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APME NEWS From the Editor
Andrew Oppmann
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his edition of APME News should have been in your hands a few weeks ago. We held the presses to include some pretty big news, however: The potential merger of the Associated Press Media Editors and the American Society of News Editors. I’ve been working as a volunteer for APME for almost 20 years, dated back to my days as managing editor of The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser (back then, the ME in APME stood for Managing Editors and the NE in ASNE stood for
Newspaper Editors). Each organization had a different style and tempo, but a common passion for journalism and the First Amendment. As the years passed, the differences between our two groups started to shrink – even to the point where we combined forces and resources and created an annual joint conference. APME President Jim Simon and ASNE President Alfredo Carbajal share their thoughts on this bold move in this issue’s cover story. I hope you read it carefully and voice your thoughts.
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Ken Paulson: Defending a free press, one resignation at a time Merger Ahead: ASNE and APME move forward with plans for consolidation Mark Baldwin: Forum brings clarity to today’s news and noise climate Austin’s Powers: Everything you need to know for September conference See the Light: Sunshine Week illuminates timely issues, social media maze NewsTrain: Scholarships help journalists polish digital skills at workshops Great Ideas: Creative new features, Web projects and social media tools How They Did It: Oregon staffs handle a bear of a project Karen Magnuson: Embracing diversity is an issue of accuracy, credibility How They Did It: Civil Beat attracts 3 million visitors to watch seal live cam The Winners: 2018 APME Award for Journalism Excellence & Innovation Editors in the News: Promotions, appointments and awards AP Stylebook Minute: Timeless advice from a century ago APME Officers: Roster of APME Board of Directors
EDITOR Andrew Oppmann Adjunct Professor of Journalism Middle Tennessee State University Andrew.Oppmann@mtsu.edu DESIGNER Steve Massie smassie@crain.com
APME News is the quarterly magazine of the Associated Press Media Editors, a professional, nonprofit organization founded in 1933 in French Lick, Indiana. Its members include senior editors and leaders from news operations in the United States and Canada who are affiliated with The Associated Press, including more than 1,400 newspapers and online sites and about 2,000 broadcast outlets. The group also includes college journalism educators and college student media editors. APME works with AP to support and recognize journalism excellence and the First Amendment. To learn more about APME’s programs and activities, visit apme.com.
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By Ken Paulson
Defending a free press, one resignation at a time
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n American’s journalism schools, we teach students how to write, report and interview. Maybe we should also teach them when and why to resign. That’s a thought inspired by Sinclair Broadcast Group’s order that its anchors read a corporateissued statement about America’s news media. An excerpt from the script, intended for anchors A and B: “Hi, I'm (A) ____________, and I'm (B) _____________... (B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our Northwest communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that _______ produces. (A) But we're concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. (B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories... stories that just aren't true, without checking facts first. (A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’...This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.
We need to instill in the next generation of journalists a deep respect for journalistic ethics and a determination to do the right thing ...
What’s truly damaging to democracy, of course, is when a major media company undermines the First Amendment and the credibility of thousands of news outlets of integrity to advance its own political and commercial agenda. Of course, this unethical behavior drew a lot more attention when Deadspin compiled a video showing all of Sinclair’s anchors reciting the script in unison seemly at the same cadence. It was absolutely chilling. What was most unsettling was virtually all were willing to recite those words and then return to work the next day, seemingly unfazed by what they had done. Virtually every newspaper editor I know has faced significant ethical challenges from a publisher, corporate owner or advertiser. Many of us have our own war stories about taking an ethical stand at the risk of being fired or having to resign. The good news is that often those in power see an editor’s steadfast determination to do the right thing and then back off. At least that’s the way it used to work. We need to instill in the next generation of journalists a deep respect for journalistic ethics and a determination to do the right thing, regardless of personal or professional risk. Some Sinclair employees said they did not resign because there were onerous conditions in the contract that would put them at a significant economic disadvantage. Yes, quitting your job is inconvenient.
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Perhaps we need to take a cue from Sinclair and make this required reading in America’s newsroom and journalism classrooms: “Hi, I'm (A) ____________, and I'm (B) ______________... (B) Our greatest responsibility is to the community we serve, publishing the truth and keeping an eye on the people in power. (A) That means government officials, of course, but it also applies to other influential members of the community, including those who advertise with us and those who sign our paychecks. (B) It’s disappointing to us that some try to influence our coverage by applying political, economic or legal pressure. But we promise to report fully and fairly, applying the same ethical guidelines we’ve embraced throughout our careers. No pulled punches. No favorites played. (A) And if we’re ordered to do something that we regard as unethical, we’ll refuse. We understand that we’ll have to resign or be fired, but that’s the price to be paid for working in a profession founded on trust. Newsrooms can’t do their jobs with an intermittent, “only if convenient” commitment to professional ethics. That would be extremely dangerous to a democracy. Ken Paulson is the president of the Freedom Forum Institute’s First Amendment Center and dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at Middle Tennessee State University.
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APME NEWS ASNE President Alfredo Carbajal, left, with APME President Jim Simon.
MERGER AHEAD
APME and ASNE move forward with plans for consolidation
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MISSOURI AND NEW YORK ---- The American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors are advancing a merger plan aimed at creating a new journalism leadership organization. The executive teams of ASNE and APME met in New York City and agreed to proceed with merger recommendations developed over months of talks between the groups. The new organization will support current news leaders, help develop emerging leaders and represent a stronger, more unified voice that defends a free and independent press. “The proposed merger of ASNE and APME represents an opportunity to create a new and vibrant organization with an even stronger voice to defend press freedom, promote diversity and inclusiveness in content and coverage and build the next generation of journalism leaders,” said ASNE President Alfredo Carbajal, managing editor of Al Día at The
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Dallas Morning News. “In proceeding with this merger, we also recognize and honor the legacy of both ASNE and APME, who for decades have served news leaders and helped to uphold journalism's highest values and standards.” APME President Jim Simon, managing editor of Honolulu Civil Beat, added, “We believe that working together will allow us to vigorously promote the values of a free press and educate the public about why that matters in a democracy at a time when journalism --- and journalists ---- face extraordinary challenges. “In partnership, we can play a stronger and more effective role in helping ensure a vital future for journalism.” The ASNE and APME executive teams will continue to hold discussions to formalize consolidation efforts, beginning with drafting a Memorandum of Understanding. Both groups will seek membership approval in conjunction with their joint News Leadership Conference, to be held Sept. 11-12 in Austin, Texas.
