These 11 journalists will go in search of a “networked” model for beat reporting
In March, the Membership Puzzle Project, which I direct, announced its Join the Beat initiative. We invited applications from beat reporters who want to figure out how to work in a more “networked”...
View ArticleWhat savvy journalists say when they are minimizing Trump’s hate movement...
For two years I have been tracking a speech pattern among American journalists, in which they try to explain to us — and perhaps to themselves — why Donald Trump’s campaign to discredit them is not...
View ArticleI will be studying German pressthink in Berlin this summer.
In 27 days I fly to Berlin to spend June, July and August as a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy. I have never lived in a European city, so this will be a new experience for me. I am posting here a...
View ArticleWhen the President’s own lawyer pictures him a grifter
By Jay Rosen White House reporter Jonathan Karl of ABC News gave a scary report Sunday about the recent round of interviews by the President’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. On ABC’s “This Week,” Karl...
View ArticleWhy does CNN continue to have Kellyanne Conway on?
I want to capture for you a little moment today on the Sunday shows. It came during Brian Stelter’s lengthy and of course contentious interview with Kellyanne Conway on CNN’s Reliable Sources. (I watch...
View ArticleIt’s time for the press to suspend normal relations with the Trump presidency
It sometimes happens in diplomacy that one country has to say to another: “This is extreme. We cannot accept this. You have gone too far.” And so it suspends diplomatic relations. In 2012 the...
View ArticleA current list of my top problems in pressthink
1. Across Europe and the United States there moves a right wing populist wave that includes in its political style the rejection of the mainstream press as corrupt, elitist and part of the system that...
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What The Correspondent adds to the American press
We make free presses one at a time. Those we have spring from the protections of law in a given country, and from the history and culture of the people who live there. When you look at the world map,...
View ArticleNext time you wonder why New York Times people get so defensive, read this.
The readers of the New York Times have more power now. They have more power because they have more choices. And because the internet, where most of the reading happens, is inherently two-way. Also...
View ArticleElection coverage: the road not taken
Originally published as a Twitter thread on election day, 2018. There was a path the American press could have walked, but did not. This alternative way was illuminated as far back as 1992. Our...
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Letter to My Network: Join The Correspondent
This is for everyone who follows me on social media, or who has read my press criticism. All my former students. Fans of this blog, PressThink. Anyone who owns my book. Anyone who’s heard me speak. It...
View ArticleYep. The Correspondent screwed up in its communications with members. Here’s...
By request, here’s my post explaining how I view The Correspondent’s decision not to have its headquarters in New York or the US, and to base the English-language operation in Amsterdam. (I am an...
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Hating on journalists the way Trump and his core supporters do is not an act...
“Hate movements” are the mobilization of resentment against a particular group of people for political purposes. When journalists are the group targeted, those of us who believe in a free press have a...
View ArticleA current list of my top problems in pressthink, April 2019
1. Absent some kind of creative intervention, 2020 campaign coverage looks like it will be the same as it ever was. Who’s ahead? What’s it gonna take to win? The debacle in 2016 has not brought forth...
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Key steps in the citizens agenda style of campaign coverage
Part of a call to action for an alternative direction in election coverage, originated by the newsroom improvement company, Hearken, and the research project that I direct, Membership Puzzle Project....
View ArticleA current list of my top problems in pressthink, August 2019
1. The entire system for covering the Trump presidency is wrongly conceived. It needs to be rebuilt, faulty premise by faulty premise. But there has never been such a rebuild while the story is running...
View ArticleBad headline, small changes at the New York Times
Knowing the characters involved — columnist Joan Walsh and the New York Times — this announcement last week caught my eye: I canceled my subscription. I know a lot of folks will tell me I’m wrong. I...
View ArticleThe Christmas Eve Confessions of Chuck Todd
‘Round midnight on Christmas eve, Rolling Stone posted a short interview with Chuck Todd, host of “the longest running show on television,” NBC’s Meet the Press. Its contents were explosive,...
View ArticleResponsible parties at the New York Times explain to the country what went...
The New York Times has a franchise product in podcasting, The Daily with host Michael Barbaro. Last week it sent out to two million listeners a 50-minute interview with the executive editor of the...
View ArticleResponsible parties at the New York Times explain to the country what went...
This is part two. Part one is here. On January 31, 2020, The Daily with host Michael Barbaro sent out to its two million listeners a 50-minute interview with the executive editor of the New York Times,...
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