Tag Archives: Columbia Journalism Review

Protecting Female Reporters From On-Air Sex Assault

Accountability, Compassion, Media, Minimizing Harm, Videos, , , , ,

Protecting female reporters from on-air sex assault: Britni de la Cretz finds some broadcasting companies react when female journalists are groped or harassed on camera.

“Such companies offered the journalists time off, therapy or counseling services, and opportunities to reevaluate whether they wished to continue reporting from those locations where they were assaulted,” she writes.

“Each woman indicated that her newsroom took the incidents incredibly seriously, especially considering the long-term psychological risks of harassment on the job, and responded in a way that felt adequate, though that may not always be the case.”

Domestic Violence Coverage Standards

Accountability, Fairness, Media, ,

Domestic violence coverage standards: Justin Ray examines a conflict between Vermont State Police and the Barre Times Argus over a murder-suicide.

The local newspaper “ultimately pledged to improve its standards for domestic violence coverage — though the paper’s editor raised concerns about the (police) spokesman’s voluble criticism and the potential precedent it sets for the paper’s relationship with a prominent state agency,” Ray writes.

Updating News Archives

Accountability, Accuracy, Media, Online News,

Updating news archives: Rick Paulus writes that outdated “trapped-in-time” news segments don’t tell the whole story.

“Creating detailed stories from the splinters of larger narratives is at the core of news gathering,” he writes.

“Journalists are charged with determining the scope of stories — where they begin and end, how broad or narrow a story should be. That challenge is now complicated by digital duplication, infinite archives and instantaneous access to them.”

 

 

Local News Death Spiral

Accountability, Accuracy, Freedom of Speech, Independence, Media, ,

Local news death spiral: Kyle Pope reports that job cuts at the New York Daily News signals need to avoid self-pity in journalism.

“This can’t be about us,” he writes. “It has to be about why the country should care if local news goes away, which is the trajectory we now find ourselves on. What are the effects on a democracy if local news is no longer in the picture?”

He adds: “If you’re in journalism and you can’t muster an answer to that question, you need to move on.”

Tech Journalism

Accountability, Media, ,

Tech journalism: James Ball calls for a universal approach.

“Maybe we should simply scrap the idea of a ‘tech desk’ altogether”, he writes.

“The sector needs scrutiny, but since technology now touches every aspect of our society, keeping it siloed from the rest of the newsroom now feels artificial. Let it be covered, extensively, across desks.”

Photojournalism’s Sexual Harassment Problem

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Photojournalism’s sexual harassment problem: Kristen Chick writes that female photographers are calling for their own moment of reckoning.

“Many women in the industry say the behavior is so common that they have long considered it simply one of the realities of working as a woman in the profession,” she writes.

The problem is rooted, she says, in these factors: The field has historically been male-dominated with a culture that glorifies macho, hyper-masculine behavior; increasing reliance on freelancers; workshops and other events for young photographers are often exploited by older, established photojournalists.

 

Finding News Deserts By ZIP Code

Accountability, Freedom of Speech, Media, Social Media, , ,

Finding news deserts by ZIP code: Michelle Ferrier writes about the Media Deserts Project.

It’s a “research effort that is trying to map the ways in which many of America’s rural communities are indeed impoverished by the lack of fresh, daily local news and information,” she writes, and find media audiences.

 

Fortifying Newsrooms

Media, Minimizing Harm, Weighing Benefits and Harm, , ,

Fortifying newsrooms: Kyle Pope writes that the five killed at the Capital Gazette forces us “to rethink the threat to journalism in Trump’s America.”

“It is heartbreaking, but necessary, to recognize that the openness that defines local news likely carries too high a risk; local newsrooms, at least for now, may have no choice but to fortify themselves.”

In the war against the press local journalists may be “most at risk.”