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Merger would create a powerful and unified voice
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hen I began my tenure as APME president last fall, the odds I’d ever be writing a column like this seemed pretty uncertain. Going back a couple of decades, APME and ASNE leaders have occasionally flirted with the idea of combining forces. For a variety of reasons, those conversations went nowhere. Not this time. After nearly a year of preliminary talks, APME and ASNE have agreed to pursue a merger plan aimed at creating a brand-new journalism leadership organization. The proposed merger is an opportunity to combine our voices into a single, forceful advocate for the values of a vigorous free press ---- and to educate the public about why that matters in a democracy ---- at a time when the threats and challenges to independent journalism grow ever more urgent. Our priorities for a new organization also include a sharp focus on leadership development efforts and reinvigorating the push for diversity in the industry, strategically partnering on those initiatives with funders and other journalism groups. On a practical level, both groups are convinced that together we can be stronger, more effective and more sustainable. ASNE and APME have both struggled with declining membership and financial challenges in the past decade ---- reflective, in part, of the reduced staffs and dwindling resources in legacy news shops. To succeed, we need to ensure the work of this new organization is relevant to producers, line editors and others working in the trenches – not just those at the top of the masthead. And our efforts must include those who are innovating with new models of journalism or educating a new generation of journalists, not just those working at traditional news outlets. The process won’t be quick or easy. At the earliest, a formal merger won’t happen for more than a year. A number of questions
remain unresolved, ranging from figuring out a financially sustainable business model to crafting a broader membership model. But I’m inspired by the energy and smarts from members of both boards ---- and the spirit of partnership ---- that has gotten us this far. When Mizell Stewart, then president of ASNE, first approached APME about a merger more than a year ago, there was some caution. Throughout our talks though, it’s remained clear that the broader priorities and missions of APME and ASNE are virtually identical. The Associated Press, which has been an essential partner with APME since its beginnings, has been supportive of the proposed merger and will play a continued role in the new organization. Since many APME members represent small newsrooms, retaining their voice also has been a key goal. “My support for the merger did not come without much introspection. I'm coming on a decade of involvement with APME and the Associated Press and have made many friends. I cherish that,” APME board member Dennis Anderson, who has put in countless hours pushing the merger forward, told me. “But with much due diligence on the part of our leadership and knowing the work that needs to be done to keep our industry strong and vital, joining with ASNE and building something new is the right thing to do.” APME got its start with a conversation among disgruntled editors in a bar 88 years ago. Since then, APME has turned those drinks into an enviable legacy of service to American journalism. ASNE can point to its own distinguished history that stretches back nearly a century. Creation of a new, stronger organization isn’t about leaving those legacies behind. It’s about building on those accomplishments as we seek fresh ways to help keep journalism vital during challenging times.
By Alfredo Carbajal
Timing for this historic consolidation is perfect
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he proposed merger between the American Society of News Editors and the Associated Press Media Editors is an old idea with much promise. And given the myriad of challenges that journalism faces, the time to create a new News Leaders group is now. With that in mind, the boards of ASNE and APME intensified contacts in the last year and set in motion formal talks toward creating a new organization to support current news leaders, help develop emerging leaders and become a stronger unified voice that defends journalism. The summer will be critical to conceive this new organization and delineate the process that, if approved by our memberships, will lead to the creation of a feasible organization grouping American newsrooms’ leaders from all platforms and formats. The timing for the consolidation is perfect. As news leaders, we know the many challenges that our industry is facing, from increasingly fragmented audiences to changing news consumption habits influenced by rapidly evolving technologies, and equally critical are the crisis of trust in real news and a cynical view in the role of the free press in our democracy. As we continue discussions to birth the yet-to-be-named new
News Leaders organization, it is clear in our mind that this new group should be part of all collective efforts to find the solutions and the innovation needed to sustain our journalism. Both ASNE and APME have rich histories. We recognize and honor the decades-old efforts to uphold the core values of journalism and aggressively meet our watchdog role in society, and we don’t shy away from critical issues, including the need for greater diversity in our newsrooms and representative inclusiveness in our news reports. Another reason to go ahead with this merger is the opportunity to consolidate efforts and programs that will help us grow membership and leverage our positioning to partner with other organizations whose mission aligns with ours, too. ASNE and APME have organized joint conventions in the past four years, and we're convinced that we can be more effective if we unite our efforts under a new organization and a new name. Our missions are very similar, and we'd like to think that combining our two organizations now will give us a strong and vital News Leaders organization whose mission starts with supporting and saving journalism.
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Why is a new organization needed and what would be its goals? As the country’s two premier newsroom leadership organizations, there is agreement we can have a greater impact by working together at a time when our voices and our efforts on behalf of journalism are needed more than ever. A combined organization would be sharply focused on advocacy for a vigorous and vital free press, leadership development and a reinvigorated effort at promoting diversity throughout the industry.
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Would this simply be a merger of the two organizations? In a legal sense, we’ll be combining the two organizations. But our goal is to create a new membership organization focused on serving the needs of leaders at all levels in newsrooms and on all types of journalism platforms. It would have a new name – and most likely, a broader membership structure than ASNE and APME. The ASNE Foundation and APME
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Foundation would not be merged at this point and remain independent of one another.
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What is the current timeline for creating a new organization? Our tentative schedule is based on formally completing a merger in about 15 months. Here are some of the key milestones: • August 2018: Complete a detailed merger and governance plan, as well as a combined budget, that would form the basis for a formal memorandum-ofunderstanding between ASNE and APME. Each board would vote on the plan later that month. • Sept. 2018: The full membership of each organization would likely vote on the merger proposal before the News Leadership Conference in Austin. If the proposal is approved, legal work would begin in earnest toward a merger. We also hope to roll out a new name for the organization at the conference. • Summer 2019: This is the target date for completing a merger and formally launching the new organization. We realize this is an ambitious timeline that could be delayed by a number of factors.
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Who is drafting the recommen dations for the merger?
