#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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#357 Keeping print alive in Toronto’s West End

Dave Bidini

Holding a writing instrument might have come slightly before holding a guitar, and is admittedly slightly easier, but Dave Bidini has been combining writing and music most of his life.

He’s written 13 books on subjects ranging from hockey to life in Canada’s Northwest Territory and what it’s like to tour the Great White North in an unforgiving winter, influenced in no small part by his role as a founding member of the Rheostatics and, later, Bidiniband.

But it was while researching his latest book, Midnight Light, that Bidini became inspired to create his own publication, the monthly tabloid-style, patron-supported West End Phoenix, focused on a neighborhood in his native Toronto where many writers, artists and musicians live.

“I was astonished, in 2015, to find a capital city in Canada where the newspaper was still vital and healthy and thriving,” Bidini says of Yellowknife and its twice-weekly paper, the Yellowknifer.  “I fell in love with the tabloid. One of the things I fell in love with, other than people still reading the paper … a great way to get to know the city is working as a reporter. I wanted to work there for the summer.”

Given an invitation of “Well, if you want to come work here …” from the paper’s editor, Bidini spent five months working in one of the upper reaches of Canada with a reporter who wanted to raise the publication’s standards to that of his bigger city roots.

Bidini wanted to see the same kind of vibrant publication in Toronto, but the media landscape as it stood didn’t offer it. He decided to make it happen himself, going door to door in the West End to both gauge interest and try to secure subscriptions for the printed paper, which has foregone ads in favor of reader support and subscriptions.

The goal of the West End Phoenix is to “dignify the neighborhood and tell the stories in a way it had never been told,” he says. “That was the creative point of view. Editorially, we want to tell the stories that matter to the people who live in the community. We want to probe housing, education, development. … The idea is to do ground-level reporting infused with essays.”

Before the paper went to press for the first time in October 2017, before there was a paper to publish, those same neighbors who now read and write for the publication, some 800 subscriptions were secured, a number that has continued to steadily increase.

Dave Bidini, an author of 13 books and founding member of the Canadian band the Rheostatics, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss his latest venture, the monthly West End Phoenix newspaper in Toronto, featuring pieces from award-winning authors, writers, playwrights and poets who live in the neighborhood.

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#356 Branded content and the battle for your audience’s trust

The conversations around branded versus editorial content have continued to evolve since 2014, when we first talked to Melanie Deziel, the founder of StoryFuel.

Melanie Deziel
Melanie Deziel

In that time, so much has happened that has impacted how news consumers view the content they encounter online. Accusations of “fake news” or “that’s opinion” muddy the waters, raising concerns about whether a particular news outlet’s content can be trusted.

But what do you do if you’ve started creating branded content as a revenue stream? Does that add to readers’ confusion?

“I understand people’s confusion. I’ve seen the conversation from both sides,” Deziel says. “I came up as a journalist, that was my background before I was on the branded side of things. I can understand those concerns from a newsroom side of things. I think, in my experience, folks working on branded content teams, many are former journalists. Many of us are trying to do our part to bring in revenue to support the work we believe in in the newsroom.”

And why wouldn’t branded content creators want to make it abundantly clear which work they’re responsible for on a publication’s website or within the pages of a newspaper or magazine? If the average reader can’t tell the difference between the editorial work they’ve subscribed to or paid to receive, and the branded, sponsored content running alongside it, how will the reader learn anything about the brand?

“Our brand partners that are paying us gain nothing if no one knows where the content is coming from,” she says. “Really clear labeling is in the best interest of everyone. Readers need to understand clearly where that content is coming from. We’re all on the same side on of that one, but it’s difficult to figure out a universal system when the way we present our regular content is so varied. Finding a universal labeling system has proven a challenge.”

Melanie Deziel, founder of StoryFuel, talks with producer Michael O’Connell about the challenges facing newsrooms that are creating branded content. The conversation addresses the impact that tech giants like Facebook and Google have on what you read and the importance of accurately measuring how readers engage with your content online.

#252 – Going native: Branded content helps sustain journalism
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#355 All the news that fits in 10 minutes

More than a decade into her career, with most of that time spent at the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles, Erica Mandy noticed she was hearing a very common refrain when talking about her work.

“I kinda looked around and realized that the younger demo was no longer watching TV news as much and the people I was talking to said four main words, which is ‘news is too depressing,’” she recalls. People also said they were tuning the news out because it was “boring and time consuming. I wanted to help people stay informed and bring information to them in a way they consumed.”

Erica Mandy (JennKL Photography)

Now Mandy is the host of the NewsWorthy, a daily 10 minute podcast in which the main stories of the day are simplified and relayed in short, casually delivered, engaging facts.

Her podcast focuses on three Fs: Fast (less than 10 minutes); Fair (“It’s important I let people know you won’t hear arguing pundits, you’ll get an overview of what’s happening and we’ll move on”), and Fun.

News “isn’t just doom and gloom,” she says. “There’s tech things happening, business things … it’s not just the political and depressing, but that’s included too because you want to be informed on the important stories.”

