NIEMAN REPORTS

AUTOMATION IN THE NEWSROOM How algorithms are helping reporters expand coverage, engage audiences, and respond to breaking news

nr_summer_2015_covers_spine.indd 1 8/21/15 11:48 AM Nieman Online

Architecture Criticism: Dead or Alive? Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin addresses those who question his craft’s enduring infl uence and suggests how criticism can be revitalized in the digital age

What APIs Can Do for News For NPR, The New York Times, and The Guardian, application programing interfaces have lowered the cost and risk of experimentation. David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, explores the value of APIs for news organizations

David Axelrod, right, director of University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, speaks with GOP strategist Steve Schmidt at Covering Campaigns, a conference for 2016 election reporters The Future of Public nieman.harvard.edu, awards & conferences Media Membership Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow Melody Kramer reports on the sustainability of public media beyond tote bags and pledge drives. She explores how membership can be broadened and strengthened, and the non-monetary ways people can contribute to their local stations

Finding the Money? A detailed look at which independent local news sites are making money—and which “The question is, how ones aren’t as reporters do you From the Archives approach the campaign E.L. Doctorow, who died this summer, visited the Nieman Foundation in 1977. The master of the historical novel talked so that you’re looking about his new book “Ragtime,” his foray into journalism, and the diff erences— or lack of them—between journalists, at the race from the novelists, and historians standpoint of the 23 Ways To Be a Columnist In remarks to a gathering of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, American people?” Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune —DAVID AXELROD off ers 23 things she has learned in 23 years STRATEGIST FOR OBAMA’S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS of being a columnist

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd A 8/21/15 11:45 AM Companies’ quarterly earnings reports represent a vast opportunity to automate journalism Contents Summer 2015 / Vol. 69 / No. 3

Features Departments storyboard cover Nieman News 3 The Play’s the Thing 8 Documentary theater’s dramatic appeal Automation in the Newsroom 32 Live@Lippmann 4 By Laura Collins-Hughes How algorithms can help reporters Medium content director Evan Hansen By Celeste LeCompte Finding a Voice 14 How a Robot Learns to Write 36 Niemans@Work 6 Egyptian media innovate under pressure An annotated auto-generated story Investigation helps free enslaved By Magdi Abdelhadi coverBy Jonathan Seitz fi shermen, virtual reality gets between Teach Your Computers Well 39 enemy combatants, free taxi service Your Attention, Please 20 Avoiding the risks of algorithmic bias in China to fi nd stories Slow journalism fi nds value in lingering By Celeste LeCompte By Michael Blanding Robot Reporting Tools Guide 40 nieman journalism lab Bots can monitor vast amounts of data Scale Is Everything 50 The Next Billion 28 By Jonathan Stray Can local news survive? Cheap smartphones may be a game By Joshua Benton changer in India By Hasit Shah watchdogwatchdog Books 52 How To Deter DoxxingD 46 “Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Newsroom stratstrategiese to protect reporters Secrets of the New Masters of Radio” BByy Rose EvelethEveleth By Jessica Abel

Journalist and playwright Nieman Notes 54 Lawrence Wright Sounding 56 page 8 Jieqi Luo, NF ’15

cover illustration:

OPPOSITE: ZANE MAXWELL/UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO INSTITUTE OF POLITICS; OPPOSITE: ZANE MAXWELL/UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO OF POLITICS; BOTTOM: PRESS; KEVIN YATAROLA TOP: SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED Joe Magee

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 1 8/26/15 1:02 PM Contributors The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University (page 32), a 2015 www.niemanreports.org Celeste LeCompte Nieman Fellow, is a journalist, researcher, and product developer based in San Francisco. She is the former managing editor and director of product for Gigaom Research, one of the fi rst subscription products off ered by a major publisher blog network. Ann Marie Lipinski editor Joe Magee (cover, page 32) is a James Geary British artist, illustrator, and fi lmmaker. senior editor His images have appeared in The New Jan Gardner York Times, The Guardian, and Time magazine, among other outlets. His researcher/reporter Jonathan Seitz work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery as well as at the Victoria editorial assistants and Albert Museum. Eryn M. Carlson Tara W. Merrigan Jonathan Stray (page 40) is a design freelance journalist and computer Pentagram scientist. He has worked as an editor at the editorial offices Associated Press, a freelance reporter in One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Hong Kong, and an algorithm designer for MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308, Adobe Systems. He teaches computational [email protected] journalism at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Copyright 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Periodicals postage paid at Laura Collins-Hughes (page 8) is a journalist Boston, Massachusetts and in New York. She writes regularly about theater for additional entries The New York Times and books for The Boston Globe. She is a former fellow at the National Arts subscriptions/business Journalism Program at Columbia University. 617-496-6299, [email protected]

Subscription $25 a year, Magdi Abdelhadi (page 14) is a writer and $40 for two years; broadcaster who divides his time between London add $10 per year for foreign airmail. and Cairo. Up until 2011 he was Middle East Single copies $7.50. editor for the BBC World Service in London. He is Back copies are available from a frequent commentator on the Middle East. the Nieman offi ce.

Please address all subscription Michael Blanding (page 20) is a Boston-based correspondence to: author and investigative journalist whose work has One Francis Avenue, appeared in The New Republic, Slate, The Nation, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 and elsewhere. His most recent book, “The Map and change of address information to: Thief,” was published in June 2014. P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 ISSN Number 0028-9817 Hasit Shah (page 28), a 2014 Nieman-Berkman Postmaster: Send address changes to Fellow, is a former news producer and South Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Asia specialist for BBC News in London. Manchester, NH 03108 He is developing a mobile news platform for new Internet users in India. Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published in March, June, Rose Eveleth (page 46) is a writer, producer, September, and December by and designer based in Brooklyn. Eveleth has the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, written for Scientifi c American, BBC Future, and One Francis Avenue, others. Currently, she is the host and producer of Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 a podcast called “Meanwhile in the Future.”

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the nieman foundation Other participating for Journalism has partnered with organizations include the the Pulitzer Board to celebrate Newseum; The Poynter the 100th awarding of the Pulitzer Institute; The Dallas Morning Prizes taking place in 2016. News in collaboration with The yearlong centennial the George Bush Presidential celebration will include four Library and Museum, the signature events in Florida, George W. Bush Library and California, Texas, and at Museum, and the Lyndon Harvard, each focusing on a Baines Johnson Library and major aspect of Pulitzer history: Museum; and the Los Angeles Social Justice and Equality; War, Times with USC Annenberg Anna Griffi n Yang Xiao Migration, and the Quest for School for Communication Peace; Presidents and the Press; and Journalism. Other smaller- looked at how reporters are Polk Award for National and Abuse of Power. scale events will take place trying to work around Chinese Reporting in 1984 and he across the country throughout censorship 25 years after was a Pulitzer Prize fi nalist the nieman event, the the year. Tiananmen. “Where Are the the following year. He made capstone of the series, Women?” was the cover story several documentaries for will take place in September nieman reports has for the Summer 2014 issue of PBS’s “Frontline” on the 2016. Focusing on power, received two Mirror Awards, the magazine. It examined the October Surprise conspiracy accountability, and abuse, the which honor excellence dearth of female leadership theory during the 1980 program will include Pulitzer in media industry reporting. in newsrooms and what can be presidential election, and he winners in conversation, “Moral Hazard” by Yang done to increase their ranks has authored several books. storytelling, and performance. Xiao, NF ’14, won in the best at the top. “Robert Parry has for “This is not just a moment commentary category while Administered by decades been one of the for retrospection,” said Nieman “Where Are the Women? Syracuse University’s S.I. most tenacious investigative curator Ann Marie Lipinski, Why we need more female Newhouse School of Public journalists,” said Bill Kovach, a past co-chair of the Pulitzer newsroom leaders” by Anna Communications, the Mirror former Nieman Foundation Prize board. “Exploring Griffi n, NF ’12, won as the best Awards honor the reporters, curator and chair of the the ways the use and abuse of single article in digital media. editors, and teams of writers advisory committee overseeing power have echoed throughout “Moral Hazard” appeared who examine their own the award. “Driven by his the history of the prize can in the Winter 2014 issue industry for the public’s concern that the information ignite debate and strengthen of Nieman Reports as part of benefi t. fl ooding our communications both journalism and the arts as a cover package on “The State This year’s awards were system increasingly substitutes we look out to a new era.” of Journalism in China” that presented at a ceremony in opinion for historical New York City on June 11. fact and undermines eff ective citizen and government investigative reporter decisions, he has created a Robert Parry is the recipient unique news website to replace of the 2015 I.F. Stone Medal disinformation with facts for Journalistic Independence, based on deep research.” recognized for his distinguished The annual award career marked by meticulously was established in 2008 to researched investigations, recognize journalistic intrepid questioning, and independence while honoring reporting that has challenged the life of investigative mainstream media. journalist I.F. Stone. Journalists Parry established the fi rst chosen as recipients produce investigative newsmagazine on work capturing the spirit of the Internet, consortiumnews. independence, integrity, and com, in 1995 and continues courage that characterized to edit the site today. He is I.F. Stone’s Weekly, which was known for his breaking news published from 1953 to 1971. reporting during the Iran- Perry will be presented with Nieman curator Ann Marie Lipinski met in New Delhi, India with Nieman Fellows, including (clockwise from top left) Raj Chengappa, NF Contra aff air while working the I.F. Stone Medal during ’91; Nirupama Subramanian, NF ’03; Hiranmay Karlekar, NF ’67; Anil for AP and Newsweek in the a ceremony at Harvard on Padmanabhan, NF ’01; Rema Nagarajan, NF ’12; and Sunil Sethi, NF ’89 1980s. He received a George October 22. 

nieman reports summer 2015 3

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I think ultimately it’s a combination “The Real Unit of of people plus machines. What the algo- rithms are doing, though, is fundamentally Exchange Is … People” responding to what humans are doing with Medium’s Evan Hansen on the content. optimum story length, writing On optimum story length We ran some numbers to fi gure out if there’s for free, and online publishing an optimal length for writing on Medium in terms of people fi nishing a story. Our data scientists assured me that seven minutes is the ideal reading time for a post. Two years ago, when Medium really took off , there was a resurgence of interest van hansen is head of egant and appealing tool for writing and to in long-form writing. Medium acquired an content labs at Medium, the on- create an environment where readers will investigative science journalism magazine line publisher created by Twitter take the time to pause and engage with the called Matter, which was publishing one co-founders Evan Williams and words in front of them. long-form story once a month. We got asso- Biz Stone in 2012. Previously, You want that instead of creating all ciated with the long-form movement, large- EHansen was editor in chief of Wired.com for this clutter, what I used to call “link rou- ly as a result of that. eight years. He has worked online for most of the lette” when I was at Wired. We were con- Yet we accept any type of writing as long 20 years he has been in the journalism industry. vinced that the stories people were reading as it fi ts our terms of service. Shorter stuff is With a clean, simple design, Medium wouldn’t keep their attention for more than great. Long does not always serve the reader aims to change the way people write, publish, a couple seconds, or maybe a minute if we better. Very few stories actually rise to the and read online. In three years, Medium has were lucky. So we’d say, “Let’s put 40 other level of needing 10,000 words. The idea is to evolved and now features content by both am- links up there. The minute they get bored publish stuff that is shorter, conversational, ateurs and professionals—not just journalists with this one, they’ll click off , and they’ll and ephemeral without displacing or remov- and novelists, but politicians and policymakers stay with Wired.” ing long-form. as well. President Obama’s 2015 State of the I think you start to see some of the seeds Union was published on Medium, and Walter of why writing is broken on the Internet. On (not) paying writers Isaacson published a portion of his latest book, Reading is an experience in which you’re I think there’s a whole range of motivations “The Innovators,” on the platform. Medium engaging with another mind. The engage- for people to write. You have amateurs today publishes two branded publications: ment between an author and a reader was who are trying to get their name out there. Backchannel, about technology, and Matter. getting severed, so at Medium we wanted to Having an open platform where their stuff In July, the site had 28 million unique visitors reconnect those dots. might get noticed and seen by a big audience globally, according to internal metrics. The method for doing that, in addition to is very appealing. Medium is not without critics, especially creating the tools, was to create a network, You have people who have stories that among freelance writers. Out of several thou- a place where people engage with each they want to get out to the public and they sand articles posted on the site each day, Hansen other and not just with documents. It took want to own that relationship and their own recently estimated that Medium pays for about Facebook and social networks to realize that words. Then on the far end of the scale, you 50 or fewer. The unpaid writers retain the copy- the real unit of exchange is not documents, have professional writers who write to put right to their work. it’s people. Hansen spoke at the Nieman Foundation this spring in conversation with David Jiménez, On algorithms and editors a 2015 Nieman Fellow. Edited excerpts: When you try to curate vast amounts of in- The real workhorse of formation, you run into a scaling problem. Medium is the network. On creating engagement People are a better judge of individual pieces It’s the people on it As a writer, you want more than a nice easel. of content than algorithms, but when you’re You want an audience and ultimately, you trying to review thousands of pieces of con- reading, recommending, want to get paid. At Medium, the fi rst piece tent in real time and make suggestions about interacting. It’s not a

of the puzzle was to make a much more el- what to read, it gets to be a problem. top-down process SEITZ JONATHAN

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nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 4 8/26/15 1:03 PM We’re putting about 25 to 30 stories [that number has since dropped to five to 10] a day on the homepage and maybe tweeting the same number of posts and oftentimes, they’re the same ones. The real workhorse of Medium is the network. It’s the other people on it, reading, recommending, in- teracting. That creates the amplifi cation. It’s by design supposed to be very organic and not a top-down editorially driven process. It’s bottom-up based on readers. Writers can see who follows you. If peo- ple follow you, there’s a notifi cation sent Medium’s Evan Hansen, right, and David Jiménez discussed the site’s growth and future plans out to that group of people every time you publish something and every time you rec- bread on the table. Even they have a range of a high-quality publication around design. ommend something. You can drill in to see motivations for writing certain things. We hired an editor who hired journalists to who’s following you. Writers will happily publish on The New write stories about design. BMW is never Medium gives an opportunity to a young York Times op-ed page and they don’t al- mentioned once. We labeled the stuff , say- writer to get noticed by people in a way ways get paid. They get huge reach for their ing, “Hey, this is sponsored by BMW,” and that you might never have a chance to get stuff . There’s a whole kind of calculus that everything’s aboveboard, but it’s a diff erent noticed otherwise. you do in terms of “Am I building my brand model of advertising. [Medium has since One of my favorite stories about people as a writer?” versus “Am I getting paid?” stopped publishing on its re:form site and whose lives have literally been changed by There is the notion that you get paid for the BMW sponsorship logo was removed.] publishing on Medium is about a 19-year- the words that you write, and I understand What’s diff erent about our model is not old who wrote a post concerning how that freelancers don’t want to get taken ad- that we’re trying to compete with, say, The teenagers use social media. Our tech edi- vantage of, but there’s a ton of reasons why New York Times or any media company. tor, Steven Levy, noticed that piece, asked people would get value out of putting things Ultimately, we want to be a place that serves the kid whether he would like to put that up on a platform like Medium for free. those companies, that tells them, “Hey, post in Backchannel, which is our in-house you’re going to get value out of publishing technology publication. He said “Yes.” On fi nding a revenue model on Medium even if you’re a major media He was ecstatic first of all that Steven Our long-term goal is to build a plat- brand.” Levy had noticed it. We paid the guy for it. form that rewards writers for being there. We’re not gearing our tools to that par- The post exploded. It owned the Internet We want to build revenue-creation tools in ticular customer now but in the long run, for a day. Then, TechCrunch called him a way that, say, YouTube has done for video that makes sense for us. We don’t want to be up. They said, “We want to interview you. creators. We want to do that for writers and competing with writers or publishers. We’re We want to introduce you to some peo- give people a bigger cut of the pie. competing with other people who provide ple at our start-up.” He fl ew out and met We haven’t considered what our most tools for publishing on the Internet. all these people. He got an internship at a potent revenue model will be in the long company he would never have had access run. We’re a broker between creators and On the value of publishing on Medium to before. audiences. It could be that we’re connect- When you post on Medium, you have fol- I think this notion that the value of writ- ing professional writers, designers, photog- lowers. People recommend your article. We ing is inherently the dollar that’s spent on raphers, and illustrators, and giving them a have algorithms that then will progressively the word is mistaken. In fact, everyone who marketplace where they can connect with show it to more people. The more recom- has written a book would say that the val- customers at scale, so if you’re a photogra- mended it gets, the more it pushes up or ue of the book isn’t necessarily the revenue pher maybe you can license your image to goes out in an e-mail blast and so on. they got from selling the book, but it’s all hundreds of people for a dollar each. That’s the fundamental dynamic of dis- the opportunities they got from the speak- We also act as a creative service agency tribution that we’re trying to build. We have ing engagements and other things. for brands, like BMW. For them, we launched a few levers that we can pull. We have an For a lot of people, writing might be a loss a site called re:form. They had a very high @Medium Twitter account and a Medium leader for other things. Distribution, market- interest in associating their brand with Facebook account. We populate the home- ing, attention—they may be way more valu- design so they deputized us to build them page with a human-curated list of stories. able to you than a dollar. 

nieman reports summer 2015 5

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 5 8/26/15 1:07 PM Niemans@Work

part of the country’s $7 billion annual sea- determine that tainted fi sh can wind up in the food export business. Our reporting showed supply chains of some of America’s biggest that everything from the fake crab in your stores, including Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, California roll to the food in your cat’s bowl and Safeway, along with the nation’s largest could have been caught by slaves. food distributor, Sysco. It can also fi nd its way How did we do it? into the supply chains of some of the most After months of dogged reporting and popular brands of canned pet food, including networking, we essentially uncovered a Fancy Feast, Meow Mix, and Iams. Free, at Last slave island in a remote corner of Indonesia, But even after we had all of this, we complete with men locked in a cage and still could not run the story until we knew Tracking fi sh caught a company graveyard fi lled with dozens of the slaves quoted and shown on camera by slaves, Margie fi shermen buried under fake Thai names. were safe. We asked the International It was an explosive story on its own, Organization for Migration to help, and they Mason, NF ’09, helps but it wasn’t enough. We were determined worked with Indonesian authorities to move end years of captivity to name names. the identifi ed men off the island and into a We used satellites to track a refrigerated secure shelter ahead of publication. cargo ship fi lled with slave-caught fi sh from Just over a week after our story ran, the the Indonesian dock to Thailand. From Indonesian government made a dramatic there, we spent four nights in a truck fol- rescue—freeing more than 300 slaves from lowing load after load of seafood being de- the island. Since then, more than 800 men so often, journalists are quick to livered to cold storage facilities, processing and counting have been repatriated, arrests dismiss stories that have been done before, plants, and the country’s largest fi sh market. have been made, businesses have cut ties especially those that have been written over Once we nailed down that some of these with tainted suppliers, a Congressional and over again. But what if you could take smaller companies were selling to two major hearing has been held, and U.S. federal a subject everyone has known about for Thai exporting businesses, California-based legislation has been written, all proof that years—an open secret—and make it your reporter Martha Mendoza started connecting sometimes the best reporting comes when own, breaking news and linking unspeakable the dots. She used U.S. Customs records to reporters take a new look at an old story.  abuse occurring in Southeast Asia’s oceans to the food on American dinner tables? That’s exactly what my Associated Press colleague Robin McDowell and I set out to do when we began a yearlong investigation exposing modern-day slavery in the fi shing industry’s gritty underworld. Migrant workers from the poorest parts of Thailand, along with neighboring Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos are routinely sold onto Thai fi shing boats that end up in foreign waters thousands of miles away for up to years at a time. Those lucky enough to return have long told of the horrors ex- perienced at sea—brutal beatings, 22-hour shifts, no medicine, a lack of food, unclean water, and bodies stashed in the freezer or tossed overboard. What is less known—and much harder to prove—is that their catch is transported from the open sea back to Thailand where it’s processed and shipped worldwide as

We used satellites and trucks to discover the ultimate destinations of fi sh caught by slaves on Thai boats A formerly enslaved fi sherman is reunited with his mother in Myanmar after 22 years