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There are four subcommittees, comprised of board members from APME and ASNE, mapping out recommendations. The governance subcommittee is exploring options for board structure and selection of leaders; a missions-and-values group is drafting a proposed mission statement, devising a committee structure and looking at how to meld our legacy programs and annual contests. The finance subcommittee is developing a joint budget and long-term sustainability plan, as well as making recommendations on membership and recruiting. The marketing subcommittee is developing a communications strategy for the unveiling of a new organization, making recommendations for a name and logo, and creating plans for a new website
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What will the governing structure look like? The current recommendation calls for a 20-member board initially, with the possibility of eventually decreasing in size to 15 members. The Associated Press would have a seat on the board. We have also discussed potential board seats for other nonprofit journalism organizations or foundations, as well as how best to ensure smaller news organizations are represented.
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By Mark Baldwin
Forum brings clarity to today’s news and noise climate Editor’s note: The Rockford (Illinois) Register Star invited AP Vice President for Standards John Daniszewski, AP Central Region Editor Tom Berman and Samantha Shotzbarger, a member of AP’s fact-check team, to participate in a public conversation on credible journalism versus fake news. Register Star Executive Editor Mark Baldwin wrote this column reflecting the event.
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ell, that was interesting. To recap: We invited the public to a discussion — we called it “What’s News? What’s Noise?” — about the current news ecosystem with key editors from the Associated Press. Among other topics, we talked about the values that distinguish traditional news organizations — the AP and the Register Star, for example — from purveyors of so-called “fake news”; the role of social media in spreading misinformation; and the need to create better news consumers. The event was hosted by Rockford Lutheran Junior-Senior High School. Some reflections: • Some people will never be convinced of the integrity of our intentions, assuming that inside every news organization lurks a Bias Desk, coordinating with Bias Desks in newsrooms across the country. One of these folks showed up at Rockford Lutheran. The man made clear his disdain for the AP group’s explanation of how careful the wire service is to apply the same standards of fairness to newsmakers from across the political spectrum. Fine. It’s impossible to prove a negative, which is what he was asking. At least he was heard. But when a young woman, who identified herself as a Muslim, said news coverage of the Middle East often seemed to favor Israel, the man crossed the line into incivility, shouting a barnyard epithet before stomping out of the room. At least the students in attendance behaved like adults. • We need to expect educational institutions to do a better job of teaching the tools of news land information literacy. (To be fair, some schools, including Rockford Lutheran and Boylan Catholic and some of the public schools, have incorporated news literacy training into the curriculum.) Given the importance placed on educating students in the STEM fields, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we rely on the schools to turn out good citizens, too. Media literacy and good citizenship go hand in hand. • We need to be careful, very careful, about how we use social media. Wester Wuori, the chief of staff at Rockford City Hall, was in the audience and put it best: We all need to get off Facebook. That’s a radical idea, given how deeply intertwined Facebook and its cousin Twitter are with many people’s daily lives. But Facebook and
Some people will never be convinced of the integrity of our intentions.
Twitter are not news platforms, and Facebook in particular is engaged in an existential quest to distinguish verified information from its lesser cousins. • The public is entitled to have high expectations for news organizations, and news organizations need to live up to them. The best news organizations are learning environments committed to continuous improvement. At the same time, however, individual citizens have a responsibility to become better, smarter consumers of news and information. For starters, that means consuming news from multiple sources. Fox and MSNBC. The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. National Public Radio and the National Review. You’ll be uncomfortable half the time, but that’s the point. President John F. Kennedy spoke of the problems that arise when we “enjoy with comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Good citizenship demands that we allow ourselves to be made uneasy by new information and by opinions different from our own. • Finally, it’s clear that the public has a voracious appetite for discussion of how news is reported and disseminated, how complex issues are reported, and how news organizations can be fair in an age of hyper partisanship. Over the next year, the Register Star will hold more public events around issues of news literacy and coverage of specific news stories. We’ll also continue to use this page to advocate for news literacy education and other building blocks of good citizenship.
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AUSTIN’S POWERS
We want to see you this September at ASNE-APME conference
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ign up today to join us Sept. 11-12 at the ASNE-APME News Leadership Conference in Austin, Texas, where you will be inundated with tips and advice on how to lead your newsroom. For two full days at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, the conference will cover the latest innovations in content and technology, leadership strategies, new business models and more. Some highlights of our sessions and speakers you don’t want to miss:
Big J Track: Editing the Archives: One of the most sacred beliefs for news organizations is that we do not take down published articles or photos. But editors are having to balance that belief with the knowledge that even the most trivial crime brief, although factually correct, can have a devastating effect on someone's life10 years later. Editors are fielding an increasing number of appeals from the subjects of these stories who argue that the photos should be removed or the articles should at least be updated with the resolution to the case. What should you do? When should we order up more reporting? Should a story ever come down? Confirmed speakers: Emilio García-Ruiz (moderator), managing editor/digital, The Washington Post; Manny García, regional editor, USA TODAY Network; and Jeremy Harmon, director of photography, The Salt Lake Tribune. Big J Track: Newsroom 2020: Legal Hotline Live: An oppor-
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tunity for you to get any information you need about the critical legal issues facing journalism today in a free-wheeling conversational format. ASNE Legal Counsel Kevin Goldberg, after introducing ASNE's new and improved Legal Hotline, will lead editors as we discuss your own concerns, as well as the trending topics he's seeing in his work for ASNE and elsewhere. The increase in lawsuits stemming from inadvertent, unauthorized use of photos and the growing trend of retaliatory lawsuits filed against FOIA requesters are just two of the possible topics for this lively discussion that focuses on the issues you want to learn about. Proof of Concept: The Story of APB: We follow one piece of journalism from news article to broadcast television. How did a New York Times magazine article, “Who Runs The Streets of New Orleans," become a Fox TV series about a technically innovative police force in Chicago? What benefits did the Times reap from the exercise? What are the journalistic or ethical issues the writer, David Amsden, faced?
Registration and hotel The registration fee is $275 for members of ASNE and APME and $375 for nonmembers. Lunch tickets are $40 a piece and can be purchased when you register or separately through the online store. A terrific group rate is available at the on-site hotel at the conference center for $219/night Sunday, Sept. 9, through Wednesday, Sept. 12. Book by Aug. 9.
