The Best Stories Find the Journalist, and Journalism Found Me

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By Nikki Roberts

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

Blog Post

February 6, 2020

 

The Best Stories Find the Journalist, and Journalism Found Me

By Nikki Roberts

 

I have learned many important lessons during my undergraduate journalism career at DePaul. One of these lessons is that sometimes a reporter finds a story, but the best stories often seek out the reporter. In my five years working in student media, I’ve found this to be true because not only have great stories found me, but journalism as a field found me when I had no direction.

 

As a high school junior in Aurora, Illinois, my only ambition was to work at my three part-time jobs so I could move out of my parents’ house and to Chicago the moment I turned 18 — or once I graduated high school. I knew the importance of obtaining a high school diploma, but it was never a primary goal for me; whenever I had the money saved, I would leave the suburbs.

 

I had no plan or direction for my life after high school graduation (yes, I graduated, and with a decent GPA to boot). I was in honors and AP classes because school work and test taking are skills that I never had to practice or study for in order to master, but I spent more time roaming the halls and confined to the dean’s office than I did in class on the days I actually made it to school.

 

However, my lack of ambition did not mean I was an apathetic teen with a lack of interests. In fact, the opposite was true. I was a music obsessed bookworm — I read every rock ‘n’ roll biography at my local library by the time I was 14 — who never stopped writing. I would write several times a week in a journal, I dabbled in non-fiction personal essays and I internally celebrated every time an English teacher assigned a composition assignment instead of a multiple-choice exam.

 

At the end of my junior year, a friend who was on staff at our school paper, The Stampede, recommended I apply for a position in the school’s only journalism class. I wrote a sample article about the differences between medicinal and recreational marijuana since I had heard many students express contradicting views on the upcoming medicinal legalization bill, and the story ran in the last issue of my junior year. After seeing my name in print, I was shocked to realize I was actually excited for school to begin in the fall.

 

My only regret about high school journalism is that I didn’t apply earlier. Our class functioned as a newsroom with periodic, news-focused assignments. As an online writer, I was guaranteed a voice on the paper’s website, Metea Media, while also having the freedom to contribute to the print edition of the paper whenever I had an idea for a feature story. Most importantly to my success in school, “newspaper” — as the journalism kids called it — was the last class of the day, which kept me from cutting out of school early. This isn’t to say I didn’t skip morning classes or sneak out of the school mid-day only to return in time for newspaper, but joining the school paper gave me a duty to be involved and informed about my school.

 

I may have ditched class and fallen asleep during AP tests, but I flew through my ACT exam with perfect marks in the reading and English sections. My mother begged me to apply to at least a few colleges so, without doing any research, I cast my line out to three Illinois schools — Northern Illinois University, Loyola University and DePaul University — and reeled in three acceptance letters that each included the respective university’s largest merit scholarships.

 

I was a wild teenager, but I wasn’t stupid. Few of my close friends were going away to universities in the fall, and those who were continuing their college education planned to attend our local community college, College of DuPage. I decided to enroll at DePaul University and declared myself an English major, since I wanted to write but couldn’t see myself as a reporter.

 

A month before I graduated, The Stampede staff swept the NSPA Pacemaker Awards and my Meta Media team accepted four online awards. After the ceremony, I attended a keynote speech given by Sun-Times reporter Maudlyne Ihejirika. She spoke passionately about covering police shootings of young black men and the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. I sat in the back of the room beside my journalism teacher but, at the conclusion of her speech, I was in her face with a notepad and a pen, eager to learn how I could be involved in exposing systematic injustice through my writing.

 

When I moved to Chicago a few months later to begin my academic career at DePaul, I reached out to Ihejirika and regularly asked her for advice, a phone call or coffee. When our schedules never lined up, I accepted that I would have to remain in digital conversation with her via Twitter and email, and the next three years of my undergraduate experience flew by.

 

If I have learned anything as a student journalist, it is that everyone in the field knows each other and what might seem like a causal connection will always lead to deeper connections or a shared network of colleagues.

 

Last fall, I attended the “Power 25,” a gathering of Chicago’s 25 most powerful women in media and their colleagues at the Union League Club. When I saw Ihejirika walk in, I knew I had to re-introduce myself, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Would she remember me? Was it worth noting that I was the eager freshman who had harassed her by email three years ago?

 

Quite out of character for me, I approached her timidly and began, “Hi, Maudlyne, I’m Nikki Roberts. I doubt you’d remember me, but I heard you speak three years ago and…”

 

“Oh, my God! You’re the senior from Metea Valley who was going to DePaul! Of course, I remember you!”

 

I’ve had many small victories that have helped me beat imposter syndrome and feel like an equal among my intelligent journalism peers at DePaul, but there is nothing quite like having a highly respected reporter remember you from when you were a completely unexperienced high school student. I am not one to place much of a belief in fate, but it is hard to convince myself I don’t belong in this field when journalism found me, and continues to find me, in the smallest, unexpected ways.

 

 

 

 

 

Spin Wars – How a partisan media landscape is biasing Americans and exacerbating political divide in the U.S.