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nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 6 8/26/15 1:07 PM In the Line of Fire the photos, they hear sounds recorded in My goal is not only to inform people, the conflict zone—gunshots, sirens, peo- but to change the way they perceive others. With virtual-reality ple panicking—and are introduced, with Though we may not agree with the combat- project, Karim my voice, to the two subjects with a few ants, we need to see them as human beings. details about their lives. The prototype was shown at the Tribeca Ben Khelifa, NF ’13, The photographs disappear and Film Festival in April, and people’s reactions fosters empathy participants hear people entering the demonstrated how powerful virtual reality room. When they turn around, they find technology can be. I didn’t expect to see so three-dimensional lifelike manifestations many viewers, with no personal investment of the two subjects in the photographs. in the conflicts, break down crying. When approached, each soldier, prompt- We don’t anticipate the project to be done ed by my questions, explains why he is until early 2017, but what we have so far is after 15 years of assignments in war fighting. Though not interacting with already changing the way people discern “the zones around the globe, I’ve found that the each other, the soldiers appear to make other.” We all want the same things, and we’re hopes, dreams, and nightmares of enemies eye contact, with viewers caught in their all fighting for survival. That’s what I, as a are often more similar than they are diff er- emotional crossfire. storyteller and a journalist, want to address.  ent. This is the story I need to share. In my 2013 photo project “Portraits of the Enemies,” I placed viewers in-between life-size portraits of enemy combatants. My new virtual reality project, “The Enemy,” is designed to help audiences discover a shared humanity between opposing com- batants in eight conflict zones, including Israel and Palestine, and Afghanistan. Based on interviews I’ve conducted with soldiers, we have produced a proto- type that places participants in the middle of two enemy combatants who share what drives them to take up arms. As viewers don virtual reality headsets, text on the facing wall provides background on one of the conflict zones. Two photographs show the opposing combatants. As viewers approach each of In “The Enemy,” Gilad, an Israeli soldier, shares his reasons for taking up arms

TAXI TO THE a sense of life as it’s really Driving around the home for Chinese New Year, BRIGHT SIDE lived here. So, I took the old city, I discovered revealing the world’s largest annual NPR CORRESPONDENT Philadelphia taxi-driving characters I never would mass migration. We found FRANK LANGFITT, model and applied it to have found through two men who were heading NF ’03, FINDS HIS BEST Shanghai, a city of conventional reporting. back home to marry their STORIES BEHIND 24 million. I rented a Toyota Take Chen, a pajama sweethearts. One, from THE WHEEL OF A FREE Camry and slapped on signs salesman I met at a ferry a poor farming village, had CAB HE DRIVES IN that said in Mandarin, stop. He’d moved his family risen—improbably—to SHANGHAI “Free Loving Heart Taxi” to Los Angeles because become a Shanghai lawyer. and explained that I wanted China’s rote-learning I drove them and one to chat with people and school system was crushing of their fi ancées 500 miles learn about life in the city. his daughter’s spirit and into China’s interior, spent For some Chinese, ruining her eyesight. days with their families, a middle-aged American I had heard of Chinese and helped out as a in the summers during off ering free rides proved millionaires making moves chauff eur at both weddings. college, I drove taxis in irresistible. People hopped like this. But until I met In total, I’ve spent nearly Philadelphia. All sorts of in my car and told me their Chen, I didn’t realize that a decade covering China. people opened up in the stories. The result has been even a pajama salesman was I’ve had more fun and anonymity of a cab. a series of profi les, heard on looking to rescue his kid. learned more from giving Three decades later, “Morning Edition” and “All Earlier this year, my rides than anything else. while covering China for Things Considered,” called news assistant Yang Zhuo I also think I’m closer to

OPPOSITE: GEMUNU AMARASINGHE/ASSOCIATED PRESS; ABOVE: KARIM BEN KHELIFA/THEENEMYISHERE.ORG ABOVE: PRESS; OPPOSITE: GEMUNU AMARASINGHE/ASSOCIATED NPR, I felt my stories lacked “Streets of Shanghai.” and I advertised a free ride capturing the real China. 

nieman reports summer 2015 7

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 7 8/26/15 1:08 PM Nieman Storyboard The Play’s the Thing The dramatic and narrative appeal of documentary theater BY LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES

the day molly ivins died in 2007, Margaret Engel called up her twin sister Allison and told her they had to write a play about the wisecracking Texas political col- umnist who stuck George W. Bush with the nickname “Shrub.” No matter that the Engels were jour- nalists who had never before ventured into drama. They were theater lovers from way back, and a one-woman show felt to them like the right form for a tribute. For Ivins’s fans, it would be a less solitary activity than reading her words on the page. Each perfor- mance would be a communal experience of listening once more to her voice, channeled through the actress playing her. 8 nieman reports summer 2015 TIllustration by Alex Nabaum nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 8 8/26/15 1:08 PM nieman reports summer 2015 9

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 9 8/26/15 1:08 PM Nieman Storyboard

When “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass dy of newspapering, “The Front Page”—all interviews with locals, then returned for Wit of Molly Ivins” premiered in 2010 journalists. Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, a follow-up a decade later. Jessica Blank at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, and David Rabe were, too, long ago. and Erik Jensen made “The Exonerated” Kathleen Turner was the star. The show These days, the traditional route to (2002) out of their interviews with wrong- has since been performed, by Turner and a playwriting career in America involves get- ly convicted former death-row inmates. others, all over the country, and the Engels ting into a top drama school, an approach “My Name Is Rachel Corrie” (2005), about are now working on two more plays: one that also worked for Watkins, who wrote a young American peace protester killed in about Erma Bombeck, due to debut in “Chicago” as part of the fi rst class of grad- Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer, takes its text October at Arena Stage in Washington, uate drama students at Yale. But the Engels from her diaries and e-mails, edited by D.C., the other about Damon Runyon. Both are hardly alone among contemporary Alan Rickman and The Guardian’s new edi- new plays were spurred by requests from veteran journalists writing for the theater. tor in chief, Katharine Viner. The list is long the subjects’ representatives. It helps that—perhaps ever since writer-per- and getting longer. “There’s always been After years as newspaper report- former Anna Deavere Smith’s landmark theater looking at current events in a very ers—Margaret, a former managing edi- “Fires in the Mirror,” an interview-based direct way, in an almost nonfi ctional way, tor of the Newseum who also worked at solo piece about the Crown Heights riots, but I think it’s really taken off in the last The Washington Post; Allison, who got an in 1992—the stage has become not just 20 years,” says Peter Marks, chief theater MA in screenwriting from the University hospitable to but hungry for documentary critic at The Washington Post. of Southern California in 2009 and also theater, often political in nature, and other Even as playwrights have borrowed worked at the San Jose Mercury News—the work rooted in the real world. techniques from journalism to create such move into playwriting often surprises fellow The Tectonic Theater Project journeyed work, journalists have recognized an op- journalists. They act “like we discovered nu- to Wyoming a month after the 1998 murder portunity to transfer their well-honed skills clear fusion in our basement or something,” of gay college student Matthew Shepard and to a diff erent medium. Lawrence Wright, Allison says. But, she argues, writing for the shaped its off -Broadway hit “The Laramie The New Yorker magazine staff writer who stage isn’t really so diff erent from writing Project” (2000) from company members’ won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his book for a newspaper: “You’re telling a narrative.” “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Indeed, the elements of journalistic excel- Road to 9/11,” has been writing plays since lence—research, reporting, storytelling— the early 1980s. Wright, whose most recent are also essential to writing for the stage. play, “Camp David,” premiered in 2014 at Certainly, there’s plenty of precedent. Arena Stage, credits “Fires in the Mirror” J.M. Barrie, the playwright who gave the Journalist-turned- with changing his idea of what drama could world “Peter Pan,” started out as a jour- do when he saw Smith perform it at New nalist. A Chicago Tribune crime reporter, playwright York’s Public Theater. “I was riveted by the Maurine Dallas Watkins, wrote the 1926 notion that you could marry journalism and play “Chicago,” which Kander and Ebb Lawrence Wright theater,” he says. “I didn’t know that that spun into their gritty, glamorous hit musical. was possible.” George Bernard Shaw, famous for his plays says “Fires in the When Wright fi nally tried fusing the two and politics, made his fi rst literary ripples Mirror” changed forms, it was partly in reaction to a favor as a critic. Pierre Marivaux, the 18th-century the playwright David Hare asked of him French dramatist; Mary Coyle Chase, who his idea of what when Hare was working on a piece about wrote “Harvey”; Ben Hecht and Charles Jerusalem in the late 1990s. “He wanted

MacArthur, who penned the classic come- drama could do to use a line that I had written in The New MARK GARVIN/PHILADELPHIA COMPANY THEATRE

10 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 10 8/26/15 1:08 PM Playwriting isn’t so diff erent from journalism: “You’re telling a narrative,” says Allison Engel, co-author of “Red Hot Patriot,” shown above

Yorker about Jerusalem, and he wound up to the days when explorers used to go around captain would give and in the process found not using it, but I got jealous,” Wright re- the world and come back to New York and a September 11 story that would become her calls. “I thought, you know, ‘I know a lot give a lecture on what they found, and people fi rst play. “The Guys,” which she fi nished in more about Jerusalem than he does, and he would be kind of mesmerized.” nine days, premiered 12 weeks after the at- gets to do this one-man show.’ ” tack and was an instant hot ticket, starring That envy eventually nudged him to Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray at the create his own well-received solo piece, nne nelson wasn’t tiny Flea Theater in Tribeca, not far from “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” which premiered looking to write a play in Ground Zero. off-Broadway at the Culture Project in the days after September Based on Nelson’s experience with the 2007. Intended as a response to questions 11, 2001, but she was feeling fi re captain, “The Guys” is a fi ctionalized ac- he kept getting about his experiences re- “utterly stymied” as a writ- count. At fi rst, Nelson considered telling the porting on terrorism, the performance er.A A former war correspondent in Central story straight, in a magazine piece, but her wasn’t so diff erent from journalism at its America who had transitioned into aca- shame at the behavior of other journalists— most primitive, he says: “If you imagine demia in New York, she was surrounded by such as the television reporter who asked the a bunch of Neanderthals are sitting around a huge, unfolding story—and watching the grieving captain, on camera, how it felt to and wondering what’s over the next hill, international students she oversaw at the lose his best friend—checked that impulse. and one of them volunteers to go and then Columbia University Graduate School of Nelson wasn’t willing to intrude on the comes back and stands in front of the camp- Journalism report it for news outlets back captain’s privacy, but she also knew she fi re and tells them what he saw, well, that’s home. She didn’t have a way to contribute wouldn’t be able to shield his identity in a lot like standing on the stage and telling to the coverage. a work of journalism. When she happened to people what you saw when you went to visit Then Nelson met a fire department sit next to Sigourney Weaver’s husband, the Al-Qaeda or you went to visit Hamas.” captain who needed help crafting eulogies theater director Jim Simpson, at a dinner, Marks, who called the show “a fi rst-rate for the men he’d lost at the World Trade “the wheels started turning,” Nelson recalls. piece of theater,” reached to a less distant past Center. Coaxing out of him the details “I said, ‘Oh! I can change anything I want for a comparison: “It was almost a throwback of their lives, she wrote the tributes the to in a play.’ ”

nieman reports summer 2015 11

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That realization freed her to give cally based movies, such as “Selma” director “The Guys” a dramatic shape, unconstrained Journalism is Ava DuVernay, who almost invariably get by the bounds of documentary. “I remem- into some kind of trouble for reworking ber this moment, at like 2 o’clock in the good preparation real-life events. Nonetheless, Weinraub’s morning, where I was writing and I said, for collaborating conscience pricked whenever he deviated ‘Oh my God, this is getting too dark. I think from reality in “The Accomplices,” which it needs a tango.’” So Nelson added an in- with directors the New Group premiered off-Broadway terlude where the lights dim, the music be- in 2007. gins, and the captain and the editor dance. “In the beginning, it can be a slightly Theater people talk a lot about dramatic awkward line to walk over, because you still truth, which is diff erent from truth in the want to deal with as many facts as you can,” everyday sense: less about facts than about he says. “You eventually realize you have capturing an essence, even if that comes is a sacred word among playwrights, and it’s a story to tell, and some of the details ei- about by changing or obscuring facts. That’s kind of kryptonite among journalists.” ther have to be omitted or altered to make it what Nelson believes she was able to do So it was for Bernard Weinraub, who a palatable two-hour fi lm or play. But there’s with “The Guys,” which premiered at a time grew up reading plays and dreaming of a constant tension there—for journalists. when hero worship of fi refi ghters—maud- a life as a playwright. He spent his career It’s sort of a delicate balance, and you’re al- lin press coverage included—was a post- instead at The New York Times, but when ways feeling a little bit guilty if you’re mak- 9/11 norm. Her play, by contrast, conjures he retired in 2005, he fi nally acted on the ing some changes. But then you realize, this images of fl awed, honorable, regular people fantasy. A story he’d covered provided the is a drama, and I have no idea what X said to who died on the job. seeds of his fi rst play, “The Accomplices,” Y. You have to make up the dialogue.” “I felt that, in a lot of ways, it was more about what the United States government Wright had to do a bit of that, too, in true than the journalism people were writ- and the Jewish establishment in this coun- “Camp David,” his play about the 1978 ing,” Nelson says. “Society needed heroes, try failed to do to save Jewish lives during Israeli-Egyptian peace conference Jimmy and they needed to put the heroes on a the Holocaust. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Carter held at the Maryland presidential pedestal, then whoever you put on a pedes- Ben Hecht are among the 14 characters. retreat. Much of the dialogue spoken by its tal, you have to tear down. And all of these Having taken playwriting classes at four characters—Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn expectations were being imposed on them, New York University as a young man, Carter, Menachem Begin, and Anwar and they were dazed by it, because it wasn’t and again, gearing up for retirement, at Sadat—is taken from life, but not all of it. who they were. And they came to this play the University of California, Los Angeles, “When I’m going out on a limb and mak- and said, ‘Thank you. That’s who we are. Weinraub understood the demands of dra- ing stuff up, I wanted to make sure that it We’re guys doing our job.’” ma: Confl ict and tension are essential, which was true to their characters and true to their But for journalists-turned-playwrights, is not the case in a news story. Steeped in beliefs,” Wright says. “Jimmy Carter came creativity can be the trickiest part—the ele- Hollywood—he covered it for the Times, and on opening night. I doubt that he would ment of theater that is most in confl ict with he is married to the producer Amy Pascal— have been able to tell what he reallyy said and R

their training. As Marks puts it, “ ‘Invention’ he sympathizes with the makers of histori- what I imagined he said.”d.” STAGE WOOD/ARENA TERESA TE play time A sampling of plays written by journalists and based on real events

1913 1928 1971 2001 “Pygmalion,” “The Front Page,” “Sticks and Bones,” “The Guys,” George Bernard Shaw Ben Hecht and David Rabe Anne Nelson A basis for “My Fair Lady,” Charles MacArthur A black comedy about a blind A fi ctionalized which lampoons Britain’s Tabloid newspaper reporters Vietnam veteran alienated account of class system via lessons in take on the police beat from friends and family who Nelson’s speech refi nement caannot fathom his wartime experiencess ghostwriting exxperiences eulogies for fi refi ghters 1926 in the wake of 9/11 “Chicago,” Maurine 19977 Dallas Watkins “EEvery Good Boy Deserves 2003 Watkins gleaned material Faavour,” Tom Stoppard “Democracy,” about female murder Seet in the USSR, a criticism of Michael Frayn suspects from cases she thhe Soviet practice of treating An look at the Guillaume covered as a reporter foor poolitical dissidence as a form Aff air, an espionage scandal the Chicago Tribune off mental illness that rocked Germany

12 nieman reports summer 20201515

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 12 8/26/15 1:08 PM he way margaret engel sees it, there’s a feeling in America that people must choose one field and stick with it. “If you are 23 years Told and right out of drama school and wrote a play, that’s considered totally fi ne,” she says. “But if you switch from a different profession—if you’re a reporter and now are doing a play—there’s a big, how do I say this, skepticism of that. There’s not much toler- ance for people multitasking.” Playwriting provides plenty of unfamil- iar challenges for journalists new to it: writ- ing dialogue that comes alive when spoken aloud, drawing characters who seem like fl esh-and-blood human beings, keeping the number of required actors low enough that the budget wouldn’t be astronomical. But journalism is good preparation for doing quick script rewrites and collaborat- ing with directors. “If an editor tells you, ‘You gotta change the lede,’ you change the lede,” Weinraub says. “So if a director asked me to do something, nine times out of 10 I did it. I’m a very easy guy to work with as a playwright—maybe too easy.” Lawrence Wright took much of the dialogue in his “Camp David” from the 1978 peace talks Journalists also tend to excel at research. Before the Engels wrote “Red Hot Patriot,” Wright researches his plays the same tion on top of fact. “When I become deeply Margaret Engel ordered 51 solo plays from the way he does his books: extensive interview- acquainted with the characters and I have publisher Samuel French, Inc., and the sisters ing, voluminous reading. In fact, he spun his a sense of what really happened,” he says, read them all. “That was a good introduction, 2014 book, “Thirteen Days in September: “the real things become the girders upon because it really felt that it was doable,” she Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David,” which I can build this abode, and then once says. “We liked a lot of the plays, but some out of his research for “Camp David.” I have those real things in place, I can go of them weren’t fabulous, and so we thought, In “Thirteen Days,” he stuck to the rules of inside it and start imagining it.” ‘Well, we can at least meet that low bar.’” nonfi ction; in “Camp David,” he laid inven- Imagination, according to Marks, is where many plays by journalists fall short, sometimes because the authors haven’t 2005 2010 spent long enough learning “the tools of “My Name is Rachel “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick- entertainment” that vital theater requires. Corrie,” edited by Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,” If subjective observation and breadth Alan Rickman Margaret and Allison Engel of character are lacking, a play can feel and Katharine Viner A staged celebration of too tethered to the page. “There’s a kind Based on the diaries and the liberal Texan columnist of fl atness sometimes to plays by journal- e-mails of Corrie, who was and the glories of the First ists because they’re basically interested killed while protesting the Amendment in imparting information; that’s what we destruction of a house in do,” he says. “The big picture of what the Gaza Strip 2014 turns this into meaningful drama, what “Camp David,” makes this dramatic, is often the thing 2007 Lawrence Wright that falls away.” “The Accomplices,” Explores the 13 grueling days As the Engels ready “Erma Bombeck: Bernard Weinraub of the 1978 Mideast Peace At Wit’s End” for its autumn opening, Historical drama suggesting Talks, when President Carter Margaret says she’d like to see even more that the FDR administration hosted Israeli Prime Minister theater based in journalism: “Journalists failed to do everything it could Menachem Begin and Egyptianan uncover amazing, spectacular stories al- to rescue European Jews President Anwar Sadat in ways, and so much of it vanishes after the during World War II Maryland story is written. You don’t have to be mak- ing up wacky scenarios when true life shows you all the drama you could handle.” 

nieman reports summer 2015 13

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 13 8/26/15 1:08 PM FINDING A VOICE

FINDING A VOICE

Amidst a challenging political and economic environment, young Egyptian reporters are developing innovative journalism and business models