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Conference schedule Monday, Sept. 10
5 p.m. APME Board Dinner 7 p.m. ASNE Board and Past Presidents Dinner
Tuesday, Sept. 11 7:30 a.m. Registration 8:30 a.m. Welcome 9 a.m. How Do I Keep My Newsroom Safe? 10:15 a.m. APPM: Effective Use of Drones Covering Breaking News 10:45 a.m. APPM: Meeting the Online Demand for Photos with Stories • Innovation Track: Serving Your Readers in 2018 • Big J Track: What Do I Need to Know? 11:45 a.m. Break Noon A Conversation with A.G. Sulzberger 1:30 p.m. Break 1:45 p.m. APPM: Powerful Photojournalism from a Small Team • Big J Track: Comments: A Path to
Subscribers • Innovation Track: Changing You and Your Team 2:45 p.m. Break 3 p.m. Harassment in the Newsroom 4:15 p.m. Break 4:30 p.m. Innovator of the Year Presentations 6 p.m. Opening Reception
Wednesday, Sept. 12 8 a.m. Registration 9 a.m. APPM: A Word from Our Sponsors The Tool Shed 10 a.m. Proof of Concept: One tool you must know about right now 10:15 a.m. Break 10:30 a.m. Big J Track: Newsroom 2020: Legal Hotline Live • Innovation Track: Measuring Success APPM: Effective Video Storytelling 11:15 a.m. Big J Track: When the Trolls Turn On Your Reporters
• Innovation Track: Table Stakes Noon Break 12:15 p.m. A Conversation with Google Announcement of Innovator of the Year Winner 1:30 p.m. Break 1:45 p.m. APPM: Practical Solutions to Maintain a Quality Visual Report in the Face of Shrinking Staffs and Budgets. • Big J Track: Editing the Archives • Innovation Track: Does Local Opinion Still Matter? 2:45 p.m. Break 3 p.m. Hollywood and You • APPM: Diversity and Representation in Visual Journalism 4 p.m. Proof of Concept: The Story of APB 4:15 p.m. Break 4:30 p.m. Using Opinions to Reach Young People • Diversity Report 5:30 p.m. ASNE and APME Awards Presentation/Reception
Things to do in Austin Austin’s “live music capital of the world” nickname is well earned. Here’s a selection of live music spots downtown and a few just east of downtown.
Downtown Austin Elephant Room. The heart of the city’s jazz scene since 1991. In this no-frills spot tucked away in a cozy cellar under a strip of swanky restaurants on Congress Avenue, hundreds of signed dollar bills tacked to the ceiling count as decor, and Austin’s top players are all regulars. The club hosts free happy hour shows from 6 to 8 p.m. weeknights. 315 Congress Ave. (www.elephantroom.com) Parker Jazz Club. This newcomer to Austin’s basement jazz scene, co-owned by Austin jazzlifer Kris Kimura, provides a more upscale experience with a polished look and a full menu of craft cocktails. Live music Tuesday-Saturday. 117 W. Fourth St. #107B (www.parkerjazzclub.com) Antone’s. The fourth iteration of the storied club founded by blues enthusiast Clifford Antone more than 40 years ago has an upscale vibe and swanky cocktail selections, but the well-curated calendar still reflects Antone’s love of American roots music. Music most nights with happy hour shows generally starting at 6:30 p.m. 305 E. Fifth St. (www.antonesnightclub.com) ACL Live. The home base for the storied “Austin City Limits” television show is also the best place in town to see a large touring show. The sound system is excellent, the seats are com-
fortable and there’s not a bad view in the house. Check website for listings; venue tours available, too. 310 W. Willie Nelson Blvd. (acl-live.com) Flamingo Cantina. Opened in 1995, it’s one of the few live music venues to weather the typhoon cocktail of change that’s shaken Dirty Sixth Street. The club’s founding vision is centered on the irie vibes of reggae music, and it also hosts hip-hop, Latin music and other global sounds. Live music Wednesday through Saturday most weeks. 515 E. Sixth St. (flamingocantina.com) The Parish. With brick walls, a wide wooden dance floor and one of the best sound systems in town, this mid-sized room, upstairs in a historic building on Dirty Sixth, is a fantastic place to catch hot locals and buzzy touring artists before they break out onto a bigger stage. Club is open intermittently, check listings. 214 E. Sixth St. (www.theparishaustin.com) Empire Control Room and Garage. The former automotive shop has been converted into a spacious music hangar that hosts mid-size touring shows and larger local events, with sounds that run the gamut from hip-hop and EDM to rock. Live music most Thursdays-Saturdays. 606 E. Seventh St. (empireatx.com)
and friends.” The space includes a small, often tightly packed, indoor speakeasy and a spacious outdoor patio bordered by a natural rock wall. Their well-curated programming mixes up local bands, DJ nights, poetry readings, drag shows and more. With a vegan food truck on site. 900 Red River St. (cheerupcharlies.com) Beerland. The heart of Austin’s garage scene is hard, fast and loud. The defiantly unpretentious dive serves cold beer, cheap liquor and the grimiest punk and rowdiest rock the city has to offer. Live music most nights. 711 Red River St. (www.beerlandtexas.com)
Barracuda. This two-stage spot has been transformed into a warm and inviting space. Live music most nights. 611 E. Seventh St. (barracudaaustin.com)
Stubb’s BBQ. In 1968, Navasota native Christopher B. Stubblefield, a former mess sergeant in the last all-black U.S. Army infantry, returned to Texas after the Korean War and opened a barbecue joint in Lubbock. It became a favorite hangout of touring musicians such as Joe Ely, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and B.B. King. 801 Red River St. (www.stubbsaustin.com)
Cheer Up Charlie’s. Owners describe the club as an “ambiguous everybody space (for) LGBTQIA
By Deborah Sengupta Stith American-Statesman music writer
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SEE THE
LIGHT Multi-group project illuminates issues related to transparency, open government and the complex maze of social media
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he Associated Press and the First Amendment committees of the Associated Press Media Editors and the American Society of News Editors joined forces in March for a Sunshine Week project shared with news organizations across North America. The project was led by Tom Verdin, national enterprise editor/state government at The Associated Press. Here is Tom’s assessment of the project: lll
The Sunshine Week package was both timely and informative. It covered not only the main mission of Sunshine Week, which is to highlight issues related to transparency and open government, but also focused on the issue of the day ---- the systematic attacks on truth and transparency that were exposed during the 2016 election. The main story went deep into how easy it is for people and organizations to obscure their identities on social media, making it extremely difficult or even impossible to know who is behind cerVERDIN tain political messaging and digital campaign ads. The sidebar was distinctive, evolving from stories that had been reported separately over time by AP members and our own state bureaus. It focused on how politicians at all levels, right down to city council, have taken their cue from President Trump and begun labeling any critical or unfavorable reporting as “fake news” to divert attention from the hard facts. That sidebar in particular got quite a bit of attention and was referenced long after Sunshine Week had ended. We also tried a novel approach this year, adding a video graphic to the content mix. This visually explained the steps journalists go through to report and edit a news story, as a way to differentiate our work from questionable online sites that are unconcerned about balance and accuracy. As a bonus, it’s still available on YouTube: https://bit.ly/2HQCEb0
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Judging by the play, our partners have not lost interest in issues affecting the media and the public’s right to know. The Sunshine Week stories ran on at least 43 front pages, and that number does not include the many newspapers that promoted them with A1 teasers. Several used the content for front-page centerpieces. The video graphic generated nearly 16,000 views on AP’s Twitter account in the first couple days alone. Several AP customers also asked about embedding it for use in their own websites or social accounts.
