We should fi ght to be and black folks being corralled by the prison system?” included in the news pages and on the websites of any To me, the complexity of black identity today—the di- credible journalism enterprise,” he argues. versity within the community, as Long-Scott and Hilton Jerell Willis and Charles Whitaker, a professor at Northwestern describe—is the selling point for a beat. Whitaker ar- his son Fidel cross the University’s journalism school and a generation younger gues that mainstream news organizations can learn a lot Brooklyn Bridge

nr_spring_2015.indd 28 6/15/15 5:39 PM From the photographer from the black press, which covers African-Americans in % a “holistic” way. The complexities of our communities QUIET ACTS OF RESISTANCE play out in those publications. For example, a study by my objective as a visual storyteller the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pub- is to connect with individuals and families 22 lished in 2013 indicated that black fathers were as in- on an intimate level, especially if this leads Percentage of volved with their children as other fathers. Yet I saw to long-term trusted relationships. When little coverage of this story, which counters prevailing collaborators fi nd a level of vulnerability that minorities in local myths about absent black fathers. allows them to reveal unseen aspects about TV news in 2013 A diverse staff means newsrooms have people with themselves, a certain power and authenticity very diff erent lived experience, people who can bring manifests in the small, ephemeral moments. perspectives that are missing to stories. Those world- I capture these moments to challenge views play out along racial and other lines, including pervasive tropes regarding the depiction of % class, religion, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. African-Americans, whether it is the I believe that’s invaluable. Direct experience with characterization of black males as violent housing discrimination or police harassment can help criminals or as deadbeat dads, or the 13 deepen reporting, revealing new angles, and not just for description of black families and communities Percentage of stories about race. For example, the drop in public sec- solely as dysfunctional and despondent. tor jobs over the past several years has disproportion- Workaday moments of ordinary black minorities in local ately aff ected African-Americans, who historically have life are often not considered newsworthy. radio news in 2013 relied on government jobs to enter the middle class. But it is these moments that represent quiet Diversity in newsrooms is about the quality of jour- acts of resistance, reclaiming narrative nalism. It’s from that point of view that we should without the need for big gestures or artifi cial be concerned about the most recent data from the iconography. My aim is to show African- % American Society of News Editors (ASNE). The per- Americans as empowered agents in their centage of minorities in newspaper newsrooms is virtu- own lives, whose humanity doesn’t need ally unchanged over the past decade. People of color are explanation or defense. — zun lee 13 13 percent of the 36,700 newspaper journalists, based on 2013 fi gures, the most recent available from ASNE and Percentage released in 2014. In 2013, the percentage of minorities in he was a star in the newsroom, and selecting him to of minority local TV news remains steady at 22 percent, where it was cover the beat immediately elevated its profi le. White journalists in in 2003 according to a survey by the Radio Television reporters understood that the beat was important, and Digital News Association. Minorities were about because senior editors valued the reporter, coverage of newspapers 13 percent of the local radio workforce in 2013, a slight race received more attention. in 2013 increase from 2003. In 2013, minorities comprised about My job, as I saw it, was to work with him to elevate 37 percent of the United States population, according to the quality of coverage, to make sure we got the histo- U.S. Census Bureau data. ry and context right. I often felt confl icted that it took a white reporter who had little experience covering race to give the beat the attention it deserved. ’m not arguing that only black I learned two important lessons from that experi- people can and should write stories ence. As with any beat, you have to give the reporter about black people, or that they are support and time to learn his coverage area, and race can I uniquely qualified by virtue of life be a coveted beat when newsroom leaders value it and experience to write about race. Like treat it as they would other specialty beats. any specialty beat, a reporter has to For Whitaker, the benefi ts of creating a beat may out- cultivate sources, identify experts, and learn the sem- weigh the drawbacks “if we’re going to do it right and inal literature. give it time and attention and the spatial real estate as Coverage involving race may have opened the door well.” So what does a black beat look like? for a generation of African-American journalists, but Looking at data is one place to start. At The Chicago many black journalists then—and now—had ambitions Reporter, where I am editor and publisher, we use data beyond reporting about race. And many young journal- to drive our investigations. There’s a treasure trove ists of color today want to cover many topics, of which of information available through public agencies. The race may or may not be one. To consign them to a race African American Policy Forum is one organization beat would just be another form of stereotyping. doing innovative work at the intersection of race and White reporters can and should cover race. As the gender. The Forum recently released “Black Girls editor for a minority aff airs beat at The Sacramento Bee Matter,” in conjunction with Columbia Law School. The in the early 1990s, I worked with a white male reporter report drew on interviews and government data to show who had had little experience writing about race. But how school disciplinary policies aff ect black girls.

SOURCES: UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU; RADIO TELEVISION DIGITAL NEWS ASSOCIATION/HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY; AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWS EDITORS 2014 NEWSROOM CENSUS FIGURES FROM 2013

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stop segregating stories Why race, culture, and poverty need to be covered like the weather, sports, and the stock market by eric deggans

it’s tough to turn on But in my experience Earlier this year, a That’s why it’s diffi cult a TV news report, pick up this approach also diff erent reader looked at to understand The New a newspaper or surf across segregates the topic of an online roster of stories York Times’s decision in a news website these days race to news—focused on I had covered over two early 2015 to move its without seeing a story confl ict and controversy— weeks, noting that most reporter on the national at least partially aff ected that polarizes audiences. of the pieces had involved race beat, Tanzina Vega, by race. Audiences are conditioned race. When I e-mailed that to a job covering courts A report from the U.S. to see race as a hot-button reader, I wondered why in the Bronx with no Department of Justice topic only worthy of the he objected to substantial announced plans to name suggesting police in most blockbuster stories, coverage of race in the fi rst a successor. Ferguson, Missouri fi lled making it tougher for place. I also wondered why In today’s times of doing government coff ers by journalists to tell subtler, he didn’t look back four more in the media with targeting black people for more complex tales. The more weeks and see that I much less, it’s tough for tickets and fi nes. Four expectation: Stories on race hadn’t mentioned the topic beat reporters to fully cover police offi cers leaving the will always center on major much at all in that time. their subjects, let alone force in Fort Lauderdale, confl ict, which can aff ect It seems news consumers for a newspaper to ensure Florida—a city with a black how audiences react to have been so conditioned full and fair coverage police chief—after they work where race isn’t even to see race as a combustible of a subject when no one is created a racially charged the primary focus, but a fl ashpoint in coverage, it directly responsible for video and traded racist secondary or tertiary topic. is tough for some to come it. Certainly, a news outlet texts. A TV personality with This is something I across even a brief mention can cover race fully and Spanish-language Univision experienced fi rsthand when without assuming the entire broadly across the fi red after saying fi rst I wrote for NPR.org about story is focused on the newsroom while also lady Michelle Obama Jimmy Fallon taking over subject. And for others, race assigning a person to ensure resembled a cast member NBC’s storied late-night is a specialty topic that only regular, quality reporting. from the fi lm “Planet of the program “The Tonight deserves focus occasionally (Is it a cheap shot to Apes.” And the aftermath Show” in 2014. Deep in the in the eff orts of a reporter note that the paper has a of questionable police piece I noted how he was covering a general interest wine critic, but no national conduct in the deaths of living the fantasy life of beat like television, as I do. reporter on race?) black people like Eric a millennial white guy, his In an increasingly My own employer, NPR, Garner of New York and coolness validated in part multicultural society, drew headlines when it Tamir Rice of Cleveland. by hip people of color race and culture deserve a canceled a radio show that These are a smattering of like Will Smith and backing diff erent level of coverage regularly discussed race news stories from the past band The Roots. Right than most mainstream and cultural diversity, “Tell year, featuring a roster of away, a reader e-mailed to journalists now provide. Me More,” also eliminating hot-button topics worthy take exception, wondering When you watch a typical 28 positions across the of a call-in radio show. And why I’m always writing TV news broadcast, there company. But host Michel this, in a way, is exactly the about race, even though are regular segments on Martin and a few of the problem. 80 percent of the story had the weather, sports, or the show’s staff ers were moved In my view, too often, nothing to do with the topic. stock market, regardless to the identity and culture coverage of racial issues of the news at hand. department, the home at mainstream news Audiences have accepted of Code Switch, which organizations is treated such coverage as a steady covers race, culture, and episodically, focused largely feature of any news diversity subjects. on exploding controversies product. Race, culture, and This should be an and breaking news stories. poverty deserve the same easy call for journalism Someone is dead or is kind of regular coverage as organizations. If you getting sued or has been the barometric pressure want to see more nuanced arrested or has done and the Dow Jones. If the discussion of race in something controversial, weather and stock market America, you have to and media outlets are ready tell us about the health provide more nuanced and to track the fallout in Eric Deggans is NPR’s television of our environment and consistent coverage fi rst. stories almost guaranteed critic and author of “Race Baiter: economy, then race, culture, Which only leaves one to rank at the top of their How the Media Wields Dangerous and poverty tell us about question: Why isn’t more of websites’ most-read list. Words to Divide a Nation” the health of our society. this happening now?

30 niemannieman repreportsorts springspring 20201515

nr_spring_2015.indd 30 6/22/15 10:58 AM Billy Garcia enjoys Combining data analysis with spending time in an ‘edifi ce worship.’ You only get narrative and story by an evening walk in neighborhoods enriches reporting about race. Twitter, being among the people you are writing about, fi nding the the Bronx with his the vibrant space that brought us viral hashtags like time and space to hear the stories. My theater friends call children Esmeralda #BlackLivesMatter, is a source of story ideas. So are it ‘original voice,’ letting people tell their own stories.” and Jeremy local newspapers and the African-American press. There are already some commendable reporting And Whitaker believes solutions-based journalism eff orts around race. We need more of them. The Race matters. “It’s important to look at how you can advance Card Project on NPR engages everyday Americans in who is working at solutions and what is being done,” he conversations about race and racism through mining says. “That’s the way I would like to see the beat done, and sharing their personal experiences. At The New in addition to uncovering injustices.” York Times, Tanzina Vega produced an impressive list of Many major universities have African-American stud- stories that tapped into the zeitgeist around race—from ies professors who research local and national issues, the signifi cance of Black Twitter to the diff erences be- and there are programs that are pioneering solutions to tween today’s activists and their counterparts in the civil issues. A study by the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab rights era. When she was reassigned in January, Times found that a year in the Becoming a Man program im- editors said race was too big for one beat, but have yet proved attendance and grades and reduced violent-crime to publicly announce a plan. arrests by 44 percent. The program inspired President Investigations like Nikole Hannah-Jones’s ProPublica Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which tries to story about school resegregation in the South and The steer young men of color toward success. Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’s essay about reparations feed the public appetite for stories about race while simultaneously crafting smart, thoughtful, and challeng- aldo e. johnson, jr., a professor ing analyses about the legacy of structural racism today. at the School of Social Service Hannah-Jones explored how schools in Tuscaloosa, Administration at the University of Alabama, once under federal desegregation orders, have W Chicago, says the beat should place the re-segregated with the blessing of the school district. issues black people face in the context Coates tracks the long arm of racism that extended from of institutional practices and struc- the Jim Crow South to the perceived haven of Chicago. tural inequality. “In the media, there is a huge focus on These stories prompted conversations and are changing individual behavior,” says Johnson, who has conducted the narrative around black people and an understanding extensive research on black boys and men. “I see more of their history in this country. of a nuanced discussion about structure than we’ve Making coverage of African-Americans a high-pro- had before, but it’s not defi ned as institutional racism. fi le position sends a message from managers to their Instead, we talk about disinvestment in communities. newsrooms about what is valued and what will be But we don’t say when the disinvestment occurred and rewarded. And outside of our newsrooms, the deci- who divested. We don’t name institutions.” sion sends a message that is equally as powerful as Whitaker says the beat has to capture the voices of the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. That is this: Black lives matter community: “I had an instructor who said journalists have in news coverage. 

