Lessons From The Pandemic

COVER: Lessons From The Pandemic

Touch Points

By Ann Marie Lipinski• From the Curator• November 9, 2021

The word had so thoroughly infiltrated the language that I no longer noticed it. Then one afternoon, walking across a windy plaza, it brought me to a full stop. A coffee shop had printed it on a long, wide banner, … Read more

The Old Normal Is Not the Normal Journalism Needs

By John Archibald• Opinion• May 4, 2021

George Floyd was alive the last time my newsroom was open. Think about that. So were a half million Americans and three-plus million citizens of the world, now lost to the plague of covid-19. Donald Trump was president, the news … Read more

The Newsroom Is Dead. Long Live the Newsroom!

By Jacqui Banaszynski• Opinion• May 10, 2021

I asked a friend the other day if he was eager to get back to the newsroom we once shared. The publisher has indicated that the doors will reopen as soon as midsummer, with people returning for staggered shifts. My … Read more

For Visual Journalists, The Pandemic Was Creative Inspiration to Try Harder

By Deb Pastner• Opinion• May 24, 2021

The pandemic brought out the very best in my teammates. I’m the director of photo/video at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Throughout my 22 years at the paper, I’ve observed plenty of stellar photojournalism. But this past year was different. Read more

What Newsrooms Can Learn About Trust from Coverage of the AstraZeneca Vaccine

By Mattia Ferraresi• Opinion• April 30, 2021

On March 12, 2021, La Repubblica, Italy’s most widely circulated and trusted newspaper, placed a chilling headline on its front page: “AstraZeneca, Fear across Europe.” Some reports linked the vaccine developed by Oxford University to a few unusual cases of blood … Read more

For Political Reporters, There Will Be No “Return to Normal”

By Lisa Lerer• Opinion• April 26, 2021

Back in October of last year, seven months into the pandemic, life in Delaware, Ohio, a fast-growing exurb outside Columbus, wasn’t exactly normal, but it sure seemed close. A few weeks before the presidential election, maskless people strolled through the … Read more

In Polarized Times, Local Papers Need to Lean Even Harder into Tough Issues

By Austin Bogues• Opinion• June 2, 2021

When I was 12, my buddy Robbie Davis and I went to see the movie “Titanic.” When my dad picked us up that evening, he asked us how we enjoyed the film. I told him about the special effects, action, … Read more

Post-Covid, Newsrooms Should Cover What’s Going Right in Indian Country, Too

By Kyle Edwards• Opinion• June 8, 2021

In late March, the Navajo Nation reported no new daily Covid-19 cases for the first time in six months. For the largest reservation in the U.S. — whose borders expand across Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico — it was an … Read more

“A Wake in Words”: The Importance of Obituaries During — and After — the Pandemic

By Maureen O’Donnell• Opinion• July 19, 2021

When I started to attend wakes as a girl, I told my father I didn’t know what to say or do. It was simple, he said. You extended your hand and say, “I’m sorry for your troubles.” He and my … Read more

Food Writing Needs to Balance Service Journalism with Hard News

By Brett Anderson• Opinion• April 28, 2021

The first death reported from Covid-19 in the U.S. occurred about 30 miles from where I read about it, at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, on the last day of February 2020. I was on my way home to New … Read more

As the World Changes, Sports Journalism Needs to Keep Meeting the Moment

By Shira Springer• Covering Women's Sports• September 8, 2021

One of the pandemic’s most significant sports moments took place before a nationally-televised basketball game on Aug. 4, 2020 on black t-shirts with bold white lettering. The all-caps message: “VOTE WARNOCK.” The t-shirt designers and wearers: WNBA players. At the … Read more

School Experiences Varied Widely in The Pandemic. Your Journalism Should Reflect That

By Kathleen McNerney• Opinion• September 10, 2021

The closures began at random, like kernels bursting out of hot oil onto the kitchen stove. A high school in Snohomish County, Washington, closed for cleaning after a student tested positive. Two districts in Westchester County, New York, would … Read more

STAT’s Helen Branswell On How COVID-19 Has Changed the Health and Medicine Beat

By Laura Colarusso• Opinion• September 2, 2021

In a career that has spanned 40 years, Helen Branswell has covered some of the biggest health stories of the last several decades: the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the West African Ebola outbreak and the Zika virus. In 2003, she … Read more

During Covid, Journalists Were Less Packaged. Let’s Keep It That Way

By Issac J. Bailey• Opinion• April 23, 2021

Every Tuesday and Thursday, back around 2002, I would wrap my son in warm clothes and tuck him into a covered car seat. Only his little face would be showing as I’d snap the seat out of its base after … Read more

Features

Get to Know the Newsrooms Focused on Elevating Latinx Voices in the U.S.

By Sofia Cerda Campero• Diversity• March 24, 2021

“Can star player Marco Fabián revive the Union’s Latino fan base? Show me some cariño (affection), they say.”  That was the headline for an April 2019 Spanish-language multimedia feature in The Philadelphia Inquirer about Mexican soccer … Read more

Serving the Audiences Mainstream Newsrooms Don’t

By Clio Chang• Diversity in Journalism• May 19, 2021

In March, when a man shot and killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, across three different spas in the Atlanta area, one thing quickly became clear: the mainstream press wasn’t equipped to cover the news in the … Read more

Covering Extremism: “As Exhausting a Beat as It Is Important”

By Celeste Katz Marston• Features• March 30, 2021

Seyward Darby’s book on women in the white nationalist movement, “Sisters in Hate,” grew out of a detailed piece of reporting she published in Harper’s in 2017. But that wasn’t the first place … Read more

Alexei Navalny, Social Media, and the State of the Free Press in Russia

By Elizaveta Kuznetsova• Features• June 10, 2021

On the morning of April 29, Russian opposition leader and blogger Alexei Navalny appeared in court via video link, fighting the second in a series of legal charges filed against him since the beginning of the year. His appearance was … Read more

Lithuania’s Public Broadcaster and Commercial Rivals Clash over State Funding

By Ann Cooper• Features• March 15, 2021

When the Soviet army moved to crush a powerful pro-independence movement in its republic of Lithuania in 1991, the military’s list of targets included Lithuania’s broadcast studios and TV transmission tower, which for months had defiantly sent out news … Read more

One Year Into the Pandemic, How Are Health Reporters Doing?

By Chelsea Cirruzzo• Features• March 3, 2021

For many health reporters, reporting on the coronavirus started long before most Americans realized the devastating impact it would have on their daily lives. Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, … Read more