Author: gretchenapeck

Gretchen A. Peck's writing has been featured in more than 50 domestic and international publications, including translations to Spanish, Portuguese, German, and French. She has written about communications, media, and advertising; politics and public policy; rhetoric, writing, and journalism; sustainability and food-chain matters; travel and culture; dance and fine arts; legal, and other consumer-interest topics. Her decades-long reporting on journalism and news, publishing, printing, and graphic arts has appeared in dozens of industry trade periodicals and journals, including Editor & Publisher magazine; BookTech/Book Business magazine; Publishing Executive magazine; Business Tech Edge; Dealer Communicator; Digital Output and Digital Publishing Solutions magazines; In-Plant Graphics magazine; WhatTheyThink.com, Newspapers & Technology; CREATE Magazine; Internet Publishing; Catalog Success; Artes Graficas; HOW Magazine; The Seybold Report; IPA Bulletin; Graph Expo Show Guide; American Printer; Layers Magazine; Xerox's realbusiness magazine, Broad Street Magazine, Business Ledger, and more. She "tweets" about news and publishing @GretchenAPeck.
News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

The New York Times assembles a trust team

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Among our news community, we frequently talk about “trust in news” and how it has eroded to dangerous levels. I’d suggest there are myriad reasons for that, including some that date back centuries. The press has always been a convenient punching bag. When people don’t like what they read, they naturally want to discount the information. 

Some of the phenomenon is patently new, as we’ve seen with the increase in “lawfare” suits designed to chill journalists and shutter news organizations outright. There’s also the toxic political rhetoric, even shouted from the highest offices in the land, expressly to make people doubt watchdog and accountability reporting. 

Now, we’re contending with Artificial Intelligence (AI), too, which is training people to doubt what they read and view.

Some of it is well-deserved. The press doesn’t always get the story right, especially in the rush to report first. Quality journalists among the American media are contrite when it happens, acknowledging their mistakes and offering corrections or retractions. Far too many outlets masquerading as trusted sources of news peddle misinformation and never acknowledge their failures to report accurately. That’s harmful, industry-wide.

I’d suggest the public also has a cynical view of how news is gathered and produced when they hear about strategic misdeeds, such as tabloid-style “catch and kill” stories — for example, when an adult film actress’ story about an affair with a politician never sees the light of day because the publisher and the porn star are paid to suppress it. It’s easy for the public to conflate that kind of “news” with what earnest, professional journalists produce day-in, day-out. 

Indeed, there are many reasons — deserved and not — for the lack of trust in news today, but the important thing is that we’re thinking about it as an existential threat and doing our best to counter it. That’s why I’m bullish on The New York Times decision to convene a “trust team” that’s keenly focused on this issue. 

At the link, read about my conversation with Edmund Lee, editor of The Times’ trust team and one of the ways they’ve built more transparency and familiarity into the display of news.

#newsmedia #journalism #TheNewYorkTimes

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/greater-transparency-garners-trust-in-news,249933?newsletter=250022&vgo_ee=MID6ch3E1kgN2osWmPLpl5Z40X%2F9BHtWJoghp8byQDPod%2FG7TuDV%3ASquNGI9hIBh9JM3rx0zAhA9JLH4Q%2Be7Y
News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

Behind the scenes of Pulitzer-awarded reporting

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Ever wonder what it takes to produce Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism? I spoke with reporters and editors at three newsrooms that were awarded Pulitzers earlier this month. They spoke about the inspiration behind their award-winning series; the labors and resources the projects required; the dilemmas they faced during the news gathering; and ultimately, the impact. 

 

Read the “stories behind the stories” at the link.  Congratulations to all of this year’s Pulitzer winners. https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/pulitzer-story,249969

News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

On Noonan, philosophy, protesters and newsroom representation

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I was talking to some Boomer-generation family members not long ago, who’d expressed frustration about the state of the world — not about big things, like war or the state of democracy, but about small, comparatively insignificant things. They complained about how nothing interested them on TV anymore, about the popularity of Taylor Swift, and how print menus had been replaced by QR codes. These grievances seemed petty to me, so I found myself imparting wisdom I gained far too late in life: “Not everything is made for you,” I told them.

It dawned on me that if you see things in the world in two categories — things you like = good; things you don’t like = bad — you’ll live your life in a state of perpetual frustration or agitation. It’s a far more pleasant existence to think, just because I don’t like something — just because it wasn’t produced with me as an audience or consumer in mind — doesn’t make something bad, unworthy, corrosive or a danger to society. Other people may like it, and they have a right to enjoy it and to exist, and it need not have any impact on you at all. 