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Scholarships help journalists polish digital skills at workshops
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By Linda Austin APME News
cholarships from the Hoosier State Press Association Foundation and the Arizona Newspapers Association admitted dozens for free to APME’s NewsTrain workshops in Muncie and Phoenix. The foundation financed 47 scholarships for journalists, journalism educators and journalism students in Muncie on April 14, and the association subsidized 20 students’ attendance in Phoenix on April 6-7. In addition, as it usually does, the APME Foundation supported a total of 10 scholarships for those from diverse backgrounds to attend the two workshops. Here’s more on each workshop:
Muncie NewsTrain: “very interactive” The 45 attendees emerged from their training at Ball State University energized and ready to put their new digital skills to use in their newsrooms and classrooms. “I have been in this business for more than 30 years, and it’s good to be able to acquire updated skills,” said reporter Rebecca Bibbs at The Herald Bulletin in Anderson, Indiana. “I also thought it was very interactive and allowed us to practice what was preached.” Sessions included smartphone video and mobile newsgathering with Val Hoeppner of Middle Tennessee State University, data-driven AUSTIN enterprise stories with Mark Nichols of USA Today, social reporting with Amy Bartner of The Indianapolis Star, and beat mapping with Linda Austin of NewsTrain. Jeffrey Schmucker, assistant city editor at The Blade in Toledo, Ohio, said, “Loved my time here. I highly recommend this for every newsroom.” Juli Metzer, APME board member and Ball State lecturer, was instrumental in obtaining the scholarships from the state press
Cronkite School Professor Fernanda Santos teaches how to write short and well.
VAL HOEPPNER
Indiana University students Carley Lanich and Eman Mozaffar edit their mobile video at Muncie NewsTrain. foundation. She also led the host committee of local journalists who helped organize the workshop. Phoenix NewsTrain: “everything was covered” Sixty-seven journalists, journalism educators and journalism students attended 1.5 days of journalism training at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Instructors included Cronkite's Sarah Cohen on data-driven enterprise, Fernanda Santos on writing short AND well, Jessica Pucci on audience engagement and the University of Arizona’s David Cuillier on open records. Elizabeth Montgomery, digital producer at azcentral.com, said, “I really enjoyed the whole event. ... Everything was covered, no matter your beat.” Paula Casey, executive director of the Arizona Newspapers Association, arranged for the scholarships for 20 Cronkite students to attend. She also led the host committee. “This was a great experience, and I learned a lot that I can actually apply!” said Cronkite student Skylar Mason. The slides and handouts for both Phoenix and Muncie, as well as other recent NewsTrains, can be found at slideshare.net/ newstrain. Help support NewsTrain Since 2003, APME’s NewsTrains have trained more than 7,400 journalists at 90 workshops across the United States and Canada. To keep the registration affordable at $75, APME relies on donors,
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such as The Associated Press, APME past and present board members, GateHouse Media LLC and the APME, Park, Newhouse and Sigma Delta Chi foundations. To join them in supporting NewsTrain, please visit bit.ly/NewsTraindonation. Registration opens for September NewsTrains in Greenville, S.C., and Denton, Texas Sign up at the early-bird rate of $75 to attend NewsTrain in either Greenville, South Carolina, on Sept. 7-8 or Denton, Texas, on Sept. 22. Both locations offer training in digital skills, as requested by a host committee of local journalists. The sessions will be taught by accomplished journalists who are also experienced instructors, such as Ron Nixon of The New York Times, in Greenville. In both cities, sessions include: • Data-driven enterprise off your beat • Getting your story read: maximizing social media for branding and audience engagement • Storytelling on mobile: making smart choices In Greenville, attendees will also experience: • Becoming a verification ninja • Mobile newsgathering: better reporting with your smartphone • Using social media as powerful reporting tools • Can you unplug? Making time to have a life In Denton, they will also learn how to: • Shoot smarter video with your smartphone • Use data visualization to tell better stories APME board member Katrice Hardy, executive editor of The Greenville News, applied to bring NewsTrain to her town, and David Hennigan, consumer experience director for The News, is leading the host committee. The workshop will be at Furman University.
In Denton, Dorothy Bland, outgoing dean of the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas, is the host-committee chair. The workshop will be at her school, which is about 40 miles north of both Dallas and Fort Worth. Diversity scholarships, funded by the APME Foundation, and discounted hotel rates will be available in both locations. The first 20 to register in Greenville will receive a free AP Stylebook. Registration and more info for Greenville is at bit.ly/Greenville NewsTrain and for Denton at bit.ly/DentonNewsTrain. NewsTrain is coming to Toronto, Denver, Austin and Milwaukee in 2019 APME’s NewsTrain will bring its high-quality, affordable training to two countries and three time zones in 2019. Here are the hosts for the workshops, which have an early-bird rate of $75 each to attend: • Toronto, hosted by News Media Canada in March; • Denver, hosted by Colorado State University; • Austin, hosted by GateHouse Media LLC and the Austin American-Statesman; • Milwaukee, hosted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. To be notified when dates, agendas and trainers are set for these workshops, please provide an email at bit.ly/NT2018-19. The sites were selected from applications by committees of local journalists throughout the United States and Canada. These successful committees will conduct an assessment of the needs in their newsrooms to determine which skills will be taught at the workshops. To apply to bring NewsTrain to your town in 2020, visit bit.ly/HostNewsTrain in early 2019. Linda Austin is the project director of NewsTrain. Contact her at laustin.newstrain@gmail.com or @LindaAustin_.