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nr_spring_2015.indd 31 6/22/15 10:59 AM RACE AND REPORTING

ing on the quantity of diverse sources. The newsroom developed a Source of the Week Tumblr as an evolv- ing database of racially and ethnically diverse experts. Incorporating Woods also advised reporters and editors to contact diverse sources SOUNDS familiar expert sources and explicitly ask them to rec- ommend colleagues and contacts who could bring more into reporting people of color to NPR’s reporting. “It isn’t just about requires going out and trying to fi nd brown people or women or people from the Midwest,” Woods says. “It’s about journalists to RIGHT changing the way you do things so that those folks nat- think differently urally make their way into your content as they should.” How public radio is putting more Put more of America into your stories Identify areas in which there already is a diverse pool of of America into sources. And, in areas where diverse “expert sources” its stories are scarce, consider whether a person who is managing the consequences of, say, economic policies—a coun- BY ADRIANA GALLARDO ty health worker rather than someone at Harvard’s AND BETSY O’DONOVAN School of Public Health—might have valuable exper- tise. “Education, writing, religion all track closer to the demographics of the country in our race and gender sourcing than do science, economics, politics,” accord- ing to Woods. “It doesn’t mean you stop covering the economy; it just means you put more of America into hen “tell me more,” npr’s talk the content, more of the concerns of the average person show about diversity, was canceled in into the content.” The result: a more accurate represen- 2014, NPR’s then-ombudsman Edward tation of race and knowledge in America. W Schumacher-Matos observed that Latinos (16 percent of the U.S. pop- Redefi ne “expertise” ulation) hold only 5 percent of news- Consider whether race informs your biases about “ex- room jobs at NPR and African-Americans (13 percent pertise,” and share the mic with people who don’t have of the U.S. population) are at 10 percent, down from traditional credentials. At NPR, Woods’s team found 12 percent in 2012. About 7 percent of NPR’s newsroom that 58 percent of NPR’s go-to sources were either is Asian-American, compared to 5 percent of Americans. politicians, government offi cials, journalists, or profes- Even if a signifi cant number of minorities work in sors—pools of people whose racial demographics don’t public radio, you wouldn’t know it—at least, not from refl ect the rest of the country. “If a signifi cant number their voices. “Public radio voice” is what some people of your sources are going to be journalists, you have consider accent-less and others know to be a distinct, already made a racial decision without making one,” specifi c accent: a white one. Woods says. “If a signifi cant number of your sources are If a whitewashed paradigm is getting in the way of going to be professors, PhDs in America, you’ve made eff orts to become more diverse—in terms of workforce a gendered and racial decision by that choice, before you and sound—what’s to be done? Quite a lot, in fact. ever choose the actual source. If you’re in Washington and you’re talking to a politician, you have made a ra- Start small cial and gendered choice and maybe even a geographic “NPR had felt for a long time that our sourcing was choice, by choosing the category of source.” leaving people out,” says Keith Woods, NPR’s vice pres- In 2012, Localore, a project of the Association of ident for diversity in news and operations. So the largest Independents in Radio [where the co-authors work], network in public radio launched a three-year content launched Curious City, an ongoing experiment incu- analysis project in 2013 to examine its diversity. In the bated at Chicago public radio station WBEZ. Curious fi rst year of sampling its fl agship programs, “Morning City has a simple premise: How early and often can you Edition” and “All Things Considered,” Woods’s team get people into the creation of news stories? Founder found that an overwhelming majority of sources were and producer Jennifer Brandel broke the creation of white males. So NPR began running short experiments news into four steps—pitching, assigning, reporting, within newsroom teams. and distribution—and turned each one over to what On the education team, a project manager reconfi rms was formerly “the audience.” All of Curious City’s the group’s goals and tactics for diversifying coverage, stories answer questions submitted by the public, and doing a weekly check-in about what people are learning it confi rms audience appetite by putting questions up as they address those goals, rather than explicitly focus- for a vote.

SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

32 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 32 6/22/15 11:01 AM St. Louis area The people who pose the questions are invited to Turn classrooms into newsrooms barber Christopher help report. The Curious newsroom posts about work In Washington, D.C., the public libraries run a four-part Williams with a in progress to make sure it has the story right, to invite digital audio storytelling workshop. The participants customer whose hair fresh information, and to help people understand the are overwhelmingly African-American, according to he has been cutting for 14 years reporting process. Its distribution strategy ranges from library associate and workshop leader Peter Timko, and broadcast to comic books to community actions, and they work on community and family stories that some- is always a mix of many media—including, once, info- times feel like an alternate history of the United States. graphics on rolls of toilet paper. Curious City subjects Timko’s approach is purposefully basic: a curriculum range across neighborhoods and economic boundaries. that produces an audio story with nothing but a smart- Here are the questions up for a vote last spring: In the phone, free audio editing software, and public domain Chicago area, do Arab Muslims attend the same mosques sound archives. as African-American Muslims? How Desi [South Asian] The Vocalo Storytelling Workshop, based out of is Devon Avenue these days? Black and Latino poverty Chicago’s WBEZ, teaches citizen journalists (usually seems to be concentrated in certain areas of Chicago. people with full-time, non-journalism jobs) to make What about poor white neighborhoods? radio about things that matter to them. The free work- shop is small, and applicants are asked how they will Ask daring questions give voice to underrepresented communities in the city. “Why are we allowed to be curious about everything The listeners-turned-producers regularly pull stories except race?” NPR reporter Shereen Marisol Meraji asked and sound from perspectives reporters don’t know or when she launched into “Audio Code Switching: Tackling can’t access, like Maria Gaspar’s “Cook County Jail: The Race on the Radio” at Third Coast, the largest internation- Visible and Invisible,” in which Gaspar reports on what al conference for audio producers, last November. Meraji it means to live in the shadow of one of the country’s is a member of NPR’s Code Switch team, which covers busiest jails. race, ethnicity, and culture; if Code Switch has a secret formula, it’s hiring talented journalists whose approach Taken together, initiatives like these result in radio with to very complicated questions is often, “Why is this like high-end production values and street-by-street insight, that?” The team is full of diverse journalists, but their ad- something closer to what President Lyndon B. Johnson vantage isn’t that they have a monolithic knowledge of mi- described when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act 2044 nority culture; it’s that they have excellent reporting skills in 1967: Airwaves “which belong to all the people” are Year by which and their job is to fact-check the prevailing racial narra- “for the enlightenment of all the people.” Organizations tive. They “run toward stereotypes, with respect,” Meraji that want to grab opportunities in public media have to minorities are says, to stories that explore questions like how the melody experiment along the lines set out in LBJ’s mission, with projected to from “Kung Fu Fighting” came to signal Asian-ness, or a particular emphasis on the “all”—voices that sound become a majority the Old English origins of the “ax” vs. “ask” debate. Code like, and tell the stories of, every American. And we’ll Switch stories ask about cultural signals that no one else know we’re done when inclusiveness neither requires, in the U.S. has bothered (or, sometimes, dared) to interrogate. nor feels like, innovation. 

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nr_spring_2015.indd 33 6/15/15 5:40 PM RACE AND REPORTING

WHY DIVERSITY WORKS

nr_spring_2015.indd 34 6/15/15 5:40 PM Carlos Richardson and his daughter Selah enjoy a quiet moment after dinner in Atlanta, Georgia

BY ALICIA W. STEWART With reporting by Eryn M. Carlson, Jan Gardner, Tara W. Merrigan, and Jonathan Seitz

the news industry has been talking about diversity for decades, but the talk, many say, often has not been followed by action. “The needles never really seem to move,” says Nikole Hannah- Jones, a reporter covering racial injustice for The New York Times Magazine. In 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders published what’s known as the Kerner Report, it concluded that America was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” PHOTOGRAPHY BY ZUN LEE nieman reports spring 2015 35

nr_spring_2015.indd 35 6/15/15 5:40 PM RACE AND REPORTING

The commission, tasked with determining the causes of Ha said in an e-mail, “We continue to cover issues relat- and fi nding solutions for the riots that had been scarring ed to race and ethnicity aggressively” and cited exam- the country for much of the decade, singled out the me- ples of recent stories, including a series that uncovered A diverse dia for their inadequate coverage of African-Americans. rampant racism and abuse of staff in nail salons. Vega newsroom staff “It would be a contribution of inestimable importance has since left the Times for CNN Politics. to race relations in the United States simply to treat or- Census projections indicate that minorities will can lead to a dinary news about Negroes as news of other groups is become a majority in the U.S. by 2044. While some richer variety now treated,” the report stated. progress has been made in covering communities of The Kerner Report also criticized newsrooms for color—NPR’s Code Switch project on race, ethnicity, of stories about the disproportionately low percentage of minorities and culture; the Associated Press’s race and ethnic- people of color employed in the industry. Today, with attention turned ity beat; the Chicago Tribune’s “Exploring Race,” an to race relations in cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, and online forum that ran from 2008 to 2010; The Root, Cleveland, the needle on inclusion in mainstream news- recently acquired by Univision; the now-defunct rooms seems stubbornly stuck in place. The number of NBCLatino, and Fox News Latino are just a few exam- journalists of color has slowly climbed since the Kerner ples—much still needs to be done. And journalists often Report’s release, peaking around 2008, but that hasn’t fi nd it diffi cult to have open, honest conversations about necessarily translated into more equitable coverage. race and ethnicity—even compared to other conten- In a 2014 study by the American Press Institute and tious newsroom issues, like gender imbalances—for fear the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Aff airs of damaging relationships with editors or colleagues. Research, only 25 percent of African-Americans and “I think that the problem is that racial issues still 33 percent of Hispanics said the news media accurately make more people uncomfortable than women’s is- portrayed their communities. sues,” says Anna Holmes, founder of feminist blog Jezebel and an editor at Fusion. “Also, the fact that there are fewer people of color in the media, for a variety of hat could have something to do reasons, than women might have something to do with with who’s making the coverage deci- that, which is why I think pushing for newsroom diversi- sions. The 2014 Newsroom Census ty is important. … I do see a lot more discussion of race, T conducted by the American Society of but I don’t think it’s at the point where it’s accepted News Editors (ASNE) found that only that looking at race in America is part of the standard 15 percent of daily newspapers sur- operating procedure of most media outlets.” veyed in 2013 had a person of color in one of their top Some outlets are trying to change that. Last October, three newsroom leadership positions. “Unfortunately, BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith published some of % the ASNE census shows the industry isn’t making much the diversity numbers for his newsroom. Of its 185 edi- progress,” says Karen Magnuson, who chairs ASNE’s torial employees, 72.7 percent were white, with 9.8 per- diversity committee. “In fact, we’re losing signifi cant cent Hispanic, 7.1 percent Asian, and 6 percent black. ground as minority populations continue to grow.” He called on newsroom managers to work harder to 33 “I have been hearing ever since I got into this busi- improve diversity by writing job descriptions that don’t Percentage of ness, ‘We’ve got to adapt. Our country is changing. If we presume the gender or race of candidates and by send- don’t start telling those stories and reaching those com- ing postings to journalists “connected to underrepre- Hispanics who munities, we’re going to oversee our own demise,’ ” says sented communities.” “We are modestly more diverse said the media Hannah-Jones, hired by The New York Times Magazine than we were last September and are moving in the right accurately this spring after covering racial injustice for ProPublica. direction,” Smith says now, “because people doing the “I’m going to call bullshit on that, because we’ve been hiring see it as a priority.” He cites BuzzFeed Life— portrayed their hearing the same thing for decades. Newsrooms have which focuses on food, health, beauty, and style—as a communities not really changed. Until the mastheads at the top of team that has been especially focused on refl ecting the organizations understand how critical this reporting is diversity of its audience in its staff . New hires include for our democracy, it’s not going to change. Why do we Nora Whelan, who covers plus-size style and beau- not cover [race] with the same intensity and skepticism ty, and Essence Gant, whose writing has focused on % and, really, doggedness that we cover everything else?” black beauty. The New York Times came under fi re early this year Apart from the ethical imperative, one of the reasons when its sole reporter on the national race and ethnicity Smith gave for why diversity matters is “reaching more 25 beat, Tanzina Vega, was reassigned to cover courts in readers.” “The Internet is, in some ways, organized the Bronx. At the time, executive editor Dean Baquet around identity,” he wrote in that September 2014 Percentage of told public editor Margaret Sullivan, “I haven’t decided BuzzFeed post. “We are a new kind of media company African-Americans what to do about the beat, but I know that it has to be with the opportunity to reach a huge global audience, covered paper-wide.” The Times declined to make an and we need to build an organization that’s capable of who said the editor available to comment for this story, but executive connecting with a vast range of readers.” Case in point: media accurately director of corporate communications Danielle Rhoades When BuzzFeed noticed that Latinos were underrep- portrayed their

SOURCE: 2014 STUDY BY THE AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS-NORC CENTER FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS RESEARCH communities

36 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 36 6/15/15 5:40 PM Artist Cbabi Bayoc resented among its readership, editors launched new stations as a well as newspapers. To date, all eight fellow- with his daughter content initiatives—including everything from in-depth ship recipients have gone on to full-time jobs with the Jurni at his SweetArt immigration coverage to quizzes and listicles that speak company. Cox also runs mandatory diversity awareness Bake Shop in St. to a Latino audience—across the News, Buzz, and Life workshops aimed at creating an environment in which Louis, Missouri divisions that signifi cantly increased its Latino audience staff feel comfortable talking about race and ethnicity. from January 2014 to January of this year. “When you have a diverse staff , and people are com- Another of Smith’s arguments for diversity is that fortable around these topics, you get a better outcome,” it “helps editorial organizations avoid the bland and Riley says. “That’s sort of the business payoff . This is often false conventional wisdom held in a room full of beyond just a nice idea, beyond the right thing to do, and people who come from similar places.” That’s a guiding beyond recognizing our troubled history around race. principle as well at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, It’s a business imperative.” For Riley, that imperative where editor Kevin Riley admits, “As a white man, I can pays off in better stories that better serve readers. avoid race if I want. I live with that white male privilege. “Black & Blue,” a collection of 14 fi rst-person stories Unless you are exposed to the idea that people of color by African-Americans about interactions with police, do not have that option, and race is in front of them all is the kind of coverage Riley has in mind. The series of the time, you don’t have that awareness, and there- included a business owner whose car was searched by fore it makes it much harder to compel yourself to act, police after he called to report a shooting and Journal- to hear the kind of things you need to hear to take action Constitution editor Todd C. Duncan’s story about being in the newsroom.” pulled over by police when he was 17, slammed to the And the Journal-Constitution has taken action. hood of his car, then left alone without an explanation Among the paper’s top staff —three managing editors, or apology. Riley also mentions a column by Gracie three deputy managing editors, and an editorial page ed- Bonds Staples about pointed remarks regarding race itor—there are two white males, two African-American that Michelle Obama made in her Tuskegee University females, one white female, and two African-American commencement speech and at the dedication of an art males. The paper is helped, according to Riley, by the museum in New York. “I’m not prepared to say a white fact that it’s part of a corporation, Cox Media Group, reporter couldn’t do that [story],” Riley says, “but I just which he says takes diversity seriously. Cox recently be- think that when you can comfortably get into a topic like gan a year-long fellowship for recent college graduates that with some perspective and voice, you’re better off .” of color who want to pursue a digital project at one of For Riley, “There’s no way around a personal com- the company’s properties, which include TV and radio mitment to diversity. You can mandate it at a certain