BY MAGDI ABDELHADI PRESS AMR NABIL/ASSOCIATED

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 14 8/26/15 1:09 PM Protesters in Cairo last summer demand the release from prison of photographer Mahmoud Abou Zeid, known as Shawkan

nieman reports summer 2015 15

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 15 8/26/15 1:09 PM ne day last may, These two incidents illustrate how far followed by archival footage of flybys and Egyptian private tele- Egyptian media has come—and how far it elite military troops rappeling down walls. vision station TEN still has to go—since the Tahrir Square pro- Editorial independence also is rare among pri- broadcast an inter- tests of 2011 that toppled President Hosni vate media fi rms, which require reporters to view with Justice Min- Mubarak. Columnists and reporters are hew closely to political or corporate interests. ister Mahfouz Saber once again beginning to expose corruption, The political situation is also fraught. in which he expressed police brutality, and the failure of the state Since the overthrow of President Mohamed the opinion that a law to provide basic services and uphold the rule Morsi in July 2013, the country has seen graduate whose father of law. Social media storms can force min- a considerable deterioration in its human was a garbage collec- isterial resignations. Yet, when journalists rights record and a dramatic increase in the tor could never be- go too far, censors are still quick to step in, number of jailed activists and journalists. come a judge because “a judge must come as the al-Ghatrify case shows. Egypt’s national union of journalists, the from a respectable environment, materially “The Egyptian media is still in transi- body that represents print media workers, Oas well as morally.” tion,” says Naila Nabil Hamdy, associate accuses the police of escalating its attacks Within minutes, social media was buzz- professor of journalism and mass com- on journalists and arresting them on spu- ing with calls for Saber to step down. Even munication at the American University rious charges. Between January and March the mainstream media joined in. Less than in Cairo—a transition from state-run to of this year alone, the union documented 24 hours after the interview aired, Saber independent entities, from print to digital 126 “violations” against journalists—verbal resigned, an unprecedented outcome in media, and from national to local coverage. or physical abuse, confiscation of equip- a country where just a few years ago minis- Leading this shift is a cohort of digital- ment, or prevention from covering cer- ters were immune to public opinion and ac- ly savvy journalists-turned-entrepreneurs tain events. A report by the Committee customed to remaining in offi ce for decades. launching their own platforms. Encouraged to Protect Journalists (CPJ) concluded in On that same day Saber resigned, the by post-Mubarak revolutionary fervor and June that 18 journalists were “behind bars fi rst print run (about 48,000 copies) of the fed up with the stifl ing environment of state in relation for their reporting—the highest privately owned daily Al-Watan was pulped and corporate media, these 20- and 30-some- in the country since [CPJ] began recording following an objection from “sovereign thing reporters face formidable obstacles: data on imprisoned journalists in 1990.” entities,” a common euphemism for the a restrictive legal system, the threat of gov- The report describes prison conditions: Egyptian Army or intelligence services, to ernment repression, and scarce venture cap- “In letters from prison, some journalists a headline and a column. The headline— ital willing to support independent media wrote that they often do not see sunlight for “7 Stronger than el-Sisi”—referred to the projects. The challenging political environ- weeks; others described the torture of pris- numerous challenges facing President ment has forced these editors to innovate, oners, including the use of electric shocks.” Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s efforts to reform developing ownership, business, and jour- The Egyptian government rejects the accu- Egypt’s Kafka-esque bureaucracy. The col- nalism models never seen before in Egypt. sations, insisting that those in detention are umn, by Alaa al-Ghatrify, was a thinly veiled The new voices are, however, still vastly being tried for other off enses. reproach of the president and those of his outnumbered by state and corporate media. The arrest and subsequent trial of three supporters who believe el-Sisi’s sagging The state-run media empire alone is made Al-Jazeera journalists in December 2013 has popularity can be bolstered by sycophan- up of newspapers (some 50 dailies and week- thrown into sharp focus the plight of jour- tic media coverage rather than concrete lies), radio stations, and TV networks that nalists in Egypt. After 400 days in jail on achievements. employ some 74,000 staff . State-controlled charges of broadcasting false news and sup- The second edition of Al-Watan appeared outlets have little or no credibility among porting the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, later with a new headline—“7 Stronger than Egyptians but remain on autopilot, with designated as a terrorist organization by Reform”—and with the rest of the report, millions of dollars of government money the Egyptian government, Australian Al- a sharp critique of the entrenched bureau- keeping them afl oat. On state-run TV news, Jazeera reporter Peter Greste was released cratic interests fighting to preserve the nationalist songs are intercut with images of in February. His two Egyptian colleagues, status quo, intact. Al-Ghatrify’s piece was state offi cials in sharp suits and sunglasses Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, won gone, though it promptly appeared on his next to President el-Sisi delivering a speech an appeal and were released on bail. They

Facebook account and was widely shared. or inaugurating a new infrastructure project, await a verdict in their re-trial. PRESS TODRAS-WHITEHILL/ASSOCIATED TARA

16 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 16 8/26/15 1:09 PM In 2013, Lina Attallah and her colleagues role of members of the Saudi royal family lost their jobs at Egypt Independent, the MADA MASR PROVIDES in helping an Egyptian businessman, want- English-language edition of the flagship ed on corruption charges, smuggle some of daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm. After a dispir- RARE INSIGHT INTO his possessions to Saudi Arabia. Another iting series of editorial and financial suggests that Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque, the disputes with their bosses, Attallah and CORRUPTION IN EGYPT most infl uential seat of Sunni Islam, was her colleagues decided to start Mada Masr being infl uenced by Wahhabi Islam, Saudi (“Egypt’s Horizon”), an English-Arabic Arabia’s more puritanical strand of the news and arts website that caters primarily faith, in that country’s sectarian conflict to Egypt’s well-educated cultural elite, rath- with Shia Iran. Rather than publishing the er than look for jobs at other mainstream relevant documents with little or no context outlets. “There was nowhere else to work,” like other papers, Mada Masr contextualized says Attallah. “It was a time when media described as “exclusive access to court doc- the story, off ering a depth of comment and freedom became more and more limited. uments” and the fi rsthand account of a key analysis rare in Egyptian journalism. No media outlet could aff ord to hire inde- prosecution witness, the piece offered a Mada Masr describes itself as an inde- pendent journalists who wouldn’t compro- rare insight into how corruption operated pendent and progressive content provider mise the content. And that is why we had to in the highest offi ce in Egypt. Mubarak and that is diff erent from Egyptian media con- build our own space.” his sons are appealing the verdict. Although trolled by the state or corporate interests. Mada Masr is using that space to cover most media outlets covered the case, none Its coverage and news agenda refl ect that controversial subjects. In May of last year, offered an account as crisp, thorough, ambition. In practice, Mada Masr becomes the site published an in-depth account of and well documented as Mada Masr. a platform for dissenting voices and a tool to the corruption case in which Mubarak and The site signed a deal in June with challenge dominant narratives whether they his sons were convicted of embezzling some WikiLeaks that gives it exclusive access to are about the economy, political confl ict, $17 million in state funds to spend on their more than 100,000 documents from the or even cultural discourse. Mada Masr thus private homes; Mubarak was sentenced Saudi Foreign Ministry. Mada Masr has treads a fi ne line between advocacy journal- to three years imprisonment and his sons published several pieces based on the doc- ism and the impartial paradigm it claims to for four years each. Based on what the site uments, including one about the alleged represent.

Though some Egyptian media are bolder in their reporting today, censors still routinely step in when they think journalists have gone too far

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 17 8/26/15 1:09 PM Mada Masr stands out in another respect: should cover.” Salah-Ahmed says that Mada It is trying to bring maximum transparency Masr broke even on its fi rst event; not bad EGYPT’S FIRST to its operations. At the end of each year, for an organization still building its brand. staff publish, in Arabic and English, an audit Fatemah Farag is another young Egyptian NETWORK OF LOCAL of their editorial performance—what the journalist trying to combine editorial in- site covered well and what it covered poor- tegrity with commercial success. In 2011, PAPERS COVERING THE ly, how journalists dealt with controversial she founded Welad El Balad (“Sons of the issues and the risk to their safety. “We do Land”), the country’s fi rst network of local COUNTRYSIDE IS GIVING the annual review to refl ect on our practice newspapers exclusively dedicated to cover- and develop it,” says Dalia Rabie, one of the ing the countryside. “As a newspaper edi- READERS A VOICE editors of the site. “We are a growing proj- tor within mainstream media, my job was ect, and we are constantly trying to learn to identify where the red line was, then try from our failures and successes, and we also to see how close we could move toward the like to engage our readers in the process.” red line, perhaps play on the red line, may- Editorial success is one thing; com- be sometimes stick your toe outside the red mercial viability another. No local capital line,” Farag says. “Now there was an oppor- is available without strings attached, yet tunity to decide that the red line doesn’t ex- o survive, start-ups like Atallah and other new digital outlets need ist, and do something very diff erent.” Welad El Balad and Mada Masr investors to keep their sites going until Welad El Balad is certainly different. have to come up with novel solu- other revenue streams come online. Mada Whereas almost all Egyptian media outlets tions for old problems: How to Masr currently receives fi nancial support are concentrated in Cairo, Farag has her make money and reach readers. from international media development eyes set on the largely uncovered country- To ease dependence on donors, organizations while it explores live events side, where more than half of Egypt’s over Welad El Balad off ers media train- as a complement to revenue generated via 80 million people live. From an office in Ting for young journalists or bloggers, while advertising and subscriptions. 6th of October, a satellite city south of Cairo, Mada Masr publishes a daily e-mail news- One such event is Mada Marketplace, she manages Welad El Balad’s eight weekly letter that translates and analyzes Arabic- a combination craft fair and music festival on publications, two of which are digital-only, language newspapers in Egypt. Aimed at the old campus of the American University spread over eight provinces in the Nile Delta foreign diplomats and expats, individual in central Cairo, a stone’s throw from Tahrir and Upper Egypt. Some 100 journalists subscriptions are $50 per month. Welad Square. Rock bands perform against a huge operate out of newsrooms situated in the El Balad relies on citizen journalists for Mada Masr banner, while attendees browse communities they cover, reporting on hyper- much of its coverage and, in another fi rst food stalls, book stands, and tables heaped local issues—education quality, healthcare for Egypt, deploys informal distribution with artisan jewelry and handmade clothes. in public hospitals, clean drinking water, networks that comprise contributors, vol- Mada Marketplace is “more of a communi- industrial waste dumping on farmland. Page unteers, small business owners, and even ty-building than money-generating activ- two of each paper, called “We Are Listening itinerant vendors. The papers sell for around ity,” says Amira Salah-Ahmed, its business to You,” is dedicated to complaints from 13 cents, and distributors get 25 percent. development offi cer and co-founder. “It gets readers and responses from local govern- Some local editions, like Al-Fayoumiya, our audience to come out from behind the ment. In the absence of elected assemblies, based some 130 kilometers southwest screens to meet us and meet each other and these forums are the closest readers are like- of Cairo, also host cultural activities sever- tell us about what we produce, stories we ly to get to local democracy. al times a month, including readings, book Welad El Balad is groundbreaking in signings, and debates. In recognition of a country where the media have always Welad El Balad’s work with underserved been Cairo-centric and owned by either communities, the World Association of the state or big money. And the approach Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN seems to be catching on. Farag says that the IFRA) gave it a Silver Award for the best 2014 circulation was 200,000 for all eight community service in April. newspapers combined. Given that around The local approach is also taking root in fi ve people read each copy, Welad El Balad Cairo, a metropolitan area of some 20 mil- reached around a million people. Sales and lion people with neighborhoods that are al- ad revenue now cover 25 percent of oper- most cities unto themselves, with a million ational costs. For the rest, Farag relies on or more residents. Yet there is no single dai- foreign aid, a risky strategy given the sus- ly publication that covers local issues. Tarek picion with which the West is regarded in Atia is trying to change that with Mantiqti Egypt. In May, for example, Welad El Balad (“My Neighborhood”), the fi rst in a series of had to issue a statement refuting comments hyperlocal newspapers he hopes will even- in mainstream media suggesting that the tually cover all of the city’s districts. Unlike company was receiving money from abroad Farag, who relies on both subscription and Al-Jazeera’s Mohamed Fahmy stands accused as part of an international conspiracy to advertising revenue, Atia is taking the free

of being a member of a terrorist organization destabilize Egypt. sheet route, hoping his circulation numbers PRESS OPPOSITE: AMR NABIL/ASSOCIATED PRESS; AMR NABIL/ASSOCIATED

18 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 18 8/26/15 1:09 PM An Egyptian denounces toppled President Hosni Mubarak against the backdrop of two journalists who were killed during the uprising in 2011

and local audience will attract sufficient The story was covered only sporadical- ent parts of Cairo and move from monthly advertisers. Atia says Mantiqti “is part of a ly by the national media. So many street to weekly publication. Then he hopes to at- global trend, where media workers are going vendors had set up shop in the area that tract national advertisers lured by the more back to the roots of journalism by re-discov- local residents complained that there was upscale demographic. In the meantime, he’s ering the importance of local.” no room for pedestrians. Mantiqti covered developing digital portals for specifi c neigh- Launched two years ago, the fi rst Mantiqti the issue intensely. “We gave a platform for borhoods and a mobile app enabling users to covers downtown Cairo, an area that emerged everybody’s grievances,” Atia says. “We did rate local businesses and services. His com- outside the medieval Islamic city some 150 not take sides. The only side we took was, pany, too, organizes events and runs media years ago. Designed to be “Paris on the Nile,” How do we help transform this chaotic sit- training courses, covering topics like basic it has fallen on hard times but has an air of fad- uation into a much more healthy environ- video journalism and journalistic ethics. ed glory. Mantiqti has its offi ce on the ground ment for everybody?” Atia is convinced that Purging Egyptian journalism of the lega- fl oor of a block of fl ats that miraculously sur- the paper’s coverage played a part in fi nding cy of 60 years of authoritarian rule will take vived the onslaught of modernization. It has an innovative solution. The street vendors many years. But Atia speaks for many of his high ceilings, wooden shutters, and colorful were moved to a specially designated mar- entrepreneurial colleagues when he says, fl oor tiles. Atia’s colleagues stuff advertising ket zone, thus easing congestion on neigh- “We have to be part of the process that puts leafl ets into the latest issue as he explains why borhood sidewalks. these issues on the agenda—media devel- Egypt needs hyperlocal journalism. “National Mantiqti comes out monthly and has a cir- opment, press freedom, professionalism in newspapers are only interested in the area culation of around 10,000 copies. Atia hopes media production. I’m defi nitely not waiting when there is a big event, but then it is forgot- to break even by the end of 2016. He’s now for those [things] to happen. I am actual- ten,” he complains, citing the issue of street looking for investment that will enable him ly part of the process that is making those vendors in central Cairo as a case in point. to launch new Mantiqtis in other, more affl u- things happen.” 

nieman reports summer 2015 19

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 19 8/26/15 1:09 PM Paleontologists in Ethiopia examine tools and other evidence of ancient humans

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 20 8/26/15 1:09 PM YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE As news cycles speed up, slow journalism takes its time to report and tell stories BY MICHAEL BLANDING JOHN STANMEYER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC JOHN STANMEYER/NATIONAL

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 21 8/26/15 1:10 PM aul salopek had been he recalls. “What is the ultimate quest?” Somali pirates were threatening oceano- writing international stories for For Salopek, the answer was “the spread graphic research. In February of this year, more than 20 years before he of homo sapiens out of Africa.” So he con- he walked alongside Syrian refugees as they decided to slow down. “I was a ceived a project tracing that migration, from fl ed into exile in Turkey, reporting that gave conventional foreign correspon- Ethiopia, across the Middle East and Asia, him fresh emotional insight into a crisis that dent zipping around the world and down through the Americas to the tip has been covered for four years. doing fi reman stories,” he says. of Argentina. “Everyone is going faster and faster Working for the Chicago Tri- To follow that path, he would use the same and getting shallower and shallower,” says bune, he parachuted into crisis zones to re- means our long-ago ancestors did: his feet. Salopek. “I said, ‘How about we slow down port intensively for a week or two, churning Thus was born the Out of Eden Walk, a bit to grab a little mindshare by going in Pout rich stories that earned him worldwide a seven-year quest to walk across the world the opposite direction.’ The rewards have acclaim, along with a couple of Pulitzers. and report every step of the way. Now two been far in excess of my expectations, both Eventually, he settled down to write years into the project, Salopek has gotten professionally and personally. It’s a sense a book about his travels, a frustrating exer- as far as Tbilisi, Georgia, writing long sto- of narrative direction I never had before cise for Salopek, who wanted to be out in ries for National Geographic and shorter when I was fl ying around the world and the fi eld, not writing about being out in the pieces for an ongoing blog. In January 2013, telling stories of the crisis of the day that fi eld. “I sat at my desk fantasizing about how he spent time with researchers digging up seemed disconnected.” to escape, and thinking what would be the human fossils in Ethiopia, subsequently More and more journalists are catching

most amazing narrative I could pursue,” writing about their worries that attacks by up with slowing down, espousing a new SIDDIQUI/REUTERS DANISH

22 nieman reports summer 2015

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 2222 88/26/15/26/15 1:101:10 PMPM form of “slow journalism” that takes its time ences its sourcing and methods and inviting to tell stories, even as social media’s nano- SLOW JOURNALISM, participation in the final product. It also second news cycle increases pressure to be provides a complement and corrective to fast and first. This past January, Andrew MORE THAN BREAKING breaking news, where amid the pressures of Sullivan, pioneer and patron saint of the ever-present deadlines, conjecture can often political blog, announced he was calling it NEWS, ASKS “WHY?” replace reporting. “We are at an age of over- quits. For nearly 15 years, Sullivan had lived load; we have too much information com- up to the name of his Daily Dish with diur- ing at us too fast,” says Megan Le Masurier, nal missives that dissected the news in real a media and communications professor time. In one of his last posts, he explained at the University of Sydney who wrote a his decision to stop: “I am saturated in dig- scholarly article on the topic for Journalism ital life and I want to return to the actual Practice. “If you tune into the news on a dai- world again. … I want to have an idea and let and then spaced out the story in 12 hour-long ly basis, you get the updates, but you lose it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly segments to create “Serial,” which became sight of why things are happening.” blogged. I want to write long essays that can the most popular podcast of all time. Part of The term “slow journalism” first ap- answer more deeply and subtly the many what made the show so engrossing was the peared in a February 2007 article in the questions … presented to me.” way it unfolded slowly over time, with one British politics and culture magazine Former New York Times executive editor episode often complicating or even contra- Prospect, written by Susan Greenberg, a se- Jill Abramson announced last November that dicting the one before it. nior lecturer in English and creative writing she is collaborating on a new media start-up Slow journalists measure reporting time at the University of Roehampton. In con- with Steven Brill that would advance writers in months or years, rather than days, and see trast to daily news, she contended that jour- up to $100,000 each to write stories longer the form as something more than just a re- nalism driven by craft, voice, and care was than an article but shorter than a book. “This boot of long-form narrative nonfi ction. Like increasingly becoming a “luxury” product. American Life” producers Sarah Koenig and the “slow food” movement from which it “What I mean is the luxury to take time,” Julie Snyder spent a year re-investigating the gets its name, slow journalism stresses open- she says. “It takes time to discover things, story of a 1999 murder in Baltimore County, ness and transparency, laying bare to audi- it takes time to fi gure things out, it takes

Slow journalists linger, as did Katherine Boo who spent years in Mumbai reporting her book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers”

nieman reports summer 2015 23

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 23 8/26/15 1:10 PM time to do something new, and it takes time to communicate it in a way that does jus- tice to it.” To describe the phenomenon, she borrowed the concept from “slow food,” an international movement that started in the 1980s with protests against McDonald’s in Europe, advocating for food that was locally sourced, ethically produced, and cooked, served, and enjoyed with enough time to savor the ingredients. Though many of the principles of slow journalism aren’t new, the idea has taken on fresh urgency. It shares characteris- tics with narrative journalism, especially the emphasis on immersive reporting. So Ted Conover can spend months work- ing as a prison guard in Sing Sing to write “Newjack;” Adrian Nicole LeBlanc can live nearly a decade with a family in the Bronx for “Random Family;” and Katherine Boo can stay more than three years in a Mumbai slum for “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.” Then there is Robert Caro, who has spent more than 30 years chronicling the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson—with four volumes published, and a fi fth, examining the bulk of his presidency, forthcoming.

he need to augment the news with more context and analysis is what compelled Rob Orchard and Marcus Webb to launch Delayed Gratification, a self-styled “Slow Journalism Magazine,” in the UK in 2011. “Journalists are constantly on Tthe back foot trying to keep up with break- ing news on Twitter and social media,” says Orchard, the magazine’s editor. “We wanted to provide a haven where journalists have plenty of time to react to the news events and try to find stories that hadn’t been found in the fi rst knee-jerk reaction.” Released quarterly as a highly stylized print magazine, each issue revisits the news of the last three months, sifting through the headlines to identify the important stories and report them with more depth and con- text. A recent issue included a story covering The slow journalism magazine Delayed Gratifi cation examines stories, such as a mining the mining disaster in the Turkish town of Soma that killed more than 300 people and and made promises of giving money to sur- Orchard doesn’t see the magazine com- briefl y dominated news in May 2014. “It was vivors and reforming the mining industry. peting with “fast” news so much as augment- a horrible tragedy, and it got blanket cover- Three months later, however, all the prom- ing it. “All of us are news junkies as much age,” says Orchard. “All the news organiza- ises had evaporated. The resulting story de- as everyone else,” he says. “We are all con- tions sent their crews in and they stayed for tailed a community seething with shock and stantly checking our phones. What the maga- a few days, and then the agenda moves on, as anger and struggling to put itself back to- zine addresses is a desire for something a bit it always does. But the story hadn’t ended.” gether. “When you return to events after the more considered and nourishing.” While the spotlight was on the town, says dust has settled,” says Orchard, “what you Since 2008, when the economic cri-

