Intimidation backlash
Amid what seems like an epidemic lately of reporters getting bullied, it’s worth looking at how this treatment often plays out: It backfires.
Vanity Fair’s Eric Lutz documented this effect in a recent piece about the Trump administration’s efforts to intimidate journalists, including HuffPost’s S.V. Dáte, who was called a “left-wing hack” by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt after he asked who suggested the location of an upcoming summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (She answered, “Your mom did.”)
Their exchange went viral and only ended up bringing attention to Dáte — including a New York Times profile by Erik Wemple this week. HuffPost, meanwhile, used the episode to promote its membership program, Wemple writes. “Serious questions deserve better than middle school humor,” its campaign said.
As Dáte’s HuffPost colleague Igor Bobic posted on X: “Can someone from the WH call me an extremely childish thing so I can get a NYT profile and a badass Doug Mills pic pls. Man did this backfire on them.”
- Plus: The interview assassin. Why Isaac Chotiner doesn’t mind the “gotcha” label. (CJR)
News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.
Civic Discourse & Democracy
>> Why economists and doctors are monitoring local news (CJR)
The removal of publicly available data on government websites means some researchers are turning to local news for insights, writes C.J. Robinson.“News media help fill that gap by acting as our eyes and ears in the community,” a computational epidemiologist, Maia Majumder, told Robinson.
>> Will the real De Blasio please stand up? A lesson from a UK newspaper’s gaffe (The Guardian)
The Times of London’s removal of a story quoting “Bill de Blasio” about New York’s mayoral race turned out to be a lesson for journalists after Semafor reported that the newspaper had not interviewed the former mayor at all, but rather a wine importer from Long Island with the same name.
- Read Semafor’s scoop: British newspaper spoke to the wrong Bill de Blasio, not an ‘imposter’ (Semafor)
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Culture & Inclusion
>> A new roadmap for reporting about Latinos (Nieman Reports)
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has updated its Cultural Competence Handbook at a time when it’s critical for journalists to “cut through the noise and report with accuracy, context, and humanity,” writes Patricia Guadalupe. The update, she writes, offers a “sharper, more practical guide” for reporters covering an increasingly diverse United States.
- Read: The NAHJ’s handbook
- Plus: When this California Spanish-language TV station closed, a news desert opened for Latino viewers (CalMatters)
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Community Engagement & Trust
>> New from API: 3 examples of conversion wins from newsroom-creator partnerships
We’ve added a new entry to our guide to influencer collaborations: a look at how they can lead to increasing on-platform followers and off-platform conversions — newsletter subscriptions, paid subscriptions and attendance at in-person gatherings. Three case studies, from Houston, Tulsa and Dodge City, Kan., show that these collaborations can lead to real conversion wins.
- Plus: A new fellowship is all about putting the news in news creator (Nieman Lab)
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Revenue & Resilience
>> CPB grants $1.1M to form Upper Midwest Newsroom (Current)
A $1.1 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will support a regional journalism collaboration led by Minnesota Public Radio, writes Tyler Falk. The Upper Midwest Newsroom will also include Prairie Public Broadcasting, South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Wisconsin Public Radio and will have two editors managing four reporters — one at each station.
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What else you need to know
🎥 Hundreds of thousands of videos from news publishers like The New York Times and Vox were used to train AI models (Nieman Lab)
🤖 AI slop myths, debunked: What’s harmful, what’s hype, what’s just meh (Digiday)
🤔 Many Americans say they often come across inaccurate news — and have a hard time knowing what’s true (Pew Research Center)
📣 Why so many publishers are launching brand marketing campaigns right now (Adweek)
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Weekend reads
+ Media went all-in on diversity. Now it’s in full retreat (The Wrap)
+ Who has free speech? The global fight over a powerful idea (Foreign Affairs)
+ A post-literate age. Journalism and fiction are both essential to a thriving democracy. (The Atlantic)
+ As a crime reporter, blood and death were part of the job — something worse came after (Newsweek)
