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:
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.
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!
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)
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.
The host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour speaks about audio storytelling and a recent partnership with Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Often when I speak with people around the news world, I learn something new. Each interview offers me a fresh professional perspective on journalism, storytelling, audience and business models. My conversation with NPR’s Manoush Zomorodi did that and more.
Zomorodi is the esteemed and well-sourced host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour. She recently found a new way to “engage audience” by enlisting listeners in a cooperative study with Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center. The project began with Zomorodi’s personal reflection on how technology—a topic she often covers on her show—was impacting her energy level, her focus, and overall health.
She learned of a study that indicated that our sedentary lifestyles, exacerbated by the time we spend on digital devices, was profoundly harmful. But there was also good news. A little bit of “gentle movement” every 30 minutes could potentially offset the harm. She wanted to test the theory, and so the partnership with Columbia’s scientists did just that.
At the link, read about my conversation with Zomorodi for Editor & Publisher. Professionally, she taught me a new way to “engage audience,” quite literally, but her work also changed the way I approach my own health. In news speak, it was impactful.
This headline may not be entirely true, and yet, it was in this pre-Middle School era of my life when I first began to fully “understand the value of a dollar.”
I find that’s a popular phrase passed down through generations, an invaluable life lesson or a rite of passage. For two sixth-grade classes in the 1970s, their introduction to commerce and capitalism began that week.
That was the year that the number of students had outgrown the school, and some lucky contractor got the local school system bid for providing pop-up classrooms made out of stitched-together double-wide trailers. Two sixth-grade classes shared the one we’d been sentenced to, with a sliding partition between the two groups, each with its own teacher.
The partition was an insufficient barrier that mostly rendered us distracted by what was happening with the kids on the other side. When they laughed, our heads swiveled. When we acted up, they’d go silent and giggle as they listened to our punishment being levied. One teacher would have to raise her voice to keep the attention of her class whenever the sounds of the other teacher seemed more interesting.
And vice versa, and so it went.
Imagine the delight in our little hearts when one day the partition was folded in on itself, the two classrooms of kids facing off at last. The once competitive teachers joined forces and announced that we were going to learn about running a business and paying bills. They went on to explain that for a period of one week, there would be no traditional classroom lessons and that our trailer would be transformed into a microcosmic town.
Each of us had a role to play in the town. They asked for a show of hands when assigning roles like bankers, retailers, landlords, food purveyors, even insurance carriers.
I was the only one who wanted to run the town’s newspaper.
The town also needed governance, and so a show of hands indicated which of my classmates aspired to political life – managing their day-to-day duties while also running for a handful of offices, including mayor and sheriff.
We spent a day or two planning and building the town. Creative cardboard cutouts became our storefronts. Logos were designed, and signs went up over our storefronts. My classmates got right to work. The banker “handprinted” money and distributed a precisely equal amount of cash to each of the town’s residents, so everyone had a level playing field – a comparatively endearing socialist start to what would end in survival-of-the-fittest capitalistic carnage.
The most popular business, by far, was the town baker, who sold decadent treats to a classroom of kids given the freedom to make their own nutritional and expenditure decisions.
We didn’t speak of food allergies back then.
I got right to work wearing all the hats at the newspaper – a lot like things are today.
I reported and designed the layout. I “printed” the paper on the front office’s mimeograph. Printing is a big cost for actual newspapers, but I’d managed to get the paper and “press” for free. This would be seen as an ethical breach for actual newspapers.
I had to hock the paper, selling single copies to passersby. I sold advertising and wrote ad copy. I had to distribute the paper when it was hot off the press.
And though everyone wanted to read the paper – mostly to see if they were in it – few wanted to buy the paper. It was hard to compete with Mom-baked brownies.
I spent the week walking around the perimeter of the trailer, interviewing my classmates about the health of their businesses or who they liked in the pending election. I wrote trends pieces about how the town’s residents thought the rent was too damned high and how they wanted to be able to spend more of their money on luxury items, like those chocolately brownies. I vaguely remember writing an expose on the insurance carrier in town, who I saw as a huckster selling vapor.
“People give you money, but what do they really get in return,” I grilled him like I was Woodward or Bernstein.
One by one, the small businesses fell, exiling their owners from town, to a corner of the trailer-classroom to watch an episode of “Free to be You and Me” or to throw a sixth-grade temper tantrum, perhaps.
Naturally, the bank endured; it thrived off of the interest. The insurance carrier – who had minimal overhead costs and a contained, safe environment that put odds in his favor – stayed afloat. The baker had fistfuls of colorful cash by week’s end. And the newspaper endured, though I, too, was pretty busted. By the time I’d covered my own costs – rent, insurance, crayons – I didn’t have enough currency for much else.
I’d spent days coveting my classmates’ disposable income and how they frivolously, happily spent it on baked goods and insurance policies.
Somehow, I’d managed to get the news out, but it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t lucrative.
Journalists in war zones navigate complexities, danger and how to make the story resonate with audiences far removed — geographically and emotionally — from the fighting
From the December 2023 Editor & Publisher magazine:
In an era plagued by media consolidation, hedge fund ownership and gutted newsrooms — or “ghost papers” — investigative journalism has fallen by the wayside at too many newsrooms across the country. Investigative journalism is labor- and time-intensive and often expensive to produce. It also requires skilled journalists to do the work.