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By Michael Abraham

Picture this. You’re flipping TV channels at night, trying to catch up on the events of the day. You land on a channel with two talking heads, discussing the previously ongoing impeachment proceedings of President Trump. When the commercial break arrives, you flip to the next channel and find two more – perhaps whiter, more chromosomally diverse – talking heads discussing the same topic. It takes you a moment, though, to realize that the topics are the same because this news station is framing the same stories in completely opposing ways.

Your palms grow clammy. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. With every goosebump the realization becomes clearer. You have entered the Twilight Zone.

Or, on the other hand, you might have just flipped from CNN or MSNBC to Fox News.

News organizations have had partisan leanings since the chisel met the tablet. That’s nothing new. However, with the introduction of cable news in the 1980’s and the accompanying 24-hour news cycle, networks were forced to fill more time than incoming national news provided. The result paved the way for programming based on political commentary and analysis both of which are significantly more susceptible to bias than traditional news reporting.

Thus, we find ourselves today in a media landscape that is virtually split down party lines. Ask anyone not living under a rock and they’ll tell you, in a variety of ways: Fox News is for conservatives and MSNBC or CNN, liberals. Add arguably the most polarizing president in American history into the mix and it seems that these networks are sprinting in opposite directions at times.

Data from Real Clear Politics suggests that, while outlets are generally talking about the same topics, their takes are quite different. Further, it shows “that there are very real systematic differences in the coverage we see across the media landscape and that there has been a genuine fracturing of the media since Donald Trump’s election. At the same time, that divide is still small, meaning that rather than entirely disjointed pictures, news outlets present different takes on the same shared universe of stories.”

This didn’t start with Trump, though. The schism began with the cable news network founders. Take media mogul Rupert Murdoch, for example. Murdoch sat at the helm of Fox Corporation for many years. Politico reported that during his leadership, then Fox parent company News Corp, contributed millions of dollars to GOP-aligned groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Governors Association.

If that wasn’t enough to make consumers and competitors question the network’s objectivity, Murdoch was also very outspoken in his support for Republican politicians and criticism of Democrats. In 2012, he came out in support of Mitt Romney, saying, “Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc.” Several years later, in 2015, he tweeted: “Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide?”

Even today, with Murdoch having passed control on to his son, conflicts of interest exist. How about the fact that former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan sits on Fox Corporation’s Board of Directors?

A similar narrative can be told about Murdoch’s main rival, CNN founder Ted Turner, who was often outspoken about his support for Democratic initiatives and candidates. Although these figures have moved on, the culture they created survives and perhaps even grows. Current CNN chief Jeff Zucker reportedly previously hosted private events for both Obama and, more recently, Kamala Harris. He also hasn’t been secretive about his own political beliefs.

It is generally accepted that an organization’s culture trickles down from its leadership. As a young journalist, I find it odd that, while journalism preaches the importance of objectivity, ethics and avoiding conflicts of interest, the organizations that employ journalists throw caution to the wind regarding the same set of standards. If Pete Rose can’t bet on baseball, why can news executives be in bed with parties and candidates? There is an increasingly fine line drawn between what is and isn’t a conflict of interest for the media and it is becoming grayer by the day.

Accomplished journalist Katy Tur mentions in her book “Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History,” that she doesn’t even vote so as to remain an unattached observer. Many high-profile journalists, even when their affiliations are obvious, avoid officially declaring a political party in order to maintain the illusion of a balanced opinion.

Nevertheless, each network’s TV line-ups, themselves, emphasize how partisan bias might exist and how echo chambers are created as a result. For example, Fox News features a nightly primetime program called “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” They describe the show as an “hour of spirited debate and powerful reporting.” Rather than focusing on the hard news, Fox allows Carlson to insert his own subjective views on the topics of the day. His opinions become conflated with actual facts and the entire primetime viewing audience is left to find the truth.

The same can be said for CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” or MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews”. Because ratings drive success in television, the most popular personalities are able to put their own, sometimes hyperbolic, spin on the news. Therefore, the news that many Americans consume isn’t necessarily news at all; but, instead, the news as viewed through Tucker Carlson – or another show host’s – lenses. Have you ever tried on someone else’s glasses? Sometimes they distort the way you see things.

This has a significant effect on the way each networks’ audience views the state of the country. Months ago, as Newsweek pointed out, NBC and Wall Street Journal poll data found that 73% of Fox News viewers approve of Trump’s presidency. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC viewers responded with approval ratings of 34% and 30% respectively.

Viewers consume the content generated by their parties’ unofficial news sources and continue to seek out information that aligns with the beliefs they’ve been fed. Repeat this process on a nightly basis and viewers become fat with their own confirmation bias. All the while, network executives continue the spin with one watchful eye on the ratings and the other on the party-supporting opinion buffet.

Or maybe we’re in the Twilight Zone.

What we owe our audience

dmoseley Student Perspectives

As the line between news and opinion blurs, journalists must clarify

By: Lacey Latch

The 24-hour news cycle has completely transformed the journalism industry since its widespread implementation in the 1980s. Three decades later, nonstop cable news has become commonplace and so too has its programming and the personalities that lead it. At the same time though, this process has eroded the divide between news and opinion that was once separated by specifically marked newspaper sections or had very little presence on television altogether. Now, Americans are bombarded with more news-related content than ever before, but their ability to sift through that content has come into question.

