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The Onion adds a new layer, buying Alex Jones’ Infowars and turning it into a parody of itself - 2024-11-14T19:34:09+00:00
Maybe it’s not such an odd pairing? After all, The Onion and Infowars both publish a lot of fake information. Both are known for their coverage of national tragedies. They both reach audiences who want to have a laugh at a world being presented to them through a very particular lens. Both have been the...

Among apps vying to replace Twitter, Bluesky may have the news and innovation edge - 2024-11-14T18:45:10+00:00
Even before the U.S. election sped up an exodus from the Elon Musk-owned site, X had reportedly lost one-fifth of its active users in the U.S. and one-third in the U.K.. Bluesky seems to have the juice to win over some of those fleeing users — especially journalists and others interested in news and current...

The Guardian won’t post on X anymore — but isn’t deleting its accounts there, at least for now - 2024-11-13T18:13:32+00:00
The Guardian said Wednesday that it will no longer post on X, saying it is “a toxic media platform” and “its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.” The news organization does not, however, appear to be deleting or locking its accounts there. Instead, The Guardian’s X accounts...

What should journalists do when the facts don’t matter? - 2024-11-13T13:00:55+00:00
Most people agree that actual facts matter — in such activities as debate, discussion, and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified, and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting. But what happens when important, verified facts are published and broadcast widely, yet the resulting impact proves underwhelming — or even meaningless?...

The New York Times tech guild’s election-week strike is over, without a contract - 2024-11-12T19:38:57+00:00
For a union considering a strike, the phrase “maximum leverage” is always top of mind. If the goal is to push management into action, the withdrawal of labor should be designed to maximize its impact on operations. If you represent longshoremen, you time a strike (and its potential economy-wide impact) to the weeks before a...

I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how. - 2024-11-12T18:32:04+00:00
Around 1 a.m. on July 27, 2017, I woke up, opened my politics Twitter list, and lay in the dark watching (via tweets) the Senate’s failed vote to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. Around 1:30 a.m., Arizona Senator John McCain cast the deciding vote to save the ACA. For the next hour and...

We need a Wirecutter for groceries - 2024-11-08T15:01:45+00:00
A few years back, my local mom Facebook group started a weekly thread to share the best deals on groceries around town. We tried to look through supermarkets’ circulars to pull out the best deals we saw. Someone started a spreadsheet comparing prices at Costco versus non-warehouse stores. The effort fizzled quickly. Why? Not because...

Threads was next to useless on election night (but that’s kind of the point) - 2024-11-07T19:36:40+00:00
Where did you turn for election night news? The platform formerly known as Twitter? Bluesky? The Meta-owned Threads? Those who chose the latter hoping for timely updates about the presidential election being closely watched in the U.S. and around the world on Tuesday were disappointed. Threads users were confronted with a non-chronological feed that made...

Google Scholar now adds AI outlines to research papers - 2024-11-07T17:44:28+00:00
Google Search may not get a lot of love these days, but a niche Chrome extension launched in March — Google Scholar PDF Reader — counts 500,000 users who leave largely positive reviews : “A revolutionary game changer. Considering naming my first-born child after this chrome extension.” Google’s promise with the launch of the extension was...

What audiences really want: For journalists to connect with them as people - 2024-11-06T14:35:12+00:00
Ask journalists about the core professional values that define good journalism, and the answers have been pretty consistent across the decades and even, to a large extent, around much of the world: factuality, impartiality, public service, autonomy, and ethics. These values are settled and foundational enough to constitute what Dutch media scholar Mark Deuze once called “the occupational...

When the winner’s name isn’t enough: How the AP is leaning into explanatory journalism to call races - 2024-11-05T16:53:04+00:00
Ten years ago, when the Associated Press declared the winners of the 2014 midterm elections, the alerts it sent out were little more than headlines: So-and-so won such-and-such election in this or that state. The updates were short and to the point — no more than 120 characters, usually — and the AP didn’t see...

Votebeat assembles nearly 100 election experts to answer reporters’ questions (now, and in the weeks ahead) - 2024-11-05T14:24:40+00:00
“Is wearing Taylor Swift merch or a trash bag considering electioneering in Kansas? What if you dress your kid up as Donald Trump or Kamala Harris?” “A used car dealership owner in Texas told his employees he’d reimburse anyone who votes $20 worth of food at one of several local restaurants. Is that illegal?” “Should...

Student journalists, filling local news gaps, step up to cover the 2024 election - 2024-11-05T14:00:21+00:00
The 2024 election is all hands on deck for American newsrooms. And student reporters are helping supply critical local news to communities across the country. The Center for Community News at the University of Vermont is leading what it calls “the first nationally coordinated effort to strengthen university-led election coverage.” Around 145 colleges across 46...

The Washington Post isn’t alone: Roughly 3/4 of major American newspapers aren’t endorsing anyone for president this year - 2024-11-04T19:53:37+00:00
I can’t remember the last time I was as shocked by a news-industry number as I was by 200,000. Specifically, the 200,000 Washington Post subscribers who NPR’s David Folkenflik reported cancelled their subscriptions in the days after the paper announced it wouldn’t be endorsing in the 2024 presidential race. (Not long after, the number grew...

Abortion is the next front on the crime beat - 2024-11-01T15:07:14+00:00
The headline: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.” Nieman Lab spent the last week reporting on crime news now. Of course, we could not cover the entire landscape of news about crime, but we delved into podcasts, TikTok creators, digital news...