University of Arizona Professor David Cuillier recommends filing FOIA requests weekly.
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2017 APME/ASNE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE
great ideas ON THE JOB: MAKING THE NORTH COAST WORK The Daily Astorian, Astoria, Oregon David Pero WHAT THEY DID: For the second year, The Daily Astorian saluted workers in its Weekend Break/Friday Extra section. This generated five pages of photos and caption stories with sponsoring ads.
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FACES OF THE REGION The Times of Northwest Indiana, Munster, Indiana Summer Moore WHAT THEY DID: After the success of the Facebook page Humans of New York, we decided to launch a local version called Faces of the Region. We created a Facebook page — nwi.com/facesoftheregion — that has photos and quotes from everyday Northwest Indiana people. Then we expanded further and started Faces of the Region galleries, where we took large galleries of people mugging for the camera at events. It has added millions of pageviews to our site.
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SPIRE COLAB: OUR STORY BEGINS HERE
GIVING THEM THE TIME OF DAY Quad City Times, Davenport Iowa Autumn Phillips WHAT THEY DID: We’ve learned that our digital readers respond well to two things: Content that’s predictable, allowing them to form a habit around it; and content that’s associated with a person or personality. Realizing this, we developed a series of digital touch points throughout the day – Rick’s Six, Jack’s Notes @ Noon, Ryan’s Wrap-Up. Readers start the day with a 6 a.m. push alert on their phone for Rick’s Six. It’s a conversational write-up with images and occasional video by morning online editor Rick Rector looking at six things readers need to know on their way to work – traffic conditions and road closures, weather, a quick look at the stories people at work might want to talk about. At noon, they get another push alert with a story from our Sense of Place reporter Jack Cullen. Jack searches the streets of the Quad-Cities for the off-beat, the obscure, the curious and the culturally embedded. He writes these slice of life stories each morning and has them online for our audience each day at noon. Feedback has been tremendous and these stories are often our most popular offering of the day. Jack’s Notes also publish as a column the following day in print. At 5 p.m., readers get a push alert from digital editor Ryan Jaster called “Ryan’s Wrap-Up.” It’s a conversational look at what readers enjoyed and how they responded to the news of the day on our website. It’s a great way for the evening crowd to catch up on news they missed while they were at work.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Sarasota, Florida Matthew Sauer WHAT THEY DID: We’re defined by where we live. It explains our favorite bumper stickers, gathering places, and even the stories we tell. “Where are you from?” is a familiar ice breaker with new friends because it tells us who we are and how we view our world. What we’ve learned is that community pride evolves from those who recognize that solutions happen only after you identify the problems. The reality is that community problems share many ZIP codes. Even in Sarasota, Florida – a place that locals affectionately call “Paradise” – residents are deeply involved in social issues ranging from grade-level reading to homelessness to mental health. We’ve created SPIRE CoLab, a partnership between journalism and philanthropy to create compelling media that inspire, inform and empower communities to take action on relevant social issues. SPIRE CoLab is led by the HeraldTribune Media Group with support from The Patterson Foundation. The purpose of SPIRE CoLab is to tell meaningful stories and make them available to media organizations in your community, to spur discussion and spark action.
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The Loneliest Polar Bear by The Oregonian / OregonLive
10-month-old polar bear cub Nora explores her quarantine enclosure shortly after her arrival at the Oregon Zoo. SHERVIN HESS /OREGON ZOO
POLAR PLUNGE All hands on board as Oregon staffs handle a bear of a project
he 2017 publication of The Loneliest Polar Bear project taught editors that there are ways to think about storytelling beyond the print and digital page. Along with a five-chapter series, The Oregonian/ OregonLive released a children’s book “Hope for Nora,” a 30-minute documentary titled “Thin Ice: A Polar Bear’s Plight,” and looked for ways to engage readers through a board game, events and contests. For journalists watching the rollout from afar, one thing was clear – this was special, and it was made that way through a year-long focused effort on the part of the newsroom staff. The hard work and planning paid off as The Oregonian/OregonLive saw unique visitors stay on the project for an average of 20 minutes. “That time on site is a huge number. It’s extraordinary,” said Mark Katches, editor of The Oregonian/OregonLive. Here’s how they did it: Katches recognized an opportunity when the Oregon Zoo in Portland announced its newest attraction, a polar bear cub named Nora. Years ago, he led a project about an orangutan at the Milwaukee County Zoo when he was assistant managing editor for projects and investigations. The Milwaukee project was a three-part story by Jan Uebelherr with engagement ideas – like a children’s book -- similar to those used in The Loneliest Polar Bear. “I remember, I was a new dad reading to my newborn son (in Milwaukee),” Katches said, “and three weeks before we published that story, as I was doing a final edit, I found myself seeing the cadence of a children’s book in Jan’s writing and proposed the idea of doing a children’s book to engage a new audience.” Uebelherr and Katches co-wrote the kid’s book in just a few days. When Nora arrived in Portland, Katches said the young bear had
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GRAHM S. JONES / COLUMBUS ZOO AND AQUARIUM
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Nora the polar bear at the Columbus Zoo, winter 2015-2016. some of the same attributes as the Milwaukee orangutan. He saw a chance to revisit some of his earlier ideas but also expand on them. The Portland newsroom embarked on the project with an overarching goal in mind: “How can we make this special?” Someone suggested they do a documentary. Someone suggested a board game. Coloring pages. Puzzles. “Everyone was so excited >> Continued on next page
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about this project and the ability to connect with kids,” Katches said. “We had a lot of meetings – an early convening meeting and then got back together every few weeks.” Reporters, editors, the web team, video and photo team members each owned a piece of the project. Ultimately, the story would be a broad, multi-entry look at climate change, at the shifting role of zoos and the plight of the polar bear told through the frame of Nora’s life. In a project this size involved lots of deadlines and touch points. The Oregonian/OregonLive newsroom used Trello as a tool to keep organized and on task. It wasn’t difficult to keep the team motivated. “Everyone fell in love with Nora and fell in love with telling the story – not just about a cute cub but how we intersect with nature,” Katches said. Nora ended up being a much richer character than they ever imagined. When they started the project, they didn’t know that she was on anti-depressants or that she didn’t know how to be a bear. They didn’t know that she had cracking bones or that events would conspire so that she would have to move to Utah. “We were clear from the very beginning that if this was just a story about a bear, it would be a failure,” Katches said. “We wanted to weave in these bigger, meatier issues. That was our vision from day one.” Though the whole newsroom felt invested and contributed to the project, there was one reporter, Kale Williams, who focused on it full-time. For the first six or seven months he juggled other reporting responsibilities, but toward the end he was cut loose to spend his time focusing entirely on Nora. Katches tells editors that newsroom-wide expansive projects like The Loneliest Polar Bear don’t come along often and opportunities