Orchard, politicians grieved with families often fi nd is a completely diff erent story.” sis further squeezed journalism, those in EMRE TAZEGUL/AP

24 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 24 8/26/15 1:10 PM disaster last year in Turkey, after most media have departed. Above, locals prepare graves for the mine accident victims

search of that kind of nourishment have a Web page, those who do stay are staying authors by the number of pages read rather increasingly moved online, with a new longer—and those staying longer are more than how often a book has been borrowed. cadre of narrative websites—The Atavist likely to return. Chartbeat recently changed All this reader engagement matters because, Magazine, Narratively, Longform—chal- its metrics to emphasize “engaged time” on according to Chartbeat, readers are 20-30 lenging the conventional wisdom that Web pages rather than pageviews or unique visi- percent more likely to remember an ad if surfers are only interested in reading bite- tors as a more accurate measure of quality. they spend at least 20 seconds on a page. sized chunks. In fact, according to analyt- Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform Journalists like Dutch reporter Arnold ics firm Chartbeat, while more than half is deploying attention metrics, too. Its sub- van Bruggen and photographer Rob of readers spend less than 15 seconds on scription program now pays independent Hornstra welcome attention metrics. They

nieman reports summer 2015 25

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 25 8/26/15 1:10 PM spent fi ve years traveling in the war-torn re- Night Live,” but Snyder defends them: Funk’s contribution, “Of Ice and Men,” gions of Abkhazia, Georgia, and the North “I feel like we made the right choices. grew out of an article he originally pitched Caucasus for The Sochi Project, a series Anybody looking at the case would have to The New York Times Magazine about of books and online stories that cast new come to moments that were similar. I have a looming confrontation between Royal light on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a lot of uncertainty, and it seemed im- Dutch Shell and Greenpeace in 2012. When Russia. Each year they spent three months in portant to be honest about that, and not Shell never appeared in the Arctic that year, a diff erent region to produce a new chapter, pretend that we knew everything.” Mark the magazine killed the piece. Funk kept stunning in their intimate portraits and rich, Berkey-Gerard, an associate professor of with the story, discovering that the reason authoritative writing. Just over the moun- journalism at Rowan University in New for Shell’s disappearance was the crash of tains from Sochi, the North Caucasus is Jersey, agrees: “What people really liked a massive oil rig, which he investigated for among the poorest and most war-torn plac- about it was seeing the process in mo- the next year and a half to create an in-depth es in the region, the site of three centuries tion and going through all of the things piece on Shell’s safety practices. of confl ict with Russia, including two wars a reporter goes through to get the truth. Ironically, before Funk published the with Chechnya in 1994–1996 and 1999–2006, And also seeing that even if you put hun- Amazon Single, he sold an excerpt of the a brief war between Georgia and breakaway dreds of hours into a piece, you may never e-book to The New York Times Magazine. republics South Ossetia and Abkhazia in get the truth.” That never would have happened had he 2008, and increasing radicalization among Transparency brings its own challenges. not had Deca’s financial and emotional the Muslim population of Dagestan, once According to Snyder, the very public nature support. “It was languishing, to be honest. home to the family of Boston Marathon of listener engagement with “Serial”—some I didn’t know what to do with it,” says Funk. bombers the Tsarnaev brothers. “The of it reckless speculation—aff ected story “Knowing I had a place to publish it kept Olympics are about the unity of nations, selection and promises of anonymity for me going.” Despite that success, however, and the Caucasus are about war and confl ict. seasons two and three, which are in back- Funk admits he’s been disappointed with It was so surreal to see Sochi chosen as the to-back production, with season two airing revenues earned from Amazon. “The mon- Olympic city,” says van Bruggen. this fall. Another struggle for reporters of ey from The New York Times Magazine is The time van Bruggen and Hornstra the genre is more basic: How to support the most money that’s come from it by far,” spent there gave them unique access to themselves while they do the diffi cult, time- he says. stories in the region. Through interviews consuming work of pursuing a story. at wrestling schools in the North Caucasus, Along with nine other writers, McKenzie for example, they gained an introduction Funk, author of “Windfall: The Booming or slow journalism, perhaps to a family in Dagestan with ties to rebels Business of Global Warming,” about the even more so than other enterprise fi ghting in the mountains, aff ording a rare race for profi ts in the Arctic, formed Deca projects, time is money. Most of the opportunity to tell the human story behind (the Greek prefi x for “10”), a collaborative slow journalism eff orts so far have the continuing Islamic insurgency in the re- through which members help each other been supported in one of two ways: gion. By the time the Games began in 2014, produce and disseminate narrative work. philanthropic grants or crowdfund- The Sochi Project had caught the attention After raising $32,000 on Kickstarter last ing. Salopek is funding his long walk of journalists from around the world, who year, the group committed to paying half of Fwith a grant of nearly $1 million from the turned to van Bruggen and Hornstra for members’ expenses, up to $2,500, as well as John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, context on the region. “The way Sochi was providing fact-checking and cover design without which, he says the project wouldn’t organized, people experienced it as a sort support toward the publication of stories be possible. of suburb of Moscow,” says van Bruggen. as Amazon Kindle Single e-books. For each Van Bruggen and Hornstra funded “I think we changed the narrative and project, another Deca member serves as themselves through crowdsourcing and showed how Sochi was in the middle of this editor, with 70 percent of profits going book sales, which rarely topped more than very volatile region.” to the writer, 5 percent to the editor, and $1,200 over expenses per year until the fi - In addition to providing greater depth, 25 percent back to the collective. nal year. “It’s a bad economic model,” sighs forays into slow journalism are often typi- van Bruggen, who is working with Hornstra fi ed by greater transparency in the reporting on a new project based in Western Europe. process. In “Serial,” Koenig opened up her “For our next project, we need to make methodology to an unprecedented degree, a living during the making of it.” airing her doubts and changing her mind Amazon doesn’t release the amounts from episode to episode. “There was a lot of writers have earned from selling Kindle context to everybody’s point of view,” says MOST SLOW Singles, but editor David Blum notes that Snyder. “In order to really understand what writers keep 70 percent of profi ts from sales we were trying to say and draw meaning for JOURNALISM EFFORTS and retain all rights to the work. Sometimes it, we needed time. We needed the listeners Amazon pays expenses “in the four-fi gures,” to be just as inside the story and understand SO FAR HAVE BEEN according to Blum, for reporting, as it did it on as granular a level as we did.” for a recent Single on the Costa Concordia Koenig’s on-air vacillations have been SUPPORTED BY GRANTS cruise ship disaster. Authors retain full criticized by some reviewers and even lam- profits from any movie deals, as author

pooned on “Funny or Die” and “Saturday OR CROWDFUNDING Stephan Talty, who co-wrote “A Captain’s ROB HORNSTRA

26 nieman reports summer 2015

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 2626 88/26/15/26/15 1:101:10 PMPM average, writers make north of 10 grand on a story,” says Ratliff . For every slow journalism publication that survives, another goes by the way- side. Back in 2010, LA Weekly editors Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa founded Slake, a handsome print publication featuring long-form journalism focusing on Los Angeles as a crossroad of cultures in the 21st century. “Every piece of the journal was put together with the utmost attention to detail,” says Donnelly. “That’s where it all falls down to a certain degree, because this painstaking process was very expensive.” At its height, the journal had 500 subscribers at $60 each, and issues hit the Los Angeles Times bestseller list 14 times. But the pub- lication ran out of money after two years. Donnelly was next hired to edit an online publication called Mission & State that fea- tured a mix of stories from around the Santa Barbara region, funded by a two-year grant from the Knight Foundation. The publica- tion failed to develop a business model that could keep it afl oat, however, and shuttered after only a year and a half. “We have to be willing as consumers to support this stuff , and how do you get the genie back in the bottle now that we are conditioned not to pay for anything?” Donnelly says. The question of sustainability is one that has also bedeviled the slow food movement, Brothers living in a disputed region of Georgia pose with Kalashnikovs for The Sochi Project which has developed models such as com- munity-supported agriculture in order to Duty” about the capture of Captain Richard measures are necessary to subsidize creative support local farmers. Residents, often in Phillips by Somali pirates, recently did with journalism, adding that the site is vigilant an urban area near a farm, purchase shares a Kindle Single called “Operation Cowboy.” about confl icts of interest. at the beginning of the growing season, “It’s never an easy path to making a living One publication that seems to have allowing the farmer to obtain seeds and as a writer,” says Blum, “but people have cracked the code on making slow journal- equipment, in exchange for weekly or bi- felt that Kindle Singles have helped them in ism sustainable is The Atavist Magazine, weekly deliveries of produce at harvest time. making a living and giving them a creative which publishes long-form narrative articles Some outlets have experimented with outlet they wouldn’t have anywhere else.” of 10,000 to 20,000 words. Started back in community-supported journalism. One suc- Delayed Gratifi cation has survived for 2011, the site from the beginning vowed to cessful publication is Belt Magazine, which four years by charging $57 a year for sub- compensate writers at the level of major started in Cleveland and has since expanded scriptions. Still, editor Rob Orchard laments print publications. to a handful of other Rust Belt cities. Rather that he is only able to pay writers 32 cents “When we fi rst started, we paid writers than subscriptions, Belt is funded by “mem- per word, compared to typical word rates thousands of dollars out of our bank ac- berships” that range from $20 per year to in the U.K. of 50 to 65 cents per word. counts,” says CEO and editor Evan Ratliff . $1,000 and include copies of the magazine Likewise, Narratively’s founder and edi- Since then, the company has received more as well as swag like T-shirts and a mem- tor in chief, Noah Rosenberg, says the site than $4 million from investors, including bership card that off ers discounts on local only pays “a few hundred bucks” per story. Barry Diller and Andreessen Horowitz. events and products. That’s hard to stomach for writers used What allows the company to succeed is However it’s funded, as with local and to rates of $1 to $3 per word for national mag- a publishing platform separate from the organic foods, much of the success of slow azines. Recently, the site has begun hiring magazine that individual subscribers use to journalism has come from consumers willing writers to produce branded content for cli- publish their own content, which drives rev- to pay a premium for it. “We happily do that ents including Chevrolet, General Electric, enue for the company as a whole. For each because we take responsibility for health and and SundanceTV. While such a practice may article, Atavist pays a fee and then splits any the environment,” says Le Masurier. “In the raise eyebrows about the separation of edi- revenue from subscriptions, single-copy same way, consumers need to take responsi- torial from advertising, Rosenberg says such sales, and television and fi lm rights. “On bility for journalism.” 

nieman reports summer 2015 27

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 27 8/26/15 1:10 PM India now has the third highest number of Internet users in the world—behind the U.S. and China

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 28 8/26/15 1:10 PM As Quartz, BuzzFeed, and The Huffi ngton Post look for footholds in India, the bigger opportunity for news may be among Indians buying smartphones to access information in languages other than English BY HASIT SHAH THE NEXT BILLION

every morning, mr. and mrs. singh gently shoo their dog away from the freshly delivered copies of The Times of India and the Hindustan Times, two of India’s oldest and most popular English- language newspapers, and settle down to read over the day’s fi rst cups of strong tea. In their comfortable home in the well- to-do South Delhi neighborhood of Greater Kailash Part 1, the Singhs have a good broadband connection and own BlackBerry smartphones, an iPad, and a MacBook. They are Internet users, but never fi rst thing in

AJIT SOLANKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS the morning, and only rarely for news.

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 29 8/26/15 1:11 PM In the evenings, they watch one of the able, 315 million people living outside cit- start shifting to mobile, papers may start major Indian news channels, whichever has ies are illiterate. Nevertheless, there is an facing problems. the most interesting stories or the least irri- opportunity here. Anticipation of that shift is part of tating shouting match, and often switch to Indians read newspapers and watch TV what brought Quartz, BuzzFeed, and The the BBC or Al Jazeera. I stay with them once news in numbers that can still surprise Huffi ington Post to India. Their editorial or twice a year when visiting India, and we media executives in the developed world. strategies diff er—BuzzFeed fi xates on viral often discuss news and current aff airs over According to the 2014 Indian Readership pop culture content before planning to ramp an evening drink. In India—unlike in the Survey, about 300 million people, around a up to serious news; Quartz focuses on busi- U.S.—TV and print are still doing very well, quarter of the total population, read a print ness and fi nancial briefs; The Huffi ngton as suggested by the Singhs. paper. The largest daily, the Hindi-language Post sports a broad mix of repackaged and The couple represent the opportunity— Dainik Jagran, had a readership of 16.6 mil- original content—but their commercial and one of the challenges—facing American lion that year; the biggest English paper was challenges are identical. news outlets looking to set up shop in India. The Times of India, with a readership of Quartz India, which has six local journal- Over the past year or so, Quartz, BuzzFeed, 7.6 million. By comparison, the biggest pa- ists working out of a small Delhi newsroom, and The Huffi ngton Post, as well as Business per in the United States, USA Today, has a says traffic has increased from 200,000 Insider, have all launched India-specifi c ver- combined print-digital readership of just monthly unique users to around 1.5 million sions of their sites, each chasing the same over 6.7 million, according to the most over the past year. Not all of these users 125 million fl uent English speakers. At the recent data from the Alliance of Audited will be in India itself, with a large diaspora same time, legacy brands have a dimin- Media. Oh, and overall newspaper circula- accounting for at least some of the growth. ished presence. CNN is ending its content tion in India is rising. Quartz India content is aimed at both an and licensing partnership in the country, India now broadcasts more than 400 Indian and a global business audience, and The New York Times scrapped its India news and current affairs TV channels. with articles on everything from Bangalore Ink blog last year. The Hindi-language Aaj Tak news chan- real estate to Google’s hiring strategy The recent digital arrivals face con- nel has nearly 40 million weekly viewers, in Hyderabad. “That approach is harder in siderable revenue challenges. Although according to India’s Broadcast Audience some ways,” says Quartz publisher Jay Lauf, Internet use is growing—India now has Research Council. The biggest channel over- “but we think focusing on what’s truly in- the third-largest number of Internet users all, the entertainment-focused Star Plus, teresting about a topic allows you to attract in the world, behind the U.S. and China— has a weekly audience of about 400 million. a readership on both levels. Our audience advertisers spent only about 12 percent of In India, “TV is already at scale and is go- target is the same business leaders who we their budgets on digital in 2014. In the U.S., ing to grow,” says Samir Patil, the Mumbai- fi nd read our regular Quartz content.” Lauf it’s closer to 30 percent. Plus, for most of the based founder of digital news site Scroll. describes Quartz India’s advertising perfor- population, broadband networks are poor to Despite the continuing strength of print mance as “wildly successful,” particularly nonexistent, and cellular coverage is erratic and TV, there are nonetheless reasons for among big global brands like GE, though he at best. Furthermore, many Indians still pre- legacy media to fear the encroachment of declined to cite specifi c numbers. fer to consume news through legacy chan- digital, according to research compiled by BuzzFeed India editor Rega Jha, who runs nels. The challenge: How to make money Samar Halarnkar, editor of the nonprofi t a team of six from a small offi ce in Mumbai, with minimal staffi ng and a strategy based data journalism site IndiaSpend. Even as is replicating the same editorial strategy that almost exclusively around digital advertis- India’s overall media revenue pie expands, has worked so well in the U.S.: Focus fi rst ing and branded content, when print and TV print’s share is falling, mostly nibbled away on humor and pop culture, then gradually are still so dominant. by digital. And despite ongoing circulation add more substantive journalism. “The plan Meanwhile, many of the billion-plus growth, more than 70 percent of the in- down the line,” she says, “is to hire a news Indians who have had no Internet access at dustry’s ad revenue originates from just team to really aggressively cover the kinds all are expected to buy inexpensive smart- two cities, Delhi and Mumbai, where the of stories I don’t think the mainstream orga- phones. Though these people are linguisti- combined population is around 50 million nizations here are doing justice.” Jha won’t cally and culturally diverse, they will likely and smartphones are becoming ubiquitous. say how big BuzzFeed’s audience is but she share three characteristics: Their devices Once Delhi and Mumbai advertising dollars hopes to build it—and, eventually, its rev- will be basic; their literacy rates will vary enue streams—with distinctive coverage widely; and the vast majority won’t speak of progressive social justice issues like sex- English. “We’re on the verge of seeing uality and feminism, still fringe topics for a massive number of people discover the much of India’s media but of increasing in- Web for the fi rst time, mostly through mo- terest to younger, urban Indians. More than bile devices,” says the BBC World Service’s half of the country’s 1.2 billion population Indian-born mobile editor Trushar Barot. CHEAP SMARTPHONES is under the age of 25, including Jha herself. This emerging demographic represents the Some are skeptical about the eff ective- next big audience for news. THREATEN TO END THE ness of simply building a big audience and In rural India, literacy is shockingly hoping advertisers will come. “The idea low: According to the government’s Socio HEGEMONY OF PRINT of scale and reach as the key metrics is in- Economic and Caste Census in 2011, the credibly seductive and somewhat danger-

most recent year for which data are avail- MEDIA AND TV IN INDIA ous when it comes to news,” says Harvard SHALIESH ANDRADE/REUTERS

30 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 30 8/26/15 1:11 PM cause it believes platforms that operate exclusively in English have limited room for growth. Indian Twitter users can tweet in any language available on a given mobile de- vice, and the company is also working with regional newsrooms to help them craft sto- ries more native to the social Web. Translation software is making it easier to reach audiences. The Google Translate app now includes Hindi as one of its languag- es. With its “real-time visual translation,” you can point your phone at a foreign menu or road sign and fi nd out instantly what it says. Handsets from Micromax, maker of some of India’s best-selling smartphones, feature a new, locally designed operating system that enables real-time translitera- tion and translation. So, a message typed in English can be received in Hindi; one writ- ten in Gujarati (which is spoken by about Print newspapers in India have surprisingly high circulations, and readership is on the rise 50 million people, according to the 2001 census) can be received in Punjabi (about Business School professor Bharat N. Anand, Knight Foundation, to build a platform that 30 million speakers). “For the 90 percent who researches the media and entertain- makes news and other essential information of Indians who don’t use English, we saw ment industries. Anand thinks subscrip- much more accessible through these types a clear opportunity,” says Rakesh Deshmukh, tions or paywalls—or some combination of inexpensive handsets. CEO of MoFirst, the fi rm that makes the op- thereof—are essential to sustainability. But Ketla—which means “how much” or erating system. to convince Indian audiences to actually pay “how many” in Gujarati, my family’s native For digital news, this technology could for content, when newspapers still cost only language—uses swipe-able comics to convey be a game changer. If the software can be a few cents, he believes media companies news and other information to non-English made to work to a publishable standard, must create high-quality, unique user expe- speakers of diff ering literacy levels. Initially, and not just with informal private messages, riences. Digital news outlets will need deep Ketla will produce one locally relevant news where a degree of error is usually tolerated, pockets and patience. story a day, with artists and editors using in- news outlets could save a lot of time and formation already in the public domain to money on translation and transliteration. create simple comic strip narratives. Crucially, audiences could also control the eanwhile, india’s other There are other uses for Ketla, too. A lo- language in which they receive news. Digital audience—the millions of peo- cal healthcare provider, for example, might news content would suddenly have a much ple who will acquire cheap want to publicize a free service for preg- bigger reach. smartphones—is underserved. nant women and explain why it’s import- Journalistic efforts are already under On my last trip to Delhi, Kundan ant. Ketla could help the provider create way to create this kind of content. The Kumar—a member of the Singhs’ and distribute a digital comic strip for that People’s Archive of Rural India, a network live-in domestic staff who is purpose. Because the platform uses illustra- of volunteer journalists covering stories Mfrom a village in Uttar Pradesh, a sprawling, tions, not video, the data is light enough to they say mainstream urban media overlook, underdeveloped Hindi-speaking region— work across India’s erratic networks. Text aims to record the lives of the more than proudly showed me his latest gadget, a sleek is minimal, so it can be easily translated to 800 million Indians who don’t live in cit- $100 iPhone-like handset made by the Indian any of India’s offi cially recognized languag- ies—in every possible language and various fi rm Lava. He’s never owned a personal com- es. Plus, the content is shareable via exist- digital formats. The project, still in its early puter, but he and the hundreds of millions of ing social media platforms like WhatsApp, stages, is also dedicated to archiving India’s young Indians like him are increasingly turn- which helps further extend its reach. languages. ing to their smartphones for entertainment Multilingualism is essential for reaching In Delhi, the Singhs may be settled and information. rural audiences in India, which has, in addi- in their media routine. But news outlets Entertainment is there—movies, mu- tion to about 20 offi cial tongues, hundreds should consider paying closer attention to sic, instant messaging. As for information, of dialects. “It’s a huge challenge for any Kumar and other Indians like him, who rep- Kundan reads newspapers and watches TV platform to service a country as linguisti- resent an enormous emerging market eager because it’s much easier and cheaper than cally and geographically diverse as India,” for news, information, and entertainment. using up his precious data allowance on says Raheel Khursheed, a former TV report- I can think of a billion reasons why it’s in news platforms not designed for him and er who is now head of news, politics, and the interests of news outlets to overcome not in languages he can read. To that end, government at Twitter India. Twitter thinks barriers of language, literacy, and relatively I am working on a project, funded by the it’s worth trying to meet that challenge be- low-end tech. 

nieman reports summer 2015 31

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 31 8/26/15 1:11 PM AUTOM IN THE NEWSROOM

Illustration by Joe Magee

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 32 8/26/15 1:11 PM How algorithms are helping reporters expand coverage, engage audiences, and respond to breaking news MATIONBY CELESTE LECOMPTE

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 33 8/26/15 1:11 PM philana patterson, assistant business editor for the Associated Press, has been covering business since the mid-1990s. Before joining the AP, she worked as a business reporter for both local newspapers and Dow Jones Newswires and as a producer at Bloomberg. “I’ve written thousands of earnings stories, and I’ve edited even more,” she says. “I’m very familiar with earnings.” Patterson manages more than a dozen staff ers on the business news desk, and her expertise landed her on an AP stylebook committee that sets the guidelines for AP’s earnings stories. So last year, when the AP needed someone to train its newest newsroom member on how to write an earnings

story, Patterson was an obvious choice. PRESS CHUCK ZOELLER/ASSOCIATED

34 nieman reports summer 2015

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 3434 88/26/15/26/15 1:111:11 PMPM The trainee wasn’t a fresh-faced j-school graduate, responsible for covering a dozen companies a quarter, however. It was a piece of software called Wordsmith, and by the end of its fi rst year on the job, it would write more stories than Patterson had in her entire career. Patterson’s job was to get it up to speed. Patterson’s task is becoming increasingly com- mon in newsrooms. Journalists at ProPublica, Forbes, The New York Times, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Yahoo, and others are using algorithms to help them tell stories about business and sports as well as educa- tion, inequality, public safety, and more. For most orga- nizations, automating parts of reporting and publishing eff orts is a way to both reduce reporters’ workloads and to take advantage of new data resources. In the pro- cess, automation is raising new questions about what it means to encode news judgment in algorithms, how to customize stories to target specifi c audiences without making ethical missteps, and how to communicate these new eff orts to audiences. Automation is also opening up new opportunities for journalists to do what they do best: tell stories that mat- ter. With new tools for discovering and understanding massive amounts of information, journalists and pub- lishers alike are fi nding new ways to identify and report important, very human tales embedded in big data.