“The causes of America’s deepening political divide are many and much disputed, but the differences between an opinion show and a news show might be difficult for people to discern,” Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wrote in 2017. “The reason: Programs such as [Sean] Hannity’s and others on cable news are often a mix of many things — news, commentary, analysis and pure, unadulterated opinion.”

In the fall of 2018, the American Press Institute released a report analyzing a survey of American citizens about their news consumption and this exact question: Can people tell the difference between news and opinion? It turns out that for the most part, the answer is no. Their surveys found that “just over half of Americans say it’s easy to distinguish news from opinion in news media in general.”

This statistic is certainly alarming in its own right but the implications of this reality are far-reaching. With a President who routinely dismisses the press as creators of “fake news,” the American public is already more inclined to question what they’re reading and seeing. That is only compounded by the fact that when they turn on “the news,” there really is no saying what they’ll get in terms of punditry, analysis or hard reporting and there is rarely any label indicating which of those categories the program falls into.

The consumer is of course to some extent responsible for their own media literacy but journalism as an industry also plays a critical role in the formation of that literacy. In another survey the American Press Institute found that “Fully half of the U.S. public is unfamiliar with the term ‘op-ed,’ and nearly three in 10 said they were unfamiliar with the difference between an editorial and news story (27 percent) or a reporter and columnist (28 percent).”

This clearly indicates that there is a disconnect between journalists and the population we are supposed to be serving, one that directly impacts the efficacy and trust placed in our work. It also further erodes the public’s trust in journalism as a whole. Commentators who offer opinions but are presented as reporters reporting fact only support the perception that journalists are inherently biased.

Notably, an overwhelming majority of journalists surveyed about this issue correctly believe that “most people misunderstand the difference between news and opinion content.” But despite the fact that journalists might be aware of the problem, fixing it has become something of a nonstarter in the industry.

While touring newsrooms in New York City in December, I asked DePaul graduate and MSNBC producer Kat McCullough if the network feels it is responsible for making the distinction between news and commentary clear for viewers. While she acknowledged this issue is something the industry needs to reckon with, MSNBC, like so many of their counterparts, has yet to determine the best way to start that process.

Journalists exist to serve and inform the American public. However, that mission can’t be accomplished if readers and viewers don’t know how to interpret what is being presented to them and journalists are responsible for making that easier. By labeling content and defining what those labels mean, journalists will be better suited to do their job because they will be reporting on and for a more media literate audience. Overall, if reporters and the public develop a better understanding of each other, both parties will benefit indefinitely.

 

 

 

 

 

Making sure journalism reaches an audience is as important as creating that journalism

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Bianca Cseke

Your tweets can get you fired if you’re a journalist.

That’s more or less the warning most reporters receive at least once while in journalism school and when they begin working in a newsroom.

It certainly became reality for Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez in January after basketball player Kobe Bryant’s death, when she tweeted a link to a story about sexual assault allegations against him. The paper’s editor, Marty Baron, sent her an email citing her “real lack of judgment in tweeting this.” Sonmez was briefly suspended from work before editors reversed their decision, but her post is still under investigation to determine if it violated the paper’s social media policies.

News organizations have a myriad of expectations for their reporters regarding social media, especially Twitter, and much of it can seem contradictory and impossible to follow. Be engaging and show your personality, but don’t post anything you wouldn’t want published in the paper itself. Avoid showing a bias, to the point of “aggressively managing” friends’ and followers’ comments on your posts, Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism says.

It can be hard to realize that being a journalist means giving up some of the rights and privileges others have, like posting political opinions online, but it is no different than traditional guidelines about not participating in protests or putting political candidates’ signage up.

In fact, not only is it the same principle, but it could be even more important given how so many people get their news nowadays: through social media. If journalists are to be considered reputable, fair sources, their online presence should reflect that.

Beyond the inability to have a separate, personal life online, some journalists have pushed back at the notion that Twitter helps journalists and journalism itself. In early 2019, New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote that “Twitter is ruining American journalism,” saying that the platform prizes image over substance and ruins journalism’s image. He calls it “the epicenter of a nonstop information war,” “an almost comically undermanaged gladiatorial arena where activists and disinformation artists and politicians and marketers gather to target and influence the wider media world.”

As serious an issue as online disinformation may be, pessimism about the interconnectedness of journalism and social media ignores the fact that it helps news organizations reach a wider audience – and often much faster – than if they simply put their content on their websites and expect the public to find that content on its own. It succumbs to a mindset in which news organizations are the gatekeepers to information and readers will simply accept this, regularly checking to see what those few individuals have to say. That’s not how readers in the digital age behave and that mindset also does not bring important information readers may not even know they want or need to them.

It is the sacred duty of journalists to listen to the public they serve, City University of New York journalism professor Jeff Jarvis writes. It is also vital to bring journalistic value to the public conversation. With so much of the public on social media, discussing current affairs – sometimes seriously, sometimes not – it would be misguided for journalists not to participate on these platforms to engage with their communities.

