What Journalists Must Do Next

Cover Package: Election '16: Lessons for Journalism

The Way Forward

By Ann Marie Lipinski• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 30, 2016

For many mornings on my way into the Chicago Tribune newsroom, I passed by an Arthur Miller quote engraved in the lobby: “A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” That sentiment, as sturdy as the travertine … Read more

Closing Gaps in the Name of Democracy

By Evan Osnos• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 13, 2016

Everyone has a story along the lines of mine. At a family gathering in October, I was chatting with a cousin about the campaign, and, since we didn’t see it quite the same way, each of us was speaking delicately. Read more

All Journalism is Local

By Nicco Mele• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 14, 2016

Being a political animal, one of my first thoughts the morning after the election was, “Who’s going to run for President now?” You can rest assured that there are a dozen or so billionaires slamming their fists on their kitchen tables … Read more

The Problem with Polls Isn’t Technological, It’s Political

By Jill Lepore• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 16, 2016

“Election polling is in near crisis,” the political scientist Cliff Zukin wrote in The New York Times in June of 2015, a year and a half before the Dewey-Defeats-Truman of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton. Zukin is a … Read more

Predicting Outcomes Is Not Our Job

By Keven Ann Willey• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 16, 2016

One thing I worry about is the seeming expectation that the press should have been able to predict the outcome of the election. And that “we got it wrong.” Clairvoyance is the stuff of fortune tellers; journalists report on the world. Read more

Responding to Our Oral Culture

By Danielle Allen• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 11, 2016

Sometime late last winter, I began to focus closely on what would happen in the primaries on Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016. I realized I really needed to get on top of Donald Trump’s policy proposals. My first step was … Read more

Four Steps to Strengthening Journalism’s Role in Our Democracy

By Michael Oreskes• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 22, 2016

Focus is one of journalism’s most important skills. It’s that separating the wheat from the chaff thing. In an age of distraction we need THAT skill now more than ever. (Is anyone going to explain why Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign … Read more

Get Serious About Getting Rid of Fake News

By Joshua Benton• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• December 14, 2016

One way to think of the job journalism does is telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s victory came as such a surprise—a systemic shock, really—to both … Read more

What Went Wrong—and Right—with Campaign Coverage

By Perry Bacon• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 22, 2016

There was a whole lot that went right in 2016 campaign coverage. If you were reading Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, PRRI’s Robert Jones, or New America’s Lee Drutman, you understood how race, identity, and our changing culture were deeply shaping this … Read more

Relevance over Reach, Value over Volume

By Jeff Jarvis• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 15, 2016

Among journalism’s many failings in this election, our greatest, I think, is this: We in liberal media (let’s admit that much, at least) abandoned and, in turn, were abandoned by conservative Americans. They do not trust us. Thus we could … Read more

Looking for “Whitelash”

By Wendi C. Thomas• Diversity• November 11, 2016

The signs that someone like Donald Trump was coming were right there, in online comments lousy with creatively spelled racial slurs that slipped past even the best filters. They were in the vicious tweets and voicemail nastygrams aimed at journalists … Read more

Still An Outsider in Mainstream Journalism

By Ricardo Sandoval Palos• Diversity• November 22, 2016

I watched election-night coverage on television with acquaintances from Europe, who seemed flummoxed by what was unfolding on the screen. I spent a lot of time explaining the Electoral College and unpacking why I thought that Donald Trump was getting … Read more

How Collaborative Media Partnerships Can Help Rebuild Local and Regional Journalism

By Jeff Young• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 10, 2016

The chasm between the coastal media centers and the country’s heartland is laid bare. Deep discontent, long simmering in the manufacturing Midwest and Appalachian coal country, went largely unrecognized until this year’s populist primal scream. Even then, national coverage often … Read more

Creating Community-Centered, Not Candidate-Centered, Narratives

By Mark Jurkowitz• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 18, 2016

In covering the local election season in Dare County, North Carolina–best known as the home of the Outer Banks–journalists can’t be accused of paying too much attention to an unending parade of polls. For starters, there were no publicly released … Read more

Journalists Need to Better Explain What Journalists Do … Including Me

By Michael Calderone• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• November 18, 2016

Donald Trump’s precedent-breaking refusal to allow a small pool of journalists to cover his travels as president-elect has revealed some common ground in our otherwise fractured republic. Good, Trump supporters tell me. The press deserves to be treated badly after … Read more

Earn Back the Right to Serve as Watchdogs

By Matt K. Lewis• Election '16: Lessons for Journalism• December 7, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump’s recent victory stunned a lot of Americans, not the least of which were members of the elite media, who couldn’t fathom the possibility that A) the so-called experts had been wrong, and B) the American public might … Read more

Let the Interlopers In

By Diana Marcum• Diversity• November 12, 2016

I remember the day the Los Angeles Times decided to hire me. I’d been freelancing for the paper out of California’s Central Valley. Ashley Dunn, then the metro editor, came up to Fresno because no one had met me in … Read more

Storyboard

The Power of Oral History as Journalism

By Keith O'Brien• From Nieman Reports• May 5, 2016

“I think I started every interview with: Tell me how you met Bill Cosby.” Noreen Malone, a senior editor at New York magazine, didn’t plan the question ahead of time. As she set out to interview the 35 women accusing … Read more

Watchdog

Access, Accountability Reporting and Silicon Valley

By Adrienne LaFrance• Watchdog• August 17, 2016

The first time I visited Facebook’s office in Washington, D.C., I was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement. I didn’t. Then there was the time I got through an entire interview with a product manager at Apple, only to be … Read more

Features

Reporting on Islam

By Carla Power• July 6, 2016

The concept was simple: Seven Californian Muslims, each photographed against a grey background, talking about the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” usually translated as “God is great.” No voiceovers. No cutaways. Just seven Californians, talking about two words. If there’s one … Read more

Crowdfunding the News

By Gabe Bullard• September 26, 2016

On June 25, 2013, Texas state Senator Wendy Davis spent nearly 11 hours on the chamber floor filibustering a bill that would have restricted access to abortion in her state. The speech drew the national eye to … Read more