What does it take to create and lead an investigative team today? E&P asked five investigative editors. Read on at the link.
In the 1990s, I worked at a law firm while getting my grad degree. My job wasn’t clearly defined. I answered phones, paid the bills, and drafted correspondence and pleadings for the senior partners. One of the partners worked in criminal law, and working with his team allowed me insight into some horrific crimes — not the least of which was a compelling case against the Archdiocese for the alleged sexual abuse and rapes now made famous by the Netflix documentary, “The Keepers.”
That same attorney introduced me to a convicted murderer, for whom he was mounting a death penalty appeal. The man had been sentenced to death, along with a buddy, for murdering a Baltimore woman in her home. She was a single gal, a professional who lived alone. According to the defendants’ testimony, they’d gone to her home one evening, thinking she wasn’t there. Once inside, they scouted the first floor, looking for items of value to grab. They came to the kitchen and felt hunger pangs. They opened the refrigerator, took out some ingredients and began cooking up a snack on her stove.
But she was home.
Upstairs, she was sleeping in an early bed. The clanging sound of pots and pans and cooking utensils woke her. She stirred, and the sound jolted the intruders down below. One of the men grabbed a 10-inch chef’s knife — at trial, they’d pointed fingers at each other, accusing the other of wielding the knife — and they went upstairs.
They forced her back to the bed. To silence her screams, they put a pillow over her face. Then, the man holding the knife stabbed her dozens of times, including a final blow that penetrated the pillow and impaled her through the breastplate.
As I tell you this story, the hair on your arms might stand at attention. You might feel revulsion at the brutality of it. You might for just a fleeting moment consider what it was like for her in those final horrific moments. But you’ll never really understand the violence unless you saw the crime scene photos.
I had to sift through them one day, stacks upon stacks of black-and-white glossies taken by law enforcement and shown to jurors as evidence during the trial. To this day, I can remember how she looked, frail and tiny and limp. The simple furnishings around her defied why anyone would want to rob her. She had so little, just starting out in life.
Blood was everywhere — pooling on the sheets, seeping through the soft, worn pillowcase, where the knife was embedded in her body. It was splattered on the walls, the carpet, the nightstand.
I’m sure my heart fell out of rhythm when I noticed in one of the photos that she was wearing a nightgown with Ziggy, a cartoon character, childlike. I had the same nightgown when I was a teenager. I have a photo of me in it from one Christmas morning.
I cried for hours in our little law library. I still cry when I think about those images — when I think of her — today. They were hard to look at, certainly for the jurors who were deciding the defendants’ fate. But they needed to see them, to fully understand, to grapple with the violence, to make informed decisions and to act accordingly.
Yesterday, The Washington Post published a controversial investigative piece, “American Icon: Terror on Repeat, a rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings.”
The piece is controversial for its graphic photos, showing the horror, carnage and death inflicted by people with access to a weapon of war — a gruesome tool designed expressly for hunting human beings.
As long as I have worked in news, there has been fervent debates among journalists about graphic images and what is beyond the pale for the viewing public. This is not an easy professional nor moral call. And it’s often the case that new outlets are accused of exploitation and shock value for publishing violent imagery.
I spoke with a Pulitzer-awarded photojournalist this week, for whom I have the utmost respect. She’s been covering war for more than 23 years, and has paid witness to the very worst of humanity, the very worst violence, the absolute worst gore. Over the course of her career, she’s faced this dilemma an untold number of times, weighing which images to submit for publication and which ones are simply too grotesque to inflict on others.
She spoke thoughtfully about her worry that if a photograph is too distasteful to a person, they’ll simply turn the page or switch the channel and move along, negating all of the work and danger it took to capture it, negating the story of the victims.
If they can’t stand to look at the photo, they can’t care about the people, she explained to me.
We talked a little about the skills a journalist acquires on the war beat, and how they translate here in America for local news reporters who find themselves covering crises, like mass shootings. If you’re intrigued, I’ve written more about our conversation in the December issue of Editor & Publisher.
I implore you to look at the photos in WaPo’s important piece of journalism.
Fit yourself in the cowboy boots of young people running from rapid gunfire, when moments before they were singing along to country music.
Stand over the body bags lining an elementary school hallway, with the corpses and parts of children zippered inside, and imagine what it’s like to be their parents, their friends, the adults who failed to protect them.
Fight the urge to turn away from the picture of pews, soaked in blood, the walls of the church pockmarked and splintered by an AR-15s spray.
No narrative, no amount of pontificating, no amount of wrestling with the right adjectives can communicate the story more honestly and accurately than these videos and photos.
He’s right: Why should these images only haunt him and the victims’ families? We’re all responsible for gun violence in this country, because we turn away, we move on, we conscientiously — by choice — build up our tolerance to it.
I get tangled up on the question of whether it’s the press’s duty to somehow soften the blow, to make violence and murder more palatable to the public? Or is it a newsroom’s duty to depict the crime and its aftermath with unobscured clarity?