nieman reports spring 2015 37

nr_spring_2015.indd 37 6/15/15 5:40 PM level. You can require it in hiring. Those things help. … that involved videographers, designers, and reporters. Terence Mason of But in the end, we all have to look at ourselves in the The result: a series of videotaped conversations in which St. Louis, Missouri mirror and say, ‘Do I care about this? And if I care, what people off er powerful perspectives on the word. supervises bath time for his son Kai am I doing about it?’ ” Vox, too, has learned a lot about hiring, after getting While many news outlets face layoff s or hiring freez- slammed in 2014 because so many of its fi rst employees es, The Washington Post, bought by Amazon founder were white and so few were women. The company put and CEO Jeff Bezos in 2013, hired 114 journalists last forward Ezra Klein as the leader, though he was one of year; 40 of them, or about 35 percent, were journalists three co-founders, including Melissa Bell, his colleague of color. “You have to think about the makeup and the from The Washington Post, and Matthew Yglesias, from mix,” says Kevin Merida, a Post managing editor. “Do Slate. Bell says the intense scrutiny taught them to wid- you have enough people who come from diff erent reli- en outreach, create a welcoming culture, and create gions? People who grew up poor? People who grew up clear career paths at Vox. “We learned a couple things,” % rich? People who are of every ethnicity and every race Bell says. “One of the biggest things was making sure and are young and veterans? That’s really why you want you’re doing a lot of outreach and that you’re trying to have a diverse newsroom: Because we’re in the busi- to fi nd diff erent networks. You have to actively seek ness of explaining people to each other. How can we do out people.” 15 that if we don’t have enough variety in our newsroom?” Vox does that in part via an internal Google docu- Percentage of 965 Merida points to “The N-Word,” a project that ex- ment that tracks writers of interest. When staff come plored the history of the term and its place in American across journalists whose work could add value to what daily newspapers culture, as journalism that might not have been tackled Vox is doing or who cover topic areas Vox might want that had a person in a less diverse newsroom. A brainstorming session in to get into, their names go on the list. “When we have the newsroom brought together journalists of diff erent positions open, those are people that we start contact- of color in one races, genders, and ages and broke down barriers be- ing in the beginning,” says Bell. She and her colleagues of the top three tween departments. The sports editor led a discussion also look for job candidates through organizations fo- leadership

SOURCE: AMERICAN SOCIETY OF NEWS EDITORS 2014 NEWSROOM CENSUS positions in 2013

38 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 38 6/22/15 10:59 AM cused on bringing more women and minorities into Times and Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic brought technology. Blacks in Technology, the Levo League, a national audience. About 10 days after the shooting, an online career-development network geared to- attorney Kevin Cunningham, a Howard University ward young women, and Tech LadyMafi a all focus on alum, created a Change.org petition asking the state that goal. of Florida to prosecute Zimmerman for the murder of What Bell is trying to do for Vox, Emma Carew Martin. The coverage and the petition were amplifi ed on Grovum is trying to do for the industry as a whole. social media, which led to further reporting from oth- Back in late 2010, Retha Hill, director of the Digital er outlets. Entrepreneur and rapper MC Hammer and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab at Arizona State singer Janelle Monae tweeted about the petition and, University’s journalism school, wrote a blog post for as Twitter traffi c around #WeAreAllTrayvonMartin in- PBS MediaShift about how to increase the number of creased, so did news attention, until Trayvon Martin’s people of color speaking at prominent new media con- killing became a focal point for America’s ongoing con- ferences. The piece generated a lot of conversation on versation about race. Twitter, and Carew Grovum, a member of the Asian Newsroom diversity has also spurred impact- American Journalists Association, says she “was very, ful coverage at the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, very surprised to see people saying, over and over again, where executive editor Hollis R. Towns has overseen ‘We can’t fi nd qualifi ed minorities.’ I realized I kept a number of initiatives to improve the paper’s cov- waiting for somebody to say, ‘This is absurd. I can name erage of minority neighborhoods. In the past, pros- a dozen people off the top of my head who would be ecutor’s offices in Monmouth and Ocean counties great for these kinds of conversations.’” were inconsistent in how they released mug shots of Tired of waiting, Carew Grovum, who recently crime suspects, resulting in more photos of black and joined the staff of The New York Times Opinion sec- Latino suspects being released than of white suspects. tion after working at Foreign Policy magazine, got to- Reporters began asking agencies for mug shots on all gether with mentors, friends, and colleagues to launch crime stories. When the prosecutor’s offi ces refused, the Journalism Diversity Project (JDP), a curated list the paper began calling them out—noting that state of journalists of color. Starting out as a simple Google law allows local discretion in the release of photos— Spreadsheet, the JDP quickly became a combination until offi cials in both counties began releasing more database and website listing people, as Carew Grovum photos of suspects. “Gradually and quietly they start- puts it, “you would want to see speak at a panel, would ed making the photos available to us for all types of hire into your newsroom because they’re doing amazing crimes,” says Towns. “Now it’s much more equitable work, and happen to be of color.” Conference planners, and there’s much more balance in the public’s view such as the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and of crimes.” Associated Press Media Editors, have used the list to Graduation rates at Asbury Park High School, which fi nd speakers, while SRCCON, a national conference mainly serves minorities, had hovered around 50 percent for media-minded technologists, used the list to make for years. The paper did a series of stories and editorials its fi rst conference last year a diverse gathering. chronicling issues facing the district—low test scores and high dropout rates even as the state spent about $30,000 per student per year—that helped break a deadlock on the sne itself has programs in place hiring of a new superintendent last year. The paper also to help enhance diversity, including worked with community partners to give students books its Minority Leadership Institute, and encourage volunteerism in the schools. A which provides professional devel- Following the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael opment for mid-level editors and Brown, Towns initiated a series of articles and videos business executives. Other initiatives about race, including personal stories—written by include the Online News Association and Poynter’s Asbury Park Press staff ers and people from the com- Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media, munity—sharing their thoughts on race and experiences a free week-long seminar; the Asian American Journalists about relationships with minorities. “We were thinking Association’s newly launched I-Con, an invitation-only one day, How can we crystallize the recent events and leadership event that will be held in Miami this fall; the discuss race in a way that’s conversational?” says Towns Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, of the series. “The response was overwhelmingly posi- which trains journalists in leadership and multimedia tive, and it was good dialogue. We gave [the community] skills; and many others. a forum to talk about issues without being preachy.” In 2012, when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed While Towns is proud of his accomplishments, by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman, he says there is still plenty of work to be done, in his three African-American journalists and a white lawyer newsroom and in others around the country: “Diversity championed the undercovered story about the shooting isn’t a one-time thing where someone hires a person death of the black teen and helped elevate it to interna- or two and checks a box and says, ‘Okay, we’ve done tional prominence. Trymaine Lee, then a reporter for our part.’ It takes time and resources to bring about The Huffi ngton Post’s Black Voices, persistently covered diversity in coverage, diversity in thinking, and diversity the story. Columnists Charles M. Blow of The New York in approach.” 

nieman reports spring 2015 39

nr_spring_2015.indd 39 6/15/15 5:40 PM RACE AND REPORTING BUILDING A BETTER NEWSROOM How to make journalism more inclusive—and how that can contribute to better coverage

audacity to write about issues of race, all of a sudden it Real Change, is followed by a deeply, intensely personal conversation publicly about who they are: Are they black enough? Are they not really black at all? Can they separate their own Not Empty Claims personal background from the topics they cover? The thing is, those questions are not only unfair, they BY WESLEY LOWERY are red herrings. From Ferguson to North Charleston, South Carolina, Wesley Lowery is to Baltimore, it’s important that we have a diversity of a reporter at The voices on the ground, covering these stories of race and Washington Post, justice and equity. where he covers law As journalists, it’s our job to be skeptical. It’s our job enforcement, justice, we’re currently caught in a period of time in to ask hard questions. The problem is, if all of the jour- race, and politics this country where we seem to be in an almost perpet- nalists on a particular story have the same backgrounds, ual state of conversation about issues of race, ethnicity, the same upbringings, or the same amount of pigment in and diversity. And we’re having that ongoing conver- their skin, what we know for a fact is that they’re not go- sation while living in a country where our media are ing to be best equipped to ask the depth and the detail of disproportionately white and male, where our political questions that are needed. As the demographics of the chattering and punditry class is also disproportionately country continue to change rapidly, we’re only going to white and male. continue to see stories that involve race, and ethnicity, And yet reporters of color, specifically black re- and culture popping up and gaining prominence in the porters, often fi nd themselves questioned when they news cycle. Which is why newsrooms have to prepare are charged with covering this ongoing moment in themselves to tell these stories adequately and fairly. American history. The double standard is obvious. A newsroom cannot tell stories like Ferguson or No one ever has any conversation about, “Can any Baltimore—at least they cannot tell them thoroughly white male reporter cover police fairly?” No one ever and with nuance—if you don’t have people who look like asks that question. Yet, any time a black reporter has the the people who are being written about in these stories

40 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 40 6/22/15 10:59 AM doing some of the reporting and making some of the by the Asian American Journalists Association, and coverage decisions from the newsroom. then things like the Metpro program at the Los Angeles Newsroom Media diversity is not some type of progressive ide- Times and Chicago Tribune. diversity is a al. It’s a journalistic imperative for any outlet devoted What we also know is that creating diversity in a to fairness and accuracy in its coverage. As journalists, newsroom isn’t looking up one day and saying, “We have journalistic we want to ask hard questions of everyone else, but an open desk; let’s go fi nd a person of color to sit in it.” If imperative don’t you dare ask a media organization for diversity you haven’t been building those relationships for years, statistics. That’s something we have to be willing to en- you’re not going to be able to fi nd the right people to fi t gage—the reality of the lack of diversity in many of our in your newsrooms. own newsrooms—if we want to see real change and not As reporters, we all walk into the same press confer- empty claims. ence, walk down the same streets—and the people who It’s about big organizations investing in training and I hit it off with might be diff erent people than the people retention programs in communities of color. You have you hit it off with. If you’re a news organization that to actually build a pipeline. You do see some programs wants comprehensive coverage, you need a newsroom placing students of color in newsrooms, providing them full of diff erent types of people who are going to hit it with training, guidance, and mentorship—the student off with diff erent types of people, build diff erent types project program at the National Association of Black of sources and fi nd and tell diff erent stories. That’s the Journalists, the j-camp for high schoolers conducted way it works. 

that is 48 percent Latino, 15 percent Asian, L.A. In recent months, the “Take Two” Enhancing and 9 percent black, that’s not enough. morning show has looked at how to talk to While SCPR has become a model for oth- children about race, L.A.’s race relations, Diversity er public media newsrooms, we’ve learned and other subjects that highlight diversity there’s a long way to go. in all its forms. Means So, what’s worked? We couldn’t do this without signifi cant SCPR’s push for diversity starts with its diversity within our reporter and producer board, a diverse group of L.A. business and corps. Every hire brings a new-to-us net- Expanding civic leaders who believe in the need for work of sources and resources. Every addi- a major news service for all of Los Angeles. tional language spoken equals a new channel Audiences SCPR prioritizes research and engage- for hearing about issues aff ecting people in BY ASHLEY ALVARADO ment at multiple levels, seeking input from our coverage region. We are doing stories we stakeholders, community leaders, and were not equipped to cover fi ve years ago. community members through digital and We’ve also created a safe space to talk in-person eff orts. This is not outreach; it’s about things like multicultural competence, a “two-way street.” SCPR regularly publish- how to pronounce particular words, and po- es Public Insight Network queries, engag- tential obstacles to engagement. These con- growing up asian and latina in atown ing with a more diverse pool of sources. In versations are not limited to people of color that was nearly 90 percent white, it was 2011, SCPR launched the One Nation Media but rather involve the entire newsroom. only natural that I’d develop an appre- Project, as part of a three-year, $6-million There’s more to be done. Our demo- ciation for diversity. I didn’t see me any- investment from the Corporation for Public graphics don’t refl ect the region. Though where, and it was my longing for stories Broadcasting, with the goal to provide nearly 40 percent of our content team is not that refl ected the experiences and diver- high-quality, multimedia English-language white, all but two of our senior managers sity of my communities that steered me news coverage to multiethnic communi- are. We have to actively look for opportu- toward journalism. ties in Southern California. SCPR leaders nities for growth within SCPR and hold on From its inception, Southern California stress that a pool of applicants to talented reporters of diverse Public Radio (SCPR) has set the goal to is not considered a pool unless backgrounds. It’s a natural con- serve all of greater Los Angeles. Its leader- it’s diverse. sequence of SCPR’s success ship understands that in order to stay rele- By doing all this, we’ve that other news organizations vant and viable, newsrooms must embrace changed the way we cover Los would want to hire them away. diverse hiring and refl ect the communities Angeles, shifting the editorial Most of all, the organization they serve. strategy to more meaningfully has to keep pushing forward: SCPR has proved that trying to reach engage and widen our audience through criticism, awkward people of color does not mean the existing while also telling important, im- Ashley Alvarado is moments, and the occasional white audience will tune out. Between 2009 pactful stories. Recent examples the public engagement hiccup. There have been tre- and 2014, SCPR nearly doubled its Latino include Deepa Fernandes’s piece editor at Southern mendous challenges—internal listenership without losing core listeners. on janitors spreading the value California Public and external—but the wealth of Total audience is up 22 percent. And in our of early education among immi- Radio. She also is the ideas and better sense of place newsroom, just less than 40 percent of the grants and an Adrian Florido re- managing editor of are daily reminders that we’re content team is non-white. But in a county port on a produce stand in South Los Cabos Magazine on the right path. 

