Journalism

It’s a conundrum for news leaders: Finding time to keep up with the critical industry trends, while juggling the always-on demands of covering the news of the day. That was true even before 2020 brought us a global pandemic and a long overdue reckoning on race. But there really are a few reports each year that point to where the news industry is going, not where it’s been. The annual Reuters Digital News Report, which surveyed 80,000 news consumers globally across 40 countries, is one. Here are some top takeaways.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: “The success of local television news in some markets comes even as the broadcast industry in general faces monumental challenges that existed apart from COVID-19, largely due to competition from unregulated high-tech companies openly competing for the same local advertising dollars.  And, these successes come despite the obstruction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which overturned well-reasoned efforts by the FCC to modernize outdated media ownership rules last fall.”

CNN National Correspondent Sara Sidner has led the network’s coverage from Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, and from Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown in 2014, and investigates hate in America.

The current host of the weekend AM Joy is expected to host a 7 p.m. daily news and opinion program, people familiar with the matter say, filling the vacancy created at the cable news channel when Chris Matthews resigned abruptly in March.

Les Crystal, who was president of NBC News in the late 1970s before serving for more than two decades as the executive producer of PBS’s NewsHour, died on Wednesday. He was 85.

Publisher complaints about Google have grown more pointed as the Justice Department investigates the search giant for possible anticompetitive practices. The News Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 news organizations in the U.S., last week published a white paper that provides more concrete examples of how Google allegedly interferes with the digital operations of publishers.

President Trump again took aim at Fox News on Tuesday, saying he’s “not happy” with the network while arguing it “wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.” “I’m not happy with Fox at all,” Trump told Christian Broadcast Network’s David Brody. “My base hates what Fox News is doing,” he said before adding that “Fox News wants to be politically correct all of a sudden.”

More than 320 scholars and practitioners in media and communications signed a letter sent to six CEOs of television news networks, including NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and PBS, calling out issues of systemic racism within the organizations.

The Secret Service abruptly called for reporters to leave the White House grounds Monday night, CNN reported. Broadcasting from Lafayette Square in front of the White House, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called the move “incredibly unusual,” telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper “I don’t think we’ve ever been asked to actually physically leave the White House at a time like that.”

Monday represented a key phase in New York City’s reopening, with many offices bringing employees back for the first time. Despite moves back by CBS and Fox News, most news employees continue to work remotely, and the television programs that originate here have a patchwork of approaches that have quickly become familiar.

KMTV’s Maya Saenz: Covering an Omaha protest that fell into chaos, I realized my hard-won relationships with law enforcement counted for little in a heated moment. More worrisome still, the media’s rights can be trampled by violent caprice.

After nearly 100 days away from the office, CBS This Morning returned to its home, Studio 57 at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. Not only have the show’s host trio of Gayle King, Anthony Mason and Tony Dokoupil been remote for the entire time, but the control room has been away from its stomping grounds for this entire time as well. King and Mason were back at the table this morning, while Dokoupil remained at his makeshift home studio in Brooklyn. But that won’t be the case each day. The hosts will rotate.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s MediaJobCenter include openings for a chief engineer, a creative services manager, a news director and a local sales manager in markets in Alabama, Alaska and Ohio.

The change conveys “an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa,” John Daniszewski, AP’s vice president of standards, said in a blog post Friday. “The lowercase black is a color, not a person.” The news organization will also now capitalize Indigenous in reference to original inhabitants of a place.