Journalists at Legacy and Digital Newsrooms Respond to an Industry
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NIEMAN REPORTS WHY NEWSROOM UNIONS ARE SURGING Journalists at legacy and digital newsrooms respond to an industry in crisis with a new wave of organizing by steven greenhouse Contributors The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University Steven Greenhouse (page 32) was www.niemanreports.org a New York Times reporter for 31 years, covering labor and workplace matters from 1995 to 2014. He also served as the Times’s business correspondent in Chicago, as its European economics correspondent in Paris, and as a diplomatic correspondent in Washington. He is the author of “Beaten Down, publisher Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Ann Marie Lipinski Future of American Labor,” to be editor published this August by Knopf. James Geary senior editor Gabe Bullard (page 6) has Jan Gardner worked in public radio for nearly editorial specialist a decade, starting at NPR member Eryn M. Carlson station WFPL in Louisville, Kentucky. Currently, he is a senior staff assistant editor at WAMU in Washington, Shantel Blakely D.C. and was previously the design director of digital content for Pentagram the show “1A,” which is produced editorial offices by WAMU and distributed by NPR. One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, A 2015 Nieman Fellow, Gabe has MA 02138-2111, 617-496-6308, also worked as deputy director [email protected] for digital news at National Geographic. Copyright 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Periodicals postage paid at Mary Louise Schumacher Boston, Massachusetts and (page 16), the 2017 Arts & additional entries Culture Nieman Fellow, is an independent journalist and critic. subscriptions/business She is currently at work on a 617-496-6299, [email protected] documentary film about art critics Subscription $25 a year, in the midst of technological and $40 for two years; cultural transformation. Until add $10 per year for foreign airmail. February 2019, she was the art Single copies $7.50. and architecture critic at the Back copies are available from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Nieman office. where she covered culture for the Please address all subscription Midwestern newspaper for more correspondence to: than 18 years. One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2111 Issac J. Bailey (page 24), a 2014 and change of address information to: Nieman Fellow, is a journalist, P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 author, and race relations seminar ISSN Number 0028-9817 creator and facilitator. He is the Postmaster: Send address changes to author of “My Brother Moochie: Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Regaining Dignity in the Face of Manchester, NH 03108 Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South,” published Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) in 2018, and has contributed to is published in March, June, Politico, CNN.com, Time, and The September, and December by Washington Post. He is a former the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, columnist and senior writer for One Francis Avenue, The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, Cambridge, MA 02138-2111 South Carolina. OPPOSITE TOP: L.A. TIMES GUILD PRESS BOTTOM: ANDREW HARNIK/THE ASSOCIATED Members of the Los Angeles Times Guild who, in 2018, voted overwhelmingly to unionize for the first time in the paper’s 137-year history Contents Spring 2019 / Vol. 73 / No. 2 Features Departments Smart Speaker Use is Growing. 6 cover Live@Lippmann 2 Will News Grow With It? Podcasting pioneers Julie Shapiro and Jake Smart speakers are challenging the Why Newsrooms 32 Shapiro discuss the state of the business, foundations of radio, and news outlets are Are Unionizing Now the importance of audience engagement, racing to find a place on the platform Journalists are saying yes to unions to and brand building By Gabe Bullard lift salary floors, win or improve basic benefits, and provide some cushion to Niemans@Work 4 Visual Arts Journalism: Newsroom 16 the industry’s volatility Documenting the peace process in Pressure and Generational Change By Steven Greenhouse Colombia, live-blogging the stock market, A survey of more than 300 journalists finds changing course leads to a new book visual arts writers and critics addressing How Implicit Bias 24 issues of race, gender, identity—and Works in Journalism Books 40 relevance Avoiding the pitfalls of hidden biases can “Automating the News: How By Mary Louise Schumacher lead to better story selection and more Algorithms Are Rewriting the Media” inclusive reporting By Nicholas Diakopoulos By Issac J. Bailey Nieman Notes 42 Former President Sounding 44 Barack Obama Yoshiaki Nohara walks past his official portrait by artist Kehinde Wiley. Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott’s review of the Obama portraits garnered more than a million views—proof that arts writing can capture large audiences live@ of the value chain of podcast technol- lippmann ogy—in data analytics, ad tech, and so forth—which means that there are more resources if you’re trying to follow your “The bubble is getting own path, but the filter for breaking into a network or into an organization is higher. bigger, but not bursting” Now, you’re asked, “Why should we sup- port this? Do you have audience? Do you Podcasting pioneers Julie Shapiro have some standing? Do you have some and Jake Shapiro on the state of the traction elsewhere?” business, the importance of audience On the absence of an ad platform Jake: I think it is a double-edged sword. engagement, and brand building Part of what’s protected podcasting from some of the ills of digital media is that it hasn’t had a hyper-efficient advertising network and the lowering of prices and think we hit a tipping point” is On the state of business the gaming of systems that can come with how the findings of a survey examin- Julie Shapiro: Fifty-one percent of peo- that. It’s simultaneously inhibited the total ing podcasting habits was described. ple know what the term “podcast” means, economy of podcasting, but also protected I Nearly one in three people listen to which is more than when Edison Research it from some of the worst attributes. a podcast every month. Last year it counted last year. When you look at these There is no Google of podcast adver- was about one in four. trends, you look at the money coming in, tising. There’s no Facebook of podcast ad- Edison Research’s 2019 Infinite Dial re- you look at the excitement, and you look vertising. In order to advertise, you have to port underscored that podcasting has gone at the creative energy in the space, the in- talk to the publisher. mainstream and that big money has followed. dication to me is, no, we’re not in a bubble If you turn on a prominent podcast plat- Podcasting startup Luminary announced $100 that’s going to burst. The bubble is getting form two years from now and you’re hear- million in funding and plans to offer subscrip- bigger, but not bursting. ing like nine terrible pre-roll commercial tions in its effort to be the Netflix of podcasting. It’s harder and harder for individuals spots and you have to pay to skip them, Over the past year Spotify has increased the to puncture through the noise and have then we’ve arrived at the worst version of number of podcasts it offers and, in March, the a show that has enough listeners that you that scenario. music streaming service acquired podcast com- can support yourself, whether you’re lis- pany Gimlet Media. tener-supported through Patreon or you’re On podcasting vs. public radio To make sense of these developments and big enough to start getting ads. Jake: Podcasts done right are radically to discuss podcasts by journalists, 2019 Nie- There are technologies and companies different than broadcast radio. For a long man Fellow Francesca Panetta, who led The like RadioPublic that are trying to make it time, podcasts were broadcasts that would Guardian’s podcasting team early on, brought possible for every podcaster to earn mon- just be time-shifted over. You’re starting together Jake Shapiro and Julie Shapiro (no re- ey. But what is mostly happening is lots of to see the form and format flow the other lation to each other) for a conversation. Jake money is going to big companies that have way. They’re very different media. Not just Shapiro is co-founder and CEO of RadioPublic, huge staffs, huge budgets, and investment free from the tyranny of the clock, but also a mobile listening platform and marketplace for money. There’s the world of public ra- how you expect an audience to be tuning podcasts that was spun out of PRX. It is an app dio—talent and mission-driven communi- in, what the role of a host is, and the idea and a curated offering of podcasts. ties that started podcasts at stations—and that you’re tuning into a channel which is Julie Shapiro is executive producer of Ra- there’s the more commercial side that is largely just something you can go in and diotopia podcast network from media compa- working with more business-y models and out of versus selecting something that’s ny PRX. She also is executive producer of “Ear venture capitalists. going to be in your AirPods. Hustle,” a podcast that tells stories from with- in San Quentin State Prison in California. A Jake Shapiro: It is increasingly hard to be On pitching a podcast fan of the list genre of podcasting, she named simultaneously excellent at podcasting and Julie: I’m always fighting for a more cre- two favorites: WNYC’s “10 Things That Scare a good entrepreneur and a good marketer. ative use of the form, to break beyond the Me,” which features both well-known and or- It’s also true that a lot of the mechanics of things that are very familiar to people, and dinary people (“this collective tapestry of our podcasting, because we’re only four and to think about what you can do through national mentality right now,” she called it), a half years into the modern industry, are sound that you can’t do on paper, or on a and “An Inventory of Philando Castile’s Car” still pretty primitive.