Some listeners have told her NewsWorthy isn’t the only political or news-focused podcast they listen to, something Mandy welcomes.

“There’s time for people to have the big picture and be informed of everything that’s going on (without having to) dive really deep, but also see the overview,” she says.

It’s also important for her to include an overview for each story she discusses, something other journalists often take for granted.

“Journalists assume everyone knows what they know. We’re in it every single day,” she says, while listeners and readers very likely won’t be as immersed in the nitty gritty of a major story. “Every time I bring up the Russia investigation, I’ll give you a one-sentence reminder. People have other things going on in their lives and news isn’t as important. Part of what I try to do is be your friend (and tell you) here’s what’s going on in the world, I’m going to break it down and make it simple and easy to digest and you can be part of the conversation.”

Erica Mandy, the host of the NewsWorthy podcast, joins producer Michael O’Connell to explain why compact but well-explained news podcasts are not just the wave of the future but the best way to keep people informed in the present, and how 10 minutes is all anyone really needs to stay aware of the world.

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#354 Misinformation, deep fake videos and the peril of mismanaged AI

Three years ago, Amy Webb told the Online News Association’s annual conference that it was possible to take video footage of a person speaking and create a very believable and credible video using the same person saying something entirely different.

This ability is something news organizations now speak about all the time, usually in reference to fake news and misinformation. But no one’s doing anything to address or stop such deeply faked videos from being made, identified or stopped, Webb says.

Amy Webb

“To me, what’s scary is not the technology, it’s our inaction to do something about the technology,” says Webb, a quantitative futurist, founder of the Future Today Institute and author of a new book, The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity. “I don’t know how many different ways to say this: If there was collaboration across the industry and news organizations on their own developed their own ways for verification, there would be other ways to combat this problem.”

Better collaboration among news organizations is something Webb says desperately needs to happen, especially in preparation for the 2020 election. If she were working in a newsroom, she would start a war room today to “map out where there is risk and opportunity in trying to cover the 2020 election. Increasingly the conversation has been wrested from the usual suspects and the usual places and are happening in new places that are damaging to the future of democracy. News organizations really need to start thinking seriously about what disinformation looks like 12 months from now, what are the distribution channels that are going to matter. I don’t see that happening.”

What she does see happening, as discussed in her book, is a centralization of artificial intelligence among three centers of power – Washington, D.C., Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

In her research with clients or on various projects over the past few years, Webb’s journalist brain kept coming back to the same question: “What happens when we consolidate tremendous power among just a few companies and just a few people who work inside these companies that will ultimately result in a technology that will be designed to make decisions for us?”

Those three cities and their power players don’t have the best relationships with each other but they will likely form the future of artificial intelligence for every aspect of our lives.

“AI is constantly talked about but always with a lot of misplaced optimism and fear. It’s a real story that we need to get to so we can prevent catastrophic outcomes I see on the horizon and start on the difficult work of making difficult choices under challenging circumstances so that we can get to better actions,” she says.

Amy Webb, a quantitative futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss trends in media, her frustration with the lack of response to deep fake videos and why the United States could learn from China when it comes to collaboration on artificial intelligence.

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#353 Reveal sues ICE for not responding to FOIA request

In the course of researching stories, reporters will often ask their sources directly for documents needed to explain a situation. This is pretty common practice.

When Aura Bogado was talking with a representative from government contractor MVM, she asked to see the company’s contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, given that MVM was hired by the agency to assist with the transport of immigrant children at the U.S. border. That meant any contract would stipulate the conditions under which those children would need to be housed and cared for, as MVM would be acting as a government entity.

Victoria Baranetsky

“It’s a growing trend that media attorneys have been seeing: the actions of government have been contracted out,” says Victoria Baranetsky, a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the legal counsel for the Center for Investigative Reporting. “Being able to obtain this kind of information is important as a form of government accountability, despite being in the hands of private contractors.”

Bogado filed a record request, a common practice for obtaining documents, but there was no word from ICE within the 20-day response period. She then filed a more detailed Freedom of Information Act request, making it incredibly focused and specific in requesting just one document – the contract between ICE and MVM – but ICE still hasn’t responded.

The agency hasn’t denied the request, Baranetsky says. It just hasn’t answered at all.

“ICE has not said they’re withholding,” she says of the contract. “Here, ICE did not give a determination. … [Bogado] had previously discussed with the agency, she had gone to the agency and asked for records. They said she would have to formally submit a FOIA request for them. The agent did say they had in their possession and she’d have to go through the process.”

This isn’t a typical FOIA request in which a wide and deep net is cast. “There’s one document we’re talking about that very clearly exists,” Baranetsky says.

Now Reveal, the radio show, podcast and online presence for CIR, is suing for the information.

“Lawsuits like this, they absolutely are a lot of work and they’re costly,” Baranetsky says. “They’re not something we take lightly. This is a circumstance where there’s a clear public interest in the material. It went directly to her reporting. The delay made it rise to the need of litigation.”