Algorithms and Automation years of experience, industry standards, and the AP’s own stylebook all help Patterson and her busi- AP’s Philana Working with other journalists on the business ness desk colleagues know how to tell an earnings story. Patterson helps train desk, she settled on a handful of storylines, with all But how does a computer know? It needs sets of rules, software to write their accompanying variety. She then worked with soft- known as algorithms, to help it. earnings stories ware developers at Automated Insights, the Durham, An algorithm is designed to accomplish a particu- North Carolina–based company behind Wordsmith, lar task. Google’s search algorithm orders your page of who translated those story models into code the com- results. Facebook’s News Feed determines which posts puter could run to create a unique story for each new you see, and a navigation algorithm determines how you’ll earnings release. Today, the AP produces about 3,500 get to the beach. Wordsmith’s algorithms write stories. stories per quarter using the automated system, and that In order to write a story, Wordsmith needs both data number is set to grow to more than 4,500 by the year’s about the specifi c task and guiding principles about the end. Automation is taking off , in large part because of general one. Your GPS needs to know where you are the growing volume of data available to newsrooms, now and where you’re going; it also needs to know that including data about the areas they cover and the audi- “giving directions” means showing the fastest route ences they serve. from point A to point B, which depends on a variety of The history of the news business is, in some ways, other data like whether streets are one way, what the a history of data. The ability to collect and publish busi- speed limits are, and if there’s traffi c or construction. ness-critical information faster than others has been Similarly, to write an earnings story, Wordsmith needs a key value proposition since Lloyd’s List was fi rst pub- the specifi c data about a company’s quarterly earnings, lished in London in 1734. Companies like Bloomberg and and it also needs to know how to tell an earnings story Thomson-Reuters have built empires on their ability and what information it needs to accomplish that goal. to provide market data to business readers. But even To train Wordsmith, Patterson had to think about outside the business media landscape, data has been an the possible stories the data might tell and which met- important part of why customers have turned to news rics might be important. Did a company report a profi t THE RACE TO outlets: Box scores, weather, election results, birth and or a loss? Did it meet, beat, or miss analyst expectations? death announcements, and poll results are all classic Did it do better or worse than it did in the previous quar- PUBLISH BUSINESS elements of a newspaper. ter or a year earlier? Deciding which metrics and data DATA QUICKLY DATES Just as media have undergone a digital revolution, might matter was a head-spinning task. “You have to “BACK TO THE FIRST so have the data that inform many elements of the news. think of as many variables as you can, and even then you Information of all types is increasingly accessible in the might not think of every variable,” she says. LLOYD’S LIST IN 1734 form of “structured data”—predictably organized infor-

nieman reports summer 2015 35

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 35 8/26/15 1:11 PM HOW A ROBOT LEARNS TO WRITE A STORY An annotated Associated Press earnings report by Automated Insights’ Wordsmith system by jonathan seitz

“our goal prior to automation was to have 130 words onto the wire within 15–20 minutes of the press release” FedEx reports fourth-quarter[2] forecastsforecasts loss of $895 million, falls short announcing a company’s earnings [1][1] falls short of for the most recent quarter, says MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) _ FedEx Corp. (FDX) on Wednesday Philana Patterson, the AP’s a fiscal fourth-quarter loss of $895 reported [3] a fiscal fourth-quarter loss of $895 assistant business editor. Since it million , after reporting a profit in the same period began using Automated Insights’ a year earlier. Wordsmith platform in 2014 to automatically generate these On a per-share basis, the Memphis, Tennessee-based stories, the AP has been able to get company said it had a loss of $3.16. Earnings, stories of up to 500 words onto adjusted for non-recurring costs and asset impairment the wire as quickly as one minute costs, were $2.66 per share. after the earnings data is released. The Wordsmith software is capable The results did not meet Wall Street expectations. of generating up to 2,000 stories The averagaverage estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by a second, says Joe Procopio, chief [4][4] ZacksZacks InvestmentInvestment ResearchResearch was for earnings of product offi cer at Automated $2.70 per share. Insights. Here’s how it works: ] also [5] TheThe packagepackage deliverydelivery companycompany posted[6][6 alsorevenue fell of $12.11 billion in the period, which short of Street forecasts. Six analysts surveyed by Phrases like “falls short” Zacks expected $12.39 billion. are part of a strict vocabulary [7][7] profitprofit of $1.05 1 the Associated Press For the year, the company reported defi ned for Wordsmith based billion, or $3.65 per share. Revenue was reported as on the same style guide used by $47.45 billion. AP reporters. Patterson says the AP’s goal was to let the [8] FedExFedEx expectsexpects full-yearfull-year earningsearnings inin thethe rangerange ofof numbers tell the story and only $10.60 to $11.10 per share. use plain verbs. The choice of word is partially randomized, FedEx shares have risen roughly 5 percent since the with “beats,” “misses,” and beginning of the year, while the Standard & Poor’s “matches” having a higher 500 index has increased almost 2 percent. The stock probability of being used has climbed 31 percent in the last 12 months. than “tops,” “falls ] This story was generated automatically by short of,” and “meets.” [9][9 This story was generated automatically by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Full Zacks research report: FDX.

The AP compares Wordsmith analyzes numerous factors to fi nd a story’s lede. There are hundreds performance to Wall Street of possible data points that could be used, based on comparisons among factors 2 forecasts as well as to the 3 like current earnings data, the company’s historical data, performance of similar company’s own announced companies, or Wall Street expectations, Procopio says. This is similar to the guidelines expectations, the latter of given to the AP’s reporters for covering earnings: Net income (also called “profi t” which is typically considered and “earnings”) is considered the primary benchmark for a company’s success, so it a more powerful indication should be compared with the same quarter in the year prior to get a sense of whether of performance. the company is doing better or worse.

36 niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20201515

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 36 8/26/15 1:11 PM mation, like a spreadsheet, database, or fi lled-out form. This makes it well suited for analysis and presentation Wordsmith relies on data using computers. entered by humans at The growth of structured data is at the heart of 4 Zacks Investment Research increasing automation eff orts. Business and sports have for AP stories, but reporters long been data-intensive coverage areas, so it’s no sur- will often incorporate Since Wordsmith has prise that automation is being used in these areas fi rst. additional quotes and context already given FedEx’s The sports and business agate were among the fi rst when covering the same 6 earnings and noted that items to exit the print pages and fi nd new homes on- earnings report. AP reporter it did not meet expectations line, in part because this kind of information is easily David Koenig wrote a story in the previous paragraph, handled by digital systems. But today, a growing volume on this release that included here it notes that overall of private and public data is available in digital formats, explanations for why FedEx’s revenue missed expectations and new tools make it easier to pull data out of even revenue was down: lower fuel as an aside using the word non-digital formats. (For more on the journalistic prom- surcharges, a strong dollar, “also,” since that detail is ise of open data, see “A Brief Guide to Robot Reporting and a change in accounting of secondary importance to Tools” on page 40.) of pension costs. Patterson data about earnings. It is able But data isn’t the same as information. Algorithmic says the AP hasn’t been able to do this because separate content creation isn’t just about turning a spreadsheet to get those contextual details algorithms check the overall of numbers into a string of descriptive sentences; it’s into the structured format fl ow of the language at the about summarizing that data for a particular purpose. Wordsmith needs quickly sentence, paragraph, and The Associated Press’s data is provided by Zacks enough, so the Automated story levels to keep it from Investment Research; that company uses human ana- Insights stories are produced becoming repetitive. In eff ect, lysts who review Securities and Exchange Commission without them. the system is writing new data, stock pricing, and press releases to build a custom The AP always assigns sentences based on what it feed of the numbers the AP has requested. That data additional reporting resources has already written, Procopio is sent to Automated Insights, and Wordsmith assem- to 80 companies, while another says, similar to how a human bles the stories following the rules Patterson and her 220 are reviewed each quarter might write. colleagues helped set. by editors. “We’re trying to use Translating even the simplest data means convert- earnings stories as a window Because Wordsmith is ing the loose guidelines a human reporter might follow into the company’s strategy,” monitoring the fl ow of into concrete rules a computer can follow. For example, AP business editor Lisa Gibbs 7 the story, this can lead to a human reporter might have a general idea of when says of the work her reporters small changes in the language, a company’s performance was very diff erent from an- are doing now. “When you’re such as substituting synonyms alyst expectations, based on their knowledge of the in- having to churn out hundreds for words that occur multiple dustry. But for the algorithm, the AP had to specify exact of earnings stories you don’t times. Terms like “profi t” ranges for which the spread between actual earnings and necessarily have the time or the and “earnings,” for instance, expectations is considered large or small. Wordsmith brainpower to look for those may be used interchangeably uses such metrics to decide both which words are used more interesting tales.” in some situations. “We don’t to describe the data and how the story is structured— ever want an article that’s for example, whether the fact that a company missed ‘profi t, profi t, profi t, profi t,’” After using “FedEx Corp.” analyst estimates should be mentioned in the headline. Procopio says. on fi rst reference, the The story-assembling algorithm uses a predetermined 5 company is referred to set of vocabulary and phrases (known as a corpus) that as a “Memphis, Tennessee- This data about FedEx’s follows the AP’s strict stylebook rules. based company” or a “package expected earnings for the “It’s a lot!” Patterson says. “To come up with a sys- delivery company.” To avoid 8 year is not always included tem to trigger the right type of story, we as reporters and repetition, Wordsmith pulls when Zacks sends its initial editors and programmers have to fi gure out this stuff those descriptions from a data. When additional data ahead of time.” database of company locations from Zacks is delivered, You have to know, “what it is you want your data to and business types that have the entire dataset will be re- tell you,” says Evan Kodra, a senior data scientist with been defi ned in accordance evaluated and a new story Lux Research, a Boston-based market research fi rm. with AP style. will be generated. The more targeted and specifi c the questions, the bet- ter the results. “It still takes a lot of creativity to defi ne Every automated AP story goes out on the wire with this the problem.” disclaimer as well as a link to a page that gives more detail Editors say that’s one reason they’re incorporating 9 about how the automation works. If a reporter has rewritten automation technologies into their workfl ow: It en- an automated story, the disclosure will remain, with the language ables them to focus on the fundamental work of being updated to read: “Elements of this story were generated partly a reporter. “Isn’t that our whole job: understanding the by Automated Insights.” purpose of any kind of narrative before we do it?” asks

nieman reports summer 2015 37

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 3737 88/26/15/26/15 1:121:12 PMPM Scott Klein, an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. ups. But the most important part was selecting the right “In a way, our job is fi guring out the purpose of the story schools for comparison. and fi guring out a way of telling it.” The editors wanted to prioritize comparisons that ProPublica’s fi rst—and so far only—foray into auto- showed diff erences with regard to opportunities, but mated journalism was part of “The Opportunity Gap,” it wasn’t appropriate to compare a school in California a data-driven analysis of which states are (or aren’t) to a school in Chicago because the economic and pol- providing low-income high school students with the icy conditions can vary widely across such geographic coursework they need to attend and succeed in college. gaps. Based on their reporting, Klein and data editor Studies have shown that advanced high school Jennifer LaFleur decided to fi rst restrict the compari- coursework can improve a student’s college outcomes, son to schools within the same district or state, before and in 2011, ProPublica released an investigation into highlighting data that showed similarities or diff erences where low-income high school students have equal between the compared schools. “Even though the data access to, and enrollment in, advanced courses. The look the same,” says Kris Hammond, chief scientist and analysis was based on a new data set from the U.S. co-founder of Narrative Science, “there are so many Department of Education. ProPublica used the data to diff erent environmental conditions that are outside the create an interactive news app to accompany the story. scope of this data that the comparisons would not fl y Website visitors could explore the data at the federal, and would, in fact, be making false analogies.” This kind state, district, and school levels. of journalistic insight is critical to fi netuning the perfor- Two years later, the team was preparing to update mance of algorithms. the app with current data when Narrative Science, Like any human reporter, robot journalists need a Chicago-based competitor of Automated Insights, editors. But the challenge of editing automatically gen- approached them. The company’s platform, Quill, erated stories isn’t in correcting individual stories; it’s in uses a similar algorithmic method to produce stories retraining the robot to avoid making the same mistake. from sets of data. ProPublica had spent months ana- lyzing, interpreting, reporting out, and correcting the Department of Education’s data set. “The data were so well structured and we understood it so well,” says Klein, meaning it was a good fi t for automation. They decided to use automation tools to provide a written narrative to accompany each of the 52,000 schools in the database. n may 2015, the new york times wrote Each of the profi les needed to provide a summary of an article about a new study on how where you the data for an individual school, but it also needed to grow up aff ects your economic opportunities connect each school with the broader story. To provide later in life. The study used tax records to track context, ProPublica decided to include both a summa- the fates of 5 million children who moved among ry paragraph outlining the thesis of the broader inves- U.S. counties between 1996 and 2012. The study tigative work and a comparison with another school concluded, “The area in which a child grows up to show the local context. To produce the narratives, has signifi cant causal eff ects on her prospects ProPublica’s editors provided Narrative Science with for upward mobility.” To accompany the article, their complete data set as well as some sample write- the Upshot team produced an interactive piece that highlights data for each of the 2,478 counties included in the study. IBut rather than just present a searchable database or zoomable map, graphics editors wrote an article that adapts to the user, based on their current location. By looking at the user’s IP address, key paragraphs highlight local income statistics and compare them to national averages. The accompanying map is automat- ically focused on that county and its neighbors. Users can choose other locations, but rather than seeing an entirely separate story, the same story gets new data and a new lede for the new location. When “The Best and Worst Places to Grow Up” was ProPublica’s released, many users didn’t notice that the text was as- Scott Klein says sembled algorithmically. They just arrived at the page automation gives and thought their version of the story was the only ver- reporters more time to fi gure sion of the story. That seamless experience is partially out the best way the point, but it comes with its own editorial demands.

to tell a story “Because people think this is edited by a human editor, GERALD RICH/PROPUBLICA

38 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 38 8/26/15 1:12 PM teach your computers well Avoiding the risks of algorithmic bias by celeste lecompte

systems like newspaper stories—to to bias her response damaging cultural Wordsmith and Quill identify patterns. Those toward an edible treat, not stereotypes. are natural language patterns can then be a panting pet. But it has Today, Wordsmith and generation (NLG) applied to new situations. its dark side, too, and the Quill require editors platforms. That means That’s how Siri fi gures out risks of ignoring biases to explicitly construct the they’re designed to whether you’re looking for are signifi cant. Google’s models that shape stories. turn data into human- a restaurant or a pet shop new Photos tool recently But NLP-based systems sounding prose. NLG when you ask her for the highlighted the issue could “read” multiple is an active area of nearest “hot dog.” Then, when a black user found examples of the text editors technology development, Siri uses natural language that photos of him and want to create, alongside aimed at helping generation to direct you his friend were labeled the data sources for the translate the growing to the nearest frank. “gorillas” by the software. story, and develop their stores of structured By looking at large The error was likely linked own statistical models for data into human-usable volumes of data, NLP to a lack of black faces what makes an earnings information. systems develop statistical in the algorithm’s training story or a homicide Siri, Apple’s models about how often data for “people.” And report. Examples of this conversational assistant, humans use specifi c a number of recent studies approach are few and uses natural language vocabulary, syntax, and have found issues with far between outside of a generation to answer phrases in a particular Google’s search algorithm: research context—for now. simple questions and context. To do so, they an image search for But it’s not wise to bet respond to user requests. depend on training data “CEO” returns almost against improvements But Siri is also using sets, known as corpora, exclusively images of men, in this area of technology. another technology that that have something while women conducting If news organizations Quill and Wordsmith in common—e.g., all of the online job searches are adopt more artifi cial aren’t: natural language text is weather reports shown fewer ads for high- intelligence techniques, processing (NLP). or earnings statements. level coaching services. it will be important to Natural language The models generated These kinds of issues ensure that they’re using processing is a class of by NLP tools will replicate happen because the diverse training data artifi cial intelligence tools the same biases inherent algorithms learned from that refl ect their eff orts that let computers analyze in the corpora. Usually, the patterns of past user to produce more inclusive unstructured data—like that’s good: You want Siri behavior—reinforcing coverage of communities. 

