397. Podcasting with a South American twist

Audiences in South America are hungry for good podcast content, much like their cousins to the north.

Sebastián Payán of 070 Podcasts from Colombia and Tiago Rogero of Negra Voz of Brazil are two of the 18 podcasters and journalists from across Latin America who spent several weeks in the U.S. last fall, describing their own podcasting experiences and meeting with producers from the Washington Post, NPR, Podcast Garage and others.

Brazil is the second-largest podcast production country in the world, second only to the U.S., Rogero says. “For journalism, it’s a good environment. The top 10 podcasts, both in Apple and Spotify, are news shows. For Spotify, it’s a podcast made from a Brazilian newspaper, for Apple it’s from Global TV. It’s an increasing environment. Things are getting better. There’s a lot of room to grow.”

But, admittedly, it’s a smaller audience for podcasts in Brazil than in the U.S., he says.

In Colombia, Payán says, there are new podcasts popping up every day, but there isn’t a lot of narrative work being done.

“It’s mostly talk shows you can hear on the radio,” he says. “You don’t see a lot of difference between radio and podcasts. Most of the podcasts come from outside media. You don’t see a lot coming from big media, they’re coming from independent media and producers. Even a lot of radio shows, they say they have podcasts, but they record the program and upload it without editing everything.”

Brazilian producers are trying to move forward and create different content that isn’t just something found on radio, but it’s a process.

“We have legacy media, legacy radio that are uploading shows as podcasts, but those same media do podcasts,” Rogero says. “They are live. They have sound design. We are kind of in the middle of this transition to figuring out that podcasts are a completely different media, but we already have a lot of good examples of podcasts in Brazil that are seeing these as a different media.”

Another difference they’re seeing on a larger scale: How podcasts are funded, and how that funding is discussed.

“In Colombia, you’d start doing the podcast and then think how are we going to finance,” Payán says. “Here, you see how the public media is investing in podcasting. We have seen here that podcasting has become another opportunity for journalists in times of crisis. There’s a big interest in storytelling podcasts. … You have to really try hard to do something new.”

This week, It’s All Journalism producer Michael O’Connell is joined by Sebastián Payán of 070 Podcasts in Colombia and Tiago Rogero of Negra Voz in Brazil, part of an group of nearly 20 international podcasters who recently visited the U.S. to share their experiences and learn how podcasts are made in America.

396. Tess Koman’s iconic video journey dining at America’s amusement parks

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Tess Koman has what might be a dream job: she goes to amusement parks and tries all the food possible in the course of a day.

This is not what she thought was possible when she went to a small liberal arts college and studied English while wishing she could be an intern at Cosmopolitan.

“I was wrapped with anxiety that I didn’t go to journalism school. At the same time, I had been obsessed with Cosmopolitan for many years because I wasn’t allowed to read it when I lived at home,” Koman says.

She took matters into her own hands, applying for an internship four times, getting rejected four times, until eventually she was tapped by the new editor of Cosmo’s website to come on board as an assistant. Koman spent the next seven years writing on various topics until Delish.com came to poach her.

Now she travels to amusement parks and eats everything in sight, making brightly colored, engaging, self-deprecating and really fun to watch videos describing what she’s tried and how it all tastes.

“It’s seductive,” she says. “You can say whatever you want to say and people can disagree with you. I can write about how I think a Dole Whip tastes and that will upset people very much. There are certain facets to food that some people are very interested in.”

Her series, Iconic Eats, was pitched as something totally different, it turns out.

“I wanted to be an authority on food. I pitched it as the best venues in New Orleans, the best deep dish in Chicago,” she says. “I did a cheeseburger video in New York City. … I walked away from the idea for a while (until) I was sent on a press trip to Disney and myself and Chelsea, my shooter and director, we had a spare afternoon. With the cooperation of the production team, who happened to be very flexible at Disney, we ate our way through Disneyland, put it on YouTube and it blew up so fast.”

And that’s what put Koman on the fast track to a kind of cult status as the girl who eats things in parks. That brings with it great fun and perks but also, being a person on YouTube can bring out the worst in some people.

“After the Disneyland video, I came back to the office and said I’d never do this again. People were so terribly mean to me,” she says. “As I obsessively scrolled through the comments, I did find these gems in there. People hate things about me I can’t change. They don’t like my voice, they don’t like my nose, they hate my clothes. Plenty of antisemitic things. A lot of oversexualization of what I’m doing there. The job has become to put food in my face. As I combed through the comments, there was productive feedback there as well, people wanted to see the prices of the food or had ambitions to do something similar. We were providing some kind of service.”