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clusive community. We then interested in advancing our Continue partnered with a variety of community shared their views organizations, including the through social media, blog YWCA, the Rochester Museum postings, letters to the editor, To Care, and Science Center, the and in meetings. We believe Rochester Area Community “Unite Rochester,” as we call All The Foundation, and Facing Race, the initiative, has helped build Embracing Equity. Karen Magnuson greater awareness. Time Before the editorial board is vice president We’re now working on how BY KAREN MAGNUSON launched its “listening tour,” and editor of the to turn some of our findings we put out calls in print and on Rochester (N.Y.) into action. Last year, we cre- digital platforms for people to Democrat & ated the Unite Rochester Court come meet with us to talk about Chronicle Academy to help citizens better race. Many of our meetings understand our criminal justice were out in the suburbs because we wanted system. One initiative for 2015 is to create at the rochester democrat & to engage more suburban people. Our sub- a Community Crisis Response Team that Chronicle, we launched a series of inves- urbs are predominantly white, and our city would help our leaders and community tigative reports about two and a half years is predominantly black. We wanted to pro- respond well if Rochester experienced the ago looking at disparities in areas such as vide opportunities for people who normally kinds of problems we’ve seen in Ferguson housing, education, criminal justice, and wouldn’t be able to talk to one another to and Baltimore. jobs. At fi rst, we received both positive sit down and engage in a discussion about We know that what’s true in the com- and negative reactions. The negative reac- racial issues. munity is true inside our own newsroom. tions were from people who believed we Only eight people showed up for our The culture can’t be changed overnight. were making a big deal over nothing, that fi rst one, but the crowd grew with each Diversity is not a problem you can fi x and race was no longer a problem in America. tour, up to about 50 community members then it stays fi xed. It’s something you have Through our reporting, we showed that it and political leaders at our fi nal meeting. to continue to care about all the time. As mi- is a problem and that we, as a communi- We received pushback from some who nority populations grow and change the de- ty, needed to get our arms around it. We maintained that the Democrat & Chronicle mographics of our communities, it becomes used those reports to start a conversa- was, in the words of one woman, “stirring even more important for it to be part of your tion about how we can build a more in- the pot,” creating trouble. But the people thinking day to day. 

old novice reporter at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. Growing up poor in one of the richest cities Tribalism in the country gave me the tools for resourcefulness, sharp instincts and observation that an outsider needs As a Spur to in journalism to succeed. It helped me learn, too, that joining the journalism tribe required connections—the Newsroom kind of network I didn’t have until I went to boarding school and college as a scholarship student. In these Joshunda Sanders rarifi ed, elite environments, I learned that more than is the author of “How Diversity skill, hard work or talent, above all, you needed the Racism and Sexism BY JOSHUNDA SANDERS right network at the right time to get the “right kind of Killed Traditional experience.” In other words, a member of the tribe had Media: Why the to vouch for you. Future of Journalism I was lucky enough to meet a few who saw my po- Depends on Women tential. They encouraged me to apply for a Hearst and People of Color,” Newspapers Fellowship, a two-year program that in- to be published in volved four six-month stints at newspapers in large and August journalists might resist the designation, but mid-size newspaper metro markets. The value of the we are tribal. As wedded as we are to our tribalism, our fellowship was that it extended my network, off ered me long days and bellyaching and gallows humor, this very invaluable reporting experience, and off ered me a wide tribalism is what limits the racial and gender diversity range of mentors. of our nation’s newsrooms. Latoya Peterson, deputy editor for Fusion Voices, As with any tribe, you can’t just say you’re part of the and I had a shared mentor, like so many others, in group. You have to be chosen. This is not immediate- the late Dori J. Maynard, president of the Robert C. ly evident to anyone outside the tribe who wants in; at Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, least, it wasn’t for me. California. Dori not only championed diversity in order My writing journey has been leaning in the direction for journalism to truly refl ect the fast-changing world of journalism since my fi rst summer job as a 14-year- in which we all now live, but she also gave back to the

42 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 42 6/22/15 10:59 AM industry what the best mentors do: She instilled in us nity and the pathway it aff orded her into the business “is hope and confidence. Without Dori, Peterson says, a classic example of outreach that matters not because “I would never have applied for a Knight Fellowship. it ‘lowers the bar’ in an eff ort to recruit minorities, but I wouldn’t have even known they were available, much because it opens the eyes of smart, talented people to less that I could get someone to pay me $65,000 to think the fact that, yes, they can work their way to the best about the big thoughts on media.” Peterson’s time at paper in the land—sometimes, even at age 23. A lot of Stanford University was also affi rmation that the lack us would never dare to set our sights so high,” she says. of a traditional background in journalism was irrelevant The ultimate value of a group is that they remind to her future. each individual member of the group of their worth. The The same was true for Nicole Collins Bronzan, di- potential of journalists to continue that tradition by way rector of communications at ProPublica. An internship of mentorship, internships, and fellowship programs provided the all-important connections that created may be the only opportunity we have to truly change the a pathway for her to The New York Times. The opportu- racial and gender diversity in our news organizations. 

Making one thing we do that Connecticut has a large mainstream, important works is hiring Hispanic Mexican population.” Those issues to win the election, Coverage writers. They don’t have to things end up being useful not just a Hispanic issue. Mainstream have a sort of Hispanic beat. for your coverage. Just opening up It’s not easy because BY ADRIAN David Noriega is a national your network I have found reporter for us who broadly you have to go out of some to be the biggest thing. CARRASQUILLO covers immigrants, but of your comfort zones. You Sometimes I ask on not immigration. One story have to keep searching Facebook or on Twitter, he did always sticks out for people. It’s always a Who are the Latino writers for me: Construction deaths work in progress. We’re not you’re reading? Who are are dropping for every patting ourselves on the the journalists you’re group in the U.S. except back. We think we can do interested in? I’m wondering, Latinos. They’re going up for better. Reporters don’t have Who are some of those Latinos. There’s stuff to be the “black writer” up-and-comers? I always with immigration status, or the “woman writer” or want to stay on top of it. with language. They can’t the “Hispanic writer” Sometimes I’ll see one and advocate for themselves. or the “LGBT writer,” but say, “Wow, this writer is David has done an amazing ultimately that diversity incredible. I really would job elevating stories like helps. love her to join BuzzFeed.” that, but the hard part is This is going to be the We just think about that for fi nding those stories. Having most Latino election ever. the future. It ends up being a diverse newsroom helps. You see that with the so important with a lot of Last year, Gabriel García candidates. You have Marco the issues going around the Márquez dies, and we look Rubio. You have Ted Cruz. country right now, some around the newsroom. You have Jeb Bush, who has of the criminal justice and Nicolás Medina Mora is a Hispanic family. And then immigration stuff , so many a writer from Mexico on the Hillary, who went so far to areas where diversity really criminal justice beat. But the left on immigration. The is going to make the news at the time, he was like, other thread is the high- coverage better. “Márquez was my mentor. profi le Hispanic hires. You What is working for I knew him in Mexico. I met saw that with Hillary. Her us is making this kind of with him often. I need to political director is Amanda coverage part of the go for a walk because this is Renteria, who doesn’t mainstream site. If you’re very emotional for me, just have a Hispanic role; saying that Latinos are but I want to come back and she’s a political director. American, and that’s part write a eulogy.” He wrote Martin O’Malley has of the mainstream, then this beautiful story, “The Obama’s former director of there’s no need to separate Death of the Patriarch.” Hispanic media from 2012, it. We get really good What happens when when Obama got the responses from people who Adrian Carrasquillo you have diverse journalists highest percentage of the just feel like they’re being is editor of Latino in the newsroom is, they Hispanic vote in history. treated like everybody coverage and a might say, “Oh, I’m from It shows a thread that’s else. We don’t have to have political reporter at that town” or “Oh, I know going on in politics right BuzzFeed Latino. We have BuzzFeed News that because this area in now, that these issues are just BuzzFeed.com. 

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a question, given our ubiquitous current industry buzz- If Truth and word—audience engagement. Who’s doing the engag- ing and with which audience? Who’s doing But while the diversity conversation may have stayed the engaging Credibility Matter, So in the same tired spot over the last decade, worsened by cycles of more layoff s and buyouts than hires, I’m and with which still here taking my place at the table while many of my audience? Must Diversity worn-out colleagues abandon ship. That in-the-bone re- BY SANDRA CLARK sponsibility is still there. From copy editor with a mis- sion to managing editor helping guide the future of the company is not a bad place to be. I’ve also come to realize that my place is not typical. The full breadth of my diverse experiences—child of an immigrant, military family, father formerly in law en- forcement, two years living in a village, daughter born in years ago, i was recruited from the university South Africa, small business owner, mother of a college of Kansas for the copy desk by legendary Philadelphia student—means I can relate to virtually anyone. And Inquirer columnist and life-long diversity champion that trait brings diversity to my offi ce often. Acel Moore. In me, he landed the ultimate diversity The young white dotcom editor wants to know how hire—African-American, Japanese, and female. And he to approach a contentious issue with the newsroom. An let me know I wasn’t there just to be a number. African-American reporter wants to discuss her provoc- As one of a handful of people of color on staff at the ative story about why she likes a song about a drug-deal- Inquirer back then, I felt an in-the-bone responsibility to ing rapper and his empowered girlfriend. The fashion make my voice heard, even as I wasn’t always accepted writer wants to share an e-mail from an irate reader who by blacks or whites. I learned quickly that there’s a dif- didn’t like it that she used a black model. The veteran ference between being let in and feeling like you belong. staff er wants everyone to know she shouldn’t be written Today, our newsroom, like so many across America, off . A Vietnamese student asks me to lunch. The Latino has seen minority staffi ng levels dwindle, leaving even job candidate sends me more samples of his captivating white staff ers to ask, “What are we going to do about multimedia work. The LGBT writer has a story to pitch diversity?” While the media can expose the lack of diver- of someone we should have written about but never no- sity in schools, companies, government, boards, and law ticed. The promising high school student wants advice. enforcement, to name a few, we have shown little under- Other diversity eff orts are more purposeful. Over the standing of its true value in our own precious arena. If last few years, with hires limited, I have built a diverse truth and credibility matter, then diversity must matter. freelance pool, often editing the stories myself to ensure It doesn’t seem that hard to grasp. What I do know is my teaching as portfolios are refi ned. Managers who report child could never take a look across the company and to me also are asked to bring in a diverse group of can- assume there’s an opportunity for her. didates to be interviewed. That has yielded exceptional The diversity malaise is showing in a new era of dig- candidates and two off ers. And I’ve initiated an informal ital and print coverage, even as we write about how pay-it-forward chain to coach and steer up-and-coming Sandra Clark is much more diverse the world is. The millennial boom journalists and PR specialists. managing editor for is much ballyhooed, but mostly represented in media Perhaps Ann Brill, dean of the William Allen White digital/arts & by hotshot techy white kids who have the freedom to journalism school at the University of Kansas, said it features/news experiment. Young people of color who are driving best at a recent board meeting. Answering a question operations at The the population surge and young whites not immersed about why the school was working hard to diversify, she Philadelphia Inquirer. in the foodie scene and still trying to fi nd their way didn’t belabor a business argument or make a moral one. She recently earned don’t see their faces much. It’s social media from or- “We just want our school to have a student body that her MBA in global dinary people that really fi lls out real-time coverage looks like the world we live in.” business from of communities we don’t cover enough. Which begs Diversity can happen—if we want it to.  Arcadia University

Invest in we don’t have a lot of country, such as Montana, communities in their Native American journalists New Mexico, and Arizona, coverage areas. Developing at mainstream newspapers, I can’t believe that the local There’s this desire in Talent and that’s a problem, newspapers don’t have the industry to hire now, especially because we may any Native journalists on without any real investment BY MARY HUDETZ not be that large in number staff , not only as a measure at the ground level in but the jurisdictional and of community building developing talent. The economic power of tribes is but also as a way to Native American Journalists so signifi cant. In states build relationships with Association has great that are the heart of Indian these really important partners in media, but we

44 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 44 6/22/15 10:59 AM need help to develop talents year. Six of the 10 have since support their education in college so they’re ready gotten an internship for from afar, people who for jobs when it’s time. this summer or advanced in understand and appreciate There are a lot of students some other signifi cant their cultural heritage. who are interested, but the way. For example, one is Without that, they don’t programs and the capacity studying journalism at feel supported and don’t to track and recruit them the City University of New pursue journalism. It’s Mary Hudetz is are not there. York, one is going to CBS complicated being a Native president of the Native We piloted the Native News, and another is going American in this country. American Journalists American Journalism to work at The Cherokee Some might describe it as Association and Fellowship this year. We Phoenix in Oklahoma. dual citizenship. Sometimes editor in chief of Native brought in 10 Native Native students don’t just by being Native and Peoples Magazine American college students always get what they need having that life experience, for a week of training in in a college journalism you bring an expertise to the summer and mentored program. Or, they might the newsroom that others them throughout the school need mentors who can don’t have. 

