#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.

“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

#362 What is the future of LGBT media?

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.

5 more podcasts to check out

I’m happy to announce that 22 Hours: An American Nightmare, the podcast we interviewed Megan Cloherty and Jack Moore about last week, shot to the top of Apple Podcasts’ ratings in its first week. While we had very little do with the show’s success, we’re happy to see our podcasting friends doing well.

This morning, I posted a short podcast in conjunction with a story I wrote for the Indiana University Alumni Magazine. I mentioned this assignment back in May, when I posted my full interview with Erica Mandy on the IAJ podcast. Erica, founder and host of the Newsworthy, was one of the alumni podcasters I interviewed for the story.

I’m always happy to talk to my fellow podcasters, especially ones doing exceptional work. And that was definitely the case with the creators behind the five podcast I wrote about:

Erica Mandy, the Newsworthy
Paul Gilmartin, Mental Illness Happy Hour
Christiane Wisehart, Examining Ethics
Sonja and Alex Overhiser, A Couple Cooks: Small Bites Podcast
Jerod Morris, Andy Bottoms and Ryan Phillips, The Assembly Call

I encourage you to listen to our short preview and also check out each of these podcasts. They highlight the variety of quality content being produced in the podcasting medium. Enjoy.

#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.

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.

#360 New true-crime podcast tackles ‘An American Nightmare’

Megan Cloherty and Jack Moore, co-creators of the 22 Hours: An American Nightmare podcast.

“The best thing that can be said about this crime was from the prosecutor,” said Megan Cloherty, former It’s All Journalism producer and co-creator of 22 Hours: An American Nightmare, a new true-crime podcast from WTOP News Radio in Washington, D.C. “She said: ‘This a crime that nightmares are made of.'”

Jack Moore, the podcast’s co-creator, agreed with that assessment.

“It strikes to the primal fear of anyone, being attacked in your home, with your family, being held captive, and being unable to protect or save the ones that you love,” he said.

22 Hours dives deep into the brutal 2015 home invasion and murder of the Savopoulos family that shocked the nation’s capital.

“There was a lot of extraordinary things about this crime,” Moore said. “The family was very wealthy. It happened in a very wealthy part of D.C. But, it really revolves around a family and this horrible thing that happened to them.”

Both, Cloherty and Moore covered the case for WTOP, following it day-to-day through the courts.

“The man who was accused of doing it and then went on trial and was convicted of doing it, a big part of his defense was, ‘It wasn’t me, it was my two brothers,” Moore said. “So now you have another family that is completely shattered by this horrifying crime.”

The 10-episode podcast series 22 Hours: An American Nightmare debuts Monday, June 10. Listeners can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Podcast One.

Reporters Meghan Cloherty and Jack Moore join IAJ producer Michael O’Connell in studio to talk about their new true-crime podcast, 22 hours: An American Nightmare. They discuss what it was like covering the 2015 home invasion and murder case for WTOP News Radio in Washington, D.C., and the challenges they faced turning the story into a 10-part podcast series.

#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.

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

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.

#357 Keeping print alive in Toronto’s West End

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.

#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.

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

#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.”

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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