It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell is joined this week by Tess Koman of Delish.com, discussing her video series Iconic Eats, which involves traveling to amusement parks around the country and sampling all their tasty treats.

395. Public Narrative works to help newsrooms find stories they may be missing

Public Narrative has a straight-forward mission: to work with journalists to “balance the narrative about public safety, public health and public education,” according to the group’s president, Jhmira Alexander.

The goal is to make sure important achievements in those three areas are not only recognized by stakeholders but by the community at large, namely, by media coverage .

“If an agency like the Chicago Police Department or public schools makes mention of how, in CPD’s case, how crime decreased between 2017 and 2018. We should be seeing that in the headlines and if not, where is the disconnect,” she says. “The exact same when it comes to testing scores, different situations in public schools. How are we seeing that translated into headlines? We might see organizations share about good things happening in schools and communities, but we may not see that translate across all platforms.”

There seems to be “a total disconnect between what is communicated in meetings and what’s translated in media,” Alexander continues. She’s not calling for only good news, happy stories to be published, but she’s working with stakeholders to identify positive things that are newsworthy and work with media organizations to get those details and achievements out to a wider audience.

Part of that is explaining what a newsworthy story looks like and why. Another part is story choice decisions made by outlets.

“Story choice is so important to make sure all voices are heard,” Alexander says. “I think it’s real easy to be one-sided and push for your perspective without taking into consideration the value-ad there is to engage audiences that might not always look like you or agree with you. We’re at a critical time that forces us to lay our differences aside and find ways to collaborate whenever possible.”

Newsrooms, in turn, need to assess their makeup and see where they’re falling short, in terms of coverage and which communities might be missing.

“Just listening to their audience and understand what they’re interested in and remaining true to that,” she says. “That’s what makes a newsroom effective, if and when their stories can reach and really begin to transform the lives of people. That comes with a great measure of assessing and being honest with oneself about what went right, what went wrong, and where do we need to go from here.”

She also stresses to the community organizations trained by Public Narrative the importance of journalistic integrity.

“Journalistic integrity is so important in an age where everyone is screaming about fake news. It makes it hard to educate people on what to trust and what to disregard,” she says. “The role that journalists have in maintaining integrity for the sake of influencing our culture, it’s a really big one. I would encourage journalists to maintain that, to continue to maintain that, and even more so, be mindful. You make work for an outlet that has its own reputation, but being cognizant of your brand as a journalist.”

It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell is joined by Jhmira Alexander, president of Public Narrative, to discuss the importance of educating community partners on how news works and why story choice in newsrooms can leave big portions of audiences out of the headlines.

394. Improve audience conversations and avoid trolls with Subtext

Imagine an online community where readers can ask reporters any and all questions they might have about their work, free from the insults and ridicule of trolls.

Welcome to The Alpha Group‘s Subtext, an SMS-based platform that allows journalists and news organizations to talk directly with their audience.

“It’s a platform that connects hosts — journalists and media organizations, in this instance — with their most engaged followers,” says Mike Donoghue, one of Subtext’s co-creators. “Think of it as having insider access and a direct line of communication with the journalists who are closest to the stories you care most about, in a medium that feels more engaging and personal.”

Subtext allows reporters and news organizations to discuss stories directly with their audience, or ask for suggestions on topics to cover. It can also offer conversation prompts, like asking what kinds of questions should come up in an interview. When the reporter responds, only the person who submitted the question can see the answer, or the reporter can choose to address it publicly.

“One of the nice things about Subtext is you can solve different problems, depending on the organization’s goals,” says David Cohn, another Subtext creator. “We have seen some people use it as an engagement tool. There’s a lot of free email newsletters out there but the open rate on texting is way better than anything on email. If you think about the voice you can accomplish through text, it’s way better.”

David Cohn

Other organizations have used Subtext as a retention tool, something extra they can add if their publication is behind a paywall.

Subtext, then, is the best of both Twitter and email in a troll-free environment.

“Trolls only succeed and thrive if they feel like they’re being seen,” Cohn says. “A mean person would be sending a mean message to one person. We haven’t had any trolls at all. It really is a service between the reporter and the audience. There’s no point in being mean or rude. We see a much better quality of conversation.”

It also helps build a better quality relationship between reporter and audience.

“If you’re a sports reporter going on ESPN, the moment the lights go on, you deliver your reporting to the camera,” Donoghue says. “When the lights go off, the conversation you have with the crew, those are the ones that ultimately perform well on the platform because it gives your subscribers the sense of having this inside, unvarnished access to the personalities they love. That’s been a successful angle for hosts on the platform and it’s a really unique way to engage with journalists.”