which consistently leads with stories about poor blacks, making it diffi cult for them to Train Our violence and shootings, mostly in predom- defi ne themselves not only with journalists, inantly African-American and Hispanic but with educators, employers, and, yes, Brains to neighborhoods. the police. I’m not saying these stories shouldn’t be In 2008, one of the reasons I was excited covered. Only that they often lack context about the prospect of a black family occupy- See Beyond and depth and feed a perception that skews ing the White House was that I hoped (how- and even skewers reality. Complicating this ever naively) that the image of the Obama Stereotypes further is that these stories often are at the family would serve as a counterweight to BY DAWN TURNER TRICE top of the news not because “what bleeds the many negative depictions of blacks. leads,” but because a 24/7 news cycle re- I also hoped that the media would no longer quires editors to deliver something new. portray as anomalies successful black men I don’t believe the intent is always ma- who weren’t athletes or entertainers. licious. It’s just that the consequences are That really hasn’t happened. never benign. The story of race in this country is one But this isn’t only about black men being deeply rooted in fear—fear of the unknown, the high-profile deaths of michael depicted as violent. We media types tend to fear of the little known. We media types play Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddie cast blacks as the poster children for far too into all of that, sometimes wittingly or un- Gray have allowed us to train the spotlight many of society’s ills. Not because it’s the wittingly depending on the news outlet.. on law enforcement and examine how po- truth, but because it fi ts the familiar trope These stories and images are so pow- lice offi cers can be more eff ective in belea- and it’s convenient to think inside the box. erful. They are also so unforgiving. They guered black communities. A 2012 study by the College of Wooster become hardwired into our brains. I would But, in order to have a substantive dis- analyzed the images that ran with 474 pov- argue that the race problem in America is as cussion about newsrooms, race, and how we erty-related stories in Time, Newsweek, and neurological as it is sociological. Race makes cover these stories, we in the media must U.S. News & World Report from 1992 to us reactionary. We, pardon the cliché, shoot turn the lens on ourselves and acknowledge 2010. The study found that “while Hispanics fi rst and ask questions later. our complicity in these tragedies. are underrepresented in media portrayals For me, the reason it’s important to have It’s not an easy task. But it is a necessary of the poor, African- Americans a diverse newsroom and more one if we intend to be part of the solution, are overrepresented.” Blacks in-depth news stories about rather than the problem. appeared in 52 percent of the race is because we need to train We have to ask ourselves: What role do images, despite being a quarter our brains to see people of col- we play in all of this when we constantly bar- of Americans living in poverty or as individuals rather than rage our viewers and readers with images of during that period. Although types. It’s a huge undertaking, black men as criminals? The repetition of Hispanics made up 23 percent one we’ve struggled to achieve these images has conditioned all of us (in- of the poor, we saw their fac- through the ages. cluding police offi cers who carry weapons) es in just under 14 percent of Dawn Turner Trice Still, if we journalists don’t in ways that make it diffi cult not to view the photos. is a 2015 Nieman move beyond the standard, black men and boys as dangerous. If this were just about the Fellow and a knee-jerk narratives, we will do In my hometown of Chicago, the num- media misrepresenting the poor columnist at the more harm than good. Although ber of homicides is about half of what it that would be one problem. But Chicago Tribune. She that is not the mission of any was in the early 1990s. But you wouldn’t it’s compounded by the harsh also is the author of news organization, it certainly know this by looking at the 10 o’clock news, stereotypes that are attached to two novels will be the result. 

nieman reports spring 2015 45

nr_spring_2015.indd 45 6/22/15 11:00 AM Nieman Watchdog

USE IT OR LOSE IT Fresh questions about when—or if— it’s ethical to publish leaked, stolen, or hacked information BY HELEN LEWIS

46 nieman reports spring 2015 Illustration by Anna Parini

nr_spring_2015.indd 46 6/15/15 6:01 PM hen german- Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about the ex- wings Flight 9525 tent of U.S. intelligence operations. crashed in the Journalists have been accused of invad- French Alps on ing privacy, threatening national security, March 24, the and breaching copyright by publishing such deaths of the 150 stories, and their sources might lose their people on board were initially assumed to jobs, their freedom, or even their lives. So be a tragic accident. But within 48 hours, how should reporters and editors decide Wa transcript of the plane’s voice recorder was whether to publish and how much to redact? leaked to the media. It revealed that co-pilot And what technical know-how do they need Andreas Lubitz had set the aircraft on a colli- to protect whistleblowers? sion course. Just before the plane crashed the The Sony hack provided something of pilot, who was locked out of the cockpit, could a test case, as did the iCloud leak, which in- be heard screaming, “Open the damn door!” cluded naked photographs of actresses such The recording was evidence that the as Jennifer Lawrence. The New York Times crash was not an accident, but a deliberate was reluctant to report on the huge dump act of mass murder. It duly led news bulle- of e-mails and other confi dential material tins around the world. But should the media taken from Sony’s servers, with executive have published the transcripts, particularly editor Dean Baquet asserting that the paper when the investigation was still in progress? would only cover newsworthy information The International Federation of Air Line surfaced by other outlets, and would not dig Pilots’ Associations condemned the leak, through the fi les itself. The Times gave op- calling it a “breach of trust” with investiga- ed space to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to call tors and victims’ families that harmed fl ight publishing the leaked information “morally safety by stoking “uninformed” speculation. treasonous and spectacularly dishonor- The media were unmoved. There was no able,” although its public editor Margaret navel-gazing about the ethics of publishing Sullivan later defended reporting on the the transcript, and no groundswell of public e-mails when the contents were newswor- opinion against it. That makes it relative- thy. “No, this isn’t a Snowden Redux, but ly unusual among cases involving leaked, when top Hollywood fi gures make racially stolen, or hacked information, which often tinged jokes about the president, that’s le- provoke controversy. Such sources are fa- gitimate news,” she wrote in a blog post on miliar ways to obtain stories—consider the December 12, 2014. impact of the Pentagon Papers being leaked Other sites had already made the same in 1971—but the emergence of WikiLeaks decision. Gawker dived into the Sony data in 2006 made it clear they will become ever with something approaching glee, creating more important in the digital era. Since then, a microsite to host the revelations. Notable there have been questions over the publica- headlines included “The Natalie Portman- tion of Sony executives’ corporate e-mails Ryan Seacrest Gaza Strip Reply-All Chain in late 2014, the publication of leaked celeb- from Hell,” “Hollywood Executives Think rity nude photos last August, and Edward Jaden and Willow Smith Are Crazy, Too,”

nieman reports spring 2015 47

nr_spring_2015.indd 47 6/15/15 5:40 PM Nieman Watchdog

After hackers leaked embarrassing Sony Pictures e-mails and threatened movie-goers in 2014, the company pulled “The Interview” from theaters

and “Sony’s Embarrassing Powerpoints Are embassy cables, as details of informers, ac- reporting. In journalism we have to accept Even Worse Than Their Shitty Movies.” Sam tivists, and opposition politicians in auto- that some mistakes will be made. This is Biddle, who led Gawker’s reporting, defends cratic regimes were not redacted before the a fundamental concept of liberty.” its coverage by arguing that the hack was documents were made available on fi le shar- In order to reduce the chances of such the biggest technology story of the year. ing sites. The Guardian and The New York a mistake happening, reporters working with “It exposed the way an enormous, public- Times had largely removed such sensitive sensitive information should ask themselves ly traded multinational company functions information before publication. fi rst if any redactions are needed; if they are, and revealed a lot about the people making Reporters working with sensitive infor- they must be carried out by someone with decisions at an institution of huge cultural mation should take particular care with fi les the relevant expertise. It is also best practice power,” he says. “If that’s not newsworthy, stored as PDFs. In 2005, a blogger discov- to open sensitive documents only on a com- I don’t know what is.” ered that the Pentagon had inadequately puter that is “air-gapped”—not connected Biddle is also keen to stress that there redacted PDFs of an offi cial U.S. military in- to the Internet—in case viruses or malware were plenty of juicy nuggets of information quiry into the accidental killing of an Italian have been hidden within the files, which Gawker did not publicize, even though they agent in Baghdad. The “redaction” consisted could alert their owners. While working were already public because the data was only of highlighting the text in black shad- on the Snowden leaks, The Guardian went dumped online. “I think that’s something ing, and so copying and pasting it into an- further and established a secure room, into that hasn’t been said enough,” he points out. other document restored its readability. which reporters were not allowed to bring “We would have never published something The same simple mistake was made by phones or other electronic equipment in like Social Security numbers or addresses or The New York Times in January 2014 when case they were bugged. credit card information, things that were all it published a PDF from documents handed Understanding the content of leaked there.” (That said, in April, Gawker’s sister over by Edward Snowden. Pasting the text documents as fully as possible also makes site Jezebel did publish part of a Sony execu- into a new document revealed the name of it easier to protect sources. In 1983, Peter tive’s Amazon order history, which included a National Security Agency agent as well as Preston, who edited The Guardian from 1975 pubic hair dye.) the target of an operation in Mosul, Iraq. to 1995, published a story based on a leaked What not to publish is a key concern for When asked about this mistake by John document containing plans for cruise mis- anyone dealing with leaked or stolen data. Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” sile deployment in Britain. The government In July 2010, WikiLeaks was criticized by in an April episode, Snowden replied, “It forced the newspaper to turn over the doc-

the Pentagon for its handling of the U.S. is a f**kup and these things do happen in uments, and some seemingly unintelligible PRESS GOLDMAN/ASSOCIATED DAVID

48 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 48 6/15/15 5:40 PM squiggles in the top corner allowed it to be Quinn Norton, a tech reporter who has editors overrode their promises on the traced to a Foreign and Commonwealth written for Wired, also tells a story about a ground that the real story was not the minor Office photocopying machine and, ulti- source losing access to information because shoplifting charge, but the fact that a politi- mately, to the source, Sarah Tisdall, who of metadata. She had set up a relationship cal operative was trying to smear an oppos- was jailed for six months for violating the with an anonymous contact who had access ing candidate shortly before the election,” Offi cial Secrets Act. “I feel that, once The to mail servers at four Syrian embassies. She says Kirtley. For her, the case illustrates the Guardian used the document in that story, worked with ProPublica, following security fact that “this was a situation where the re- we owed its provider protection,” Preston protocols—for example, only opening the porters should have questioned the source’s says now. “But providing it sight unseen— encrypted documents on a computer that motives before agreeing to his terms.” and looking in the wrong direction any- was air-gapped. Unfortunately, Norton Cohen later sued both papers. The case way—was a nightmare.” says, ProPublica may not have scrubbed the went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Because digital documents often carry documents clean of all the metadata before ruled that the First Amendment did not all kinds of metadata hidden underneath sending them to the Syrians for comment. protect the newspapers from being sued for their visible contents, making originals Within two hours, Norton’s source lost ac- breach of contract. available should be handled with care. cess but was not identifi ed. This applies to pictures as well as text. The Although metadata is unlikely to en- hiding place of fugitive tech entrepreneur danger journalists’ lives, it might affect fter the sony hack, andrew John McAfee, who was named as a “person their livelihood. Norton argues that the law Wallenstein, co-editor of Variety, of interest” in a death in Belize, was un- has not yet caught up with the realities of went public with his doubts over wittingly revealed by Vice in 2012 when the handling digital information. For example, whether to publish information magazine posted a photo of editor in chief she says, possessing child pornography is a that might have been obtained by Rocco Castoro posing with him. The pic- strict liability off ense in some jurisdictions. foreign spies. Writing on the Variety ture, part of a post entitled “We Are with It does not matter if you have not looked at site last December, he asked: “What John McAfee Right Now, Suckers,” still the material; you only have to be in posses- Aif suspected hacker North Korea bombed contained its Exif data, revealing not only sion of it to be committing a crime. So any Culver City [site of Sony Pictures head- that it was captured on an iPhone 4S, but journalist opening up a parcel of encrypted quarters]? Can I sift through the rubble for the exact location in Guatemala where it data runs the risk that hackers have embed- Sony executives’ hard drives? … Outlandish was taken. (McAfee, who is still wanted for ded something nasty in there for which he as that sounds, it’s also strange that because questioning, fl ed the country and now lives or she is now legally responsible. the nature of the Sony attack was virtual in Tennessee.) If that sounds far-fetched, consider that, instead of physical, it’s fair game to scav- It is possible to strip metadata from according to Norton, hackers inserted en- enge for data.” Despite his ambivalence, he photos, something Vice belatedly did in the crypted links to child porn websites into concluded that there was suffi cient public McAfee case. And according to Guardian the blockchain, or shared database, used to interest in reporting on a major company. tech reporter Alex Hern, the saga carries trade the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, intending Besides, he added, “journalism is, in some two basic lessons for journalists working to make it so everyone who owns Bitcoins sense, permissible thievery.” with digital information: Know your tools, would be committing a criminal offense. This is a characterization Kirtley dis- and think twice before publishing original It was their idea of a prank. Similarly, she putes. “Under U.S. law, a critical factor is documents exactly as you received them. warns that being part of a large media orga- whether the news organization itself broke “The former is harder, but the latter obvi- nization does not necessarily provide pro- the law to get the documents,” she says. ously goes against what you want to do as tection against prosecutions for computer “Simply being the recipient, especially if the a journalist,” he says. “If you create a new fraud or misuse. Wronged companies or the documents come from an unknown source image/document, and paste in what you Department of Justice can choose to target through a brown paper envelope or digital want to share, it’s a fairly safe way to ensure individuals, rather than institutions. dropbox, is not considered ‘theft,’ even if that the metadata isn’t carried over.” There When dealing with documents obtained the source broke the law in obtaining or is a tradeoff , however: “You also ensure that under murky circumstances, news organi- passing on the documents.” This is the key independent researchers can no longer veri- zations should follow standard procedure issue in the “Lux Leaks” case, where French fy that your document is genuine.” and question the motives of their sourc- TV journalist Edouard Perrin was charged es. Jane E. Kirtley, the Silha Professor of on April 23 as an accomplice to theft, along- Media Ethics and Law at the University of side two employees of Big Four accounting Minnesota, recalls a 1982 story in which a fi rm PwC, for his part in publishing details Republican campaigner named Dan Cohen of corporate tax avoidance in Luxembourg. approached two major papers in Minnesota The authorities there allege that Perrin did with information on the Democratic candi- not simply receive leaked documents, but SHIELDING A SOURCE’S date for lieutenant governor, who had been directed his source to look out for particular charged with a shoplifting off ense in 1970. fi les, thus playing a “more active role in the IDENTITY CAN BE TRICKY (The conviction was later vacated.) Both committing of these off enses.” papers’ reporters agreed to Cohen’s terms: Kirtley adds that there is an ethical dis- WHEN DOCUMENTS OR They would publish the story without nam- tinction, as well as a legal one: “For me, it ing him as their source. But, independently, always comes down to a balance between PHOTOS HAVE METADATA both sets of editors overruled them. “Their the value of the information to the public

