✍️ New Jobs and Trust In Mainstream Media ✍️ — March 20
“Be It Resolved, Don’t Trust Mainstream Media”; Plus hundreds of new jobs at mainstream and non-mainstream media organizations
Hello folks, happy Monday and welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, home of the world's largest curated journalism jobs board. We handpick every single job, so you don’t have to. If you’re a paid subscriber and don’t have access to the job board, me at daniellevitt32@gmail.com and I’ll send you the link.
Today we’re going to dig into trust in mainstream media, based on a recent MunkDebates debate on the motion “Be It Resolved, Don’t Trust Mainstream Media”. Arguing for the motion were Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray, and against were Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg. Debates offer a snapshot in time on a particular subject, and it was incredibly insightful to hear what each side thought and how they arrived at those conclusions. Personally, I went into it pretty skeptical I could have my opinion changed, but was pleasantly surprised to learn I went back and forth (and still am) on the issue.
Something I think about a lot is that, in spite of my position on and in the media, I run a job board that lists jobs for many of the organizations I criticize. That of course can easily come across as grossly hypocritical. But that’s okay, because it’s impossible to run a perfect organization and my critiques (and praise when it warrants it!) come from wanting the strongest and healthiest media landscape as possible. And thus, my two objectives with the job board are 1) to help people land good-paying jobs and 2) share as much of my experience so that those people have a broader and deeper lens on journalism.
So with that, let’s get through some housekeeping and then we’ll get to the debate!
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🚨 Featured Postings 🚨
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Forum Communications Company
Audience Operations Specialist
Location: Duluth, MN or fully remote
Contract: Full-time
Requirements: Experience in implementing customer retention strategies; being a subject matter expert for a CRM-type system; Google Analytics and/or other metrics platforms; strong problem-solving capabilities; self-motivated, good organizational skills, detail-oriented, ability to prioritize, multi-task and meet deadlines; Naviga software
Deadline: Rolling
Street Spirit Newspaper
Location: Berkeley, CA
Contract: Full-time
Salary: $60,000-$63,000
Requirements: Edit and fact-check stories for each issue; Report and write stories as needed; Build relationships with freelance journalists; Post on social media to promote Street Spirit
Deadline: Rolling
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Politico Europe
Location: London, UK
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 3+ years’ experience working in an audio team producing podcasts or some other broadcast equivalent; Skilled audio editor (Adobe audition or equivalent); Experience recording and setting up technical equipment; Strong communication written and oral; Ability to work under pressure and on deadline; A keen interest and knowledge in politics — UK but also Europe and the US
Deadline: Rolling
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 5+ years’ experience working in an audio team; Skilled audio editor (Adobe audition or equivalent); Experience recording and setting up technical equipment; Strong communication written and oral; Ability to work under pressure and on deadline; A keen interest and knowledge of European politics
Deadline: Rolling
Journalist, Politics and Influence
Location: Paris, France
Contract: Full-Time
Requirements: 5-10 years’ experience on political, public action, economics/finance or related subjects; Good knowledge of political ecosystem and public affairs; Ability to develop network of sources and reveal proprietary information; Autonomy and sense of initiative; strong team spirit and taste for entrepreneurial adventure; The journalist will be required to collaborate with teams around Europe; French-speaking with conversational English to interact with international editorial staff.
Deadline: Rolling
Preview of This Week’s Postings 🇺🇸🇬🇧🇪🇺🇨🇦
Debate Disclaimers and Prerequisites
I’ve worked for several news organizations that would be considered by most as mainstream — The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News to name just three.
The purpose of a debate’s motion is to yield a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but I don’t think this was fair to those arguing against it as it only captures one side.
There is no right or wrong answer. We all come from different angles and have unique experiences.
While I landed on ‘yes' for the motion, I don’t believe anyone should just discard mainstream media. I still firmly believe we need the largest and most influential news organizations to act in the best interest of the public at large, not just for their own audiences, or in conjunction with government or corporations.
What Is The Mainstream Media?
The first thing we must define is what the mainstream media even is, something it took the debaters almost 40 minutes to do. Everybody’s interpretation is going to be slightly — or vastly — different, and that’s okay. There are numerous similar definitions of the word mainstream itself, and I’ve gone with Collins’, which describes mainstream as “People, activities, or ideas that are part of the mainstream are regarded as the most typical, normal, and conventional because they belong to the same group or system as most others of their kind.”
As it pertains to our topic, I interpret mainstream media to mean news outlets that are any combination of legacy media or “papers of record”, politically homogeneous, state funded, corporate owned, and the largest and most influential. I don’t believe the mainstream is made up of any single attribute, otherwise The Joe Rogan Experience would be considered mainstream based on it being the most popular podcast in the world, and I don’t think anybody would put the JRE in that category.