It’s All Journalism Producer Michael O’Connell is joined by The Alpha Group‘s David Cohn and Mike Donoghue. They talk about Subtext, an SMS-based platform the co-created that allows journalists to talk directly with their audience without being bothered by trolls.

393. Hard Times: When The Onion isn’t edgy enough

Like so many other younger siblings, Matt Saincome just wanted to hang out with, and be like, his older brother.

Since his brother was listening to punk bands from The Ramones and Black Flag to Minor Threat, that’s what Saincome listened to as well, from the time he was in elementary school. He tricked his parents into getting a mohawk, kind of, by spiking his hair for a weird hair day in fourth grade. It stuck.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that, after going into journalism school at San Francisco State and realizing he had more fun, and reached more people, writing jokes that took 30 minutes than he did writing a full-length feature story that took a month to complete, he combined his love of punk music with his love of writing.

Matt Saincome and Michael O’Connell pose for a selfie at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Saincome is one of the co-founders of The Hard Times, a hardcore music and satire magazine that has also spawned a book.

“Hard Times was something where I looked at the New York Times and then I saw Vice. You have a legacy organization and then the younger, edgier version,” he says. “I looked at The Onion and saw there wasn’t a younger, edgier version (and thought) what if I start Vice Onion? That was my original notion.”

Utilizing his familiarity and love of punk music and the ethos around it with his journalism training, he and co-founder Bill Conway have been keeping punk snarky and fun for several years.

The publication has been embraced by punk fans and bands as well, something Saincome attributes to his knowledge of the crowd and his roots.

“There’s always been two veins in punk and hardcore, the super serious political vein and then the troublemaking comedy vein,” he says. “You have the Dead Kennedys with super political stuff, though they had plenty of humor in their politics as well. Then you have troublemakers like Fear who are more out to fight the crowd. There’s a politics side or an escapist side. I think Hard Times is definitely in that escapist camp, creating fun and levity through satire and taking all the ideologies of punk and self-serious people, flipping them upside down with satirical tools and seeing if they hold up to jokes. Sometimes they don’t and that’s fun too.”

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined by Matt Saincome, co-founder and writer with The Hard Times, to discuss the satirical punk and hardcore music publication and why it’s all his older brother’s fault.

392. Calling out racists in cartoons makes them angry

Jen Sorensen gets hate mail — she has a folder she checks with some regularity — but it’s not quite the pit of despair and misogyny some might expect.

“There isn’t quite as much misogynist hate mail as I thought there’d be,” says the cartoonist.

That might be due to the alternative press outlets in which her work is primarily circulating.

“Some people aren’t seeing my strip who might react strongly to it.”

But being a woman, and a woman who creates political cartoons, and one who does this work during the Trump era, presents other challenges.

The lack of broad attention is keeping some of the important topics she explores out of reach of the masses.

“In the midst of a traditionalist movement that’s so antagonistic to women and women’s rights, that’s a part of the story that’s getting overlooked a little,” Sorensen says. “You think there might be more attention on women political cartoonists when there doesn’t seem to be more than in the past.”

Most of the complaints she does receive are from people who don’t appreciate their views and political allegiances called out as racist.

Jen Sorensen receives a lot of hate mail for her political cartoons, but not as much as one might think.

“I think they don’t understand that just simply by supporting Trump and accepting this rhetoric and everything he’s doing with immigrants and immigrant children, they don’t see the connection” with racist thoughts and practices, she says. Instead, they’re more likely to argue that “liberals, by noticing race, are the racists.”

Despite the misogyny, despite the angry emails, despite the struggles, Sorensen says it’s the simple act of drawing attention to unfair or slanted situations that help make change happen. Ten years ago, people weren’t having the same level of conversation about things like representation in media that are happening now.

“There are always going to be people who take things too far,” she says. “It’s never fun to be criticized, but this is the way social progress happens. Instead of dismissing it, we need to recognize that this is people responding to a racist environment, to the Trump administration’s lies about immigrants and people responding to attacks on civil rights.”

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined again this week by political cartoonist Jen Sorensen to talk about being a woman with a platform and a voice in the time of Trump, the feedback she receives and why calling out social problems and racist thought might be the only way to move society forward.

391. America has a bad case of truth decay, according to new RAND report

When politicians and policy makers can’t agree on a basic set of facts, how can they really establish a set of priorities for a nation?

When citizens have more difficulty discerning facts from opinion, and no longer trust elected leaders or the media to provide information, what does that do to a society?