nieman reports spring 2015 49

nr_spring_2015.indd 49 6/15/15 5:40 PM interest as compared to the harm that would be caused to the individual by publication.” A PRESSING QUESTION Gawker’s Biddle believes the idea of harm to individuals can be overstated, not least FOR JOURNALISTS by those whose embarrassing secrets are revealed by stolen or leaked documents. IS HOW TO TREAT “I think the ‘Well, the Pentagon Papers, sure, but Sony…’ argument is silly,” he says. STOLEN DATA THAT “Leaked data doesn’t have to be world his- torical to be worthwhile. How high we want OTHER MEDIA OUTLETS to apply the public interest test is probably more a matter of squeamishness.” For reporters dealing with the Sony ARE COVERING hack, the leak gave an insight into how those controlling a multibillion-dollar business that shapes our cultural land- scape functioned behind closed doors. WikiLeaks, which produced a searchable index of the Sony fi les in April, argued on offer is credibility,” says Kirtley. “By this its website that “behind the scenes this is I mean not only accuracy—because I do an infl uential corporation, with ties to the think there is a clear responsibility to au- White House (there are almost 100 U.S. thenticate anything we publish—but also government e-mail addresses in the ar- the practice of vetting information and doing chive), with an ability to impact laws and one’s best to put it in the proper context.” policies, and with connections to the U.S. The iCloud leak provides an instruc- military-industrial complex.” Sony dis- tive example of where media organizations agrees. “The cyber attack on Sony Pictures voluntarily impose limits on material that was a malicious criminal act, and we would interest the public but which is not strongly condemn the indexing of stolen in the public interest. News organizations employee and other private and privileged across the world happily wrote stories about information on WikiLeaks,” the company starlets’ intimate photographs being dumped said in a statement. on fi le-sharing sites—and reaped the traffi c benefi ts from search engine optimization that reeled in anyone Googling “naked ce- he involvement of wikileaks lebrity pictures.” However, no major news points to another consideration news outlets published the pictures themselves. organizations must bear in mind: Biddle’s explanation for this is simple: “The If they don’t publish, someone else iCloud hack itself was deeply interesting, will. In the case of the Sony hack, which is why we covered it. But the pictures Wallenstein at Variety argues, “Our themselves? Not at all. We’re a lurid tabloid very real qualms about motive were site, but not a pornography site.” up—something as illegal, as stolen, as any- Tsuperseded not just by the contents of the leak Many agree that individuals have a thing on the [News Corp chairman Rupert] but by the incontrovertible fact that [they] greater right to privacy than corporations Murdoch charge sheet.” were thrust into the public domain by the and that revealing fi nancial details or per- It is also worth noting that news outlets hackers and other media. Tiptoeing around sonal opinions is less invasive than reveal- may not have hacked the Sony e-mails, but the elephant in the room seemed pointless.” ing naked photographs. But not everyone. someone did—and that person has com- For journalists in the digital marketplace, Brad Pitt compared the Sony leak to the mitted an off ense for which the penalties how to treat stolen data that is available else- News of the World’s phone-hacking, when are severe. Aaron Swartz, who downloaded where is an increasingly pressing question. reporters illegally accessed the voicemails more than four million paywalled academic The commercial pressure is always to fol- of celebrities, politicians, and athletes as articles with the intention of making them low up a story that other outlets have run, well as families of dead U.K. soldiers and freely available online, was facing 35 years particularly when it involves gossip about a 13-year-old murder victim over sever- in prison when he killed himself. Andrew Angelina Jolie and what powerful people say al years in the early 2000s, and declared: “weev” Auernheimer, who exposed a fl aw in when they think no one can overhear them. “I don’t see any diff erence in [News of the AT&T’s security and passed the information It is more important than ever to have “red World parent company] News Corp hack- to Gawker, was sentenced to 41 months in lines”—clear guidance on what an organi- ing phone calls and people hacking e-mails.” federal prison. He served just over a year zation will and will not publish under any Preston echoes this: “Nothing much in the before his conviction was vacated. Chelsea, circumstances—and an internal procedure Sony celeb package even came near a pub- formerly Bradley, Manning was sentenced to for applying a public interest test to the gray lic interest reason for publishing. Yet lofty 35 years’ imprisonment for passing classifi ed

areas. “Ultimately, what news organizations Brits and lofty Americans just scooped it all U.S. government data to WikiLeaks. PRESS MICHAEL SOHN/ASSOCIATED

50 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 50 6/15/15 5:40 PM An art installation in Berlin honors leakers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning—and allows people to speak out beside them

While the idea of “public interest” is Richard Sambrook, director of the ing misunderstandings about the source’s important in the newsroom, it provides lit- Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University role to perpetuate, for which it was strongly tle protection in the U.S. for sources who and a former head of news at the BBC, says criticized by the Hutton Inquiry [into the have broken the law to acquire newsworthy it’s also important to prepare a source psy- leak],” Sambrook says. “However, to have information. In the U.K., the situation is chologically for the eff ects of publication. corrected misunderstandings would have fractionally better. The Data Protection Act He worked at the BBC during one of its big- risked identifying him … Kelly understood recognizes a public interest defense. For this gest controversies, when reporter Andrew he was talking to journalists about matters reason, Norton says it is vital for journalists Gilligan claimed that the Tony Blair govern- he shouldn’t, but I do not believe he recog- to do what they can to protect sources. She ment had “sexed up” a report on Iraqi weap- nized the scale of risk or what would happen uses Tor and Tails, free tools that make her ons capabilities to provide a better pretext to him once he came forward.” Web usage almost impossible to track. “But for invading the country in 2003. Gilligan re- Handling stolen documents is a fraught what I need is for my source to use Tor and lied on an unnamed source. The Ministry of and fractious business, one where the eth- Tails,” she says. “When I write the piece, my Defence investigation into the leak focused ical and legal boundaries are ill defi ned. It name is going to be attached to that. I’m on UN weapons inspector David Kelly. Kelly, is therefore vital that news organizations not going to be anonymous.” Just interact- who told his bosses that he had talked to develop robust procedures to protect their ing with her publicly could put a source in Gilligan, was distraught at his identity be- sources and their staff and to give their read- danger, she adds: “I’m a high-value target. coming public knowledge, and he was found ers the information they need to make sense I don’t know why law enforcement wouldn’t dead a week later. “The BBC went to some of the world. As Preston notes, “It’s the job hang around and watch who I talked to.” lengths to protect his identity, even allow- of editors to publish, not to keep secrets.” 

nieman reports spring 2015 51

nr_spring_2015.indd 51 6/15/15 5:40 PM Nieman Journalism Lab

Something pushed news from a scheduled activity— So let’s try to imagine what that future a morning newspaper, an evening news- vision of the news experience on a smart- Up Your Sleeve cast—to a constant background noise, watch might look like—and see what’s What the future something you dip into or stumble upon standing in the way. irregularly. The art of usefully interrupting It’s 2020. A light but persistent buzz on of news on someone with news is turning into one of your wrist wakes you up at 6 a.m. After giv- smartwatches this century’s key journalistic skills. ing you a few seconds to yawn and stretch, might look like— And anyone whose memory stretches your watch shows you the few headlines back more than a few years should hesitate you need to know about this morning. It’s and who stands to to dismiss the Apple Watch too quickly. been storing up breaking news stories over- benefi t most When the iPhone debuted in 2007, plenty night, but it knows enough about your news thought of it as a rich geek’s plaything, a habits—what topics you care more or less BY JOSHUA BENTON niche product for Apple’s fan club. There about, what outlets you prefer, what sto- were no apps! Data networks crawled! When ries you’ve been keeping up with—that it Steve Jobs showed off what news would can judge what’s worth telling you about. look like on his shiny new slab of glass, he Today, it guesses you won’t be interested in pulled up NYTimes.com in a Web browser— that big national security scoop, but that you headlines illegible, shrunk to the size of at- will care about the bizarre double homicide ’ve spent the past couple of oms—and described a world where reading two towns over from the place where you weeks with a town crier attached to news on a phone meant a thousand pinches grew up. my wrist. in and out. If the news is truly big—say, Osama-raid Or at least that’s the best metaphor (“It’s kind of a slow site, because it’s got big—you’ll hear about it no matter what. But I can come up with for what wearing a lot of images,” Jobs said at the time—per- in the great muddle of daily news beneath Ian Apple Watch does for (to?) a news-inter- haps the fi rst public complaint of a news site that, the device will pick and choose. ested consumer. It’s tweaked the modern loading too slowly on mobile.) Your waterproof watch goes with you American condition—constantly fiddling Even among those who saw the iPhone’s into the shower, where it plays you NPR’s with your smartphone—with a system of potential, few would have guessed that, in morning news package—or, just as likely, a thumps and buzzes that grab your attention less than a decade, it would become the pri- curated audio package of headlines derived whenever an app believes it deserves it. It is mary way many people—particularly young from a morning e-mail newsletter you like. simultaneously a marvel (a powerful little people—get news. Or that the iPhone (and The newscast is timed to the usual length computer, attached to my arm!) and a bore, other devices modeled on it) would be driv- of your shower. After you towel off and get a transference of focus from a nice 5-inch ing the majority of traffic to many news dressed, another newscast—a little more screen to a tiny 42-millimeter one. sites. Or that it would create entirely new feature-driven, more tied to your interests The arrival of any new class of devices interface paradigms for accessing news and —sticks with you through your commute to leads the journalism-inclined to ask: What other information. work, where it’s piped into your car stereo. does it mean for news? And today, at least, So while the Apple Watch seems more At work, your day of answering e-mail the answer is: not much. Only a small share interesting than important in 2015, it’s easy is interrupted a couple dozen times by that of news consumers will have a smartwatch to imagine looking back on today fi ve or six familiar buzz. But most of them are for bits in the immediate future. The fi rst class of years from now and thinking: Why didn’t we of information personal to you—texts you news apps, from all the usual big players, pay more attention? (News companies don’t need to see, Slack notifi cations from your are annoying to launch, clumsy to navigate, exactly have the best track record of antici- boss, meeting reminders, a nudge to pick up and shallow in content. (For what it’s worth, pating future change.) bananas on the way home. Only a couple are I think The New York Times’s “one-sen- reserved for news on most days. And even tence stories” and NPR One’s focus on au- then, the watch is smart enough to know dio make them the early leaders.) Reading you don’t need to see the same story pushed anything more than a glance on your wrist is It’s 2020. Your Apple breathlessly by 10 diff erent news outlets. surprisingly tiresome; a headline and a sen- Watch knows when The watch knows you well enough to tence are probably all you’ll stand for before you’re eating lunch alone know when you might have time to read just whipping out your phone. a little. It can tell when you’re grabbing What the Apple Watch is really good at is and reminds you of lunch alone, checking for the absence of notifi cations—getting your attention. And the 15-minute read you any friends or co-workers nearby, or when

that’s important. The shift to digital has wanted to get to you’re locked in a meeting. When it thinks PRESS MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/ASSOCIATED

