#368 Amplifying young international voices to tell stories that matter

Young people have the passion and energy needed to make real change in their communities and to help move the needle, albeit slowly and in fits and starts, for the world at large.

A group of 130 young writers from around the world are getting together to do just that this week, attending The International Congress of Youth Voices in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This is the second year for the event, which focuses not only on letting these young activists share their stories, but helps them learn how to communicate their concerns and their priorities on a global scale, making their issues resonate on a larger level with people who have very different backgrounds.

The congress grew out of 826 Centers, a writing organization with a presence in 27 countries, where Amanda Uhle worked with the congress’ co-founder and the creator of the centers, David Eggers.

Amanda Uhle

“We believed there was this great power in getting young people together, physically, in the same space,” she says. “We know young people have important perspectives and thought there’d be great power in uniting them.”  

The congress is supported in large part by News-Decoder, “an effort to help young people around the world better understand big international issues and become better global citizens,” says Nelson Graves, the organization’s founder. It was created after Graves, a former journalist and teacher, saw many of his international correspondent friends “out to pasture” after taking buyouts. News-Decoder “brings experienced, skilled foreign correspondents together with young people to help broaden their perspective and learn from each other.”

Writers in News-Decoder can help the young congress attendees understand how to portray their ideas in a way that limits bias and preconceived notions, creating persuasive pieces that are suited for an international audience.

Among the central topics of this year’s event: Climate change, immigration and gun control.

Nelson Graves

Immigration and gun safety are “two issues the young people in our partnership and beyond are very concerned about, primarily because they’re existential issues. Along with climate change, these are existential issues that call into question a young person’s sense of identity,” Graves says. “Immigration has a direct relationship with a young person’s definition of self and sense of identity. … Guns represent a physical threat, particularly in the United States where there have been so many shootings at schools.”

News-Decoder “offers this incredible platform for our students to publish their work,” Uhle says.

Some of the congress attendees from last year worked with News-Decoder staffers to publish their work, both from the United States and internationally.

“It’s such a great match. I think we all see that young people come to us with knowledge and passion,” Uhle say. “It’s true of the youth writing centers. The gap is having young people think about their audience and who they’re writing for and to. Having experienced journalists like Nelson’s organization does is a tremendous asset for a young writer who needs to frame writing in terms of who’s going to read this and how do I sway them to my opinion.”

Amanda Uhle of the International Congress of Youth Voices and Nelson Graves of News-Decoder join producer Michael O’Connell to discuss this year’s conference and why giving young people support when speaking on issues of importance to them is the most important role adults can serve.

#366 Young women lead the conversation about periods, sexism
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#367 Investigative reporter exposes injustice in civil rights-era murder case

For three decades, Jerry Mitchell was an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

He spent those years digging into crimes so closely aligned with the civil rights era, he little believed it possible there was any stone to be overturned or any clue left to be found.

Jerry Mitchell

“I have always been attracted, you could say, to injustices that weren’t being dealt with or corrected,” he says. “Even beyond just civil rights cases.”

One of his first editors had served as a statehouse reporter in Oklahoma who asked Mitchell if he’d ever read “All The President’s Men,” the classic account of the Watergate scandal. “He told me to read the book and study how they use attribution. It was the best advice I ever got in journalism,” Mitchell says. “I began to learn through that book, to see how you can do that (investigative work) and how it evolved.”

Mitchell, now the director of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, started covering civil rights cases in 1989, shortly after watching the movie “Mississippi Burning,” about the deaths of three activists at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. “I saw it with two FBI agents who had worked on the case… and I was intrigued that nobody got prosecuted for murder. There were 20-something Klansmen involved. That blew my mind.”

In particular, he focused on the case of Edgar Ray Killen, a prominent Klan member at the time of the killings. It had been more than 20 years since the deaths of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, but he was inspired by small and incremental breaks in other cases from the era, including the death of Emmett Till.

“I believe there’s always hope, there’s always a possibility in a case you look at,” Mitchell says.

In the Killen case, he was leaked an interview with Sam Bowers, who had been head of the Klan in Mississippi during that time. “He talked about the 1967 federal trial (on conspiracy charges). He said he was quite delighted to be convicted, one of seven Klansmen (to be charged and found guilty). The instigator had walked free. I did a story and the authorities reopened the case in earnest in 1999.”

In 2005, Killen was convicted on three counts of manslaughter. He died in prison in 2018.