10 years after Serial: Nieman Lab looks at crime news now - 2024-11-01T12:00:11+00:00
“For the last year, I’ve spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999.” On October 3, 2014, the first episode of a new podcast dropped. Serial quickly generated a tsunami of interest in true crime, and in podcasts as a...

Why criminal courts are still a black box for data journalists - 2024-10-31T16:31:57+00:00
Testify, The Marshall Project’s investigation into Cuyahoga County criminal courts, started with a tip. Back in 2021, a data set pulled from the county’s records system landed on the desk of reporters at The Washington Post. The source had collected years’ worth of criminal dockets for Cleveland, Ohio. “It was a little too local for...

Is the crime news people crave the crime news they need? - 2024-10-30T19:00:29+00:00
Here’s a tricky contradiction about local crime news: Most Americans consume it, yet few say it’s easy to stay informed about key questions that news should, theoretically, cover. More Americans follow news and information about crime than any other local topic except the weather. And 85% express interest in what local officials are doing to...

The Washington Post’s non-endorsement led to record-breaking weeks at other news orgs - 2024-10-30T18:33:51+00:00
You may have heard that an eye-watering 250,000 subscribers have left The Washington Post following the paper’s decision to not endorse a presidential candidate. The figure represents about 10% of the Post’s digital subscribers. Readers were particularly upset at the timing — less than two weeks from a close and consequential election — and weren’t...

In a saturated true crime landscape, some content creators try to focus on victims and survivors - 2024-10-29T19:09:56+00:00
When 27-year-old Jackie Flores tells people she’s a full-time content creator, they incorrectly assume her content blends her two main interests: true crime and beauty. “I’ve seen pages where people do their makeup while talking about true crime,” said Flores, who posts researched true crime retellings as @truecrimejackie. “I feel like, we’re speaking about something...

In 2020, talk of “defunding the crime beat.” Where are we four years later? - 2024-10-28T19:56:48+00:00
Back in 2020, Nieman Lab published “Defund the Crime Beat” as part of our annual predictions series, in which we ask some of the best and brightest people in media and journalism what they think the year ahead will bring. The short piece by Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli, then both at the nonprofit Free...

The future of true crime sounds like…public radio? - 2024-10-28T19:55:54+00:00
Not too long ago, the word “radio” meant something very particular: The turn of a knob to music stations cycling through the latest hits, or a Howard Stern/Rush Limbaugh-type spouting off, or an NPR member station, staidly delivering the news interspersed with occasional oddities like the musings of a horse born to be wind but...

Why do broadcast journalists look and talk the way they do? Look to the imagined audience. - 2024-10-24T18:43:22+00:00
The trick to sounding conversational, particularly when reading a script, is to imagine you’re talking to a specific audience member. That’s advice I received years ago at an audio storytelling workshop and remind myself of whenever I’m alone recording narration for a podcast. The specific listener I’m envisioning is known as the “imagined audience.” As...

Medill’s 2024 State of Local News report expands what it qualifies as local news — and asks readers to point out what it missed - 2024-10-23T19:46:19+00:00
The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative Wednesday, chronicles declines in local news across the United States by essentially every important metric: number of newspapers; publication frequency; employment; circulation and readership. The grim numbers on those fronts are unlikely to surprise anyone, but it’s still striking that some...

Why millions of Americans avoid the news — and what it means for the election - 2024-10-23T15:55:18+00:00
Benjamin Toff is one of the leading experts on the rise of news avoidance and one of the authors of this recent book on this issue, based on survey data and interviews with people in Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He was also the leader of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s...

The Lenfest Institute launches $10 million AI news program for big-city dailies with backing from OpenAI and Microsoft - 2024-10-22T19:54:46+00:00
On Tuesday, The Lenfest Institute launched a $10 million AI and local news program in partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft. The program will initially fund projects for AI adoption at five independently owned U.S. metro news organizations — The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Sun-Times owner Chicago Public Media, The Seattle Times, and...

Israel has posted 1,200+ videos of airstrikes. This visual investigation shows the view — and the costs — on the ground in Gaza. - 2024-10-22T16:37:28+00:00
Over the last year, while the Israel Defense Forces posted footage on social media of its airstrikes claiming to target Hamas and other militant groups, Palestinians in Gaza have used platforms like Instagram and TikTok to document life under those airstrikes. An investigation published earlier this month shows how airstrike footage and on-the-ground testimonies can...

Don’t trust the polls? Neither did The New York Times in 1956 (spoiler: it didn’t work out great) - 2024-10-21T13:38:37+00:00
In response to national pollsters’ failure in forecasting election outcomes in 1948 and 1952, The New York Times pursued in 1956 a weeks-long, multi-state exercise in on-the-ground reporting to assess public opinion about the presidential race. The Times’ experiment, which these days would be recognized as “shoe-leather reporting,” included two dozen journalists assigned to four...

A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews - 2024-10-17T15:46:20+00:00
Last September, The Guardian launched a digital European edition to expand its coverage of the continent and deepen its relationship with European audiences. A year in, the effort is paying off. One-time donations from European readers increased by 45%, and The Guardian’s overall number of recurring paid supporters increased by 8%. (While The Guardian is...

The FTC puts an end to “click to subscribe, call to cancel” - 2024-10-16T16:18:07+00:00
The days of signing up for a subscription in one click online, then spending an hour on the phone to try to cancel it, will soon be over — and newspaper (and gym, bottled water, clothing rental, you name it) cancellation horror stories will, fingers crossed, be a thing of the past. On Wednesday, after several...