52 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 52 6/15/15 5:40 PM The Apple Watch holds promise for news organizations, but they may need to learn more about their readers’ habits

you’ve got a moment to spare over a sand- of user data. These devices will be person- for companies that hope to have sustainable wich, it reminds you of that good 15-minute alized in every other important way—your businesses around producing news. read you heard about but didn’t get time to messages, your fitness, your heartbeat— Maybe smartwatches will be a fad, our read yesterday. and it’s unlikely smart users will stand for era’s pet rock, and how news plays on them In the evening, when you’re having din- a one-size-fi ts-all package of news. won’t matter. The move from the desktop ner with your family, it knows not to bug If that’s the future, who’ll be in the best Web to phones is huge; the move from you with anything less than big news. (It position to collect and act on all that data? phones to watches is … of undetermined knows you’re in the dining room and can It’s not going to be your local daily news- size, at this point. Most likely, the smart- detect your teenage son’s cell phone sta- paper publisher. It probably won’t be the watch will end up ranking somewhere on tionary across the table from you—a rare major national news brands. It’ll be tech- the spectrum between the iPhone (huge) feat.) When you’re getting ready for bed, nology companies: the people behind the and Google Glass (laughable) in impact— right after it lets you know what’s on deck social networks and the devices they run on. but where, exactly, is unknowable. for tomorrow, it serves up a nice, quick, light That’s not new—it’s an extension of what But the problem the watch outlines— feature story that it thinks you’ll enjoy right we’ve seen on phones—but it’s discouraging that news companies don’t know enough before dozing off . Then, it’s off to sleep, and about their readers—is a real one. It’s the cycle repeats. a problem for advertisers; it’s a problem for So what’s standing between today and building audience; it’s a problem for cus- this sort of smartwatch future? There are Will the Apple Watch tomizing products that meet readers’ needs. boring technical answers: faster processors, become ubiquitous? Who And that’ll be true no matter what’s on peo- better networks. But the real hurdle is intel- ple’s wrists next year. ligence. Personalization. Data. Making those knows but what is certain judgments—what you’re interested in and is that customizing news Joshua Benton, a 2008 Nieman Fellow, is the in what context—will take huge amounts feeds is key to the future founding director of the Nieman Journalism Lab

nieman reports spring 2015 53

nr_spring_2015.indd 53 6/22/15 11:00 AM Books

new streaming technology. Both advances transformed the video rental market. But the perception in the marketplace and at Netfl ix that this further advance had moved it from the retail business and into the realm of HBO and premium paid television was after the fact, a dawning realization. Mirabile dictu: Netfl ix was the fi rst suc- cessful seller of content in the digital world. Don’t Touch That Dial! It proved the subscription model. And one more unwitting breakthrough: In “Television Is the New Up until Netflix, television had always Television,” media critic Michael been organized on a geographical model. Networks were an association of local af- Wolff argues TV is disrupting fi liates; cable systems, even consolidated ones, were a collection of exclusive licenses the Internet much more than the to wire specifi c communities; cable stations lived or died on their ability to make deals other way around with local cable franchises. And, of course, BY MICHAEL WOLFF none of this transcended national borders. Netfl ix, on the other hand, implement- ed its streaming service—pivotally with a third-party license of content through Starz, a second-level cable pay-TV service— on a national basis overnight. media columnist michael wolff, who disrupting television. Wolff maintains that it’s Internet protocol (IP) destroyed the regularly excoriates the media’s reporting on it- the other way around: Television is disrupting myth of television localism—and that there self, has turned his acerbic attention to TV. The the Internet. He points to Netfl ix as a prime ex- were daunting hurdles in creating a televi-

death of television, he argues in his new book, ample of the phenomenon, and in this excerpt sion network. FILMS NOUJAIM has been greatly exaggerated. It’s very much from his book, he lays out his argument. alive and kicking, he argues in “Television Is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph he solipsism of the tech of Old Media in the Digital Age.” community sees Netflix as In recent years television—not just PBS, a satisfying disruption of the but HBO, Netfl ix, and others—has assumed a TV business. But that’s a strik- greater importance for journalism because it ing inversion of what’s actually has become a major platform for documentaries. Thappening: TV is disrupting the Internet. PBS still showcases the American Experience It is not Netfl ix bringing digital to tele- series and the work of Ken Burns, while HBO vision, but, quite obviously, Netfl ix bring- has jumped in with documentaries like the six- ing television programming and values part “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert and behavior—like passive watching—to Durst,” which made headline news when it aired heretofore interactive and computing-re- this spring. CNN’s film division made “Life lated screens. Itself,” about the late fi lm critic Roger Ebert. Netfl ix was a commerce company deliv- ESPN has earned acclaim for its “30 for 30” ering DVDs, no more part of the media busi- documentary series about important moments ness, or show business, than Blockbuster, in sports. Netfl ix has about 50 million subscrib- the video rental company that once had ers globally and has had an Oscar-nominated outposts in strip malls everywhere. But this documentary in each of the last two years, “The early origin and business model (you paid Square” about the uprising in Egypt’s Tahrir them) became the crucial diff erence in its Square and “Virunga: Gorillas in Peril.” eff orts to break out of the fulfi llment busi- The conventional narrative about “disrup- ness—the need to get paid (or the habit of tive innovation” has held that the Internet is being paid) pushed Netfl ix beyond the lim- itations of digital media. This is an edited excerpt from “Television This was mostly a happenstance segue. Is the New Television: The Unexpected Netfl ix initially was not going into the me- Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age” dia business. Rather, it was a disrupter of by Michael Wolff Penguin Random House retail models, fi rst delivering DVDs by mail, Copyright 2015 Michael Wolff off ering a larger selection and lower cost, and then delivering the same product via

54 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 54 6/22/15 11:01 AM There was one more crucial aspect to It not only became a de When it began its move Netflix’s transformation into media, and facto television channel, it into original programming it its lightning rise to a competitive television established the crossover rushed to say, in an eff ort to network: its CEO, Reed Hastings. market of licensing deals for project its technology bona Hastings is a salesman. He describes television shows. Television’s fi des, that its user data gave himself in all the ways that tech guys like major, if not singular, pre- it the wherewithal to more to describe themselves, as an entrepreneur, occupation—looking for finely calibrate the market, as an engineer, as someone surely with the downstream markets for its the zeitgeist, and the chances temperament of a technical and software product—suddenly had an- “Television Is the New for a hit. Many press accounts Television: The Unexpected visionary. But really what distinguish- other outlet. Not only was of “House of Cards,” its fi rst Triumph of Old Media in es Hastings is that he sells. He courts; he digital, in this regard, not the Digital Age” original production, had it as schmoozes; he begs. He has built what he competitive with television, By Michael Wolff the miraculous result of a big would like to characterize as a tech company it was a wholly unexpected Penguin Random House data, big brother confection not as tech companies are built, on platform expansion of ancillary reve- of heretofore unimagined functionality, but as media companies are nue. Digital became part of the television audience research. In fact, it was a project built, on his ability to make deals and then business. An additional Netfl ix contribution that its producer and star, Kevin Spacey, had trade up to better deals. was to turn heretofore ad-support network been shopping to all the major television Curiously, among the many formative shows into paid products too. outlets. It landed at Netfl ix because it had moments in the company’s development, Reed Hastings and Netflix, surprising been unsuccessful in fi nding another home. the loss of its Starz deal, which gave it a nobody so much as themselves, woke up Its success was an example not of data, but trove of movie licenses, a seemingly certain as a television channel. Other than being in classic television and show business fash- setback, encouraged it to make a diff erent delivered via IP, Netfl ix had almost nothing ion, the caprice and luck of a needy buyer kind of deal that would transform it once to do with the conventions of digital media. meeting an eager seller. again: Netfl ix had to license television pro- It is not user generated, it is not social, it Netflix had merely recreated the pre- grams. And rather within a blink of an eye, it is not free. It is in every way, except for its mium channel television business, in its went from being a feature fi lm rental site (a route into people’s homes—and the diff er- economic and narrative structure, diff erent few million people a day go to the movies) ences here would soon get blurry—the same only in the way that it had established a third to being a rerun television network (40 to as television. It was old-fashioned, passive, distribution track. There was broadcast, 50 million people a night watch television). narrative entertainment. cable, and, after Netfl ix, IP, but surely this was more an expanding television business Netfl ix is betting on viewers’ interest in documentaries such as Oscar contender “The Square” rather than an expanding digital business. There was, in fact, rather little that Netfl ix depended on from the digital system of networked traffi c and advertising revenue, whereas it was entirely dependent on its ability to license television content and to attract top writing, acting, producing, and directing talent. And yet Netfl ix became a new digital stan- dard-bearer. In 2014 a New Yorker profi le ef- fectively made Netfl ix the offi cial television killer (there have been many prior television killers). Ken Auletta, writing about the me- dia business for many decades, is surely the voice of the establishment in the fi eld, con- ferring dominance to the players he covers. Very little in this particular piece was new. Rather, the approach here—putting a lot of well-known sources on the record in support of the current and popular thesis—is meant to solidify, rather than challenge, a wide- spread impression, and to thereby stand as the defi nitive statement. It is an instructive example of a kind of Silicon Valley agitprop that is so often retailed through traditional reporters and that then becomes the con- ventional wisdom adopted by the fi nancial community as well as by other journalists. “Television,” says Auletta, as his pro forma thesis, “is undergoing a digital revolution.” 

nieman reports spring 2015 55

nr_spring_2015.indd 55 6/15/15 5:40 PM Nieman Notes

Introducing the 78th Class of Nieman Fellows Twenty-four journalists, including a political cartoonist Debra Adams Simmons Mariah Blake and two photographers, have Senior news executive at Most recently a senior reporter been selected for a 2015–16 Advance Local, a group of news for Mother Jones, will study the Nieman Fellowship outlets, will study the impact of intersection of science and U.S. the digital news transformation government policy. on newsroom leadership and U.S. Fellows diversity, media ethics, and on local communities.

Christopher Borrelli Andrea Bruce Christa Case Bryant Mónica Guzmán Chicago Tribune features Confl ict photographer, Jerusalem bureau chief for The Technology and media writer, plans to study the will study the history of Christian Science Monitor, columnist for GeekWire, The decline of regional identities democratic theory and new will study the technology Daily Beast, and Columbia in the United States and the storytelling techniques beyond and international politics of Journalism Review, will study role that economics and social photography. cybersecurity, with a particular how journalists can better meet policy play in that change. focus on cyberwarfare. the demands of online public discourse.

Mary Meehan Todd Pitman Wendi C. Thomas Kim Tingley Reporter at the Lexington Bangkok bureau chief for the Columnist for the Memphis Contributing writer for The Herald-Leader, will examine Associated Press, will study Flyer, will study how to deepen New York Times Magazine, the impact of the Aff ordable the causes and consequences the public conversation on will study the history and Care Act and barriers to of military intervention in economic justice using a philosophy of science, sustained health improvement emerging nations and examine multimedia news website and specifi cally the science of among the previously ways to advance reporting civic engagement campaign. navigation and its relationship uninsured. in countries under army rule. to memory and sense of place.

Christopher Weyant Christine Willmsen Wonbo Woo Cartoonist for The New Yorker, Investigative reporter for Producer for NBC News, will examine the repositioning The Seattle Times, will study will examine how major media of editorial cartoons as a emerging toxins and chemicals events aff ect communities critical asset to journalism’s that impact the health and and the collateral eff ects of digital business model. safety of our workforce. competitive news coverage on residents after the spotlight fades.

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nr_spring_2015.indd 56 6/22/15 11:00 AM International Fellows

Cansu Çamlibel Naomi Darom Tim de Gier Fan Wenxin turkey israel netherlands china Senior diplomatic Writer at Haaretz, will study Head of digital and a staff Reporter for Bloomberg correspondent for Hürriyet, the relationship between writer for Vrij Nederland, will News, will study how China’s will study the rise of political feminism and the messages study the political and domestic politics and economy Islam and how religion shaped about gender conveyed by economic challenges of digital impact its relations with other contemporary Turkish political popular culture. technology and the relevance countries. discourse. of modern leftist theory.

Olivia Laing Hamish Macdonald Stephen Maher Fabiano Maisonnave u.k. australia canada brazil Writer and critic for The International aff airs Political columnist at Senior reporter and editorial Guardian and The New correspondent for ABC News, Postmedia News, will study the writer at Folha de S.Paulo, Statesman, will study literature will study innovative modes use and abuse of surveillance in will study the impact of social and the crosscurrents between of storytelling to develop new the absence of eff ective civilian and economic policies on art and trauma. models for the delivery of oversight. inequality and the environment international aff airs reporting. in developing countries.

Grzegorz Piechota Anastasia Taylor-Lind Fungai Tichawangana poland u.k./sweden zimbabwe Head of the Innovation Lab Documentary photographer, Managing editor of Zimbo at Warsaw-based Gazeta will study the ways women Jam, Zimbabwe’s leading arts Wyborcza, will study patterns are portrayed in ancient and and culture website, will study in digital news content modern confl ict. digital storytelling techniques, engagement to identify best the development of interactive practices. media, and online security.

In selecting the Nieman class of 2016, Nieman Foundation cura- tor at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Rebecca tor Ann Marie Lipinski, a 1990 Nieman Fellow, was joined by Tabasky, Berkman’s manager of community programs; James Anna Griffi n, storytelling editor at The Oregonian and a 2012 Geary, Nieman’s deputy curator and a 2012 Nieman Fellow; and Nieman Fellow; Blair Kamin, architecture critic for the Chicago Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab and Tribune and a 2013 Nieman Fellow; Robert Faris, research direc- a 2008 Nieman Fellow.

