Journalism

President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks on and threats aimed at the press. On Aug 18, President tweeted criticisms of The New York Times and the state of journalism in general: "The Failing New York Times, in one of the most devastating portrayals of bad journalism in history, got caught by a leaker that they are shifting  from their Phony Russian Collusion Narrative (the Mueller Report & his testimony were a total disaster), to a Racism Witch Hunt....'Journalism' has reached a new low in the history of our Country.

It’s likely that a robust antitrust enforcement regime, in tandem with a suite of economic policies could create a market more amenable to sustaining journalism. But in the absence of that, and the uncertainty as to whether the market is fundamentally able to provide the necessary journalistic coverage to inform and serve a functioning democracy and civic life, it’s worth considering what no Democrat has dared advocate for 50-some years: a renewed and robust public investment in media. Yet the fate of (public) media has gotten surprisingly little attention in the 2020 cycle.

People of color made up nearly 40 percent of the US population, according to 2018 Census Bureau figures. In comparison, only 16.55 percent of journalists in US newsrooms in 2017 were people of color — down from 16.94 percent in 2016, according to the American Society of News Editors’ newsroom census. Knight Foundation’s $1.2 million investment in the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education is an attempt to help newsrooms rethink solutions to the diversity crisis.

Apparently, Facebook is offering news outlets millions of dollars for the rights to put their content in a news section that the company hopes to launch later in 2019. Representatives from Facebook have told news executives they would be willing to pay as much as $3 million a year to license headlines and previews of articles from news outlets.  The outlets pitched by Facebook on its news tab include Walt Disney Co.’s ABC News, Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, The Washington Post and Bloomberg. The news-licensing deals between Facebook and news outlets would run for three years. It isn

Government whistleblowers increasingly being charged under laws such as the Espionage Act, but they aren’t spies. While we all live under extensive surveillance, for government employees and contractors — especially those with a security clearance — privacy is virtually nonexistent. When a government worker becomes a whistleblower, the FBI gets access to reams of data describing exactly what happened on government computers and who searched for what in government databases, which helps narrow down the list of suspects.  Government insiders charged under the Espionage Act are not allowed to

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines Aug 1 to change long-standing guidelines related to cable franchising fees. The modifications detrimentally affect one of educational media’s great unsung heroes, Public, Educational and Government access television and radio stations nationwide. The effects of the FCC’s decision will go beyond PEG stations. The new rules, which will take effect in Sept, will allow cable companies to assign market values to benefits and charge the amount back to local communities in most cases.

America’s two largest newspaper publishers will merge in an effort to combat declining circulation and plunging advertising revenue, but will still face pressure to cut costs at hundreds of already cash-strapped publications around the country. The $1.4 billion purchase of McLean (VA)-based Gannett by GateHouse Media, based in Pittsford (NY), will create a conglomerate that will own more than 250 daily newspapers and hundreds of weekly and community papers.

Layoffs continue to pummel US newspapers. Roughly a quarter of papers with an average Sunday circulation of 50,000 or more experienced layoffs in 2018. The layoffs come on top of the roughly one-third of papers in the same circulation range that experienced layoffs in 2017. What’s more, the number of jobs typically cut by newspapers in 2018 tended to be higher than in the year before. Mid-market newspapers were the most likely to suffer layoffs in 2018 – unlike in 2017, when the largest papers most frequently saw cutbacks.

For people pondering the potential effects of foreign interference in the 2020 elections here in the United States, it is worth understanding what other democracies are doing to confront the same problem and what lessons can be learned from their experiences. As a 2018 report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee put it: "[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Kremlin employs an asymmetric arsenal that includes military invasions, cyberattacks, disinformation, support for fringe political groups, and the weaponization

Political groups on both sides of the aisle are throwing money and resources at propping up local, partisan websites that are often designed to appear as straight news. Some of these sites are leveraging Facebook advertising to boost their content.