That’s not to say journalists should base all of their reporting on what people say they want or only consider perspectives found on a single platform. A Columbia Journalism Review study found that making the use of Twitter a routine part of news production influences news judgment. Spending more time on the platform makes tweets feel equally newsworthy as information found outside of social media. While communities can provide useful insight into what to cover, others can take advantage of the platform to spin their message. Journalists can feed into that cycle of reporting on officials’ tweets and treating all of them as newsworthy. It explains why nearly every time President Donald Trump tweets, reporters write stories about what was tweeted out, even if it is unclear what his administration plans to do.

Journalists should exercise the same caution online as they do in more traditional reporting, like verifying information and people’s identities, as well as carefully considering what audiences want to see published versus what they need to see because the information is so important for a well-functioning community.

And as much as some journalists will complain about having to utilize social media to promote themselves and their work, and as much as they resent not being able to have a completely private life separate from their work online, it is journalism’s duty to make sure important information worth reporting about in the first place reaches the communities it impacts.

 

Investigating Gender Gaps and Using Facts to Create Social Change

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Meredith Melland

Reporter Jodi Kantor’s stories often ripple from the pages of The New York Times and transform into massive waves that break gender barriers, bring nuance on politics and culture to the surface and inspire change that continues to reverberate through the United States’ social fabric.

Her reporting on the difficulties facing low-wage lactating workers in 2006 prompted two women to design mobile lactation suites that have been brought to businesses around the world. Starbucks changed their scheduling policies when she reported on the chain’s irregular hours, even before she reported the biggest story of her career.

Kantor and fellow Times investigative reporter Megan Twohey revealed three decades of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017 — prompting the Weinstein Corporation to fire him and catalyzing thousands of women to share stories of sexual abuse or harassment using Tarana Burke’s Twitter hashtag, “#MeToo.”

As she sat with Twohey in the basement of Chicago’s Vic Theatre before an event for She Said — their book on the reporting process and effects of the Weinstein investigation — and signed books as they were slid to her in a fluid assembly line, Kantor described how she uses gender as a lens for investigative reporting.

“I think covering politics in general is part of what made me want to use gender as an investigative topic,” Kantor said.

When she covered the 2008 presidential campaign and election, Kantor was struck by how the heated discussion on Hilary Clinton’s potential candidacy was permeated with sexism, partisanship and personal feelings.

“I just remember thinking with this, what the gender debate in the U.S. needs is more facts and it needs especially more airing of hidden and secret facts,” she said.

After reporting on the 2012 election and writing a book about the Obamas, Kantor directly pursued stories on gender inequities. She reported on the gender opportunity gap of 1994 Stanford graduates and attempts to change the male-oriented culture of Harvard Business School, which sparked nationwide discussion of college rules on admission and treatment.

By the time she embarked on the Weinstein story with Twohey, she was an open secrets veteran. Still, some moments in the months of intense reporting affected Kantor emotionally, especially when Ashley Judd agreed to be the first survivor to go on the record in what felt like a “massive leap of faith.”

“I still wanted to sound professional, and I remember in that moment searching for something to say to her, and sort of the best I could muster was ‘this means the world to me as a journalist,’” Kantor said.

Kantor said that she and Twohey preferred to keep the focus on their sources’ feelings and pain to understand their stories and effectively do their jobs.

“If you were diagnosed with cancer, you wouldn’t necessarily want to be speaking to a doctor who was weeping in the room with you,” Kantor said.

Though the investigation required the reporters to conduct several meticulous interviews with women divulging personal stories, Kantor stressed that they still had to establish clear journalist-source relationships.

“This reporting definitely requires the ability to talk to people who may have been deeply traumatized, who are recalling their worst memories as they speak to you, but that only makes it all the more important to be professional and to be collected,” Kantor said.

With such a dark subject, working with a partner helped her process information while maintaining appropriate distance from the sources.

“That’s part of why the partnership between Megan and I became so important to both of us, because that was the place where we could take our own feelings about this work,” Kantor said.

The Weinstein story and the duo’s subsequent investigations have continued to impact the country and culture, but not every Kantor article has created widespread social reform. In 2016, she developed a series with reporter Catrin Einhorn on Canadian citizens who adopted Syrian refugees.

“It’s one of the most extraordinary humanitarian efforts I’ve ever seen because it was an example of individuals doing something that governments couldn’t or wouldn’t do,” Kantor said.

She thought the story was a model of a solution for a desperate and difficult-to-solve crisis.

“I hope it opened people’s eyes,” Kantor said.

Though it was widely read, it hasn’t produced visible action. Kantor remarked that the role of a journalist is to inform the public and hope they read and listen.

“You’ll never know who’s read your story and what it’s inspired them to do or change,” she said.

Kantor, like many people in the journalism world, felt overwhelmed by the number of possible investigations and large-scale stories when Trump took office.

“How in the world am I ever going to be equal to this moment? How can I do a story that actually matters?” Kantor said she asked herself then. ”Because I’ve got this precious seat at The New York Times at a time when journalism is under siege, and what am I going to use this for?”

