Another quick post from vacationland. In case you missed it, The Boston Globe has gotten itself into trouble for publishing a headline that claimed Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is transgender. The headline was affixed to an accurate AP story. Step two: The Globe botched the correction. Finally, it published this editor’s note:
A significant error was made in a headline on a story in Friday’s print sports section about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif incorrectly describing her as transgender. She is not. Additionally, our initial correction of this error neglected to note that she was born female. We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regrettable and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.
Social media has erupted in fury at the Globe. This was a mistake that could have been avoided with the right training and editing processes in place. I hope the Globe takes steps to ensure that this sort of error doesn’t happen again.
Follow-up, Aug. 5: My old Boston Phoenix and “Beat the Press” friend Adam Reilly reports for GBH News on the fallout. I’m quoted.
•Kim lie dogs Noem. South Dakota’s dog-killing governor, Kristi Noem, also lied in her forthcoming book about staring down North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some media outlets are describing her claim as “false” rather than as a “lie,” which I guess is OK. Several, though, have parroted her claim that it was an “error.” For instance, here’s a headline from The Associated Press: “South Dakota Gov. Noem admits error of describing meeting North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in new book.” And here’s how the “PBS NewsHour” rewrote that AP headline: “South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem erroneously describes meeting with Kim Jong Un in new book.” Whatever else you want to call it, it was not an error — you don’t confuse the dictator of North Korea with the governor of North Dakota.
•Gannett nixes expansion. Earlier this year, top executives at Gannett said they were in expansion mode. Our largest newspaper chain, notorious for hollowing out newsrooms, was going to try something else, building up both the news and advertising sides. Well, that didn’t last long. Rick Edmonds reports for Poynter Online that Gannett’s plans to add staff at its smallest dailies have been put on hold, although hiring continues at larger papers. On Thursday, Gannett reported a loss of $84.8 million in its first quarter.
•Media chain roulette. You may have heard that Kim Tunnicliffe, a respected reporter for WBZ-AM, was laid off by the soulless corporate ghouls who own what was once a great all-news radio station. What I didn’t know was that the three entities called WBZ all have different owners. WBZ-TV is owned by CBS and WBZ-AM by iHeartMedia. The third entity, WBZ-FM, is much better known as the Sports Hub, and its owner is Beasley Media Group. I had assumed the Sports Hub was part of iHeart. Anyway, best wishes to Tunnicliffe, who deserves an opportunity to work for an outfit that’s worthy of her talents.
The foundation is set up as a nonprofit, so it can receive tax-free donations and philanthropic grants. In turn, it has doled out grants to small papers in western Iowa, including the Carroll Times Herald, La Prensa and the Times Pilot. These grants were critical because the crisis in local news has hit rural areas hard.
I’ve got a Quick Take on The Associated Press, which is the principal source of international and national news for local newspapers around the country — and in many cases for state coverage as well. Two major newspaper chains, Gannett and McClatchy, have announced that they are going to use the AP a lot less than they used to, which will result in less money for the AP — and either higher fees, less coverage or both for their remaining clients.
Ellen looks at Outlier Media, a woman-led team of local journalists in Detroit. They formed a network called the Collaborative Detroit Newsrooms network to produce and share news for underserved populations. They’ve won a major international award from the Association of Media Information and Communication. Executive editor Candice Fortman traveled to Barcelona to pick up the juried prize.
A new book, “Newshawks in Berlin,” by Larry Heinzerling and Randy Herschaft, details the shameful coddling of the Nazis before and during World War II at the hands of The Associated Press’ Berlin bureau. Tunku Varadarajan reviews it (free link) for The Wall Street Journal. There are echoes of my Northeastern colleague Laurel Leff’s book “Buried by the Times,” about The New York Times’ playing down of the Holocaust.
There’s a bit more nuance to the news that Gannett is dropping The Associated Press — nuance that wasn’t included in Ben Mullin’s initial tweets or in a follow-up story at The Wrap. New York Times media reporters Mullin and Katie Robertson now report that Gannett will use Reuters for international news and that it will continue to use the AP for election data. The McClatchy newspaper chain is cutting back on its use of AP journalism as well.
Credit where it’s due: Sophie Culpepper of Nieman Lab appears to have been the first to report that Gannett will use Reuters.
Three observations:
The news is not as bad as it first appeared. Reuters is a world-class news organization, and the AP is the gold standard for election returns.
You have to wonder what this will mean for the AP. Gannett publishes about 200 daily papers, anchored by USA Today. McClatchy, which is owned by a hedge fund, publishes in 30 markets and owns major papers such as The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina; the Fort Worth Star Telegram, The Kansas City Star and The Sacramento Bee.
I find it odd that the initial statement from Gannett, reported by Mullin on Twitter/X, made no mention of Reuters or of Gannett’s continued use of the AP for election data. A bit of damage control perhaps?
There aren’t too many people who subscribe to more than one daily newspaper, either digital or in print. There are a few freaks like me (I pay for four). Most people, though, go with zero or one. Which is why a daily, unlike a weekly, should offer a comprehensive mix of international, national and local news. It doesn’t matter if all or most of the non-local journalism is from wire services. After all, The Associated Press, Reuters, AFP and the like are among our finest news organizations.