you have to have the same standards, accuracy, qual- Klein says most of the drafts that ProPublica received ity, and tone. There’s a big danger in messing things at fi rst had errors. Data appearing in wrong parts of the up,” says Gregor Aisch, a graphics editor for The New story was the most common mistake. Once editors mark York Times. up the drafts, developers make the changes to the code The story uses pre-assigned blocks of text and fol- to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Over time, ProPublica lows specific rules for how to assemble paragraphs felt confi dent it had a system that produced accurate based on the available data. In some cases, it might be stories and used language with which its editors were as simple as substituting a new number or county name. comfortable. For the best- and worst-performing counties, the story FOR ITS BEST PLACES The Associated Press also spent months reviewing got additional sentences that only appeared in those TO GROW UP drafts, refi ning the story algorithms, and verifying the contexts. In addition to editing the pre-written chunks quality of the data supplied by Zacks. The fi rst quarter of text, editors had to check for fl ow between sentences REPORT, THE NEW that the system was live, editors reviewed drafts of ev- in multiple possible arrangements. “YORK TIMES USED ery story before it was put out onto the wire, checking The challenge is even trickier for newsrooms using ALGORITHMS TO for errors in both the data and the story. Now, the systems like Quill or Wordsmith, because these systems majority of stories go live on the wire without a human use more “word variables,” and they have more options ASSEMBLE STORIES editor’s review. for how to describe data. So, the same data might be THAT VARIED The AP says the only errors it still sees come from able to produce a dozen diff erent variations of a story. DEPENDING ON THE errors in the data passed to the system. Some are simple For now, the process for editing these stories is more typos or transposed numbers, while others depend on or less the same as for human writers: reviewing drafts. USER’S LOCATION more complicated human errors. Unless data is gath-

nieman reports summer 2015 39

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 3939 88/26/15/26/15 1:121:12 PMPM ered by a digital sensor, the process almost always starts company like Netfl ix—appears. The lesson, for auto- with humans doing data entry, which is often where mated and human-generated stories alike: Your data problems are introduced. Since the project’s inception, have to be bulletproof, and you need some form of edi- Patterson says, only two published errors have been AT AP, AUTOMATED torial monitoring to catch outliers. traced back to the algorithm. STORIES HAVE FREED The story was updated with a correction, following In July, Netflix released second-quarter earnings the same processes as for any human-generated story. at the same time as its stock underwent a 7-to-1 split. UP 20 PERCENT But because of the way AP stories are syndicated, uncor- But the data Wordsmith received didn’t reflect the “OF THE BUSINESS rected versions of the story persist online. Patterson says split, so Wordsmith initially reported that the price of it’s wrong to blame automation for that kind of error. an individual share fell 71 percent and noted that the DESK’S TIME “If the data’s bad you get a bad story,” she says. company had missed analyst expectations for per-share Tom Kent, the AP’s standards editor, acknowledges earnings. Neither of which was true. In fact, investors that mistakes are an issue that the AP takes seriously— who owned the stock saw an increase in the value of but he also points out that human-written stories aren’t their portfolio; Netfl ix’s share price has more than dou- error free, either. “The very stressful job for a human of bled since the beginning of the year. This was, in eff ect, putting together fi gures and keeping data sets separate a human error: The analyst data should have refl ected and not mixing revenue and income and doing the calcu- the stock split. But Wordsmith does not have an auto- lations correctly was a prescription for mistakes as well,” mated warning that kicks in when something anom- he points out. According to Patterson, who oversees all alous—like a 71 percent drop in share price from a corrections (human or otherwise) for the business desk,

a brief guide to robot reporting tools From crime statistics to SEC fi lings, software agents can monitor vast amounts of open data to help journalists spot potential stories by jonathan stray

transparency is understandable by worthiness, something knows might be interesting. pointless if no one is converting it from one that journalists may not be The rise of algorithmic watching, but there’s no form into another. While used to doing. and high-frequency trading way a human reporter can this is valuable, bots can For decades banks suggests that journalists keep up with the open data also “read” and analyze and others in the fi nancial should also be engaging in created by a modern city, open data, generating news industry have employed detailed analysis of market let alone a country. Software by fl agging items found in much more sophisticated data streams with an agents, sometimes called a larger data stream. anomaly detection software eye towards underhanded bots, can monitor vast Software can look to detect fraud and other dealings, much as fi nancial amounts of information and for the unusual. The Los threats. Generally this data provider Nanex does. provide summaries, or alert Angeles Times crime map is done with proprietary In 2013, Nanex analyzed reporters when something generates automated software on proprietary trading data and found interesting appears. While alerts when violent and/ data. But there’s a huge evidence suggesting insider there is huge potential for or property crime reports amount of public fi nancial trading, because trades advanced techniques from from the most recent data that is not regularly were executed faster than artifi cial intelligence, there week are up signifi cantly monitored by journalists. the information could have are also some useful bots over the average for a The Securities and possibly been transmitted that can be set up today, neighborhood. These alerts Exchange Commission’s after the embargo ended. in minutes. are displayed on the main EDGAR system publishes We cannot have algorithmic The most straightforward crime map and the page for disclosure fi lings from accountability without way to monitor open data each neighborhood. There all U.S. public companies, robots watching the is to present it in more is a deep question here up to 12,000 reports per algorithms; humans are useful ways. Narrative about the right numerical day during peak periods. just too slow. Science demonstrated its threshold for triggering This data fuels a cottage This sort of work will Quill automated story an alert, or more generally industry of advanced require sophisticated new writing product by what words like “anomaly” analytics tools for software. But there are generating textual reports or “unusual” should mean investors, which could also simple bots available now from sensors monitoring in practice. Part of the be used by reporters to to help journalists with the health of Chicago’s work in creating a robot monitor the activities of their daily needs. beaches. These systems reporting tool is coming entire industries, beyond Sometimes you just want make open data up with mathematical just the specifi c companies to know when somebody

more accessible and defi nitions for news- that a reporter already writes about a particular PRESS SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED

40 niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20120155

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 4040 88/26/15/26/15 1:121:12 PMPM the error rate is lower than it was before automation, Instead, the Associated Press has human editors who though she declined to provide exact fi gures. add context to many of its automated stories. At least 300 companies are still watched closely by the AP’s busi- Algorithm-assisted Journalism ness desk staff . There are 80 companies that always get the imperative to avoid errors prompted additional reporting and context by Associated Press the AP to keep its automated stories simple, which makes staff ; another 220 get reviewed by editors, who may them, well, somewhat lifeless. Other Wordsmith us- enhance the story with their own reporting or context. ers include descriptions of major factors, such as most That system has created signifi cant effi ciencies for the point-contributing players for fantasy sports or top-per- AP, freeing up 20 percent of the staff ’s time across the forming stocks and categories for fi nancial portfolio sum- business desk, estimates Lou Ferrara, the vice president maries, that infl uence the overall trend in a data set. The and managing editor who oversaw the project. And that AP has opted to exclude these more analytical facts, often doesn’t take into account the impact of the initiative on included in human stories, from automation because of the AP’s customers. concerns about adding too much complexity too quickly. One of the biggest impacts of the Associated Press’s “There are things we decided not to do quite yet that were automated earnings project has been its expanded cov- presented as possibilities,” Patterson acknowledges. “We erage of smaller companies that are primarily of interest chose not to add them to the stories, because we were re- to local markets. The AP’s customers are, largely, local ally committed to making sure that the accuracy of the outlets, and companies of interest to these clients had stories was intact.” fallen out of AP coverage during the cutbacks of the

topic. The free Google to create a record of who champions at their own is a system powerful enough Alerts service scans the said what when. There are game in February 2011. to scrutinize every available Web for specifi c words myriad tools for change But the ability to answer open data feed, understand or phrases and sends an detection, from free sites general questions by what each data point means e-mail when they appear. like Follow That Page to instantly consulting in context by comparing it The names of people more professional services a large body of reference to databases of background and organizations are an like Versionista. There is a material has applications knowledge and current obvious query, but two whole subgenre of bots that far beyond game shows, events, and alert reporters prominent databases monitor Wikipedia, such and IBM has since invested when something looks fi shy of police killings—Fatal as @congressedits which more than a billion dollars or interesting. Encounters and Killed By tweets when someone edits in a new division devoted This dream is a ways Police—use Google Alerts a page anonymously from to cognitive services. One off , but the necessary to fi nd relevant incidents an IP address belonging of the fi rst big applications technology is under active in local news reports. to the U.S. Congress. is health care. IBM has development within Other simple bots We can expect to see collaborated with Memorial powerful industries. watch for changes in a web much more sophisticated Sloan Kettering Cancer If this technology can be page. This can be used bots make their way into Center, where the system imported into journalism to detect deleted content, journalism in the next aims to assist doctors in it may change the fi eld track shifts in language few years. IBM’s Watson diagnosing complex cancers in signifi cant ways. The as a politician or company technology is best known by comparing a patient’s defi nition of news will shift responds to scrutiny, or for defeating “Jeopardy!” case to huge databases toward things that can of medical research. be expressed to a computer, This kind of artifi cial something which seems intelligence technology a little inhuman but will be developed fi rst could end up being more for fi elds such as law, transparent and systematic fi nance, and intelligence than the tenets of “news where there are large judgment.” As a result business opportunities. of this systematization, But consider what it could journalists and their do for journalists. Imagine readers will expect to be telling a newsroom AI to everywhere, monitoring watch campaign fi nance every government disclosures, SEC fi lings, department and every and media reports for multinational corporation, suspicious business deals not just the ones that that could signal undue have caught our attention Watson’s ability to answer questions has uses far beyond game shows political infl uence. The goal recently. 

niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20201515 41

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 41 8/26/15 1:12 PM is true for other areas of coverage the AP is looking to automate, including Division II and Division III college football and basketball games. By offl oading the basic reporting work, the AP hopes it’s making it easier for local papers to focus on the stories that matter to community members, like the Van Horns. “We’re not here merely to be just churning out numbers,” says Lisa Gibbs, the AP’s business desk editor. “We’re really writing these stories for customers who are more likely to have shopped at a Walmart than to own individual stock in Walmart.” Gibbs was hired just after the introduction of the automated earnings stories. She says it was an oppor- tunity for the team to rethink how the company was 2000s. For communities, this was a potentially sig- Alexis Lloyd of going to cover business. With automation, Gibbs says nifi cant loss. “If there’s a big company, it’s employing The New York Times her team has been able to focus on doing the kinds of people in your family, your neighbors, people you go to R&D Lab says the medium-sized enterprise stories that had been squeezed church with,” says Patterson. “There are a lot of peo- public’s thinking out before. She points to the example of a piece by busi- about automation ple who are interested in the economic health of that hasn’t changed since ness reporter Matthew Perrone, who covers the U.S. company.” the 1950s Food and Drug Administration, which reported on a lack In Battle Creek, Michigan, for example, the Kellogg of regulatory oversight for the growing number of stem Company is one of the region’s most important employ- cell clinics. “We were able to take some time, send him ers, and its fi ngerprints are all over town—from thou- to travel to some of these clinics, and ultimately publish sands of monthly pay stubs at the bank to the names on the story,” she says. a school to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s cheery-look- ing headquarters downtown. Pat Van Horn is among the locals who worked at Kellogg until she retired in 2010. She and her husband Lance still pay attention to what’s happening at the company. They have friends who work there, and like many locals, they’ve got Kellogg stock in their portfolio. he ap isn’t alone in using auto- So each quarter, when the company releases its mation to support its reporting eff orts. earnings statements, the Van Horns glance at the Battle One of the fi rst places to adopt automa- Creek Enquirer to see how things are going. “You know, tion in the newsroom was the Los Angeles what was the earnings report this quarter, the divi- Times. The paper’s Homicide Report dends are going to be X amount per share,” says Lance. maintains a database with information “We follow them a little bit.” about every homicide reported by the Los The Enquirer uses the Associated Press’s earnings Angeles County coroner’s offi ce; each vic- stories as the foundation for its coverage of the com- tim profi le includes a brief automatically pany; local reporters add context, digging deeper on is- generated write-up. It’s up to reporters sues that are likely to impact Battle Creek. That frees up to decide which stories deserve more in- reporters and editors to do the work that the computers depth reporting. can’t do. TThe LA Times built on the lessons from that For the AP, content licensing is king, making up the project with the introduction in 2011 of Quakebot. vast majority of the company’s revenue, and newspaper Ken Schwencke, a digital editor on the LA Times’s data and online customers accounted for 34 percent of 2014 desk at the time, used data from the USGS Earthquake revenue. Continuing to deliver content those custom- Notifi cation Service to automatically generate short re- ers want is key to retaining their business. “It’s not like ports on earthquakes above the “newsworthy” thresh- we’re going to be growing revenue in the local markets OREGON PUBLIC old of a 3.0 magnitude. LA Times reporters review the in any particular way,” says Ferrara. Instead, the AP sees stories, publish them, and update the story with addi- the automated earnings as a way to retain customers, BROADCASTING’S tional information as it becomes available. Quakebot’s particularly those that have been hard hit by job losses AUTOMATED LOCALIZED big advantage is speed; a story can be posted online across the industry. “EARTHQUAKE in under fi ve minutes. This kind of assistive role is one The AP is doubling down on that strategy; the com- that many news organizations insist is the foundation of pany has continued to expand its automation eff orts, PREPAREDNESS their automation eff orts. adding public companies with a market capitaliza- REPORTS WOKE UP The AP recently hired its fi rst “news automation ed- tion above $75 million as well as select Canadian and itor,” Justin Myers. He sits on the editorial team and European fi rms. Many of these companies would never LISTENERS TO THEIR is represented by the News Media Guild, just like his

have been covered by the AP’s staff writers. The same VULNERABILITIES editorial colleagues. His job is to help fi gure out how to JOE MAGEE BY OPPOSITE: ILLUSTRATION JOE PUGLIESE/AUGUST;

42 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 42 8/26/15 1:12 PM streamline editorial processes and “give time back to the writers, editors, and producers, who in a lot of cases are slogging through whatever processes we’ve built up over the years, rather than focusing on doing journalism.” Myers has spent his first few months on the job mostly interviewing reporters, editors, and producers to fi nd out what work he can help take off their plates. The number one question he’s asking: “How do you spend your time?” If it’s possible to automate some of a staff - er’s burdensome tasks, Myers is happy to help. “Let’s have a computer do what a computer’s good at, and let’s have a human do what a human’s good at,” he says. Alexis Lloyd, creative director of The New York Times R&D Lab, agrees. The general public’s thinking about automation hasn’t been updated since the 1950s, she says. Typically, we imagine an all-or-nothing sce- nario: all with humans or all with machines. She says that’s wrong; across all kinds of industries the approach to automation has changed to focus on more assistive technologies. “We’ve been thinking that the future of computational journalism and automation will— and should—be a collaborative one, where you have machines and people working together in a very conver- sational way,” she says. Several news organizations are using automation to support their reporters’ work behind the scenes, too. Lloyd mentioned Editor, a new tool that integrates with the company’s content management system to help reporters tag content by providing automated sugges- tions. Similar eff orts are under way at BBC News Labs, with a tool called Juicer. These tools support news organizations in their push to develop new storytelling formats that highlight the relationships between news events and help provide Personalization and Revenue readers with richer context. Most of these eff orts re- automation can also become a useful tool quire large amounts of detailed metadata that can help for connecting with audiences more directly. In June, link together stories that have in common people, plac- journalists at Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) rolled es, or ideas. Adding metadata is a frustrating task for out a news app to accompany a series on earthquake most reporters, who are typically more concerned with preparedness in the state. The app, called Aftershock, crafting their story than dissecting it. Automation is a provides a personalized report about the likely impacts way to expand the use of metadata—without putting of a 9.0 magnitude earthquake on any user’s location a extra burden on reporters and editors. within the state, based on a combination of data sets. Behind-the-scenes tools can also help reporters in The scenario isn’t just speculative; the region is wide- more proactive ways. For example, another tool from ly expected to face a massive quake of just this sort, The New York Times R&D Lab automatically tracks its known as the Cascadia quake. “OPB has been doing stories on Reddit, looking for hot conversations, and a bunch of coverage on the Cascadia quake and how alerts journalists when there’s an active discussion people can prepare, but a lot of people don’t care about of their work they might be interested in monitoring a topic until it aff ects them directly,” says OPB’s Jason or participating in. Bernert. “When you put them in the center of the story, This is one of the most promising areas for automa- they take an interest.” tion in the newsroom, says Nick Diakopoulos, an assis- Aftershock uses data sets on earthquake impacts that tant professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip were modeled by the Oregon Department of Geology Merrill College of Journalism, who has been studying the and Mineral Industries and impact zones defi ned by use of algorithms in media. By tracking social media or the Oregon Resilience Plan report. The data mixes and other public data sets, automation tools can help support matches ratings for things like shaking, soil liquefac- newsgathering in a digital environment. Using automa- tion, landslide risk, and tsunamis. In total, there are 384 tion tools like these can raise journalists’ awareness of possible combinations, and users see a version of the issues, help them pay attention to important data sets, story that’s relevant to the location they’ve selected. or listen to conversations and react more quickly, he says. As with The New York Times’s “Best and Worst Places

nieman reports summer 2015 43

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 43 8/26/15 1:12 PM to Grow Up” interactive, the news app dynamically yet,” acknowledges Joe Procopio, chief product offi cer stitches together the various elements of the story— for Automated Insights. which the OPB team calls “snuggets,” a portmanteau of That’s true of even the most sophisticated algorithms “story nuggets”—based on the data for each location. that are used by credit agencies, retailers, and personnel Some of the data applies to broad regions of the companies; vast quantities of personal info are crunched state, but other data sets have estimated impacts for to pigeonhole users as a “type” that can be used to pre- regions as small as 500 meters. Aftershock takes advan- dict loan default risk, send perfect-for-you coupons, tage of that granularity by showing users the expected or characterize your management style. Take the exam- impacts for specifi c addresses. “There’s a big diff erence ple of Crystal, an artifi cial intelligence tool that helps between ‘a 9.0 earthquake in Oregon’ and ‘your area is you write better e-mails for specifi c individuals, based where shaking is going to be the worst,’” says Bernert. on their online profi les. The program reviews things “It has a diff erent emotional response for people to start someone has written online, such as their LinkedIn diff erent conversations.” profi le, and identifi es them as one of 64 types. Each The editorial appeal of projects like this is clear— type has associated communication tips about things but personalization has the potential to attract the inter- like vocabulary to avoid, how much detail to include, est of the business side as well. Following the mid-July and how formal the language should be. publication of The New Yorker’s in-depth article about Automated Insights provides this kind of customiza- the Cascadia quake, Bernert says, Aftershock’s traffi c tion to its commercial customers already—one car-sales soared. For a few days afterward, the site was handling website uses Wordsmith to show users slightly diff er- 300 times the usual number of requests. Other OPB re- ent descriptions of the vehicles based on their profi le, porting on the Cascadia quake saw an increase in traf- Procopio says. A fi rst-time car buyer might be shown a fi c, but “the real social driver was Aftershock,” he says. description that emphasizes the car’s fuel performance, On Facebook, users were sharing Aftershock and saying, while a mother in the market for a family vehicle might “This is what’s going to happen to me; I better go out see descriptions that emphasize safety ratings. In both and get prepared” and encouraging others to check out cases, the information in the profi les is the same, but how they would be impacted as well. diff erent features are prioritized. Although none of the current implementations have Diakopoulos says lack of data is a signifi cant barrier focused on monetization eff orts specifi cally related to to such personalization of stories. To push further into personalized content, it is the aspect of automation that true personalization, news organizations would need could have the largest eff ect on potential news revenue. to collect a lot more information about their users— and develop strategies for how to address stories to those different types of users. “News organizations aren’t very good about even having user models,” Diakopoulos points out. “They don’t really know who’s on their site. That’s very diff erent than having a robust user profi le and an ability to adapt the page based on the utomation is already being cookie profi le and so on.” used today to personalize some news Even if users were to agree to provide more detailed organizations homepages or to provide information—by logging in with Facebook or LinkedIn, “recommended for you” features. By fur- say—journalists would still need to be at the helm of ther increasing engagement with users, eff orts to target those users with content in specifi c automation that personalizes content ways. The complexity involved in automating a story could have positive impacts on revenue with just one variable—geography—would become ex- from advertising and subscriptions. This ponentially more diffi cult. For newsrooms, that pres- kind of personalization provokes anxiety ents signifi cant challenges for editing, fact checking, and among many news professionals, who writing multiple variations of the “snuggets” to be used worry that personalization will limit in the stories. “There is concern,” says Procopio, “that readers’ exposure to the stories editors someone is going to read a story and not get all the facts Amight deem important in favor of things that are frivo- because it’s biased toward that person. I don’t think that lous. As Mark Zuckerberg said when describing the val- concern is warranted.” ue of the News Feed, “A squirrel dying in front of your As the technology improves, the potential value of house may be more relevant to your interests right now personalization from a revenue perspective will certain- than people dying in Africa.” ly become more important. Frank Pasquale, a professor For now, most article personalization eff orts focus at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School on types of users, much as Aftershock uses automa- of Law and author of a recent book on the pervasive tion to match specifi c addresses to general scenarios. power of algorithms, “The Black Box Society,” argues It’s more like having a shirt with the right collar and that if stories can eventually be customized for users sleeve-length measurements than a handmade, cus- based on factors like their income, where they live, or

tom-tailored one. “We haven’t got it down to the person any of the micro-categories (e.g., “cat lover,” “Walmart RODERICK AICHINGER/BRAND EINS