Her advice is to new reporters entering the field during this time is simple — take the most substantive reporting job you can get, keep producing work and try out different media.

“You want to be in a place that will give you interesting opportunities and good advice,” Kantor said.

By using tried-and-true investigative tactics, determining how to best use her voice in different cultural moments and looking through the lens of gender inequality, Jodi Kantor has produced work with lasting impact. She hopes that through reading the book or one of her stories, people will be inspired to investigate and inform the world around them.

Maintaining Objectivity and Transparency – “in this fractured time in which the very notion of truth can seem illusive”

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Natalie Wade

New York Times’ Pulitzer Winning Megan Twohey discusses the role of anonymity in fair and accurate journalism and the balancing act of investigative reporting.

Across the country, hushed conversations are surfacing and non-disclosure agreements seem less effective at silencing grievances. Now, widely known are the secrets that protected Harvey Weinstein, thanks to the publishing of the article, Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harassment Accusers for Decades. New York Times’ Megan Twohey, after months of reporting alongside Jodi Kantor, was able to expose Weinstein’s abuse of power.

Unraveling this story meant combating the idea that journalistic media is riddled with rumors and “fake news.” She had to separate her emotions from her reporting and was not always sure what the end result of the exposé would be.

Tackling an investigation into an issue hidden behind the Hollywood façade, Twohey credits her previous work experience at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune, with giving her the focus and emotional bandwidth that this would require.

“There’s no substitute for experience,” Twohey says. “It can take time to kind of cultivate the skills and build the experience that sort of ensures that when you do find yourself in the midst of a big story, that you’ve got the tools to execute.”

There were plenty of things – beyond the former Israeli intelligence officials who were paid $300,000 to stop the investigation – that made the Weinstein story difficult to report. Another hurdle was working to get the many allegations of sexual assault on the record, but for Twohey, that was the only way to move forward: “… the people who made allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against Weinstein did so on the record in our stories.”

Though Twohey agrees that anonymous sources may prove useful in an investigation, transparency was key in this story, especially given the sensitivity of the alleged crimes. “We felt like in this type of reporting, in the name of not just accuracy but fairness, it’s important for people making these allegations to go on the record.”

This ethical standard embedded in the Weinstein story is what makes the allegations difficult to contest or be dismissed as rumors. “Even in this fractured time in which the very notion of truth can seem illusive … there wasn’t any debate over whether or not he had engaged in this bad behavior,” says Twohey.

Editor-in-chief at the New York Times, Dean Baquet gave her strict instruction not to speak to Weinstein off the record, Twohey says “… because what we’ve seen in the course of our reporting was that [Weinstein] was sort of a master in manipulation and bullying and if we had allowed him to go off the record it would have only, sort of, empowered him and his underhanded tactics.”

Weinstein’s threats of legal action and intimidation tactics didn’t work on Twohey. “To me the more we saw those attempts at intimidation and threats, the more motivated we were to make sure we were able to publish the truth.”

Attempting to uncover that truth has led to many uncomfortable situations for Twohey, including Weinstein barging into The New York Times office, but that is how she knows her investigative work is important. She remembers being given the best journalistic advice as a college intern at Nightline, where executive producer Tom Bettag said to her, “If you’re not scared of your job, get a new job.”

“That pit in my stomach is actually a sign that I’m taking on the type of challenges that are going to force me to grow,” Twohey says.

Journalism can be a difficult balancing act. When you’ve invested so much time and energy into one story, it’s not always easy to be objective. Twohey believes that, “As an investigative reporter you have to be emotionally invested to sort of spend months pursuing stories.”

However, she explains that this is different from opinion. “It’s not our job to offer our opinions, in fact, we feel like if we wear our opinions on our sleeves that, that can actually interfere with the reporting that we do.”

“We often feel like the best way to help, is often to do our jobs and do it as professionally as possible and that means, you know, doing the due diligence of reporting, the corroboration and ultimately following a process that is not about emotion.”

Almost two years later, Twohey has seen her work reignite the #MeToo movement and many men – who are accused of abusing their power – have come under fire. “I think that this story did help fuel that movement and help serve as a solvent for secrecy, and I think one of the reasons that this particular story had such an impact is because it was really an x-ray into abuse of power.”

The relationship between objectivity and honesty

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

A conversation with David Gelber

By Kayla Molander

David Gelber’s name has appeared as producer on over 100 stories for 60 Minutes over the course of his nearly sixty-year career.

That career is one guided by gut instinct, and trying to do the right thing.

Gelber explains his approach in a phone interview. “What’s given me joy in journalism is to start with what my gut feels about something and try to tell that story as honestly and as powerfully and with as much emotional power as I can find.”

That is a far-cry from traditional journalistic ideals of objectivity, but that has never been a problem for Gelber.

“For much of my journalistic life, if not all of it, I’ve certainly walked this line between journalism and advocacy,” he says.

Advocacy lies at the heart of Gelber’s current project, which is dedicated to what he calls “overwhelmingly the biggest story of our time.”