This same philosophy can — and should — be applied to people and lifestyles, too.

I thought about this as I read reporter Peggy Noonan’s account of attempting to interview protesters on Columbia University’s campus. She wrote about how they didn’t want to talk to her. “Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,” she implored them.

Frankly, if that’s how she approached the students, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that they opted not to speak with her. “Friends …” does make it sound a bit disingenuous, like someone trying to draft you into a religious sect.  

Journalist Peter Baker of The New York Times boosted Noonan’s remarks on X/Twitter, implying the students wouldn’t speak to her because they weren’t capable of articulating their reason for protesting. 

That’s an assumption journalists are trained not to make. Also, it’s likely not true. Just look how poised, thoughtful and resolved this student was when speaking to Fox News: https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1786088434806792573

Last week, when I spoke with several editors of school newspapers on campuses around the country, they all talked about students’ reluctance to speak to the press. 

You can read the article, “When war abroad comes to campus” for FREE here: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/when-war-abroad-comes-to-campus-student-newspapers-meet-the-moment-with-on-the-ground-coverage-of,249586

The editors explained to me that the student protesters — in fact their entire generation — is media savvy but also distrustful of the press. They worry of their remarks being misunderstood or intentionally misconstrued. They’ve grown up in an era in which “fake news” is a familiar concept and social media can make one inarticulate remark take on a life of its own. 

Anish Vasudevan, the editor-in-chief of The Daily Orange at Syracuse University, explained how student protesters on campus have designated “media-trained” spokespersons expressly for these reasons. 

As I spoke with these student journalists, it also confirmed how much newsroom “representation” matters today, especially among young people. They’re more inclined to feel seen, heard and understood when they’re talking to reporters who have some shared perspective, whether that’s ethnicity, gender, geography, race, language, education, a common campus, age or generation.

In many cases, student reporters were able to land the most meaningful interviews with their fellow students, because representation matters. It helps repair some of the deteriorated trust in news media when we see ourselves represented among the storytellers. 

Maybe this story — this moment in history — isn’t for journalists like Noonan or Baker to chronicle. And that’s ok. 

Not everything is made for you. 

News & Publishing

Artificial Intelligence is stealthily altering how news is made and how the public finds information

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) shows a lot of productivity promise for news publishers, but in its early iterations, AI is also proving to be perilous. E&P has been covering AI developments frequently, and this month we look at how Generative AI is changing the way people search for and retrieve information from AI-enabled search engines.

For the user, a query to an AI-enabled search engine may provide a thorough responses that satisfies their question. The risk remains that those response summaries may be flawed with fallacies, depending on how the AI engine was trained. 

The other concern for news publishers is how users behave based on the search response. They may be satisfied with the result and sated, and resist scrolling down for additional search results and links to other sources, including news articles. That should trouble any news media business that relies on a healthy influx of web traffic and has for years invested in improving SEO performance. 

We invited no less than 30 publishers about how they’re preparing for AI-search disruption. Some spoke on background; others opted not to comment at all, citing an uncertainty about what to do. There’s no shame in that. AI is new and developing at lightning speed, and we’re all just trying to figure out where this path is leading. But a few publishers are ahead of the curve and implementing new ways to nurture more direct relationships with readers/viewers/listeners, thereby relying less on search traffic. We tell two of their stories at the link: 

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/artificial-intelligence-is-stealthily-altering-how-news-is-made-and-how-the-public-finds,249473

Food, Travel, Culture, News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

Exploring Vermont’s new(ish) cannabis economy

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As with many other states today, Vermont is contending with a new cannabis economy. It has opened up a wellspring of opportunity for new businesses (dispensaries, growers and other cannabis-focused commercial organizations), associations, and for the state government to allocate and invest new tax revenue. 

Building on a legacy news brand that dates back a century, Vermont News & Media saw its own opportunity to create a cannabis title, “Green Mountain Vermont Cannabis News,” to inform the public about cannabis laws and regulations, new businesses and jobs, and how to enjoy wider access to locally grown products. They’ve taken a different approach to the publication than other cannabis titles, choosing to reflect the state’s craft-cannabis culture. 