Gannett, though, is about to embark on a different approach. New York Times media reporter Benjamin Mullin posted on Twitter/X earlier today that our largest newspaper chain is going to drop the AP as of March 25. “This shift will give us the opportunity to redeploy more dollars … where we might have gaps,” according to a memo from chief content officer Kristin Roberts that was quoted by Mullin, who also quoted a statement from Gannett:
This decision enables us to invest further in our newsrooms and leverage our incredible USA TODAY Network of more than 200 newsrooms across the nation as well USA TODAY to reach and engage more readers, viewers and listeners.
In other words, Gannett’s 200-plus daily papers are going to be dependent on USA Today, the mothership, for anything other than local news. So how is that going to work out?
I flipped through the current e-paper version of USA Today to see what type of international and national journalism might be available. The front page features interesting stories about COVID, Black history museums and, well, the cherry blossoms in Washington. Inside are staff-written stories on transgender issues, free speech, some Trumpy content and St. Patrick’s Day violence in Florida. The business, sports and lifestyle sections are all staff-written. So far, so good.
But there was only one international story in the main body of the paper, a piece about famine in Gaza that appears on page 2. It was written by a USA Today staff writer, but it’s based mainly on a United Nations report. At the end is a tagline stating that material from the AP was incorporated into the article. It’s accompanied by an AFP photo. In other words, covering the world without AP content may prove to be mighty difficult.
The Gannett papers offer something else to their subscribers called Nation & World Extra that looks like a print product but that I’m told is available only as part of the e-paper. Here you’ll find serious stories about the war in Gaza, the Supreme Court, the migrant crisis and more, and virtually all of it is from the AP. Imagine that you’re a subscriber to The Providence Journal and no other daily paper. Perhaps you rely on Nation & World Extra. And it’s about to lose all of its AP reporting, to be replaced with — well, who knows?
In a similar vein, Gannett also offers something called Sports Extra that also mostly consists of AP news.
I don’t want to pronounce this a pending disaster until I see what it looks like in practice. USA Today is a fine paper, and there’s no reason that Gannett’s dailies can’t use USA Today stories to provide their readers with important national news. But I don’t see how they’re going to offer any international coverage without relying on a wire service, whether it’s the AP or something else.
As is usually the case with Gannett, this seems like nothing other than a money-saving move.
Update: Gannett has clarified initial reports and now says it will use Reuters for international news and the AP for election returns. In addition, the McClatchy chain is cutting back on its use of AP journalism as well.
I’ve got a ton of good stuff to blog about, and I hope to get to some items over the next few days. Right now, though, I’ve got to say something about a weird experience I had yesterday.
I was on the train back to Boston, cleaning up the transcript of an interview I’d done in New Jersey, where I was reporting on a nonprofit news organization called NJ Spotlight News. I paid more than I usually do so that there would be a human set of eyes looking it over before sending it back. The quality was excellent — but there was a section in which my subject and I were talking about race. Every reference to “White” was uppercase and every reference to “black” was lowercase.
If you’ve been following changes in news style over the past few years, you know that some pretty significant shifts have been implemented. The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Boston Globe all decided to start uppercasing Black but not white. Here’s how Globe editor Brian McGrory explained the paper’s reasoning in January 2020:
Effective immediately, we’re updating the Globe stylebook to put the word Black in uppercase when it is used to describe a person’s race. After consulting with leaders in the Black community, we’re making this change to recognize that the word has evolved from a description of a person’s skin color to signify a race and culture, and as such, deserves uppercase treatment in the same way that other races — Latino being one example — are capitalized. Unless otherwise requested by a person we’re writing about, we’ll use Black, which is considered to be more inclusive, rather than African-American.
Why not “white”? As the AP described it, “white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.”
The Washington Post took a different position, uppercasing both “Black” and “White,” explaining, “Stories involving race show that White also represents a distinct cultural identity in the United States.” That’s fine, and I suspect that at some point others may follow suit.
But referring to uppercase White people and lowercase black people is something you’d expect from the racist dark reaches of the internet. I was kind of startled to see it come from a reputable transcription service — and no, I’m not going to name them, so don’t ask. I might let them know (now I’ll have this blog post to send them), and if I get a response, I’ll tell you what they said.
The Associated Press, in a long-overdue move, has announced that it will stop reporting the names of suspects who are arrested and charged with minor crimes. The worldwide news agency says that not only do those names lack newsworthiness but the lack of follow-up means that it would never be reported if they were acquitted. John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, writes:
These minor stories, which only cover an arrest, have long lives on the internet. AP’s broad distribution network can make it difficult for the suspects named in such items to later gain employment or just move on in their lives.
The AP will also “stop publishing stories driven mainly by a particularly embarrassing mugshot,” he adds.
And now The Associated Press has made a bad situation worse — responding to the petition by its own journalists about the firing of Emily Wilder by saying it will embark on a months-long review of its social media policy. Worse, the AP pulled Wilder out from beneath the bus so it could throw her under it again. The AP’s David Bauder reports:
The news leaders said sharing more information was difficult: the company does not publicly discuss personnel issues to protect the privacy of staff.
