In a memo to staff, NBC News Group Chairman Cesar Conde writes that the organization aspires to achieve “two concrete goals: that 50% of our News organization employees be women and 50% of our total workforce be people of color.”
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.
Norman Siegel: “The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States provides, in part, that government shall not abridge freedom of the press. Clearly, free expression by journalists, or by anyone with access to the equivalent of a printing press, is a cornerstone principle of our republic. The challenge to uphold this basic value is, unfortunately, an ongoing struggle.”
Exclusives
News consumption has fallen 11% since its peak when the COVID-19 pandemic was originally declared in March, according to a new study by LoopMe.
The percentage of people paying for news online continues to increase — and people may even pay for more than one subscription. People worldwide blame domestic politicians most for spreading false and misleading information online. And more people than ever are getting news from Instagram, with 18- to 24-year-olds more than twice as likely as other age groups to prefer getting their news from social media. This is according to a new study from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
A four-part series telling the story of how corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America earned TheOregonian the first Collier Prize for State Government Accountability. The $25,000 award, offered by […]
In a company memo, Jim VandeHei, the chief executive of the politics news site, said he supported staff members’ right to march, adding that the publisher would cover bail for any employee who is arrested.
Reporters are often faced with tough situations. For black journalists, covering the George Floyd protests and other issues of racial injustice bears additional layers of complexity, one that involves managing encounters with law enforcement while on the job, and processing the emotional toll it can take to cover these events in the first place.
ABC-owed KTRK Houston (DMA 8) will present a one-hour virtual town hall on Thursday, June 4, at 7-8 p.m. to discuss the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. Hosted […]
Austin’s KXAN Investigations Are As Big As Texas
Everything’s bigger in Texas. Even investigative journalism. Find out why KXAN Austin’s latest investigation involved almost two dozen people in news, digital, production and marketing, and how the station balances that content on TV and digital platforms across all the Nexstar stations in the Lone Star State.
CBS Local Digital has continued to spin up new OTT channels despite the coronavirus-prompted remote working shift. Executives say months of close collaboration between CBSN, the network’s streaming arm, and CBS Television Stations’ digital team allowed the group to stay on its charted course.
The new show will air live Monday to Friday at 8-10 a.m. and 8-10 p.m. ET via over-the-air TV, cable and OTT/streaming, offering “context” to its targeted audience of millennials and Gen Z-ers.
TheCoronavirusNow website went live on March 10. It was a quick launch triggered by a brainstorming session among senior Fox Stations executives late in February. CoronavirusNow, a lesson in rapid innovation, is an online aggregation site that combines content from 18 owned stations and other company assets (such as Fox Business). But unusually, there are also multiple links to stories from other sources — not just agencies like the AP or Reuters but organizations like NPR and the BBC.
Tegna’s Verify team along with a medical professional has scheduled a live AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit today at 6 p.m. ET, in the r/Coronavirus subreddit, which has more […]
With the traditional broadcast and cable news outlets branded as partisan, lacking local resources and beset by cord-cutting, the streaming service has an opening.
With users up 133% and page views up 250% in April from April 2019, Nexstar’s websites and apps now reach 36% of U.S. adults.
It’s getting hard to keep track of the bad news about the news right now. But we have to. Here’s Poynter’s attempt to collect the layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the coronavirus’ critical blow to the economy and journalism in the United States. It was last updated on May 18.
The layoffs came swiftly last week. At Vice Media, 155 people lost their jobs. Quartz laid off 80. Condé Nast, publisher of glossy magazines such as Vogue, cut 100 people. And as BuzzFeed furloughed staffers at its overseas divisions, its U.S.-based staffers braced for similar cuts. For those who had been watching local newspapers struggle in the era of digitization, these announcements were sobering: Even the media business’s most savvy, innovative and glamorous players are hurting.
Altice USA’s News 12 Networks, the hyperlocal news group serving the New York tri-state area, today appointed Jacques Natz general manager. Natz reports to Eric Harris, chief operating officer of […]
Vice Media has laid off roughly 155 employees, according to a Friday memo from CEO Nancy Dubuc. The memo, reviewed by TheWrap, said 55 of the cuts will be domestic and around 100 will be from overseas divisions.
Nearly half the employees at the international business news site will lose their jobs as the eight-year-old outlet emphasizes paid subscriptions over advertising revenue.
Rep. Evette Clarke (D-N.Y.) is leading an effort to get some economic security for digital-native journalists during the COVID-19 pandemic. Joined by some two dozen colleagues, Clarke sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) saying that without immediate payroll assistance for those digital journalists’ employers, many formerly profitable media outlets will go under, and their staffs will be out of work.
Selected from a record of more than 5,000, these 750 regional winners represent the best in local broadcast news. The winning work includes 36 podcasts, a new category for 2020, along with nearly 50 investigative reports and more than 100 examples of excellence in innovation, social media and multimedia.
In January, the Times announced it had passed 5 million total subscriptions. Yesterday, it announced it had passed 6 million. Ad revenue is cratering, but the path forward remains sustainable.
The investigative journalist Mark Schoofs, a Pulitzer Prize winner, returns to the site after having set up its investigative unit in 2014.
Localish, the millennial-targeted project from ABC’s stations that jumped from digital beginnings to linear broadcast, has expanded its horizons in the wake of COVID-19. It’s using its signature approach to positive, community-oriented stories to circle back on past subjects in a virus-changed world and explore wider corners beyond the group’s markets. Above, Michael Koenigs, the executive producer of Localish.
Jennifer Mitchell, from ABC Owned Television Stations, leads original nonlinear content production, while Daniel Alvarez, from NBCU Owned Television Stations, leads bilingual content initiatives.
COVID-19 has triggered an explosion of innovation among local station groups. Stations are also experimenting with content and creating new programs that could point the way to a more flexible and less formulaic approach to storytelling down the road, even when the worst of the crisis has passed. One impressive example: Field Notes, a new magazine show on Facebook Watch and other digital platforms produced by Hearst Television and based on the virus-related reporting of its local stations in all 26 of its markets.
An internal document at Vice Media Group lays out a plan for substantial layoffs at the new-media company’s websites, as Vice considers a variety of options to deal with coronavirus pandemic. The planning document calls for layoffs of more than 300 people in digital operations, including major cuts at both Vice News and Refinery29, the women-focused digital publisher Vice acquired last year.