Read on at the link: 

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/chronicling-the-changing-cannabis-industry-in-vermont,248925?newsletter=249064&vgo_ee=RNU3H1FbVxykLgM4AiXjJHtu3SEnrWXiuroMIdhsWNNgutl4QgMf%3A2vIxoyXvDfFoOpm8RwsMSxYsEkf2hiRa
News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

Reporting On: The Nation’s Borders and Ports

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E&P’s “Reporting On” series takes a look at what it’s like to be a journalist tasked with covering a national/international crisis, or an urgent public policy concern. This month, we spoke with journalists who report on the nation’s borders and ports. With as much national media—and particularly “cable news”—coverage as we have about the southern border, in particular, there is so much more to the story. 

I learned a lot from these exceptional reporters, who take us to the border itself; share stories of what its like in communities like Chicago, where the border crisis has been brought to their doorsteps; who help sort through the politics and the realities; and turn our attention to the vulnerabilities of the nation’s ports, so critical to our economy and yet so rarely covered in the detail they deserve. 

I set aside my own biases about immigration and allowed the reporters’ stories to stand tall here. But I’m perhaps not unlike so many other Americans who see that immigration is a many-layered complicated issue that’s just not being treated earnestly and effectively by our elected leaders. On radio and TV, we hear gripes about people not coming here “the right way,” but unlike the immigration channels of one or two generations ago, today’s path to citizenship is messy, long, prohibitive, frightening, expensive, and completely out of reach for so many immigrants. We’re failing in not exposing that story. 

Having spent part of my childhood living in South America, I also know how dire and deadly life can be in nations to our south—measurably worse today than even in the 1970s. I can understand why people want to or are forced to leave their homes, their families, their livelihoods and their way of life. It’s not hyperbole to say it can be a life-or-death decision.

This is not to discount the serious and steady threat of bad actors coming across the border and exploiting desperate people, parents and their children. We need to stop them, and we often do. But surveillance technology, concertina wire, a big tall wall, and border enforcement alone won’t solve this crisis; it requires a retooling of foreign policy and thoughtful diplomacy rather than isolationism. 

We are a champion nation. We broadcast to the world about our exceptionalism, what makes us special, what makes us wealthy, what makes us progressive, what makes us leaders, what makes us (comparatively) safe, what makes us free. To expect people from all over the world—especially poor nations plagued by crime and corruption—not to want to come here, in fact to risk their lives to become an American, is ill-considered. 

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/reporting-on-the-border,248922

News & Publishing

Reporters and editors face dilemmas in the social sphere

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Social media can be a minefield for journalists to navigate today. Social platforms are a great tool for extending the reach and impact of reporting, and it’s also part of our everyday non-professional lives, as well. It’s a way to communicate with friends and family, a way to make connections, network, socialize, have a say in our communities, and even find love. 

But being active participants in the social scene comes with obstacles. Social opens journalists up to public scrutiny in a way that bylines alone never did. It can paint us as targets for bad actors, and set us up for condemnation over our judgments about what we share professionally and personally. 

Think about the common practice of “liking” someone else’s post. As a person in news, there may be many reasons to do that. I’ve used a “like” to bookmark a post I want to expediently revisit. I’ve hit the thumbs up to boost the journalism itself because I feel the reporting is important and am glad the outlet invested in it. These aren’t necessarily endorsements or affirmations of the “message” of the post, but from time to time, I’ll like a post because I do “approve of this message.” So, there are nuances here, yet even a simple “like” can get a journalist in hot water today, as we saw just recently occur at the BBC. 

At E&P, we wanted to take a closer look at how news media publishers are addressing dilemmas about professional conduct on social platforms. We found many don’t have formal policies in place beyond their long-standing ethics rules, but quite a few are considering how to formalize a policy, so there are no gray areas when issues arise. I was heartened to speak with a number of editors who trust their reporters to act responsibly in social scenarios and, in fact, give them a great deal of leeway to still participate in social circles without fear of oppressive oversight and penalty.

At the link, check out my conversations with a few of those thoughtful editors: 

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/ethics-in-the-era-of-social-media-editors-balance-giving-journalists-the-freedom-to-post-while,248850?newsletter=248943&vgo_ee=MCAbNCpdkQkxmRGO0rd%2ByIUVo2rlixRmD1x39pNX5sU0rYI9n8ph%3AKC6aOsnL50m%2BB0tKs%2BsUqAjc%2B1xDsGMp

Book Publishing, News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Printing and Imaging

Can we be a democratic society without libraries and free access to information?