should be chosen carefully instead of trying to expand every enterprise piece. “You can’t do this more than once or twice a year. It can’t be a story like this every month,” he said. “If you’re selective in your choices, it’s doable for a small newsroom or if you have 75 in your newsroom like we do.” The plan from the beginning for The Loneliest Polar Bear was to publish the story in a narrative with chronological chapters. Once it was written, they saw obvious breaks for five chapters. They expedited the process by setting staggered deadlines for each chapter. Part 1 was due in June, part 2 in July, etc. The end scene of the story, which they could not have planned, took place in Salt Lake City seven days before they published. “We wrote that last part in real time,” Katches said. One of the first things Katches did was bring on Kelley Benham French, a Pulitzer finalist and professor at Indiana University who does contract narrative editing for newspapers, magazines and book publishers. She served as the lead editor on the project from the beginning working with Karly Imus, who is Williams’ editor. Imus helped keep all the various elements of the project on track. “She’s someone I’ve wanted to work with for a long time,” Katches said. French would come to Portland for three or four days at a time. A team of editors and Williams would sit around a table and read the story aloud, once and sometimes twice. They took turns reading, switching readers at each subhed. “I love that process. It’s a good way to catch things that don’t sound right,” Katches said. French helped shape the narrative with scene and character development and identifying tension points. Katches said he stayed within his newsroom budget for this >> Continued on next page
The Oregonian staff writer Kale Williams and senior video producer and photographer Dave Killen traveled to remote Alaska to hear first-hand the story of Nanuq’s first encounter with humans near the village of Wales.
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project, but he wasn’t afraid to spend money to make sure each piece had the tools it needed to sing. They hired someone to do sound mixing and to write a musical score for the documentary. They hired someone to illustrate the children’s book. They traveled to Ohio and Utah and Alaska in order to tell the story. Sending Williams and videographer/photographer Dave Killen to the remotest part of Alaska paid off. They traced Nora’s lineage to the village of Wales and to the Eskimo hunter Gene Rex Agnaboogok. Nora’s mother was born in the Columbus Zoo but her father, Nanuq, was orphaned in the wild in Alaska. The zoo wasn’t sure of the when or where. Williams contacted the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, where Nanuq first lived after he was orphaned and was told his mother was shot by a hunter in 1988. Williams contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife in Alaska and they found a 1988 press release that named Agnaboogok as the hunter and detailed Nanuq’s first encounter with humans. From there, Williams contacted the tribal council in Wales and got the hunter’s phone number. Killen’s photos and video from Alaska and the interview with
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Agnaboogok are key pieces in the narrative that explain humanity’s changing relationship with polar bears. Once the project was done, they decided to roll it out one chapter at a time, rather than releasing it all at once. “I’ve found that readers just get overwhelmed when you give them too much, but if you space it out a bit, you’ll give the story a little room to breathe and the other pieces – video, interactives, polls – get a little more visibility and are more likely to be viewed. The Loneliest Polar Bear was published as five chapters over five days, Monday through Friday online. (OregonLive does not have a paywall). In print, it published on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday – those are the home delivery days of The Oregonian. They screened the documentary for free at the art museum to an audience of 300 people and led a Q&A session afterward. The collaborative nature of The Loneliest Polar Bear project has changed the way the newsroom approaches its other enterprise work. They continue to use Trello for project management and the team feels empowered to come up with innovative, non-traditional ideas. “Innovation. You have to let people know that’s what you crave to have your people thinking outside the box,” Katches said.
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By Karen Magnuson
Embracing diversity an issue of accuracy, credibility
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n 2004, we took a comprehensive look at the diversity of the Democrat and Chronicle newsroom. At the time, minority members made up about 15 percent of the staff, and a survey of current and former journalists of color revealed our culture was not welcoming. We implemented a plan to hire more journalists of color, help them acclimate through a new mentoring program, and provide more professional development and opportunities for advancement. We also worked on building a greater understanding of the value of diversity in our coverage with the help of a newsroom Diversity Committee. A lot has changed in 14 years due to our industry’s financial challenges and the transformation to digital, but our commitment to diversity remains the same. Our staff of 48 is smaller but more diverse with minorities comprising 25 percent — a mix of AfricanAmericans, Hispanics and Asians across the newsroom. Our primary coverage area, Monroe County, has a minority population of 29 percent with the largest group being AfricanAmerican. The breakdown for our newsroom in Rochester is 10 percent African-American, 8 percent Asian and 6 percent Hispanic. This summer, we’ll welcome two more African-Americans as reporting interns, and internships introduce us to talented up-andcomers whom we seriously consider as openings emerge. About half of our newsroom staff are women in what once was a male enclave. Of course, it’s critically important to have diverse voices making decisions about strategy and coverage, and the diversity of our leadership team stands at 27.3 percent. Our Editorial Board of eight includes three African-Americans, including community member Adrian Hale. Our diversity is well above the national average for newsrooms but more can and should be done by the D&C and all news organizations to keep up with the changing composition of the population. The news industry in general has struggled mightily with diversity as newsrooms have downsized due to financial challenges. A 2017 survey conducted by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) found that minority journalists comprised 16.6 percent of the workforce in U.S. newsrooms. The survey received responses from 661 news organizations, including 598 newspapers and 63 online-only news websites, but not all participate. I’m doing what I can to advance the cause as a member of the ASNE board and co-chair of the ASNE Diversity Committee. I work with editors around the country to update the annual survey and provide professional development for editors on topics such as recruitment, retention and community engagement. I feel an even greater sense of urgency and purpose as minority populations grow and more communities grapple with racial strife. Without question, embracing diversity is the right thing to do, but it’s also a business imperative in a multicultural society.