In a new book entitled Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, Jennifer Kavanagh of RAND and her colleagues set out to answer those questions, only to find a distressing state of affairs set in motion long before the 2016 election brought the term “fake news” into our vocabulary.

“Truth decay is the term we’re using to refer to the diminishing role facts, data and analysis play in political and civil discourse and in our policy-making process,” Kavanagh says. “We wanted to define what this means, what we think is causing it, to talk about the consequences and to think about what we still don’t know and lay out a research agenda for studying it. It allowed us then to launch into a research agenda and set up a portfolio of work to understand and address the phenomena.”

It was a key point established early on in the research: “If policy makers can’t agree on facts, if they don’t have a common set of facts as a starting point, they can’t actually have a meaningful policy debate,” she says. “They can’t debate policy options, set national priorities, (determine) how do we allocate scarce resources.”

At the start, RAND, a research organization that works with policy makers, established four trends as contributing to truth decay: The increasing disagreements between facts and data, even when more evidence exists to support established facts; the blurring of the line between facts and opinion; the increasing volume of opinion, especially when presented as fact; and the declining trust in institutions that once were trusted sources of valid, fact-based information.

Distrust in the media and government is so high at this point in history that people don’t know who to believe.

“People not only are not sure what’s true and what’s not, but they don’t know where to turn” for fact-based information, Kavanagh says.

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined this week by Jennifer Kavanagh of RAND to discuss her new book, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life, on the concerning loss of trust and recognition in facts and evidence among policy makers and citizens alike, as opinion gets louder and harder to discern in media.

384. Memes, manifestos and 4chan — making sense of a toxic online culture

390. Shining a brighter collective light on DC’s homeless population

Washington, D.C. is a competitive town where the federal government overshadows almost everything else.

But it’s also a regular city, where people with no affiliation to the government live, work and thrive, or get pushed into the shadows.

Chris Cain, Eric Falquero and Rachel Sadon

A group of 10 news outlets joined forces to help shine a light on one of D.C.’s biggest local issues, one that often gets swept aside: the city’s large homeless population. In August, outlets made a concerted effort to provide a deep, comprehensive and multi-faceted series of stories about what it means to be homeless in Washington, from the city’s shelters to how many teenagers are without a stable place to sleep.

The idea is borrowed from a major project from the San Francisco Chronicle by way of coverage from the New York Times, says Eric Falquero, the editorial director of Street Sense Media, a publication aimed squarely at the homeless population in the city. “They started organizing a list like this four years ago, the New York Times wrote about it and four different people I know emailed it to me. I thought we can do that, we can recruit other outlets to cooperate.”

It’s an effort that included, in its most recent iteration, outlets like DCist and The DC Line in addition to Street Sense.

“We published around 10 stories, which is a lot for us on any one given topic,” says Rachel Sadon, the editor-in-chief at DCist. “The beauty is, there are so many different angles to (the topic of homelessness). We also made sure to be following up on stories we might not otherwise follow up on. Two folks who had been experiencing homelessness were sitting or sleeping on a bench late at night were killed. For the longest time, we didn’t have any information. This gave us an opportunity to say, a month after this, we don’t know who the driver is, we don’t know if he was arrested, and here’s why it happened on federally-controlled land.”

Her outlet also took a look at homelessness for children and students in D.C. who also have to try and go to school when they don’t have a permanent address. For many of the city’s youngest people experiencing homelessness, going back to school means a return to stability, Sadon says.

The joint DC Homeless Crisis Reporting Project also provided an opportunity to take a closer look at some policy-level decisions in the city that will have a direct impact on people who struggle to find, or retain housing.

“Homelessness does relate to so many issues that are top-of-agenda for D.C.,” says Chris Cain of The DC Line. “Not just the mayor’s plans to close what had been the major family shelter, where conditions were legendarily bad, but her commitment to affordable housing that encourages the private sector to build 36,000 new homes by 2025, with one-third being affordable.”

Many of these outlets — with the exception of Street Sense — do not focus on homeleness on a regular basis. A project like this provides a wonderful opportunity to help their readers stop and learn about such a pressing issue and educate them on another part of their hometown that they might not otherwise give much thought on a regular basis.

It’s also an effort that provided some good news on progress: Falquero said the city’s homeless population has been declining over the past few years.

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined by Eric Falquero, editorial director of Street Sense Media; Rachel Sadon, editor-in-chief of DCist; and Chris Cain of The DC Line, as they discuss a 10-outlet effort to cover various aspects of homelessness in Washington for the DC Homeless Crisis Reporting Project and why they wanted to dedicate time, space and resources to the issue.