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nr_spring_2015.indd 57 6/22/15 11:00 AM Nieman Notes

spent more than 40 years Dollar Ball: A Journey Through 1971 at The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Big-Money Culture of 1984 Theunissen Vosloo retired including 10 years as the College Football.” It will be Derrick Z. Jackson co- as chair of the South African paper’s Broadway critic. published by Viking in August. authored the book “Project international media group An investigative journalist, Puffi n: The Improbable Quest Naspers in April. A former Gaul has worked for The to Bring a Beloved Seabird editor turned publisher in 1983, 1982 Washington Post and The Back to Egg Rock.” Published he served as chair for 23 years. Anita Harris’s memoir, Philadelphia Inquirer. by Yale University Press in He has been appointed visiting “Ithaca Diaries: Coming of Age April, it describes the journey professor in journalism at in the 1960s,” has been Eli Reed’s photojournalism to bring puffi ns back to three Stellenbosch University’s published by Harris’s Cambridge is showcased in “Eli Reed: A Maine islands, which were their Department of Journalism. Common Press. It is based Long Walk Home,” published historic breeding grounds. on the Cornell University by University of Texas Press graduate’s diaries, letters, and in May. Photographs of 1981 fi rsthand accounts. Hollywood stars and confl ict 1986 Howard Shapiro has joined across the globe are among the Geneva Overholser, former the staff of NewsWorks, the more than 250 images in the director of the University of online portal of Philadelphia’s 1983 book. A Magnum photographer Southern California’s Annenberg NPR station, WHYY-FM, as Gilbert M. Gaul, a two-time since 1988, Reed is a professor School of Journalism, has a theater critic. Before starting Pulitzer Prize winner, has of photojournalism at the been named a senior fellow at NewsWorks in April, Shapiro written a new book, “Billion- University of Texas at Austin. at the Democracy Fund. She will advise the D.C. nonprofi t’s Informed Participation “a passionate crusader” Initiative, which works to Bruce Locklin, NF ’78, recalls his Nieman classmate Danny Schechter’s strengthen state and local penchant for questioning authority and speaking out for justice journalism and increase public engagement with the news Danny Schechter, NF ’78, whose journalistic output took shape in media. print, radio, television news, documentaries, books, and blogging, died of pancreatic cancer on March 19 in Manhattan. He was 72. In the 1970s, he was famed for his media criticism as the “news dissector” 1993 on a Boston radio station. Human rights was a driving force in his Sandy Tolan’s book, journalism. In 1990, “South Africa Now,” a weekly TV show produced “Children of the Stone: The by Globalvision, of which he was a co-founder, received a special Power of Music in a Hard George Polk Award. Land,” was published by Bloomsbury in April. It follows I think he was my favorite Nieman, so diff erent from the rest. He was a local celebrity—hardly the journey of a man who a week would pass without the Boston Phoenix mentioning Danny. He was a passionate crusader. works to transform the lives You could call him progressive, liberal, radical, or maybe something worse if you hated his stance. of Palestinian youth through Danny was talented, proud, but surprisingly insecure. Early on he told our curator that he music. Tolan is a professor at wasn’t sure he belonged in the Nieman program, that he didn’t seem to fi t. Jim Thomson said the University of Southern Danny more than belonged—he made the class better just by being there. California’s Annenberg School I remember listening to some tapes of his old WBCN radio programs. They seemed almost of Journalism. visual, a blend of news, opinion, and rock ’n’ roll. The college kids loved his stuff . It was gutsy and entertaining. Our year was a convocation year and Henry Kissinger was the speaker at the gala dinner. 1995 The room was packed with prominent people. Kissinger brought his teenage son David. After his Lou Ureneck’s book, “The speech, Kissinger took questions. Of course Danny had a question. I can’t quote the exchange Great Fire: Two Americans’ verbatim almost 40 years later, but here’s the gist: Heroic Mission to Rescue Danny stood and kept glancing around the room as he spoke. He thanked Kissinger for coming Victims of the 20th Century’s and then asked how he explained to his son what he did in Vietnam. First Genocide,” was published The room seemed to shudder—a group exhale. Kissinger remained calm. He said that as by Ecco in May. It tells the secretary of state, he tried to be a statesman, not a poseur. story of two American men Danny was crushed. Later, back at his apartment, he said his journalism career was fi nished. who helped rescue 250,000 He had tried to speak his truth to power, but instead appeared to have tossed a bomb at a people during the genocide distinguished Nieman guest. of Armenian and Greek Danny more than survived as a journalist, author, fi lmmaker and master of media. David Christians that took place in Kissinger turned out all right, too. He’s been running Conan O’Brien’s production company for 1922. Ureneck is a professor 10 years. of journalism at Boston University.

58 niemannieman repreportsorts springspring 20201515

nr_spring_2015.indd 58 6/22/15 11:01 AM Lorie Hearn is a recipient of University’s School of Media a 2014 Investigative Reporters and Communication. He 2008 2013 and Editors Award, which joins the faculty in June. Most Kate Galbraith has been Paula Molina is the recipient recognizes outstanding recently, from 2011 to February hired as a general assignment of Chile’s Elena Caff arena investigative journalism, for of this year, he served as an reporter at California Matters, Award, which honors female her work on “An Impossible editor—fi rst of online political an online media venture leaders. Caff arena, a lawyer and Choice,” which documented coverage and then of opinion producing stories on policies, politician, devoted her career “vent farms,” facilities where and commentary in the D.C. personalities, and money to promoting women’s rights. thousands of people are kept bureau—at CNN. in Sacramento. The site is Molina is a news anchor alive on life support. Presented expected to launch this for Radio Cooperativa, a radio in written narratives, radio summer. Previously, she covered station based in Providencia, stories, graphics, and more, 2006 energy and the environment Chile, and she is also a “Impossible Choice” was Brent Walth is leaving his for The Texas Tribune and The correspondent for BBC Mundo. produced by inewsource, post as managing editor New York Times. She is co- a nonprofi t Hearn founded. of Willamette Week, an author of “The Great Texas alternative weekly in Portland, Wind Rush.” 2014 to become a journalism Hasit Shah received a 1997 professor at his alma mater, $35,000 grant from the Knight Paige Williams recently the University of Oregon. 2010 Foundation in February for his became a staff writer at The Walth began his career at the Lisa Mullins returned to smartphone app Ketla. He aims New Yorker, where she has paper in 1986. He joined The WBUR in June as the to provide consumers in India covered issues ranging Oregonian as an investigative new local host of “All Things with news in a comic book from death-penalty politics journalist in 1994 and shared Considered.” She hosted format. The grant will fund six in Alabama to the cultural a Pulitzer for Public Service “Morning Edition” for the months of work to help the misappropriation of a Tlingit before returning to Willamette Boston-based NPR station start-up launch the app. totem pole. She was the Week in 2011. between 1985 and 1995 before Nieman Foundation’s narrative going on to serve as host writing instructor and the and senior producer of “The 2015 editor of Nieman Storyboard 2007 World” at WGBH. Melissa Bailey joined a new before leaving, in 2014, to Eliza Griswold is a recipient Boston Globe Media become an associate professor of a 2015 PEN Translation Prize publication devoted to the life at the Missouri School of for her translation, from 2011 sciences in June. She is Journalism. the Pashto, of “I Am the Beggar Pablo Corral Vega started developing a new beat covering of the World: Landays from in February as Quito, the people, science, and culture Contemporary Afghanistan.” Ecuador’s secretary of culture. of Boston’s Longwood medical 1999 The book, released by Farrar, A photojournalist, he has community. Bailey previously Chris Hedges’s book, “Wages Straus and Giroux, is a had images published served as managing editor of Rebellion: The Moral collection of Afghan folk poetry. in National Geographic of the New Haven Independent. Imperative to Revolt,” was magazine, The New York Times, published by PublicAff airs in James Scott’s “Target Tokyo: Audubon, and many other Gabe Bullard has joined the May. Hedges argues that Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid publications. He is also the staff of National Geographic environmental destruction and that Avenged Pearl Harbor,” founder of NuestraMirada. as a senior producer. In wealth polarization will result was released by W.W. Norton org, the largest network the position, he will edit digital in popular uprisings. in April. The book is a dramatic of photographers in Latin content for the magazine’s account of the Doolittle America. website. Prior to his fellowship, Raid, one of America’s most Bullard served as Louisville 2001 controversial military Public Media’s director of news Ken Armstrong, now at The campaigns. Scott is a former 2012 and editorial strategy. Marshall Project, was part reporter and investigative David Skok has been of The Seattle Times staff that journalist with The Post and appointed The Boston Globe’s David Jiménez has been shared a Pulitzer Prize for Courier in Charleston, South managing editor for digital. named editor in chief of El Breaking News Reporting for Carolina. He was previously the Globe’s Mundo, Spain’s second-largest coverage of the landslide that digital advisor. This new daily newspaper. A former Asia killed 43 people. Craig Welch, now reporting job comes with additional bureau chief for the Madrid for National Geographic, responsibilities—Skok will paper, Jiménez has covered was part of The Seattle Times also be general manager for disasters, wars, and confl icts. 2003 staff that shared a Pulitzer Bostonglobe.com, meaning Bryan Monroe has been Prize for Breaking News he will oversee the website’s Find additional Nieman Notes appointed the Verizon Reporting for coverage of the designers, engineers, and online at http://nieman.harvard. Chair professor at Temple landslide that killed 43 people. product managers. edu/news/

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nr_spring_2015.indd 59 6/15/15 5:40 PM Sounding

Hear Here up at a public radio station that welcomed of people were listening to their stories a degree of experimentation. As a reporter on the air but few listened to them online. Hooked on the and later as an editor, I put things on air And whenever I mentioned podcasts, peo- power of sound that I hoped would inspire the next group of ple looked at me like I had mispronounced kids playing at a kitchen table. We aired oral Neda Ulaby. So in the year or two before histories. We aired fi ction. We aired a mash- I became a Nieman Fellow, I stopped think- up of people in a state fair beer tent grow- ing heavily about radio. Ratings were good ing increasingly loud and incoherent. And, so I started focusing my energy on really close to my heart, we aired a documentary good Web storytelling. on the people most aff ected by the coal in- But sound is powerful stuff . As I was be- hen i hear the “all dustry—the miners. These stories weren’t nignly neglecting radio, more people started Things Considered” all hard news, but they explained the listening to podcasts. We started making them theme, I hear vegeta- world—its highs and its lows—in a way only at the station. Then I moved to Cambridge. bles sizzling in a pan. sound can. I’ve gained so much from my Nieman I think about being Despite this, I’m not a radio nut. I don’t year, but one thing I never predicted was 6W years old and playing with toys at the geek out about call letters, station history, that I would understand what it means to kitchen table while my mom cooked dinner or broadcast technology. And I’ve never be a public radio listener again. I haven’t just and caught up with the news from NPR. thought of myself as a “radio guy” at all. listened in nearly a decade. I’ve heard the “All Things Considered” There’s always been the Internet for me. I’ve learned that radio is still powerful. theme thousands of times since then. I’ve The radio in the kitchen was on all day when It remains a great way to give news updates. heard it several times a day, every day of my I was a kid, and so was the family modem. But it’s not always what I want to listen to. career. I work in public radio. But not one of I’ve never had a job that didn’t involve writ- Outside of morning headlines, I listen to those times has ever replaced the memory ing for the Web, and, because I grew up with podcasts, and most of them aren’t public of the vegetables, my mom, and the news. a mouse in my hand, I always loved doing it. radio shows. But what might seem discour- Sound is powerful stuff . It’s also some- As powerful as sound is, it’s also fl eeting. aging for someone in public radio is energiz- thing we hear all the time so it’s easy to take Most stories air only once or twice. As an ing our industry. The shows I listen to aren’t it for granted, especially if you work in radio. editor trying to make our local station into typically public radio, but they sound like The line from youthful listening to my a news force, the lack of permanence of my it. There’s an army of people who want to current career in public radio is fairly obvi- team’s work was discouraging. Thousands tell stories they don’t hear anywhere else, ous and straight. But it’s not quite smooth. and they’re doing it. And they’re reaching an I wanted to work in journalism not because Gabe Bullard audience that doesn’t care about radio, and of what I heard, but because of what I didn’t probably won’t ever buy a radio. When I walk hear. My dad was a coal mine inspector, and across Harvard Yard and see white cables in many evenings, after dinner, I overheard him people’s ears, I know not everyone is listen- telling my mom about work, which meant ing to music, and it makes me hopeful. It’s talking about mining accidents. I didn’t hear a generation of listeners no one expected. much about mining deaths and injuries on Maybe these podcasters are competition in the radio. I didn’t see it in the newspapers. the business sense, but they’re spiritual allies. This made me want to be a journalist. The way we fi nd and listen to audio on- While studying journalism, I developed line is due for an update (and maybe we an unhealthy addiction to podcasts and an can find a better word than “podcast”). affi nity for audio production classes. Leaving Technology is changing. But the way we college, audio was the natural outlet, and produce good audio remains solid, and the public radio was the natural place to go. reasons why we make it won’t change. When I got my fi rst job in public radio, Now when I talk about Web audio, ears I wanted to put things on air that I didn’t perk up. So many people have told me they hear anywhere else. I wanted to amplify listen when they work out, when they com- fresh voices. I wanted to tell stories that There’s an army of mute, and when they cook. I hope some of pointed out what’s wrong with our world, them have kids at the table.  and stories that tell us why it’s so great, too. people who want to I also wanted to make these stories tell stories they don’t Gabe Bullard, a 2015 Nieman Fellow, is former

sound like nothing else. Fortunately, I ended hear anywhere else news director at a Louisville public radio station ABITBOL OPPOSITE: LISA

60 nieman reports spring 2015

nr_spring_2015.indd 60 6/22/15 11:01 AM Nieman Online

5 Questions • Washington Post senior editor Cory Haik explains its “artisanal” Kindle app • Masha Gessen, NF ’04, on the Boston Marathon bombers and terrorism

From the Archives The Spring 1993 issue presented excerpts from a gathering at Harvard of 24 black columnists from across the country. Among the topics discussed at “The African-American Voice in the Mainstream Press” were the “N” word, “white people’s stuff ,” and the culture of celebrity

Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times, addresses this year’s Christopher J. The Future of Our Wrists Georges Conference on College Journalism, which provides training for student journalists Nieman Visiting Fellow Jack Riley nieman.harvard.edu, awards & conferences examines the risks, challenges, and opportunities that the Apple Watch presents for publishers

Everything Old Is New Again Lab staff writer Joseph Lichterman on listicles and aggregation in newspapers from the 1800s

Crossing the Streams Competing publications are deciding to team up on podcasts “I’m an incredible

Annotation Live! optimist about Evan Osnos shares a regret and tells the stories behind his New Yorker story about journalism right now.… former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley Narrative News I think this is the great Los Angeles Times reporter Diana Marcum talks about the writing and editing of the drought stories that earned her a Pulitzer. heyday of quality During the process, she kept John reporting and quality Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” at her side 5 Questions Science journalist Ari Daniel talks about journalism.” curiosity, story fatigue, and science —JILL ABRAMSON on the stage: “It’s so important to show FORMER EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES stories that have hopeful threads”

nr_spring_2015.indd 61 6/15/15 5:40 PM SPRING 2015 VOL. 69 NO. 2 The Neman Foundaton for Journalsm Harvard Unversty TO PROMOTE AND One Francs Avenue ELEVATE THE STANDARDS Cambrdge, Massachusett s 02138 OF JOURNALISM

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