“We can assure you that much of the coverage and commentary does not accurately portray a difficult decision we did not make lightly,” the memo said. It did not make clear what information was reported inaccurately.
Good Lord.
Also worth noting is that the AP’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, who’ll soon take over the top editor’s job at The Washington Post, says she had nothing to do with Wilder’s firing and sounds disinclined to intervene. According to NPR’s David Folkenflik, “She tells NPR as a result [of her pending move to the Post] that she had handed off her duties and had nothing to do with this decision.”
The Associated Press’ decision to fire a just-graduated college student because of her pro-Palestinian social media posts raises some important issues for those of us who teach journalism.
The AP claims that it ended Emily Wilder’s stint as a news associate in Phoenix solely because of her tweets during two weeks on the job. That would be bad enough. After all, Wilder is 22 and at the very beginning of her career. In what world would it not make more sense to sit her down, explain what she was doing wrong, and let her off with a warning? Unfortunately, based on the evidence, it seems likely that her posts on behalf of Palestinian rights back when she was a Stanford student were an issue as well, especially when an online right-wing mob came after her.
Students in my ethics classes talked about Twitter a lot during the past year. I found the case of Alexis Johnson to be particularly useful in illustrating the dilemma that journalists face. Johnson, you may recall, was banned from reporting on Black Lives Matter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after she tweeted a harmless joke comparing littering at a Kenny Chesney concert to the trash left behind at racial-justice protests.
Some of my students were adamant that journalists should be free to tweet what they like — that they have a First Amendment right to express themselves on their own time just like anyone else. What I tried to convey to them was that Johnson’s situation was a lot more complicated than that. No, journalists may not tweet anything they like. Straight-news reporters can’t tweet their opinions about people and issues they cover.
The problem with the Post-Gazette wasn’t that Johnson had a right to tweet anything as she saw fit, but that her tweet was innocuous. It seemed pretty clear that she was being punished because she was Black and because she had a mind of her own. The absurdity of what happened to her led to an uproar at the paper and in the community. Johnson eventually left, and today she’s in a high-profile position at Vice News.
So the message for Emily Wilder is no, you can’t tweet just anything. And though the Phoenix bureau was as far as you can get from the conflict in the Middle East, the AP is a worldwide news organization. Management is within its rights to insist that its reporters not express opinions about issues in the news. The problem was its absurd overreaction, which had all the appearances of a craven attempt to appease its critics on the right.
Which leads me to a more difficult issue — the question of whether someone’s social media activities as a student should be held against them when they enter the work world. My first instinct is to say no. How careful are 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds supposed to be when commenting on the news? Even if they aspire to work for a news organization, that’s in the future. They should be judged by their performance on the job, not by the views they expressed before being hired.
But I’m not sure we live in that world anymore. Disproportionate though the Wilder firing may have been, the AP is one of the largest news organizations in the world, reportedly employing about 3,300 people. I don’t think I can tell my students that they should continue to tweet controversial opinions without any fear of the consequences. What if they have a chance to get a job with the AP some day? Or another news organization with a retrograde social-media policy but that is otherwise a place they would like to work?
Few observers seem to think the AP got this right. A group of AP employees is circulating a petition calling the agency to task. Among other things, they say:
We strongly disapprove of the way the AP has handled the firing of Emily Wilder and its dayslong silence internally. We demand more clarity from the company about why Wilder was fired. It remains unclear — to Wilder herself as well as staff at large — how she violated the social media policy while employed by the AP….
Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her. We need to know that the AP would stand behind and provide resources to journalists who are the subject of smear campaigns and online harassment. As journalists who cover contentious subjects, we are often the target of people unhappy with scrutiny. What happens when they orchestrate a smear campaign targeting another one of us?
The AP’s own account of what happened says that Wilder was terminated “for violations of its social media policy that took place after she became an employee.” But Wilder herself told David Bauder, the AP reporter who wrote the story, that she believed her firing had more to do with the harassment campaign against her, which was mainly based on her more caustic tweets from when she was a student. And she told Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post: “This was a result of the campaign against me. To me, it feels like AP folded to the ridiculous demands and cheap bullying of organizations and individuals.”
As it happens, the incoming executive editor of the Post, Sally Buzbee, is currently the executive editor of the AP. It’s unimaginable that she was involved in the firing of a low-level employee like Wilder. But she’s certainly seen what a mess this has devolved into, and it’s well within her power to do something about it. The AP committed a serious misstep, and failing to address it isn’t going to make it go away.
My message to my students remains the same. There are a number of activities that journalists simply can’t take part in, such as making campaign contributions, putting a candidate’s sign on their lawn, becoming an activist on a contentious social issue — or tweeting opinions that they would never be allowed to express in the regular course of doing their job.
And as much as I would like to think that they shouldn’t be held to account for what they said as students, we have all entered a new reality. Rehiring Emily Wilder would be a positive step toward reassuring journalism students everywhere that common sense still exists, and that a great news organization like the AP isn’t going to be intimidated into doing the wrong thing.
