Pressure, and pushback  

Journalism is under pressure amid fear of retribution from the Trump administration, write Sara Fischer and Christine Wang of Axios. They cite examples of major media outlets pulling their punches in covering the president.

But lately there have also been examples of journalists refusing to be intimidated by Trump, his administration or his followers.

The media observer Margaret Sullivan this week writes about three cases of media companies or their people fighting back, saying they “have a lot to teach us about courage and the backlash that can result.” She cites, among other examples, the legal challenge by NPR and Colorado public radio stations to an administration order to halt federal funding for public media.

Courage can also come in the form of asking tough questions, as CNBC’s Megan Cassella did with the president himself, asking him about what has been called a “TACO trade,” an acronym that stands for “Trump always chickens out.” She didn’t invent the term — it came from a Financial Times columnist, as The New York Times explains. But he lashed out at her, saying her question was “nasty.”

For her part, Cassella wasn’t fazed. “He didn’t like the question, but it was a chance for him really to defend the strategy,” she said later on the network.

Backbone can be shown in other ways as well — like writing about attempted intimidation. At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Solomon Jones refused to be cowed by a reader who accused Jones of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and saying “it ‘may’ be terminal.”

“The email, sent from a reader who identified himself as a resident of Malvern, was meant to intimidate me,” Jones wrote. “Instead, it has fueled me.”

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

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> The Substack election (The Bulwark)

Pete Buttigieg is there. So is Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego and Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel. Substack, writes Lauren Egan, is becoming a home for Democratic politicians who want to build their following and expand their influence. “As cable news becomes less relevant and as liberals have scattered across a variety of social media platforms, Substack has become one of the few places to offer stability,” she writes.

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Culture & Inclusion

New from API: Trauma-informed leadership: How psychological safety can enhance journalistic well-being

As part of API’s work in helping news leaders create balance and refill resilience among their staffs, we held webinars during Mental Health Awareness month in May on avoiding burnout and how trauma-informed leadership recognizes and respects human experiences. API’s Sam Ragland walks through some exercises aimed at providing insight on two concepts — relational currency and psychological safety — that are key to success for well-being in journalism.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> Why we’re making neighborhood zines and what we hope they spark (PublicSource)

PublicSource in Pittsburgh has embarked on a print experiment that it hopes will answer a question: “What happens when journalism shows up on your block, not just in your inbox?” writes co-executive director and editor-in-chief Halle Stockton. It is launching neighborhood zines, which it describes as “short, tangible collections of stories, reflections and resources created with and for a specific community,” starting with one on the city’s North Side. Stockton says the effort is meant to offer storytelling that is approachable “and maybe even delightful.”

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Why some towns lose local news − and others don’t (The Conversation)

Abby Youran Qin, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researched the reasons behind the decline of local newspapers between 2004 and 2018 and found five key drivers that determine which towns lose their papers and which do not. Her first one: Newspapers tend to follow the money, not the places where their work is needed most. “My analyses suggest that local newspapers survive where affluent subscribers and deep-pocketed advertisers cluster,” she writes, explaining that without accountability journalism, mismanagement and corruption flourish, which is how “news deserts exacerbate inequality.”

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What else you need to know

🙌  IndiJ Public Media names Katie Oyan as next CEO (ICT News)

⚖️ Former LA Times reporter sues Villanueva, L.A County, alleging 1st Amendment violation (Los Angeles Times)

🔄 The New York Times and Amazon announce AI licensing deal (The New York Times)

✂️ Business Insider is reducing staff by 21% (Ben Mullin, Bluesky)

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Weekend reads

+ Questions for “multi-local” news — and the need for clear answers (Dick Tofel’s Second Rough Draft)

+ At the nonprofit Salt Lake Tribune, a turnaround and now a big gamble (Poynter)

+ This owner thinks newspapers are better off diminished than dead (Nieman Lab)

+  ‘They told me that they’d hunt me down’: journalists on how they survive working in war zones (The Guardian)