Learning from creators

Dave Jorgenson, The Washington Post’s “TikTok guy,” is often cited as a legacy newsroom journalist who has mastered the social platform. Now he, along with two others on The Post’s video team, are leaving The Post to start their own online video company.

The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin calls Jorgenson’s departure a “test of whether a journalist’s personal brand can thrive when it is detached from a nationally known newsroom with huge online reach.”

Another test is whether legacy newsrooms can learn from the experiences of creators and apply their techniques to their content mix. Journalists can look to the creator playbook as “an integral part of a broader long-term sustainability strategy,” Ben Reininga and Ryan Y. Kellett write for Nieman Reports.

Reininga and Kellett recently spent a year at Harvard studying this question and came up with some lessons. And while they acknowledge the challenges involved — the potential for low-quality content or misinformation — they see “compelling reasons for journalists and news organizations to try to establish a foothold on these platforms.”

“Chief among them: they are where growing numbers of people get their information,” they write.

  • Related: Video creators: Please take this survey here to help the Video Consortium, along with Project C and Fordham University’s Dept. of Communication and Media Studies, better understand how independent video creators work, fund themselves and stay afloat.

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Why accurately reporting death tolls in a disaster is so challenging — and important (Poynter)

Keeping track of death tolls in weather disasters is not easy, writes Jan Wesner Childs. She cites a number of reasons, including communication gaps, varying methods of keeping track of deaths and lack of coordination among agencies. She asked journalists who have covered weather disasters for their thoughts on how to handle the uncertainty. “The most important thing for journalists is to keep asking questions about deaths and injuries, again and again and again, and ask for details,” Peter Prengaman, Associated Press global climate and environmental news director, told her.

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Culture & Inclusion

>> Documented, Conecta Arizona, El Tímpano, Sahan Journal and Listening Post Collective announce the formation of the Immigrant News Coalition (Documented) 

The four independent local news publishers will collaborate to create the Immigrant News Coalition in an effort to help fill information gaps that immigrant audiences often face and “stabilize and scale their work and that of peer organizations.” The coalition said it will receive ongoing support from Listening Post Collective, including civic media design strategies; a grant of $1.5 million from Press Forward’s recent infrastructure round; and a $350,000, two-year grant from the Democracy Fund for peer-to-peer leadership work.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> What if news avoiders are right, and you don’t need journalism? (Knight Lab)

In June, Mattia Peretti and Jeremy Gilbert gathered 10 journalists and other people from across the journalism world “for a day of collective reflection and ideation.” They say that when participants were asked to consider journalism’s role “from the audience point of view,” many of the answers included the word “better,” prompting a discussion about how journalism can make people’s lives better. “To center the audience means going beyond producing more content and distributing stories on more platforms,” they write. “Instead, we must embrace the reality of people’s lives: what they need, what can make them better, and how journalism fits as a positive force in those lives.”

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Los Angeles Times owner plans to take paper public (Axios)

LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong said he is planning to take the newspaper public in the coming year. His comments, in a Monday appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, follows years of tumult at the paper under the billionaire’s ownership. Soon-Shiong’s remarks, writes Kerry Flynn, followed “an impassioned speech from Stewart about the media needing to stand up to President Trump,” in the wake of CBS’ decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

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What else you need to know

👀 Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication (The Guardian)

🔏 Cincinnati CityBeat says 2 of its journalists arrested while reporting on Roebling Bridge protest (WCPO)

🎙️Edith Chapin, NPR’s top editor, is stepping down (The New York Times)

🤖 The Atlantic and The Economist among initial partners for Google ‘featured notebooks’ (Press Gazette)