A tough new media environment 

The degree to which President Trump and his allies are disrupting the news media ecosystem can feel overwhelming — that’s part of the point. To help us keep track, the International News Media Association’s Earl J. Wilkinson has an issue-by-issue rundown of all the ways that Trump 2.0 is changing the media business. 

As if there weren’t enough challenges already, Wilkinson writes, “now we must deal with the multi-front impacts of a U.S. administration that is changing the environment in which news media operates — with global ramifications.”

One of Wilkinson’s points is that media companies “are pulling their punches to project neutrality.”

This is a theme New York Times journalist David Enrich has been hitting on in media rounds for his timely book about the effort to overturn the landmark Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan, “Murder the Truth.”

As an investigative reporter, he’s felt intimidation campaigns firsthand, but the Times has a big stable of lawyers to respond. Local news outlets might not, he figured. So he asked them, and heard “absolute horror stories,” he told PBS Newshour’s William Brangham.

“The bottom line was that journalists and members of the public all over the country . . . were shying away from stories that needed to be told, or in some cases were being sued out of business when they had the guts to actually tell the stories,” Enrich said.

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

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Higher Ed Under Pressure: Resources for local journalists (Open Campus)

Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization with a collaborative network of higher education reporters, is offering an assortment of resources designed to help local journalists explain what’s at stake for colleges in their area. The guides include issue primers, source recommendations, datasets, a Slack channel and other resources. The project, called Higher Ed Under Pressure, is a free service for working journalists and newsrooms.

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Culture & Inclusion

>> The four-day newsroom? How a bold schedule shift could ease burnout and boost retention (Reynolds Journalism Institute)

Some journalists might be skeptical of the notion of a four-day workweek in the news business. But the idea has its converts, writes the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s Austin Fitzgerald. Newsroom managers from around the country recently gathered to discuss the shorter week as a way to combat burnout and boost retention, he writes, and came away with actionable strategies to implement the change.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> How news publications are changing to protect immigrant sources (CJR)

With many immigrants reluctant to talk on the record, some publications have loosened their sourcing rules to allow anonymity so that people can speak more freely about their experiences, writes Meghnad Bose. “It’s not our job to make Immigration [and Customs Enforcement]’s job easier by identifying targets,” Miami Herald senior editor Jay Ducassi told Bose.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> 13 newsletters every newsroom should launch (Inbox Collective)

The newsletter consultant Dan Oshinsky says that when he talks to newsrooms, he’s often asked how many newsletters they should have. His answer is that they can have as many as they want, so long as they can be grown, monetized, measured and sustainably produced. Some news organizations might only have one. But he provides 13 ideas for newsrooms to try.

>> Join us: Diversifying Revenue Q&A: Demystifying sales for better collaboration

Table Stakes alumni (including employees of companies that have participated in the program) are invited to join us Thursday, March 27 at 1 p.m. EDT for a conversation with Kenny Katzgrau —  the publisher of Red Bank Green and creator of Broadstreet — about how to reframe advertising to better align with organizational missions and break down silos. Learn more and register here.

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What else you need to know

🙌 Niketa Patel appointed executive director/CEO of the Online News Association at a pivotal moment for journalism (ONA)

🌏 Entry submissions are open for the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards (Covering Climate Now)

✂️ Chicago Sun-Times to lose 20% of staff after buyout offer (Chicago Sun-Times)

✍️ 5 lessons from 3 years and 450 audits: What we’ve learned and what’s next (Lion Publishers)

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Weekend reads

+ These 10 jailed journalists worked for U.S. outlets that Trump silenced (The Washington Post)

+ How journalism should cover a world with the U.S. no longer at its center (Dick Tofel’s Second Rough Draft)

+ I learned my hometown paper died from Facebook. That’s the future we’re facing (Poynter)

+ The unbelievable scale of AI’s pirated-books problem (The Atlantic)