Jerry Mitchell, a 30-year investigative reporter who now runs the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, joins producer Michael O’Connell to explain why cold cases and lapses in justice should never be shrugged off and left to history.

#207 – Emory students investigate civil rights-era cold cases
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#366 Young women lead the conversation about periods, sexism

A group of eighth grade girls have done something really special: They went from not knowing what a podcast was earlier this year to creating an award-winning conversation about periods.

The students at Bronx Prep Middle School — Litzy Encarnacion, Ashley Amankwah, Kassy Abad, Kathaleen Restitullo, Carolina Abreu, Jasmin Acosta and Riazel Febles — along with their English teacher, Shehtaz Huq, won NPR’s first Student Podcast Challenge, submitting their very first episode of Sssh! Periods to the contest with hours to spare.

As young women, the students were tired of feeling like they couldn’t discuss their periods without making people uncomfortable or being shamed. They decided to do something about it.

A group of young podcasters from Bronx Prep Middle School

Every Thursday, from January until March, the girls got together after school to chat about menstruation. They originally tried working from a script but decided having a “normal” conversation was much more natural — a revelation very much in keeping with how they feel about discussing their periods.

In the process, the students and their teacher have learned a lot about what goes into making a podcast work, how to produce them and, if they’re being truthful, what a podcast is.

When they found out they won NPR’s contest, just weeks after submitting their entry, their reaction was what might be expected of teenage girls receiving good news: The screamed with joy. Their principal wondered whether a fire alarm had been pulled.

There were 5,700 entries involving 25,000 students, Huq said, and to be selected on the strength of one episode has been inspiring.

The girls also discuss the Pink Tax on feminine hygiene products, abortion, sexism, shoulder straps and gender-based dress codes in school and other topics they feel strongly about as young women.  

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined by the energetic and wise-beyond-their-years young women of Bronx Prep Middle School about their new and award-winning podcast series, Sssh! Periods, who refuse to accept that menstruation is something to be ashamed of or unnatural.

#359 Reporter uses pop-up newsrooms to amplify Philly’s unheard voices
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#365 Don’t be intimidated by the rich and powerful

It might not have been the career he envisioned, but Dan Primack has been covering business for decades.

Even if he’d known from a young age he wanted to go into journalism, and even if his uncle was a columnist at the Boston Herald, Primack stumbled into financial and business journalism.

Dan Primack

“I followed a girl to New York and needed a job,” he says. “I found a print newsletter in the trade world. It was boring but it paid the rent.”

After that came stints at Reuters and Bloomberg and finally, after 20 years covering business and start-ups, he’s joined one and now works as the business editor at Axios.

Business reporting might sound daunting to someone who’s covered something more traditional, like education or politics, as there’s a whole language built into covering finance and trade and the stock market and corporate practices, but Primack says it’s essentially the same kind of practice, just with different areas of nuance.

“It’s fairly similar to political reporting or sports reporting,” he says. “There’s winners and losers and a story as to why it happened. I remember the first story I wrote about Facebook, when it was The Facebook. It was only accessible to a couple of colleges. I’ve been able to see the evolution, not just in terms of dollars but in terms of being world-changing.”

Reporters shouldn’t feel overly intimidated when calling up an executive at a Fortune 100 company, for example, because the old cliché is true: Those executives still put their pants on one leg at a time.

“You have to remember what you’re there for,” he says. “You’re there to get a story for your readers. Whether someone’s very rich or very powerful or not, they want their point of view heard. They want someone to listen to them. You can kind of create relationships for them. It goes both ways: You get information out of them and they feel you’re willing to give them a fair hearing.”

He does feel like one of his first jobs out of college helped bring him into the business world, however.

“The reason I got the first business reporting job, I was just a press secretary on a congressional campaign in Massachusetts and the candidate was extraordinarily wealthy,” he says. “I was a decent writer and thought I’d be a decent reporter, but I think it’s more they liked the idea that I’d just worked with a rich person” and wasn’t as intimidated by someone with wealth and power as someone fresh out of school might be.  

Dan Primack has covered the business world for about 20 years, reporting on big players in the industry as well as startups. He joins producer Michael O’Connell to explain why the cliché about rich people putting their pants on one leg at a time is an important one for reporters to remember when covering major players in big business.

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#364 NewsGuard uses people not algorithms to sniff out fake news

We’re familiar with the nutrition labels that are required on food products, telling us the calorie content in addition to how much of our daily percent of sugar, sodium and fiber is in a given item.