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When I was growing up, libraries seemed this quiet, unassuming certainty in everyday life. They were well-funded, accessible to everyone in the community, no matter why nor when you needed them. I saw librarians as all-knowing beings, who could find even the most obscure title on the stacks, without so much as a glance at a card catalog. 

I worked for a while at my university library, in the periodical section. When students came in looking for references, I’d pull out newspapers and magazines from the bowels of the back or help them learn to use the microfiche machines — high-tech back then. 

It may have been my paternal grandmother and her mother (Ida Locke, a librarian seen here) who encouraged my early reading. 

Great-grandmother Locke lived with my grandparents, and I have fond memories of her seated on their sofa, a stack of books always present on the end table beside her. An insatiable reader, she could sail through a book in a single afternoon. She was a quiet, tiny mouse of a woman, always dressed for going out, even when there was no place to go. I can’t remember her voice, because she rarely offered even a hint of a smile nor a string of spoken words. But when I’d visit, she’d pat the sofa next to her, inviting me to sit and tell her what I was reading that week. Born to a German community in rural West Virginia, books were her way to rise above, to escape, to aspire — to work and have autonomy as a woman of that era. 

Books didn’t change her nature — who she was or how she conducted her simple, frugal life — but they did broaden her perspective and informed her understanding of the world outside of her own.

I think about her a lot lately, as libraries are under attack from so many directions. Funding is imperiled. Politics has landed on their doorsteps. Shamefully, surreally, book bans — patently anti-liberty and anti-intellectual — are part of our national discourse. Librarians themselves are harassed and forced out of their jobs by politically motivated and dark money-funded mobs. Can democracy survive under these circumstances, I wonder? It feels symbolic of how we’ve lost our way. 

News & Publishing

Honolulu Civil Beat thrives as a nonprofit

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Last month, I had the pleasure of quality zoom time with Editor and General Manager Patti Epler and Vice President of Operations and Philanthropy Ben Nishimoto at the Honolulu Civil Beat. We spoke about how the nonprofit local news outlet is doing critical work not only in Honolulu, where they’re based, but on the surrounding islands, as well, which have seen local news sources imperiled. They produced essential journalism during the Lahaina wildfires, and continue to tell the stories of the government agencies’ response to the crisis and how the community is recovering and rebuilding. 

After this article went to press, we learned that Patti is opting for a new role, becoming more of an editor-at-large while still serving as general manager. They are in search of a new editor-in-chief to lead the newsroom. What a wonderful opportunity for a qualified candidate to lead this impressive team — in Hawaii, no less! 

Learn more about the Civil Beat at Editor & Publisher here: https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/award-winning-honolulu-civil-beat-thrives-as-a-nonprofit,248651

Photo: Honolulu Civil Beat’s team has grown to 33, including newsroom, operations and fundraising teams. They’ve won the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter’s “Best Overall News Site” 13 years in a row. They’ve also been honored with awards from the Asian American Journalists Association, the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Online Journalism Awards, the News Leaders Association and E&P, among others. (Photo by David Croxford/Civil Beat/2023)

News & Publishing, Politics & Public Policy

Behind the numbers: Unraveling the complexities of polling methodologies and public perception

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We speak of polling in scientific terms — data, sample size, demographics. The goal is to be objective and fair, to randomly poll a lot of people across geography, ethnicity, income level, age, gender and more measurements that make the country so especially diverse. 

Yet, polling is inherently subjective. After all, the responses pollsters elicit from respondents can largely depend on the questions they ask, how they’re worded, how consistently they’re asked, and whether they’re asked in the same way over a period of time. 

There’s also the variable of sincerity and whether people answering polls are honest. 

Perhaps it’s human nature to distrust polling data that doesn’t affirm our own opinions, even when presented with insight into how a poll is conducted. However, there are quality control measures that challenge the veracity of polls. And editors make decisions about what to publish based on those tests. 

At E&P, we wanted to better understand polling methodologies and best practices, and how news media publishers can responsibly communicate polling data to the public. At the link, read about the work of polling organizations like Quinnipiac University, Gallup and The New York Times as they endeavor to gauge what matters to Americans. 

https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/behind-the-numbers-unraveling-the-complexities-of-polling-methodologies-and-public-perception,248513?newsletter=248544&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Unraveling+the+complexities+of+polling+methodologies&utm_campaign=New+Campaign&vgo_ee=X4xHDnF1CpG8F3zOar%2FS%2BEekOhXEMCrrv8xjluitkCe0uXd0CtOq%3AFqQqFYoa8DS5WkCUYcDE3zINrAg7UvbI