389. Learning from, and protecting, young journalists around the world

The world of journalism has changed a bit since Jennifer Karchmer got her start, but her passion for asking questions and telling stories has only grown stronger.

Now an independent journalist and mentor, Karchmer lives in Washington State, where she’s advocated toward the passage of the state’s New Voices law to help protect young journalists.

“Students aren’t necessarily covered by the First Amendment,” she explains. “In 1988, there was a Supreme Court case, Hazelwood, that turned the clock back in a bad way. It essentially enabled censorship by schools that were looking at stories they didn’t feel presented their high school or college in a flattering light.”

At the time, this might have included stories about teen pregnancy, drug use or the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Karchmer notes. “Because the schools were uncomfortable with it, they were using this as an opportunity to censor and use prior restraint.”

Journalism advocates began to lobby for state-level legislation, arguing that if these students were doing journalism, like the New York Times, and weren’t libeling anyone and were following all other guiding principles and rules as other professionals would, they should have the same protections.

To date, 14 states have passed New Voices legislation to help ensure student journalists aren’t punished or censored from publishing stories and to reinforce their protections under the First Amendment.

It’s important for young journalists to understand the rights and protections they have in the U.S., which for so long has been a beacon of free speech and freedom of the press for countries around the world. Karchmer also encourages journalists to travel internationally and speak with reporters in other countries to help them realize that there isn’t just one way to be a reporter.

She became familiar with Reporters WIthout Borders around 2010 and learned about the annual index that organization puts out, ranking the countries around the world with the best and worst track records for journalism. As an American, it’s something journalists here can almost take for granted, but she was curious to see what it meant to be a journalist in Iceland and, later, South Africa, to explore what the industry looks like in places that might be very different in their public approaches to, and support for, journalism and reporters.

She was welcomed with open arms in both Iceland and South Africa and spent time talking to reporters in both countries and came away from both learning a great deal about how U.S. press freedoms are interpreted in other countries and how reporters internationally operate.

“We in the U.S., we don’t have a lock on journalism,” she says. “It’s a construct. The thing I would encourage journalists to do is early on, get an understanding of journalism around the world. This is a public service, this is my passion, it’s in my blood. Getting out of the four walls of your newsroom, get out and travel.”

Independent journalist Jennifer Karchmer joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss the importance of international travel for reporters and the New Voices initiative, which works to ensure student journalists are fully protected by the First Amendment.

#368 Amplifying young international voices to tell stories that matter

388. Who wants to own their own newspaper? NewStart’s here to help

What happens when a newspaper owner is ready to retire and there’s no one in line to take over?

“As I go around the country and talk to different people at weekly and small daily papers, we’re finding there’s no succession plan at these papers,” said Jim Iovino of West Virginia University.

To help keep these papers alive, and to train and prepare the next generation of newspaper owners, Iovino and Don Smith of the West Virginia Press Association have teamed up to start NewStart, a local newspaper ownership program.

“We’re looking at the community level, small town weekly papers, daily newspapers across the country. We’re trying to find these individuals who want to come back and work in their hometown or find a new small town they want to live in, who want to own a paper or publication,” he says. “We train them in all the ways they need to do that in a smart way going forward with digital subscriptions, a whole new business model and then help match them up with a newspaper that wants to sell in an area they want to buy. We help facilitate that transaction and give them years of support after.”

Newspapers remain the best source of local news and play major roles in small town life, Smith says.

Small towns “count on their newspaper to be the marketplace of ideas in their community. When you talk to someone about their newspaper, it’s local. The radio and TV may be regional, but their newspaper is local. These small weekly newspapers stay in the home from week to week and often they’ll have the whole year sitting there.”

The goal is to keep these papers alive, keep them in their communities, without turning them into affiliates of one of the larger newspaper conglomerates, they say. They also don’t want to see news deserts overtake these towns.

NewStart offers a year-long program, at West Virginia University but also offered online, to go over the business side of things. They help prospective new owners make a business plan, learn the economics of newspaper ownership, but the course also helps the person find a newspaper to take over and make the deal happen.

“If you don’t understand the entrepreneurial part of this but want to make that commitment to a community, you probably won’t make it,” Smith says.

Producer Michael O’Connell is joined this week by Jim Iovino of West Virginia University and Don Smith of the West Virginia Press Association to talk about NewStart, their partnership to help recruit and train new newspaper owners across the country.

Better News: Iconic southern newspaper undergoes digital-first transformation

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