NewsGuard creates similar nutrition labels but for websites that provide, or claim to provide, news and information.

Eric Effron

“We’ve already reviewed and rated over 2,200 U.S. websites and we’ve picked those websites based on the ones with the most social engagement —the websites whose articles are shared the most on social,” explains Eric Effron, NewsGuard’s editorial director. “We supplement that with websites that have been referred to us. We try to figure out which websites are advancing fake stories. We will take requests from members of the public.”

NewsGuard is currently expanding across the pond, adding 100 sites in the United Kingdom and recently launched in Germany, France and Italy.

The foundational principles are simple and straightforward: A team of reporters uses a series of weighted criteria based on journalistic standards to rate and understand the website and whether the information it publishes is factual or fictional.

The journalists will “look at the website, assess the content, do some reporting, try to figure out who owns the website if the website doesn’t tell you, and will write articles that explain how the websites act according to the nine criteria,” he says.

NewsGuard clearly explains the nine criteria and how each one is weighted and what the reporter was evaluating. “We’ll tell you not just if a website runs corrections but how rigorous their policy is, do they make to locate or ask for corrections,” Effron says. “Unlike an algorithm, we call for comment. If we have something critical or negative, we’ll try very hard to reach them and to get their comment, to make sure we’re not misunderstanding.

Sometimes, websites will get back to NewsGuard after their “nutrition label” is published, letting the organization know they’ve changed a policy or made it easier to see who owns or operates a website.

But NewsGuard doesn’t just limit its research and labels to purported news websites. They’ll take a look at opinion pages as well.

“We really do try to treat a website the same as we would whether it was a website we agree with,” Effron says. “We want them to be clear that they have an agenda or orientation – if they’re a pro-Trump conservative site, we’d like them to tell their readers that’s what they are. We don’t want them to lie or write false news. We don’t have a bias against opinion sites, but we do want people to be upfront about their agenda and to be honest about their agenda.”

NewsGuard‘s Eric Effron joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss how his organization uses journalistic principles and standards to determine which news or opinion websites are trustworthy and which are feeding readers a bunch of junk.

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#363 Finding the truth in a sea of misinformation

As a journalism professor, Stephen Davis likes to know where his students stand in terms of being able to suss out the truth from the fibs.

Each year, he asks his students to research a person online, collect as much data as possible in a given amount of time, and try to determine what’s real from what’s made up.

Stephen Davis

“Every year I’ve done this exercise – and bear in mind, they’re bright kids who want to be journalists – the numbers failing it went up,” says Davis, who has taught thousands of students around the world. “They’re victims of the sheer volume of misinformation and disinformation circulating around the world.”

It’s so grim, in fact, that Davis compares ubiquitous bad information to a public health threat.

“It’s like Ebola, but it’s more likely to kill society,” he says. “The volume of misinformation and disinformation around the world is vast and our ability to detect it is not great.”

Davis has written a new book, Truthteller, about this exact issue. Historically, people have been able to rely on journalists to sift the fact from the fabrications, but the amount of bad information out there, and young journalists’ increasing disability in picking it out from actual truth, is making even credible outlets subject to following wild goose chases of garbage details.

And while it’s easy to point the finger at the current presidential administration, Davis warns that’s a cop-out that oversimplifies the problem.

“Journalists haven’t adapted to the world of social media,” he says. “A tweet rockets around the world in seconds and is seen by millions. It would be reported by media organizations. When you read the work of the New York Times, you’ll get that the statement is wrong, but it’s too late. We haven’t engaged properly with social media. We don’t even know whether the people quoted are real.”

In the book, he has a section spelling out the trouble with FOIA requests. The problem here is that they’re no longer worded in the most effective manner, but “journalists don’t have time to pursue these. If government removes access to data, they might lie more cleverly as do corporations and other institutions. The volume of misinformation and disinformation makes it easier to hide the lives and harder to investigate the scandals. You can hide your misdeeds in the ocean of misinformation and disinformation circulating the world.”

Professor and author Stephen Davis joins IAJ producer Michael O’Connell to explain how a little test he gives students inspired a book on the difficulty young and seasoned journalists alike are having in separating the truth from bad information.

#351 Mistrust of the media isn’t new, but it’s getting worse
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#362 What is the future of LGBT media?

Trish Bendix

Trish Bendix is a freelance entertainment writer and late night TV columnist for The New York Times. She got her start as an LGBT journalist writing for AfterEllen, an online publication that followed the depiction of lesbian women and couples at a time when being a gay woman on TV was literally major national news.