The story is climate change, and “the enormity of this issue cannot be understated,” he says.

In the presidential debates from the last two presidential elections, there were no questions about climate change in any of the televised debates.

“You tell me how reporters from NBC and CBS and ABC and CNN can conduct debates in 2012 and 2016 without even mentioning climate change once?” Gelber asks.

That is just the beginning of how he believes the networks have failed in their coverage of climate change. He thinks that in their quest for balance, networks have ignored scientific reality.

“Twenty years from now, we’re going to look back at this and see it as one of the most outrageous failings of American journalism… Television should be ashamed of itself.”

Gelber left 60 Minutes in 2011 when he was not permitted to exclusively cover stories about climate change. The YEARS Project was born shortly after, where Gelber created the Emmy-winning documentary series Years of Living Dangerously about climate change.

According to the organization’s website, “The YEARS Project is a multimedia storytelling and education effort designed to inform, empower, and unite the world in the face of climate change.”

Despite its mission statement, Gelber insists the non-profit deals only in fact, and bias is not an issue.

“I hate that word [bias]. There’s plenty of bias out there. We are extremely careful. We have never been accused of misstating factual information. The climate issue is a settled issue among scientists. There is nobody, including Exxon Mobile, anymore who pretends that human-caused climate change is not a scientific fact.”

Fact, according to Gelber, can coexist with passion in journalism.

“There’s been amazing journalism that’s been done by reporters who are both passionate about a subject and honest to report it fairly and accurately.”

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics does not state that journalists should avoid subjects they are passionate about, but it does caution to avoid conflicts of interests – real or perceived. The line between passion and conflict of interest is undefined and therefore debatable. Gelber thinks it’s worth discussing but is not the most important issue.

“Objectivity. I don’t know what that is, but I know what honesty is,” he says.

“That word [objectivity] needs to be defined better,” he continues. “The way it’s used by conventional mainstream journalists means don’t tip your hand that you feel strongly about an issue, which really bothers me, because I don’t feel that’s essential.”

It is no secret that Gelber feels strongly about climate change. He makes no apologies for his feelings. He compares denying climate change to believing the earth is flat, and does not entertain climate change deniers. He does not call that bias.

“I think the bias was in this ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ crap that the networks were putting out for years. Where they would give equal time to these liars who worked for the fossil fuel companies.”

Gelber can speak candidly about the networks because he no longer works for them. He is now the chairman of his own foundation. He lets his moral code guide his actions, and suggests young journalists do the same, and not be afraid to speak out against injustice.

“People have to know what they stand for… If they have real integrity they’ll know where to draw the line. They’ll know when to speak up when they see bullshit.”

Uncharted Territory

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

How to ethically report in different cultures

By Mariam Mackar

“Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity.”

This is the preamble of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics. A standard many journalists follow in order to maintain the integrity that is necessary in a field that is constantly being referred to as “fake news.” At its core, SPJ’s Code of Ethics serves as a set of principles to guide reporters during their time in a career that is filled with nuanced scenarios and morally divisive situations.

From the very beginning of a student’s time in journalism, the concept of reporting ethically is drilled into nearly each course taken and every story written, all in hopes of being translated into a future career of honorable investigations and truth-telling. Though one may learn (as much as a person can in the classroom) the standards of reporting in the United States, ethics differ within each culture, country, and community. How, if at all, does a reporter prepare him or herself to report on new environments they are not accustomed to?

“There’s no education that can teach you the things you learn by being dropped in some other country… [reporting abroad] was a real eye-opener and a real gift,” says Michelle Kosinski, CNN’s senior diplomatic correspondent for the U.S. State Department. Before her current position at CNN, Kosinski worked for 10 years as an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London, covering a wide range of domestic and international stories, such as military handover in Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and terrorist plots and bombings in Europe.

Despite the perpetual learning curve that accompanies reporting in constantly changing cultural environments, Kosinski says that being able to work in different countries enhanced her journalistic skills by making her a more well-rounded person. “It made me wiser, it made me more sympathetic to human beings in general… because I think when you see other people’s cultures, you just understand humanity more.”

After her 10 years of foreign reporting experience, Kosinski’s best advice to young journalists on how to avoid reporting with subconscious bias is to do what journalists do best: ask questions.

“The best advice is to just question everything. Question every source; like what is their agenda? What is the background? What political motive might they have to be sharing with you what they’re sharing? Because every source you’re talking to has an agenda and you’re more susceptible to it when you’re dropped into a place and you yourself are like “which end is up?”

From Kosinski’s perspective the way that a person reports doesn’t necessarily change in a new place. However, when in a new country, state or environment, a journalist has to pay closer attention to differences in the ‘rules’ of reporting, including differing laws and socially acceptable actions.

“It’s instantly noticeable, the differences, just in the way reporters conduct themselves. There are other countries where, for example, suspects’ identities are really protected and investigators won’t release as many details as you would be used to getting in America.”

She argues that one of the most valuable things a reporter can do, especially when reporting on a new place, is to ask for help. Whether that is from experts on the topic being covered, colleagues who have knowledge on the matter or natives in the area who can provide a close-to-home perspective.