Victoria Baranetsky, legal counsel for the Center for Investigative Reporting and a research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, joins producer Michael O’Connell to discuss the need to sue the government when contracts with private companies of particular public interest aren’t provided.

#350 Texas law protecting journalists under attack
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#351 Mistrust of the media isn’t new, but it’s getting worse

The American public’s distrust of the media is not new. Neither is it surprising, says Kyle Pope, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Kyle Pope

But how bad is it? And what do people outside the media bubble think about how journalists do their job?

The level of trust in the media seems to have taken a bit of a nosedive around the time of the stock market crash in 2008 and it hasn’t rebounded, according to a recent wide-reaching survey conducted by CJR in partnership with Reuters/Ipsos.

The 4,214 respondents, split roughly in half between self-identifying Republicans and Democrats, did provide a few surprising answers, such as indicating that TMZ and the National Enquirer were more representative of the mainstream media that Rachel Maddow on MSNBC or Vice News.

“What took us back the most was, we tried to think of some fundamental misconceptions about how reporters do their jobs,” Pope says. “We asked, ‘do you think reporters are paid by their sources.’ You and I know that’s a taboo that doesn’t happen by reputable news organizations, but 60 percent of the people overall said they thought we were paid. It’s overwhelmingly believed by Republicans, 70 percent, but more than half the Democrats, 54 percent, think reporters get paid by their sources sometimes or often. That’s really stark.”

The survey, published in CJR’s print magazine, indicates Americans have lost their trust in many public institutions, including schools, universities, religion, corporations and Congress, just as much as they’ve stopped trusting the news media, he says.

“I think a lot of news consumers decided the news business was part of the power structure of America that wasn’t working for them. I think they’re on to something. I think journalism, for a time, lost its way. I think the press in general … (are) paying the price for it.”

As much as the press wants to point the finger of blame at the president, Pope says Trump has only given a name and a platform to something people have felt for a long time.  

“What he did was put a language to it and he made it — I believe it is arguably the central plank of his presidency,” Pope says. “His focus on the media as a foil or even as an enemy has been the one consistent thing he’s carried through his presidency and I have no doubt it’s going to continue for the rest of it.”

Kyle Pope, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, joins Michael O’Connell to take a closer look at some of the findings in a recent wide-ranging survey of Americans’ trust of the media. The results aren’t great.

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#350 Texas law protecting journalists under attack

Texas has one of the nation’s leading state laws to protect reporters and others from being sued for trying to obtain or share public information.

Kevin Goldberg
Kevin Goldberg

Anti-SLAPP statutes, where SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation, are designed to deter “a lawsuit filed for the purpose of shutting someone up,” explains Kevin Goldberg, legal counsel for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (making his third visit to the podcast). “We see these mainly filed by people who are rich, powerful and don’t mind how much money they need to spend on attorneys. They file them as defamation lawsuits, as copyright infringement lawsuits or against unfair trade practices. These lawsuits are filed not only to punish someone from speaking out against them, but maybe send a message to others to deter them.”

In 2010, Texas passed a state anti-SLAPP statute that’s so robust and has served its purposes so well, it’s held up as a standard and used as a model by states who haven’t yet adopted similar legislation.

But the law as currently written is under attack, despite broad support from legislators on both sides of the aisle as well as organizations that often don’t see eye-to-eye, including the ACLU and more libertarian organizations.

While other states have seen their anti-SLAPP laws challenged by trial lawyers associations, the one in Texas is being poked apart by the torte reform community, Goldberg says.

“Texans for Lawsuit Reform did a study and … found that the statute is being used by people for things that have nothing to do with free speech,” he says. “They think (the statute) is being construed too broadly and will touch any type of lawsuit. They feel the same about what would constitute a legal action. They think the evidence needed of a plaintiff to win a case doesn’t match what’s needed in other legal proceedings. This law uses clear and specific evidence (as a mandate for proving an anti-SLAPP premise), which they say is a little difficult and undefined to follow. They think the structure overly encourages the filings of motions to dismiss. They have problems with how the law is being implemented.”

The Texas law does have strong support from the Texas Press Association and the Texas Association of Broadcasters, led by the groups’ attorney, Laura Prather, a partner with the firm Haynes and Boone LLP.

“She’s been working with sponsors, many of the people on the legislative committees in Texas, to walk some of this back,” Goldberg says of the law’s challenges. “She’s had a little success but not enough yet.”

The biggest challenge, that could make the protective law ineffective, including limiting the law’s application only to matters of constitutionally protected speech – which would not apply to defamation or copyright protection or invasion of privacy – instead of matters of public concern. “It blows a big hole in the law,” he says.

In his third visit to the podcast, Kevin Goldberg, legal counsel for the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, joins producer Michael O’Connell to shed some light on anti-SLAPP legislation and why Texas’ law, a model for other states, is in trouble.

#209 – Lawsuits that have chilling effect on free speech
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