“There was no one, no coverage, no real criticism of how we were being depicted” at the time, because it was so new, Bendix says. The site “grew as the community grew. It was around the same time that Will & Grace was coming to TV. I was one of four full-time staff members,” a number that eventually dwindled.

For every victory, there’s a setback, she says. It’s now far more common to see articles about the LGBT community in major outlets, which would’ve been unimaginable even 20 years ago; but at the same time, it’s no longer just LGBT-specific outlets that are telling the stories of the community, making it easier for bigger named celebrities or advocates to take their stories to those larger outlets.

“The more mainstream press covers anything related to LGBT people, the more they start to get the fun stories too,” Bendix says. “Celebrities used to come out in The Advocate, but now they’re trusting and going more to major publications. Now mainstream publications are getting the stories we used to have to relegate to LGBT-specific press. They feel kind of slighted. It might be disappointing that they’re sidestepping and going bigger.”

There are still smaller, regional publications that are doing well, because they know and have represented their community for a longer period of time. But it’s getting harder to be, specifically and singularly, an LGBT writer covering LGBT topics.

Case in point: Bendix, who says she doesn’t mind getting story assignments with an LGBT focus because she’s a member of that community, wrote an article for BuzzFeed on LGBT media and its changing mandate. The day the story was published, BuzzFeed laid off most of its staff on LGBT coverage.

“When AIDS occurs, when Pulse occurs, that’s when the mainstream press are looking for those (LGBT) writers and finally prizing those writers because they know they can get that story, but it’s a flavor of the week” for outlets that don’t specifically cover that community, Bendix says. “I’m usually optimistic, but I’m not seeing anything currently that makes me feel it’s going to change.”  

Trish Bendix, an entertainment and freelance writer for more than 20 years, joins producer Michael O’Connell to shed some light on the shifting state of LGBT journalism.

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#361 The Browser seeks out, shares the day’s best writing

What makes a good piece of journalism?

What makes an article not only worth reading, but nearly timeless?

“Most good journalism has staying power. The best journalism has the staying power of decades,” says Robert Cottrell, editor and creator of The Browser.

Robert Cottrell

Each day, Cottrell reads through dozens of articles, trying to find pieces of writing that he believes will still be relevant and worth reading in a day’s time, or a month’s, or a year’s.

He sends out a daily newsletter with five of the best pieces of writing, providing subscribers to his website and digital newsletter a sampling of journalism they might not otherwise see through all the clutter.

The Browser originated as a curation site. “We gave quite a lot of thought as to whether we should be producing original writing,” Cottrell says.

The site has been available for about a decade, and he and his small team decided that they would “add the most value by helping people to discover and identify stuff that’s going to be really rewarding for them to read.”

Cottrell sees The Browser not as an aggregator but more like a curated newsletter, though he’s hesitant to use that word. “I think of a curator as someone who works in an art gallery. I would like to think that we’re doing the same sort of service that, let’s say, a music critic or theater critic does. We see what’s being done, we see what’s going on and we try to explain to people why the best of it is as good as it is and why it’s worth their time and money.”

So what’s his barometer for the pieces he includes?

“I stop and think: is this going to be as good to read in a year’s time as it is today? I think we tend to under-value the staying power of good journalism,” Cottrell says. “We’ve lived for decades with newspapers whose business model has required them to persuade that today’s paper is fantastic and yesterday’s is for wrapping your fish and chips. … It’s a good sort of mental test to say what’s this going to look like in a year.”

Most of the pieces he highlights, as a result, tend to be thought pieces, ones not immediately tied up in the news of the day.

“Originality is the thing,” he says. “It can come with a light touch. A writer I admire greatly is Tyler Cowen, of The Marginal Revolution. He can turn a brilliant, original insight, which probably came to him like that. He can distill that into 3,000 words, yet there may be more – there’s very likely to be more wisdom in those 300 words than in almost anything else that’s 3,000 words. Length is not a factor. Humor is always a plus. A light touch is to be welcomed.”

Robert Cottrell, editor and founder of The Browser, joins producer Michael O’Connell to explain the difference between being a content aggregator and a curator and why the best and most lasting journalism isn’t likely to be focused on the day’s events.

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#359 Reporter uses pop-up newsrooms to amplify Philly’s unheard voices

Many a wide-eyed, hungry young journalist vows to do her best to amplify the voice of the unheard and shine a light on those hidden in the shadows of the community she covers.