44 nieman reports summer 2015

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 4444 88/26/15/26/15 1:131:13 PMPM Automated personalization. Kent, the AP’s standards editor, thinks Insights’ Joe Procopio, concerns about algorithmic transparency are overblown right, with company when it comes to automatically generating content. CEO Robbie Allen, “Human journalism isn’t all that transparent,” he says. says personalization is a growth area “News organizations do not accompany their articles with a whole description of what was on the journal- ist’s mind that could have aff ected his thinking process, whether he had a head cold, had just been hung up on by a customer service rep of the company he was writing about, and so on.” Because the rules governing how automated stories get assembled are available for scrutiny, automated jour- nalism may be more transparent than stories written by humans, he argues. But for the majority of projects, it’s hard to know what value readers might fi nd in disclo- sures, even if they were presented. Mike Dewar, a data scientist in The New York Times R&D Lab, has written about the futility of publishing documentation if none of the intended audience can read it. Instead of publishing just open source data or documentation on algorithms, he argues, the community needs to adopt common stan- dards and procedures. That kind of standardization could benefit non-technical users, who would become more famil- iar with how such projects work and what to expect. shopper,” or “STD suff erer”) that data brokers collect Standardization could also help smaller newsrooms from our online lives, newsrooms will almost certainly experiment with automation. At OPB, Aftershock was face pressure to do so. “That’s going to be seen, eventu- a hugely successful project, but it required some heavy ally, as revenue maximizing,” Pasquale says. lifting from the small public media team. Bernert and He suggests a question for newsrooms to consider his colleague Anthony Schick built the app during as they apply personalization: “To what extent is this a three-day build-a-thon sponsored by the University ‘dead-squirrel’ personalization and to what extent is of Oregon’s journalism school, with the pro-bono as- this personalization that draws people creatively into sistance of a local interactive design fi rm, students, stories about other parts of the world?” and academics. “There’s a lot of value to this kind To focus on the latter, one option is to rely less on of work,” Bernert says. “But how do we make it sus- broad personal data that sparks fears about who algo- tainable for a small public media newsroom?” Having rithms assume a user is and instead focus on what’s a larger shared set of the technologies and methodol- relevant about a user’s relationship to a particular story. ogies would help. For example, The New York Times’s Upshot team has Small news organizations could, in fact, have the recently published a few stories that use in-story inter- most to gain from using automation. While Wordsmith actions to adapt a story to a user’s existing knowledge and Quill are focused on expanding in big-dollar mar- or views on the subject. kets like fi nancial information and insurance, they’ve In one case, users were asked to draw a line on a demonstrated their technology on a variety of lo- graph they thought represented college enrollment cal data, such as water quality reports from public rates across economic groups. Based on the line drawn, beaches and public bike-share station activity. Local users were shown one of 16 diff erent versions of the sto- SMALL NEWS news organizations could be well positioned to take ry, each of which explained the real data while compar- advantage of this kind of structured data using ing them to the user’s own assumptions about the issue. ORGANIZATIONS automation, either by expanding their coverage or by It was a simple but very successful piece of explanatory COULD, IN FACT, HAVE creating new products. journalism because it focused the written article on in- “THE MOST TO GAIN Commercial providers once siphoned off some formation most relevant to the reader, without changing of news organizations’ most important revenue streams the reported parts of the stories. Projects like these also FROM AUTOMATED by fi nding better ways to deliver classifi ed ads, job list- have the advantage of built-in transparency about what JOURNALISM. ings, home sales, and other information—much of which characteristics are being used to automate the story’s is available in the form of structured data. Automation creation. Users actively provide the information to the THEY ARE WELL- could be one way for news organizations to recapture system in order to get the information they want, and POSITIONED TO DRAW some of that revenue. that input data is clearly linked to the story itself. After all, automation is about putting narratives Transparency is one of the stickiest issues facing ON LOCAL DATA around data, and news organizations have the skills and automation systems, particularly as they intersect with TO WRITE STORIES experience needed to do just that. 

nieman reports summer 2015 45

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 45 8/26/15 1:13 PM Nieman Watchdog

ast november, anna Merlan got an unexpected e-mail from Domino’s Pizza. HOW The pizzas she ordered were ready, and she could pay for TO them in cash when they were DETER delivered. The problem was, she hadn’t ordered pizza, and she no longer lived at the address listed in the e-mail. Merlan shrugged it off, but a few minutes later she started receiving weird tweets. “Hey do you like pizza?” an egg-avatared user asked. “Are you veg- etarian/vegan?” Merlan looked at the Domino’s e-mail again: two large pies, one with triple cheese, triple sausage, triple salami, triple barbecue, hot sauce, half onions and half pineapple, and one with no cheese but triple sausage. Eventually, it clicked. Merlan was being doxxed, the practice of publicly posting pri- vate information (home addresses, phone numbers, credit card and Social Security details) which can be used to threaten or otherwise harass an individual. The harassment that follows doxxing, a term derived from “doc,” as in “docu- ments,” is like a human distributed denial of service attack—every channel for digital Newsroom strategies to prevent the harassment that communication is fl ooded to the point where BY ROSE EVELETH it becomes unusable. Your phone is full of vile text messages and rings continuously. Your e-mail is full of threatening messages and photographs of dead bodies. Twitter and Facebook—and other ways you might com- municate with friends and family not phys- ically present—are clogged with threats. All coordinated by often-anonymous ha- rassers who have taken off ense at something address in hope of a SWAT team showing harassers, there are a few strategies media you’ve written. up—after writing about a site that purports companies can employ to deter doxxing. Though doxxing has yet to be formally to sell Social Security numbers and credit Merlan responded by chronicling her ha- studied and many incidents are not report- reports. Amanda Hess, a journalist at Slate, rassment in a post on Jezebel, where she is ed, it does appear to be on the rise, partic- has written publicly about the harassment a reporter, and where, earlier on the day she ularly the doxxing of journalists. Melissa she’s faced. was doxxed, she had written a post about Bell, vice president of growth and analytics Journalists think a lot about protecting a Time magazine poll asking readers which at Vox Media, where several staff ers have their sources, building security tools and words they would like to see banned. A set been targeted, says that the online harass- secure methods of communication. But of users on the forum 4chan had banded to- ment has “become a noticeably worse prob- when it comes to their own safety, report- gether to fl ood the poll with votes for the lem in the last year.” Two New York Times ers are often stuck with a strange dilemma. word “feminist.” In her post on the ballot reporters who included details about the They have to have open channels of com- stuffi ng, Merlan called 4chan “the Internet’s daily life of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson, munication to speak with sources and get home for barely potty-trained trolls.” Users Missouri police offi cer who shot and killed information, but that can also put them at of the site did not take kindly to the char- unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, risk for harassment. As doxxing continues, acterization, so they posted her address in a story were doxxed. Cybersecurity newsrooms are starting to re-examine their (or, what they thought was her address) and journalist Brian Krebs was “swatted”— security systems and the support networks plotted to send her everything from pizza a tactic in which harassers make false 911 in place for reporters. Though many news- and vacuum cleaners to potential rapists calls claiming a dangerous situation at the rooms still struggle with how to respond to and a SWAT team.

46 nieman reports summer 2015

46-49.indd 46 8/27/15 2:41 PM with harassment issues. Twitter, Facebook, 8chan, Voat, and Reddit (whose CEO Ellen Pao resigned in July amid dissatisfaction with the site’s eff orts to curb online harass- ment by its users) have each seen their own brands of targeted harassment campaigns. Nathan Mattise’s story is a lot like Merlan’s. At 4 a.m. on January 5th he got a hard push from his girlfriend. His phone kept buzzing, and when he looked at it, it was full of missed calls and text messages. Three hours earlier, someone on the site 8chan (founded in 2013 by a 4chan user who felt the site had become too “authoritarian”) had begun post- ing information about Mattise, including his phone number and home address. Over the next 14 hours, he was inundated with e-mails and calls as well as pizzas, Chick-fi l-A food, and 50 copies of the Koran. In a story for Ars Technica, where Mattise is an editor, he had used the name 8chan to refer to a subset of 8chan users. 8chan users protested. The fi rst thing Mattise did was contact his editors. “I wasn’t the fi rst person on Ars who was doxxed. I won’t be the last,” he says. His editors urged him to contact the police. “The NOLA PD was really willing to listen to me and fi le a report.” That’s not the experience many people have. In a Pacifi c Standard article, Amanda can follow public posting of personal information Hess recounts several stories of women who’ve been met with unhelpful, even skep- tical, responses from police. “Why would anyone bother to do something like that?” one offi cer asked her after she reported an online rape threat. This is one area where newsrooms can help employees. Merlan praises the com- pany lawyer who walked her to the police station to report the threats. She and her 4chan has become ground zero for many Christopher Poole as a place to discuss an- lawyer explained to the police what was coordinated harassment campaigns, in de- ime and manga. Poole stepped down from going on, but even with a lawyer in tow the fi ance of an offi cial policy against doxxing. running the site in January of this year. precinct wasn’t exactly helpful. Without Doxxers obtain personal information from Since 2003, the site has grown into a hub information on the physical location of the public records, data collection services, for discussion and image sharing that rang- perpetrators, the police said they would and security breaches or through hacking es from cute kittens to vulgar threats and wind up closing the case right away. into e-mails and other personal accounts. coordinated harassment. Anyone can post Arielle Duhaime-Ross, a reporter at Doxxing is almost always followed by a call anything without attaching any identify- The Verge who was targeted last year, says to action, often in the form of coordinated ing information of their own. Critics point having understanding editors is really im- harassment that ranges from threatening out that this makes it too easy for users to portant. “My managing editor and editor in phone calls and unwanted food deliveries threaten and harass victims without any fear chief took me aside and asked me about how to more dangerous things like swatting or of retribution. The site has been in the news I was doing and what they could do,” she posting a claim on Craigslist that the res- recently in connection with GamerGate, says. “They reminded me of what Vox Media ident has rape fantasies and encouraging in which some female video game journal- off ered: You can see a therapist easily once men to visit. ists and developers have been harassed, and or twice through our system; there were 4chan describes itself as “a simple im- was home base for last year’s hacked celeb- numbers I could call. It was really helpful age-based bulletin board where anyone can rity nude photographs. knowing that this system was in place.” Her post comments and share images.” The fo- But while 4chan gets a lot of the at- editors encouraged her to take time off and rum was founded in 2003 by then-teenager tention, it’s not the only platform dealing off ered to re-route her e-mail address to the

nieman reports summer 2015 47

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general tips e-mail for The Verge. Her e-mail stayed re-routed for weeks. At some companies where harassment has been constant or pervasive, there are specifi c channels through which employees can support one another. Vox, for example, has a Slack chat room called “Vox Media No Haters” where people can report ha- rassment and work together to support one another. “Those are some of the techniques Some things journalists can do to support colleagues and protect themselves that we’ve used to say, ‘We’re here with you. You’re not alone. This isn’t something you need to experience as an individual,’” says Editors should get training Freelancers should Bell. “That’s how we try to tackle it as a com- BEFORE IT HAPPENS… on what harassment consider using P.O. boxes pany.” Gawker has a similar setup. “Even looks like and the people instead of their home New hires should have and sites that might target addresses and Skype having a chat room where you can share employees or freelancers. or Google Voice phone a gross comment and laugh at it together is digital security training— how to keep personal Finance departments numbers in place of really helpful,” says Jezebel editor in chief information private, which should be comfortable personal cells or landlines. Emma Carmichael. sites and groups target using encrypted Do not send sensitive documents for things like data like Social Security At many publications, though, support for reporters, how to send and receive encrypted fi les— invoices and tax forms numbers and home harassed reporters stops there. “What we re- as part of the on-boarding addresses via unencrypted ally need,” argues Merlan, “is employers who process, and this training Reporters should be e-mail are thinking proactively about our safety.” should be updated as the off ered an offi cial e-mail address and phone number Those concerned about In January of this year, someone at harassment ecosystem changes that is separate from their harassment should set up Gawker leaked the company’s seating chart personal points of contact. personal support networks as a media in-joke. To the writers at Jezebel, Packages and letters like Slack chat rooms or should always be sent private Facebook groups who receive threats on a daily basis, that to the offi ce, rather than to wasn’t very funny. And it highlighted the private homes importance of understanding of how social media is used. “A lot of our writers were like, ‘Oh, great, a seating chart for a crazed person to come fi nd me,’” says Carmichael. “Jezebel had to explain why [the leak] felt like a threat, and I had a lot of productive conversations out of that with people from other sites and our executive editor.” Having newsroom staff understand possible threats is crucial. Staff should know what 4chan and 8chan are, understand basic digital security, and take threats and harass- ment seriously. For Mattise, a more wide- main registries—make it a little harder for Vox has also made changes to its sites spread newsroom understanding of 8chan would-be harassers to fi nd personal data. to deter doxxers. Vox’s pre-written tweets might have helped him come up with a less Newsrooms can, and should, set up educa- used to include the author’s Twitter handle, provocative headline. “If I had kicked that tional sessions for their editors and report- which gave potential harassers immediate to someone else they might have noticed ers, not just on the nitty-gritty of digital access to Twitter feeds. Now, the Twitter that 8chan users get really particular about privacy, but on the harassment policies of button simply directs to the general Vox this,” he says. “That might have been some- social media sites and the best ways to sup- account. “We wanted to keep a little bit of thing someone caught in advance. If editors port reporters who might be targeted. a wall between the vitriolic users,” Bell says. are familiar with these sites and topics that “A small product change like that, it’s not seem to be intermingled with doxxing, that going to stop harassment, but it’s a little knowledge will help.” thing we can do.” Bell also says Vox is col- At Vox, Bell says, new employees are laborating with Twitter and Facebook about off ered information on how to keep their how to make the platforms less toxic. identities safe. Trainings that walk report- If all of this feels insuffi cient to tackle ers through basic digital security mea- VOX TRAINS ITS the level of harassment reporters face, it sures—how to mask their IP addresses, is. Editors are frustrated by how helpless how to set up password management REPORTERS IN DIGITAL they feel about keeping their reporters safe. services, and how to remove their infor- I know that frustration fi rsthand because mation from data collection sites and do- SECURITY MEASURES doxxing happened to me.

48 nieman reports summer 2015 Illustration by Anna Parini

46-49.indd 48 8/27/15 2:41 PM a clause that might give them access to the media organization’s in-house counsel or lawyers or some form of guidance in these circumstances but it’s not standard yet,” says John D. Mason, a copyright lawyer who has represented journalists in harass- ment cases. “If this trend continues, it may become easier and, sadly, it may become commonplace.” against having their personal information exposed online In the meantime, where can freelance journalists turn? In my case, I was lucky enough to be part of a Slack network of Doxxed colleagues will e-mail, and social media freelancers who were a lifeline. A handful IF IT HAPPENS… probably appreciate accounts—are likely of freelancers in my neighborhood met me your support, but don’t fl ooded with messages from at coff ee shops to work by my side when If you choose to report be off ended if they don’t harassers. They may be respond. Most of the ignoring those streams or I was afraid of working at home alone. I no the harassment to the longer send tax documents via unsecure police, bring a lawyer who channels you might use unable to see your support understands the issues and to reach them—phone, amidst the deluge e-mail, which often means teaching editors examples of the threats. how to use encryption. And I urge fellow If you know any identifying freelancers to secure their personal infor- information about the harassers, share that mation, sending nearly everyone I know as well the link to Crash Override Network—a site developed by people who were targeted Colleagues can support by GamerGate—where anyone can work doxxed reporters by diverting or monitoring through a threat model. Having a safety net offi cial work e-mails and in place before doxxing happens can be in- voicemails, keeping an credibly helpful, whether that’s a dedicated eye on the target’s Twitter separate Skype number for friends and fami- mentions to document the harassment, and ly, or a private Slack space for friends. reporting the abusers While proactive measures to keep re- porters safe and support systems for them when they’re harassed are key, social media companies should do more to prevent ha- rassment. Twitter’s then-CEO Dick Costolo admitted earlier this year that the service had serious issues with harassment. “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years,” he wrote in an internal memo. Facebook hosts many pages and photos dedicated to In November of last year, something them with the police, no editors to read promoting sexist violence. Some of those I tweeted became the center of a news sto- their e-mails and tweets for them. Their who report it have been told that the imag- ry about gender representation in science. home address is their work address. Many es or pages don’t violate Facebook’s terms of Members of 4chan found and posted my freelancers send tax documents over un- service. Both services are struggling to keep home address, e-mail address, and phone encrypted e-mail and, if they get a P.O. box up with the torrent of abuse reports, and number. I got pizza, magazine subscrip- or pay for other forms of digital security, neither seem to be prioritizing the safety of tions, and 200 empty boxes delivered it all comes out of their pocket. Many free- their users. to my home. I was told that men would be lance contracts have clauses about what If I learned one thing from my ordeal coming to rape and kill me. A 4chan user happens should a journalist get a publica- it’s that doxxing can happen to anyone, at told me they had seen someone post pho- tion into trouble, but very few say anything any time, for nearly any reason. But aware- tographs taken of the outside of my apart- about what should happen if a story gets a ness of the risks—and eff ective strategies to ment building, but the thread was deleted journalist into trouble. Often freelancers mitigate them—too often come from bad before I could confi rm it. Since I am a free- balk at indemnifi cation clauses for fear of experiences rather than preparation. When lancer, no support systems, no lawyers on being hung out to dry during a libel suit, I was doxxed, the person who understood call, and no Slack chat rooms were avail- but there are reasons they might want the the most about what happened was the able to me. help of their employer’s lawyers should Domino’s delivery guy. As soon as Twitter Freelancers may be regarded as easier they need to fi le police reports or get a re- was mentioned, he knew exactly what I was targets, and in many ways they are. They straining order against a harasser. “A free- experiencing. Now it’s time for reporters have no HR department, no lawyers to help lancer could certainly propose including and editors to know just as much. 

nieman reports summer 2015 49

46-49.indd 49 8/27/15 2:41 PM Nieman Journalism Lab

Scale Is Everything omy growing steadily if only moderately. media that were supposed to succeed and The Boston Globe and The Dallas Morning supplant them? Can local news News—metros considered above-average On net, I’m still an optimist. If you survive as audiences performers in their peer group—have an- look at the many jobs a traditional local nounced new rounds of buyouts this year. newspaper did, most of them are being and advertisers shift It’s anecdotal, but my private conver- accomplished today just fine—or some- to big outlets sations with leaders of newsrooms across times far better than before. Coverage of and big platforms? America have taken a turn for the depress- Washington will remain solid. I don’t think ing. I hear worries that, at a point when that we won’t have enough stories about BY JOSHUA BENTON some newsrooms are fi nally making a shift technology, sports, food, or plenty of oth- toward digital-first workflows and struc- er subjects. Companies like BuzzFeed, Vox tures, the digital business they were chasing Media, Vice, and more are doing high-qual- is disappearing. Many of their small reasons ity work and building sustainable business for optimism the past few years, like pay- models to back it. They’re also attracting walls, have faded. You can also see it in the huge amounts of capital, all hoping to back his has not been a good stock prices of publicly traded newspaper the few giant media companies that become year for local news. That’s companies. Since the start of 2015, Lee’s the successors (or acquisitions) of the last a sentence I could have writ- stock is down about 30 percent, A.H. Belo generation of great media companies. ten any year for the past de- is down about 50 percent, and McClatchy is “The media” is going to be fi ne. The big- cade, for a host of reasons now down 70 percent. gest issue is that very little of that capital is Tnumbingly familiar. But 2015 has felt like What about beyond print? Local TV going into local news. a turning point for the most threatened sec- news continues to reach good-sized audi- From a purely financial perspective, tor of the American news ecosystem. And ences, and the upcoming presidential elec- why should an online company bet on lo- I’m worried that some of what hopefulness tion cycle will add many millions to stations’ cal news, anyway? Local media grew in this remains in the system is being wrung out by bottom lines. But disruption seems right country because local distribution was all changes in the larger digital world. around the corner for them, too. Young that was practical. Newspapers were inter- There will still be success stories, sure. people are already tuning out local TV news, ested in covering news roughly as far as their But the most important job that local news just as they did to newspapers earlier; a Pew delivery trucks could drive in the morning. has done for decades—providing a degree study this summer found that millennials TV stations were interested in as far as their of accountability to thousands of local com- were nearly twice as likely to have gotten po- broadcast towers could reach. Your market munities across the country—is increasingly litical news from Facebook as from local TV. position was entirely driven by the range going undone. And the chances of any true More importantly, it’s unclear if there (and limits) of your distribution. So it made digital substitute arising seem to be on the will be any place for local news in the broad- sense to focus on covering local issues, local decline. It’s worth stepping back for a mo- er shift to streaming—think Netfl ix, Amazon governments, local sports, local businesses. ment to consider why things have gotten as Prime, and HBO NOW—and cord-cutting. Digital distribution, of course, knows no bad as they have—and why I suspect they’ll The new “skinny bundles,” which aim to let such boundaries—the same websites are avail- get substantially worse in the next few years. people pick a smaller subset of online chan- able from Manhattan to Peoria. That means Let’s start out by looking at what are still nels than a full cable subscription, typically the competitive barriers are down—those the primary engines of local news: newspa- have no local element at all. (One exception: Tulsans who always secretly wanted The New pers. As outmoded as ink-on-paper seems Apple is reportedly pursuing local channels York Times can have it all they want now— to many in 2015, there are very few com- for its upcoming bundle.) and the smart business approach is to aim for munities where the largest local newsroom There are vigorous debates about what the largest achievable audience. That’s why the is attached to anything else. the future will hold for TV; the medium has venture-funded start-ups aim for giant, psy- You may not hear about newspaper proven stubbornly successful through waves layoff s and cutbacks as much as you used of digital change. But even if TV survives, to, but they’re still happening—just more its hard to see where local TV news—built quietly. In July, the American Society of for a world of daily appointment viewing, From a fi nancial News Editors’ annual census reported that of people sitting down every night at 6:30 newsroom employment dropped more than to see what happened that day—fi ts in. perspective, why should 10 percent in 2014—the largest decline since But the decline of traditional media is by an online company bet

the fi nancial crisis, despite an overall econ- now an old story. What about the new digital on local news, anyway? PRESS JOHNSTON/ASSOCIATED DANNY