For Kosinski, the beauty of the field of journalism is the adventure that can be found in any place. Whether that means traveling to new countries or finding stories within your hometown, the nature of reporting allows for new discoveries regardless of the continent one is working in.  Although working in unknown environments can provide differing obstacles, nothing can prepare a journalist for new cultures like first-hand experience. While norms vary from each location, the core values of the Journalistic Code of Ethics are applicable in any setting. As Kosinski’s career has shown, the benefits of being immersed in uncharted territory transcends simply reporting a headlining story by providing invaluable experience to a reporter’s future in the field.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Archibald: Journalist first, columnist second

Image dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Brian Pearlman

For John Archibald, writing a worthwhile column is not simply churning out a clickable “spin” or “hot take” on a pressing issue. It involves real journalism and real research.

“I believe that a good column is well-reported,” he says. “And then, honestly — particularly now — if it’s not, then it’s just another voice in a world full of voices.”

By good reporting, Archibald is referring to the classic shoe leather variety — trawling forms, data and records to see where governments spend their money; getting on-the-ground experience and speaking to original sources.

“I think when you offer new information, it adds a lot of value to opinion pieces,” he says.

Archibald spent 20 years as a reporter for The Birmingham News before becoming a columnist in 2004. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2018; his winning columns included a novella-like profile of the queer daughter of conservative Birmingham talk show host Rick Burgess; a piece about a 2015 incident when then-Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore cited God in court filings to lower taxes on his 43,000 square foot, seven-car garage home in Etowah county; and a full-blown investigative analysis piecing together the downfall of now-former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley — step by scandalous step.

It’s his background in investigative work, coupled with a belief that journalism must never lose its sense of social responsibility that drives him. Sure, people can pull the indictments for themselves and read PDFs of court documents online. But it is Archibald’s job to make the happenings of the day relevant and engaging — to increase Alabamians’ civic awareness and political literacy.

In this sense Archibald is a curator, distilling what he thinks is important for people to know and presenting it in a way that readers will hopefully be interested in and, yes, even entertained by.

And Alabama, a state of over 4.5 million people in which Archibald notes “the head of every branch of government has been booted out of office in the last two years,” is a fitting canvas for a journalist’s brush. You might even call it a “target-rich environment” for reporters — Archibald does.

In fact, the question of who can lay claim to the “most corrupt” state of them all was the subject of a fascinating piece Archibald published in April, in which he asked reporters from Illinois, New Jersey and Louisiana to say why they had it the worst. The verdict? It depends on how you measure corruption, and in any case, everybody loses.

But Illinois and Alabama do share more than a few similarities in this respect: Both suffer under the weight of a Machine. In the case of Illinois, it’s the Democratic Machine, famous for clouted hires, shadowy backroom deals and an unwritten pay-to-play rulebook. In Alabama’s case, it’s a powerful fraternity at the University of Alabama that counts many political figures among its ranks and has been linked to influence schemes and even alleged voter fraud. Archibald delved into The Machine in a podcast last year called “Greek Gods.”

Another similarity between the two states: an eye-rolling cynicism among the citizenry about their respective governments’ predilection towards self enrichment and corrupt dealings.

“We are incredibly cynical and expect the worst from our politicians, and we aren’t always rewarded when we get it,” he says.

Archibald is currently on a month-long break from his column while he works on a podcast project, which he jokes is putting him “in the throes of withdrawal.” As such, you can’t currently find his thoughts on some of the biggest recent news in Alabama politics: former Attorney General Jeff Sessions running once again for the Senate seat he held for 20 years.

“I think he’s determined in this very bright-red state to maintain his loyalty to the president, and he would probably be the favorite at this point,” Archibald says.

It hasn’t always been easy for Archibald, especially in the current environment of shuttered newsrooms and major layoffs at newspapers across the country. In 2012, almost two-thirds of the staff across Alabama’s three largest newspapers were laid off, leaving Al.com, under the banner of Alabama Media Group, in their wake. A September 2018 piece in the Columbia Journalism Review quotes Archibald describing the need to hunker down and push onwards with good-old-fashioned reporting, regardless of where the winds of the industry blow.

“I am a columnist,” he is quoted as saying. “I’ve got my head down worrying about what tomorrow’s column is going to be about. I don’t have time to worry about the rest of it.”

Now, he adds an additional word of advice.

“The only time I’m ever happy is when I’m doing good work, and I know that was the case in 1986 as much as it is today,” he says.” While he doesn’t agree with every aspect of the “New Media” landscape, including the over-reliance on clicks as a measure of success, he also says that any way to get more people reading journalism is ultimately a good thing.

“I think,” he says, “we just have to hold onto those good things about journalism ethics and hard work and fairness and being accountable — and writing corrections when you need to, and those sorts of things — and social responsibility, which is what’s really sort of lost in this age — while at the same time looking forward in a realistic way about how to reach people in a changing news environment.”