“That’s very much evolved in my thinking as a journalist,” says Helen Ubiñas, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. “Everyone has a voice. We have chosen whose voices we hear, whose voices we don’t, whose voices we validate and whose voices we don’t.”

Helen Ubiñas interviews students at a pop-up newsroom. (Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Media Network)

Growing up in the Bronx before starting her career in Connecticut, Ubiñas lived in some of those “unseen” neighborhoods and spent years talking with those “unseen” people. “I think I had a voice when I was younger that wasn’t always heard. That very much drives my journalism and … the stories I tell.”

During a Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) last summer, she was introduced to the concept of a pop-up newsroom. She might’ve been in the workshop, or on a hike, or in another session, she’s not entirely sure, but the idea was one that got her thinking.

Ubiñas is something of an old-school reporter: “You will not find me at my desk. I’m not a big fan of doing interviews on my phone. I like meeting people one-on-one,” she says. “I like the idea of meeting people where they are, where they live, where they attend an event. Talking to them about stories, maybe their stories, but also introducing myself, reintroducing journalists that cover their city to them. I ask them where they get their news, who do you like to read, what kind of story do you like to read, what isn’t being covered that should be.”

Armed with the idea of creating an impromptu newsroom, she piggybacked with a school in South Philly that was having an event. She brought reporter’s notebooks for the kids, chocolates and pens branded with her Twitter handle, and set up a table.

“I listened to parents tell me about their lives as immigrants in Philly, some documented, some not. What it’s like to have their child serve as a translator as they’re learning the language,” Ubiñas says. “The parents weren’t sure what to make of me. They were a little leery, what is this woman doing, why is she asking so many questions.”

But it was an opportunity to find those voices and hear those stories, ones not necessarily ignored but ones that aren’t always told on a smaller scale.

Ubiñas also found the inspiration for another column at the same event: the woman standing next to her was a local photographer. They struck up a conversation and, it turns out, she’d just returned from the U.S.-Mexico border where she’d been covering the migrant caravan.

“Maybe I would’ve met her. She was local, it wasn’t like she had an agent or a press person,” Ubiñas says. “I happened to be standing there. We were chit-chatting. That turned into another column. I don’t know if I would’ve gotten that column if I wasn’t there.”  

Helen Ubiñas, a columnist and reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, joins producer Michael O’Connell to share the joy of showing up at events to talk with people about journalism and the importance of knowing your audience — and bringing chocolate.

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#358 How to cover diversity, political division in a divided America

Farai Chidaya

On Election Night 2016, after the polls had closed and the results were in, Farai Chideya emerged from the ABC Digital newsroom near Times Square to find a much different scene than when she arrived hours earlier.

Instead of a jubilant crowd ready for “Election Mardi Gras” complete with costumes ready to celebrate an anticipated Hillary Clinton victory, she found the busy area nearly empty. There was one person running around with a Trump flag, chanting his name.

“Of course, I take out my phone and interview him,” says Chideya, a journalism program officer at the Ford Foundation and a fellow at the MIT Media Lab. “He’s Justin Rodriguez, 27 at the time, an entrepreneur from Queens, the same part of New York that Trump is from.”

Rodriguez told her that he was in Manhattan with his Muslim girlfriend and that he supported Trump because he felt that candidate would be better for entrepreneurs like himself. But Rodriquez also said he was against unrestricted immigration.

“He thought America was privileging immigrants over people already here,” she says. “We have to remember that the majority of Latinos (in the United States) are US born. Things like that are what field reporting can do for you.”

With a career that’s included its fair share of field reporting, Chideya cautions against making broad generalizations when trying to cover elections or any trend story.  Not only does that make for missing stories that matter – like a lack of attention paid to former CBS executive Les Moonves’ stated belief in an earnings call that Trump was “great for CBS” but bad for the country – it oversimplifies and paints with too generic a conclusion about people.

“I think it’s great to explore the conflict but what are you doing to frame it,” she says. “Do you have enough knowledge of history, political science, have you done any field reporting (on a given subject)? Are you just saying this is what the people of the Midwest think? If you haven’t spent time there, you shouldn’t generalize.”

Farai Chideya, a fellow at the MIT Media Lab and journalism program officer at the Ford Foundation, discusses with producer Michael O’Connell the challenges journalists face in covering diversity and political division in a divided America.

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