Unlike specific outlets, I think ideas are far more temporary and have the ability to be catapulted into mainstream thought far quicker. Take Universal Basic Income, for example. Per Investopedia, UBI “is a government program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly. The goals of a basic income system are to alleviate poverty and replace other need-based social programs that potentially require greater bureaucratic involvement.” UBI is certainly not new and has been around since at least the early-16th century, according to Fortune, and has ebbed-and-flowed in mainstream conversation ever since. But thanks to the recent rise and threat of automation on jobs and income, and Andrew Yang’s relatively successful 2020 U.S. presidential run, I would consider UBI as being on a beeline toward the mainstream, if it isn’t already.
Okay, now we’ve generally defined what mainstream is, let’s get to the debate.
“Be It Resolved, Don’t Trust Mainstream Media”
The debate itself was 90 minutes and the topic deserves an entire book. I’m going to highlight one large, yet particular point, which is this: The most alarming aspect of the argument against the motion, was the lack of an argument itself.
Among Malcolm Gladwell’s main points defending mainstream media was that its journalistic process was still intact, and his main evidence for this was that when he worked at The New Yorker there were lots of fact checkers and copy editors. To be honest, I was astonished that someone of his stature, of whom I have a lot of respect for, having read two of his books and have two more on my bookshelf waiting to be read, would have such a flimsy argument. I was waiting for the second part of his evidence, but it never came.
My own experience is pretty much the opposite. Of the newsrooms I’ve worked in, only FiveThirtyEight and the Columbia Missourian — one of the student newspapers at the University of Missouri — required every single word and number in my stories to be fact checked by an in-house copy editor. Everywhere else, my work was edited by folks on my team, and I in turn was also a reporter-turned-copy editor. For reporters to double up as copy editors, while juggling multiple other deadlines isn’t fair, especially in the case of BuzzFeed who recently encouraged its reporters to produce more stories despite it cutting the newsroom by about 40% in the past year.
Copy editing isn’t just about fact checking and making sure words and numbers are correct. It’s assessing the nuance and weight each word and number carries, considering angles and perspectives the reporter hasn’t thought about. To think the process is anywhere close to where it was seems outdated and wrong. To be transparent, I couldn’t find anything from a credible source in the past year regarding the decline of copy editors. Perhaps that’s because it’s not news anymore — here’s a 2013 Poynter article with the headline “Copy editors ‘have been sacrificed more than any other newsroom category’”, and an NYT elegy for copy editors from all the way back in 2008.
Michelle Goldberg was at least a little more conceding than her counterpart, and repeatedly pointed out that mainstream media get things wrong. While refreshing, this also isn’t a promising argument to still trust the mainstream. That said, I do agree with her statement that consuming information from the central media in the most important times — natural disasters, emergencies and breaking news — more often than not makes us smarter and more informed. I just don’t think it should be the only media that should be consumed.
Where Do We Find Trust?
As I mentioned up top, I don’t think the specific motion was fair to Michelle and Malcolm who argued against it, as it more or less absolved non-mainstream media from the same scrutiny. A better question would have been ‘Why Don’t More People Trust Mainstream Media?, because the reality is that trust in the media is at an historic low. Less than a quarter of people in the U.S. believe national news organizations care about their best interests, according to a recent study by Gallup and Knight Foundation.
My first concluding point: I don’t think you can trust any one news outlet, or even a single “stream” of media. I’d be a massive hypocrite if I told you that all you needed to read was my newsletter, or if you consume these newsletters then you’ll have everything you need. Instead, read what I have to say (duh!), but we must also consume information that challenges our presumptions, because that ultimately makes our beliefs stronger and more robust.
Second: Due to financial motives and the obsession for audience capture, we are cannibalizing each other. When a member of the mainstream media publishes an opinion piece with the headline “Is the Rise of the Substack Economy Bad for Democracy?”, I’m dumbfounded how the democratization of journalism could actually be bad for democracy. Vice versa, any time a headline reads “THIS Is What They’re Not Telling You”, it causes more alarm and division. If we don’t even trust each other, how can we expect the public to trust us?
Third: we need to tolerate and collaborate more. That means working across business, political and ideological lines. How cool would it be if The New York Times and New York Post, two of the U.S.’s oldest outlets, came together to publish a joint investigation on an issue affecting both their readerships? Yes, this might sacrifice precious subscriptions and audience capture, but imagine what a statement like that would do to its audiences and the wider media landscape. It would be a message of togetherness and being in it for the same reason, and doing what our governments are failing at.
And finally: We have to reset the priorities of mainstream media. I’m not naive enough to ignore the financial requirements of running a news organization of any size. I run my own publication and I’m one of the millions of people who find money among the most common anxieties. However, revenue cannot replace truth and accuracy at the top of the hierarchy of priorities — look at what’s happening to CNN after it prioritized ratings and partisanship for years, before returning its focus to neutrality. While certainly not the only solution, the rise of journalism nonprofits, such as ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, will go a long way to restoring trust. And there’s good news on that front: the Institute for Nonprofit News reports that “since 2017, more than 135 nonprofit news outlets have launched, roughly double the number of startups that launched in the previous five-year period.”
That’s all for now from me. Wwhere did you land on the motion? How much did you swing one way or another? Drop a comment below or email me at daniellevitt32@gmail.com! 🙏
Great points. Love the idea of NYT and NYP (or any others) teaming up to bring important stories to their readers!