At a DePaul event with former Sun-Times music critic and investigative reporter Jim DeRogatis in October, the “Sound Opinions” co-host also discussed journalistic ethics and the line between objectivity and fairness. In his view, there is no such thing as objectivity in a world of human emotion and personal, subjective experience, but journalism nonetheless requires scrupulous fairness at every corner, “bending over quintuple backwards to include the other side.”

Archibald largely agrees, though he says he isn’t bound to include the other side in a column. The news business, he believes, has sometimes used “both sides”-ism as a crutch.

“I need to be able to say unequivocally that something is right or something is wrong, something is good [or] something is bad, something is absurd or it’s not — or there’s no point in me writing a column,” he says.

“In not every case do we need to give both sides of the issue a voice. I don’t think I need to go ask a flat-earther if the world is round. There are certain times where everybody’s voice doesn’t need to be heard, and I think we have to be able to figure out when those times are.”

As for Alabama’s political corruption, the beat goes on.

In a series of award-winning columns last year, Archibald and colleague Kyle Whitmire wrote about a state lawmaker being bribed to look the other way on industrial pollution. The wide-reaching case resulted in the conviction of State Rep. Oliver Robinson, a coal company executive and a powerful lawyer; it also ensnared a county tax assessor and the president of the Birmingham NAACP.

Archibald now writes of a “shadow government” in Alabama stretching from the community level to the highest echelons of political power.

In a state where Donald Trump got 62 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election, Archibald is still trying to figure out why so many Alabamians are distrustful of their state politicians, yet they appear overwhelmingly supportive of the White House.

“I can’t figure out the connection,” he says.

A subject for a future column, perhaps.

Stop reading the news

dmoseley Student Perspectives

by Kayla Molander

“Stop reading the news.”

That search term on Google delivered 1,570,000,000 results in 0.31 seconds

 

I did not have to type my entire inquiry into the box. I merely typed “stop read” and “stop reading the news” was the first suggestion.

“Stop reading comments” was last.

Perhaps this means that Americans find news to be more useless and harmful than comments. I like to think that not reading the comments is so obvious by now people don’t need to search for it anymore. There’s no way to know for sure.

What is certain, from the search results, is there is an anti-news movement in this country. Those who believe in purging news from their lives are passionate enough to write essays about it. Hundreds of people comment on those essays. They converse about why my entire industry should stop existing.

This anti-news movement, as I have chosen to call it, is different from the cries of “fake news,” “media elite” or “corporate news.” All of those terms imply that a certain type of news is wrong. News itself is good, journalists are simply doing it incorrectly.

The anti-news movement claims news is a poison that lowers quality of life.

In his essay “This is what happens when you stop reading the news” for Medium, Nick Maccarone writes, “I’m happier, calmer, and still somehow know enough to be informed.”

Martjin Schirp agrees that the news is useless on HighExistence.com in his article titled “Why avoiding the news makes you smarter.” “Almost all news is irrelevant,” he writes, in a sentiment woven through all of these articles.

These authors argue that news should have a direct affect on your day-to-day life, and if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of your time and emotional energy.

Nat Eliason says it best in “The news is a waste of your time”:

“You might feel like it’s important to know what’s going on with ISIS, but you’re not going to do anything about it unless you’re in the military or politics, so stop worrying yourself. Don’t waste your time on it.”

The articles make the point that everything you need to know you can get from word of mouth. The emphasis is smaller, more local.

The problem with that thinking is when people place no value in journalism, the first news outlets to die are the local ones. Nearly 2,000 local papers have died in the last 15 years.

In October 2019, the Boston Globe told the story of Biddeford, Maine, where the local paper, the Journal Tribune, shut down publication after 135 years.

“The three city leaders are distressed. That said, none of them was subscribing to the paper when it published its last issue,” author Zoe Greenberg writes.

Those city leaders were not alone in not subscribing. Although the newspaper served a community of 40,000, there were only 2,000 paying subscribers at the time it closed.

The people of Biddeford are not anti-newsers – at least not all of them. Many mourned the loss of their local paper. Many care about the news – just not enough to dish out a little bit of cash for it.

Now Biddeford is what is increasingly common around the country – a news desert. There is no one sitting in their town hall meetings, digging through court records, and asking tough questions. No one is going to take a peek at the city’s financials to see if anything is out of whack.

The people of Biddeford made that choice. They decided that journalists were not worth the price tag. One-by-one communities around the country will have to make that same decision. America is approaching a day when it must decide whether or not journalism is something worth fighting for.

The people of Biddeford are proof that this is, indeed a fight. Biddeford didn’t burn the Journal Tribune down. The Journal Tribune died a slow, tragic death at the hands of indifference.

It’s not enough to not be anti-news. It’s not enough to like the idea of the First Amendment. It’s not enough to bounce around news outlets and browsers until you hit a paywall. If we want journalism to survive, we have to pay for it, just like we pay for other things we value, like college, doctors, and Starbucks.

As America ponders journalism’s worth, I send out resumes for jobs that may not exist in twenty years. Planning for retirement is hard when you don’t know what will last longer, your career or your industry.

I’ve been told that journalists are not supposed to make predictions, so I will not guess about the fate of my profession. I can only Google “stop reading the news,” and hope to one day find different results.