50 nieman reports summer 2015

nnr_summer_2015_82015.inddr_summer_2015_82015.indd 5050 88/26/15/26/15 1:131:13 PMPM Newspapers covered local news because audiences were limited by geography, but online media can focus on broader, high-value markets

chographic slices of the market (Millennials! tention to have legitimate advertising busi- That may be a perfectly wonderful fu- Liberals! Conservatives! People who like cats!) nesses. If Twitter may not be big enough for ture for Atlantic Media. But it’s hardly one rather than muddled geographic ones. Patch, advertisers, how can The Shreveport Times available to most local news organizations, as derided as it was by newspaper types, was be? The local advertisers who might have which continue to see traditional readership nonetheless the most ambitious attempt at been the life’s blood of local news sites seem fade and they have few good ways to mone- local digital news, and its fl ameout has likely happy to advertise on Facebook instead. tize the one that might replace it. scared off some potential investors. That trend is likely to continue as more There was a vision of the Internet, Still, the hopeful belief of local publish- of our online time shifts to smartphones, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that ers was that maybe their advantages might where Google and Facebook combine to imagined that the little guys could be win- let them scratch out a decent business. make nearly 70 percent of all the adver- ners. Reaching an audience would no lon- Local advertisers would want to reach local tising revenue on the planet Earth. Local ger mean owning a printing press or an readers, and a local newsroom doesn’t need news sites are disproportionately likely to FCC license—it would simply mean post- to be as big as a national or global one. be clunky and slow, a real issue on mobile ing to the Web, using free or cheap tools, And there are plenty of smaller eff orts: devices, and they generally have terrible and letting the Internet’s power to connect personal blogs that grow into small news technology for targeting ads at readers. audiences and publishers do the rest. A tiny operations, local gadfl ies who dig up dirt Here is a telling quote from Michael blog could be as powerful as a giant media at city hall, talented aggregators, founda- Finnegan, chief fi nancial offi cer of Atlantic company! tion-supported nonprofits. These can be Media—a company that has negotiated the But the story of the Web in 2015 is nearly wonderful; I’m glad they exist, and they transition from print to digital as well as the Bizarro World version of that vision. The deserve your support. But they’re not nearly just about anyone. He’s talking about the free and open Web, architected for equal numerous enough or deep enough in cover- possibilities of a platform-driven world, access, is instead dominated by a few large age to do anything more than a fraction of where Facebook, Google, and perhaps a few media companies who, in turn, are dominat- what newspapers once did. others control even more of the means of ed by a few large technology platforms. Ad And 2015 has made it clear that scale is distribution: dollars fl ow up the chain to a few companies becoming everything. Smaller audiences had “Let’s say we reach 35 to 40 million peo- with headquarters between San Francisco better be very high-value—read: super-rich ple through owned and operated sites today. and San Jose. And it’s entirely unclear, in —to be worth reaching. These distribut- Five years from now, our brands could be that context, how most local communi- ed content deals, like Facebook’s Instant reaching 300 to 500 million worldwide, but ties—the cities and towns where we live, Articles, Snapchat’s Discover, and Apple’s not if we insist that all of them have to inter- work, and play—will fi nd the information News? They’re all about the big guys. We act with us on our terms on our site. That’s they need to thrive. live in a time when there are honest ques- the future I see. That’s the future a lot of tions whether companies like Twitter and major media companies see. Some of them Joshua Benton, a 2008 Nieman Fellow, is the LinkedIn have a big enough share of our at- are running towards it faster than others.” founding director of the Nieman Journalism Lab

nieman reports summer 2015 51

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 51 8/26/15 1:13 PM Books

From Idea to Feeling In “Out on the Wire,” cartoonist Jessica Abel illustrates the storytelling secrets of leading narrative radio shows

spending hours sitting alone at a drawing table, cartoonist Jessica Abel often listens to public radio, a habit that turned her into a devotee. Abel calls radio “the most fertile ground for narrative nonfi ction in English-language media.” With a foreword by Ira Glass, her graph- ic novel “Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio” takes readers behind the scenes of popu- lar programs such as “This American Life” to uncover the techniques producers use to construct engaging stories. In this excerpt, Adam Davidson (first panel) of “Planet Money” as well as Soren Wheeler (in plaid shirt) and Jad Abumrad, both of “Radiolab,” talk about what they grapple with as they try to turn a lofty idea into must-listen radio. 

Reprinted from “Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio” by Jessica Abel © 2015 by Jessica Abel. Published by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

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nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 52 8/26/15 1:13 PM “Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio” By Jessica Abel

nieman reports summer 2015 53

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 53 8/26/15 1:13 PM Nieman Notes

to the position of chief national Center for 22 years, arranging How a Poor Minnesota Boy 1953 political reporter. fellowships and seminars on Became a Washington Insider.” Julius Duscha, the fi rst Duscha became the fi rst Washington issues for young Duscha is survived by assistant director of Stanford’s assistant director of Stanford journalists. He retired in 1990. his wife, Suzanne, and four journalism fellowship program, University’s Professional Duscha’s work appeared children. died in San Francisco on July 2 Journalism Fellowship in publications such as The at the age of 90. Program. Starting in 1968, Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Born in St. Paul, Minnesota he headed the Washington York Times Magazine, and the 1969 in 1924, Duscha began his Journalism Center, a nonprofi t Washingtonian. His work in Richard Longworth, career at the St. Paul Pioneer founded by W.M. Kiplinger the latter earned him a spot on a Distinguished Fellow at the Press and Dispatch before to recruit black liberal arts Nixon’s Enemies List. Duscha Chicago Council on Global moving to Washington, D.C. students into journalism was also the author of several Aff airs, retired in June after He wrote for The Washington careers. Duscha worked at books, including a memoir, nearly 60 years of reporting, Post from 1958 to 1966, rising the Ford Foundation-funded “From Pea Soup to Politics: researching, and writing. Since 2003, he had led the Chicago Council’s studies on global “a great editor and a great friend” cities. He is the author of William Marimow, NF ’83, looks back on the storied career of fellow three books, the most recent of which, “On Global Cities,” was Nieman John Carroll published by the Council this John Carroll, NF ’72, one of the country’s most infl uential spring as an e-book. Previously, journalists, died in Kentucky on June 14, 2015 at the age of 73. he was a foreign correspondent As editor at the Los Angeles Times from 2000 to 2005, he oversaw the for UPI and the chief European paper’s record acquisition of 13 Pulitzer Prizes in just fi ve years. correspondent for the Chicago While leading the paper, he focused on investigative reporting and Tribune from 1976 to 2003. beat coverage. Carroll joined the Times after a distinguished career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader, and The Baltimore Sun. 1978 Arun Chacko, one of India’s John Carroll was a great editor and a great friend. During the seven years we worked together leading journalists who covered at The Baltimore Sun, we talked every day—seven days a week, 52 weeks a year—so I witnessed news around the world, died John’s brilliance fi rsthand. His genteel, quiet demeanor in many ways belied his intense interest in New Delhi on June 16 after in great stories and his determination to make sure that when the stories reached print, a battle with cancer. He was 66. they were written with fl uidity and packed the maximum impact. Chacko began his reporting One of John’s great skills was his ability to see the forest when the rest of us were still career at the Indian Express wandering in the trees. A classic case in point was the Sun’s story on the hazards of shipbreaking, newspaper in 1971 and quickly which received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1998. Our maritime reporter, rose to the position of chief Will Englund, had written a story about the activities along Baltimore’s waterways and observed reporter. He helped establish the the dismantling for scrap of the Coral Sea, a World War II vintage aircraft carrier. Englund World Report news syndicate. said the work looked dangerous, and that the asbestos-laden ship might also be harmful to the He provided global coverage Patapsco River. When John read the story, he wondered aloud whether this was happening for publications such as the elsewhere in the United States and around the world. Within days, Englund had been teamed Boston-based South Asia World up with our colleague, Gary Cohn. Their reporting over the next year took them to Wilmington, Paper, Asia Week, and India North Carolina; Long Beach, California; and, eventually, to the remote shores of southern India. Today, where he was a senior Their story fulfi lled John’s vision and led to major reforms in how U.S. ships are dismantled. editor. From 2004 to 2008, John was also a gifted and often brilliant headline writer. When the Sun was about to publish he served as director of the an investigative series on juvenile boot camps, created to help teenagers who had run afoul Press Institute of India and he of the law change their ways, John was confronted with the prospect of a two-line headline with subsequently consulted for space for only seven letters on each line. After agonizing about the precisely right approach, Indo-Asian News Service, India’s John typed out “From ‘Yo’ To ‘Sir’” and presented it to me with his whimsical smile. Perfection— largest independent newswire. and brilliance. Chacko is survived by his When John’s wonderful wife, Lee, who was teaching in a Baltimore elementary school, wife, Arati, and a son. lamented the fact that her kids were struggling to learn to read, John initiated an in-depth series in the Sun that examined the merits of teaching reading through phonics—the old-fashioned, Danny Schechter, a television traditional method—versus the whole language method. That series, known as “Reading producer, media critic, and anti- by Nine,” galvanized the community and inspired hundreds of Sun employees and others to apartheid activist, completed volunteer as public school reading tutors. That was John Carroll at his best—quintessential “Surveillance A to Z,” before he public service journalist. died in March. Seven Stories Press is publishing it in January.

54 niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20201515

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 54 8/26/15 1:13 PM “a roman candle career” Jim Stewart, NF ’81, refl ects on the tough-minded reporting of his Nieman classmate, Donald McNeill Donald McNeill, NF ’81, a longtime international correspondent, died of an infection at a hospital in Boston on June 27. He was 80. He covered the fall of Saigon and the Iran hostage crisis. He served as CBS’s Moscow correspondent and subsequently was a chief correspondent in Israel. He was a professor of broadcast journalism at Boston University from 1988 to 2002.

Unlike the rest of us, McNeill was already a shooting star when he arrived at Harvard. We stood in awe of this white-haired, saber-tongued Canadian who already had a long list of accomplishments: Rhodes Scholar, chief political correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Washington correspondent, newsmagazine host, and author. Every new assignment had led to a better assignment and inevitably to a disagreement with management and a career re-boot. A “Roman-candle career,” Don called it. SANDRA ALLIK To absolutely no one’s surprise, he was snapped up by CBS News soon after the Nieman year ended and dispatched to Moscow as bureau chief. It was like throwing kerosene on a campfi re. The Helsinki Accords had loosened up satellite transmissions and McNeill went on the streets and in their faces. He concentrated on dissidents, ordinary life in the Soviet Union, and the sheer meanness of it all. He won a George Polk Award in 1983. The Kremlin seethed. It was not unexpected then that, in January 1984, when CBS decided to rotate Don and his soul mate, wife Sandra Allik, that he would be summoned to the Foreign Ministry press department for a little chortling. His replacement, fellow Canadian Mark Phillips, recalled the sneering attitude of the press department apparatchik as Don handed over his credentials. “And vat ess your nyext assignment Meester McNeill?” Adopting a super sly face, Don responded “I’m going to a country whose founding philosophy is based on the writings of a mid-nineteenth century, central European Jewish writer where the main economic unit is the collective farm and where 45 percent of the GDP is spent on the military.” Startled at seeing themselves in that mirror, the Russians hesitantly guessed “Berlin? Warsaw? Beijing?” “Israel,” McNeill said. “Israel.” And within a year of his arrival there Benjamin Netanyahu would be lobbying to kick Don out of town as well. This Roman candle of a man shed light wherever he went and we will all miss him greatly.

The book is based 2005 New Frontier Story Lab, Jason Grotto received on Schechter’s interviews Ines Pohl is leaving Die which off ers funding for a 2015 Gerald Loeb Award, with journalists, whistleblowers, Tageszeitung, a German fellows to develop and refi ne which honors outstanding government offi cials, and paper commonly referred to audience engagement for their contributions from journalists security offi cials. as taz, and joining Germany’s exploratory projects. Khelifa, reporting on business, fi nance, international broadcaster a photojournalist, will use and the economy. Grotto was Deutsche Welle as a foreign the funds to further develop recognized for his Chicago 1992 correspondent in Washington, his virtual reality project Tribune series exploring risky Carmel Rickard has joined D.C. She leaves taz after serving “The Enemy.” bond deals pursued by the Legalbrief, a publisher of as the newspaper’s editor Chicago public school system. newsletters, in South Africa. since 2009. She writes a bimonthly column 2014 Denise-Marie Ordway has examining important rulings. Wendell Steavenson joined Journalist’s Resource, Rickard served as the legal 2013 has penned a new book, an online project of Harvard’s editor of South Africa’s Sunday Mary Beth Sheridan has “Circling the Square: Stories Shorenstein Center that Times for several years. been named deputy foreign from the Egyptian Revolution.” curates scholarly studies and editor at The Washington Post, Steavenson spent more than reports, as a research reporter where she has worked as a a year in Cairo writing and editor. Previously, she 1995 reporter and editor since 2001. for The New Yorker during the covered education for the Lorie Hearn, executive Prior to the Post, she served as revolution. Ecco published Orlando Sentinel in Florida director and editor of a foreign correspondent posted the book in July. for more than 11 years. inewsource, is the recipient of a in Italy, Colombia, and Mexico 2015 Edward R. Murrow Award for AP, The Miami Herald, and Laurie Penny has been for her work on “An Impossible the Los Angeles Times. 2015 named a 2015 fellow at Choice,” a multimedia series Nabil Wakim is the new Harvard’s Berkman Center for about life support. Produced Karim Ben Khelifa has director of editorial innovation Internet and Society, where by inewsource, the series received a 2015 Doris Duke at Le Monde. Previously, she will write and speak about was recognized for its audio New Frontier Fellowship he was the French newspaper’s digital rights, social justice, components. from the Sundance Institute’s digital editor in chief. technology, and culture.

niemannieman repreportsorts summersummer 20201515 55

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 55 8/26/15 1:13 PM Sounding

Not Just a Beat policemen threatened to pull me outside. fi nger. That is disrespectful to me.” After the The young judge said, “No, don’t touch her. leader left, the young woman sat near me, Being a legal aff airs Let her leave on her own.” I was moved by to keep me from listening at the door. When reporter in China is his kindness and wanted to thank him. But I the session adjourned, I found a source who just kept walking and dared not look at him. helped me gain access to thousands of pag- perilous, but rule of I was afraid I could not hold back my tears es of court documents. I wrote an exclusive law is the only option if I faced him. A few days later I tried to fi nd story, telling the truth about the hegemony for a better future the young judge to express my gratitude. of business relationships in China. Some But I never saw him again. businessmen cooperate with politicians, However, I have continued to feel grate- getting many privileges. These secret deals ful that he spoke up for me. After that inci- are diffi cult for the press to discover. dent, the courthouse staff knew that I was Sometimes I got lucky and was able, the reporter who would listen at the door. with the help of a source, to enter the hear- One day, I again was sitting in the corridor ing room. However, I had to pretend I was s a legal reporter in of the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court, try- not a reporter so I could not take any notes. China for the past six years, ing to listen to a trial involving Zeyuan Li, In 2013, I went to Shandong province to cov- I have spent a lot of time in a former military offi cial. He had spent time er a bank fraud case. All press were barred courthouses. Judges almost in prison for fraud, smuggling, and other from the hearing room. always bar reporters from sit- crimes. When he was released, he somehow With the help of the defendant’s fami- tingA in courtrooms and policemen frequent- raised about $330 million and bought the lies, I pretended to be one of them. Before ly shoo us away from the building. So I often majority share of the state-owned Shenzhen I entered the hearing room, I went to the hid in the bathroom, waiting for potential Airlines, trading on his ties to the author- restroom and put a tape recorder inside my sources. If I was found out, at least I had ities. Four years later, he was arrested for bra. The hearings often lasted a few hours a plausible excuse for being there. embezzlement. and I would eventually feel the heat of the In 2010, a policeman pulled me out of When I was in the corridor trying to battery on my chest. My heart would beat the restroom in a Beijing courthouse. I was listen to the trial, a young woman from faster and faster. there to cover a trial involving the state- the press offi ce, her fi nger pointing at me, One day, two policemen were sitting be- owned China Central Television (CCTV) approached with her boss. She said, “That side me. I was nervous but I tried to hide and an illegal fi reworks display the year be- woman in blue is a reporter.” I answered, it. Before the hearing started, I stood up to fore that ignited a major fi re, killing one fi re- “Yes, I am a reporter. Please put down your get some water. My hands were shaking. fi ghter and injuring eight people. More than When the hearing fi nished, I rushed out of 20 people, including some low-level CCTV Jieqi Luo the court. I called my editor and shouted, employees, were charged in connection with “I hate it. I hate coming to the court. Sooner the disaster. Many journalists questioned or later, I will die of a heart attack.” whether the trial was fair. Reporters were Yet I could not stop. No matter how an- barred from attending the trial or even using gry or upset I got, I continued being a legal the bathroom next to the courtroom. I was reporter because I am proud of what I do. able to interview some of the lawyers for the Legal aff airs is not just a beat. I am working defendants who gave me the case materials. for human rights and for the freedom of the My article was headlined “Questioning the Chinese people. I believe that the rule of law CCTV Fire.” is China’s only option for a better future. When I could not hide in the bathroom, In recent years, more and more disap- sometimes I sat in the courthouse corridor. pointed Chinese people have emigrated If no policeman was watching, I would kneel to other countries. But most of the people and listen at the door. One day, when I was don’t want to or are not able to emigrate. listening like that, someone watching the se- I am one of them. Those of us who stay in curity cameras used to monitor what goes Courthouse staff know our own country are determined to make it on in the courthouse noticed what I was better—for ourselves and for our children.  doing. The leader of the press offi ce sud- me as the reporter they denly approached me, with a young judge may fi nd in the corridor, Jieqi Luo, a 2015 Nieman Fellow, is a senior

and a few policemen in tow. One of the listening at the door legal reporter for Caixin Media Co. in China SEITZ OPPOSITE: JONATHAN

56 nieman reports summer 2015

nr_summer_2015_82015.indd 56 8/26/15 1:13 PM What’s your great idea to advance journalism? apply for a nieman fellowship at harvard university

A Nieman Fellowship is a transformative learning deadlines: experience open to journalists working in all media • 2016 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships: in every country. Fellows study with some of the Oct. 31, 2015 world’s foremost scholars and experts, participate in Nieman seminars and master classes with leading • 2016–2017 International Nieman Fellowships: thinkers, and collaborate with peers on projects Dec. 1, 2015 designed to enhance journalism. • 2016–2017 U.S. Nieman Fellowships: Each year, the Nieman Foundation awards paid Jan. 31, 2016 fellowships to 24 journalists who spend two semesters at Harvard. Learn more: nieman.harvard.edu/fellowships

Journalists and other professionals working in A Nieman lasts a year positions that support journalism are also welcome A Nieman lasts a lifetime to apply for one of the foundation’s short-term Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowships.

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