Diversity of thought is part of the solution. It inspires more creativity that drives innovation. It leads to more robust community conversations that may lead to positive change. We saw it work firsthand through our public service project, the Unite Rochester Challenge, when 89 viable ideas were submitted from people in our community to help address racial and socioeconomic inequality. The challenge was part of the D&C’s ongoing Unite Rochester campaign to promote inclusiveness. Unite Rochester convened countless community conversations, sparked new initiatives such as a citizen court academy and student summits at area high schools, and led to an expansion of the UrbanSuburban program in Rochester-area schools. Diversity of thought in the newsroom also helps us in the daily conversations we have about coverage. Everyone in the newsroom is invited to our morning news meeting to contribute ideas. We also glean ideas from readers who call or write us and digital users who share with us via social media. Diversity is a core value as important as upholding our First Amendment responsibilities as a free press. We embrace it as an issue of accuracy and credibility. If we reflect and cover communities of color in authentic and inclusive ways, we deliver a more accurate news report. How could we inspire inclusive problemsolving in our community if we are not inclusive ourselves? Inclusiveness is part of our culture now and we’ll continue to keep it top of mind in the days ahead. Although we’ve come a long way since that study in 2004, we’re always looking for opportunities to improve, and welcome your suggestions. Karen Magnuson is editor and vice president/news of the Democrat and Chronicle. She served as APME president in 2007 and continues to serve on the association’s foundation board.
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How the Honolulu Civil Beat attracted 3 million visitors to watch a monk seal live cam
More online: See archived feed here: https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=5F7li2F1wMI See some Pupdates here: https://www.facebook.co m/civilbeat/videos/16075 34339279288/
SEAL THE DEAL Civil Beat attracts 3 million visitors to watch monk seal live cam
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By Autumn Phillips APME News
onolulu Civil Beat doesn’t do animal features. They are known as a watchdog journalism shop. And so it was a bit out of the norm for the newsroom to find itself posting “Pupdates” about two adorable Hawaiian monk seals. Hawaiian monk seals are one of the most endangered marine mammals in the world. When a monk seal gave birth to a pup in Waikiki on a tourist beach, the Civil Beat team saw a chance to educate the public about the fragile moment. Little did they know what the first social media post would bring and how large and captivated an audience they would eventually attract. Audience development editor Landess Cole did a Facebook Live shoot from the beach where she interviewed NOAA scientists. The feed was so popular it sparked the idea of setting up a live cam to watch the pups. “The first challenge was to find a way to have a camera stationed in a location with a view that did not interfere or disrupt the seals,” Civil Beat Engagement Anthony Quintano wrote in an email. “The other challenges were finding a place to have internet and power and also be covered from rain or high winds. The day I started to research how to do this, I was told that a Hawaiian Marine Animal Response volunteer lives in the … building, which the seals were resting directly underneath. Resident and volunteer Steve Denner gave us permission to setup our camera and tripod on his balcony and power our laptop and use his internet to keep a livestream of the seals going >> Continued on next page
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Civil Beat interviews a NOAA scientist about the monk seal that gave birth on a Waikiki beach.
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for a long period of time. Mr. Denner's residence was on the 1st floor just above where the seals would rest on the beach.” It wasn’t a high-maintenance operation once it was set up. Quintano had to go over and adjust the camera occasionally when viewers who call to say the pup had disappeared from view. Three million total visitors watched over that pup on the beach. On the day when it got under the barrier that had been set up to cordon it off from tourists, the internet went wild. “That was some drama,” said Civil Beat managing editor Jim Simon. “It really created this whole community online of people watching the seals.” Though the Civil Beat staff did weekly interviews with federal biologists and some public education articles, they mostly let the live feed – and the conversation on Facebook ---- carry itself. “What it translated to for us was some recognition of being part of the community in a different way,” Simon said. “People would come up to Anthony in his Civil Beat cap and say, ‘Hey! You are the guys with the monk seal cam! Whether that translates to readers, that’s a hard metric to determine.” Before the seals became a world-wide sensation, there was some debate in the Civil Beat newsroom about how extensively to use
livestreaming and Facebook Live. “Is it our job to point a camera at something and be CSPAN?” Simon said. “Until then, we’d used it quite a bit for things like police and ethics commissions, being the eyes and ears for our readers.” Simon is now convinced livestreaming, in addition to drawing an audience far beyond Civil Beat’s core readership, offered essential value to its coverage. Most recently, Quintano’s moderated livestream chronicling the spectacular eruption and lava flows from the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii has been followed relentless by viewers in Hawaii and elsewhere – as well as picked up by CNN, News Hour and other outlets. Just as importantly, it’s served as hub for answering questions and providing updates on the eruptions, which have more than two dozen homes and led to thousands of evacuations. Likewise, the monk seal live stream had a life of its own. People were glued to it. They kept coming back. “(The seals) are incredibly cute and charismatic. The livestream lasted for 43 days. Technical tips from Quintano: “We used a Canon XF100 camcorder mounted on a Manfrotto tripod. We had a Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Mini Recorderl >> Continued on next page
Landess Cole, Civil Beat audience development editor, operating the live cam on the beach.
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connecting the HDMI cable from the camcorder to the laptop. The converter takes a lightning cable to connect to the Mac Pro laptop we used. On the Mac Pro laptop, we had installed Telestream's Wirecast software to encode the video to Facebook. “To avoid having to continually stop by Mr. Denner's residence to check on the stream, we used TeamViewer software to remotely connect to the laptop from the office and home so we could start a new stream daily. The one thing we were unable to do remotely was control the camera angle or zoom. Mr. Denner was kind enough to spend the time to zoom in on the seals and follow them when they were in the water. It was impossible to ask Mr. Denner to man the camera every day, all day, so we asked that he keep it on a wide angle when he would leave his residence. “We would start the streams only during daylight since the camera was unable to see anything during the nighttime hours. Mr. Denner allowed us to keep the camera at his residence for 20 days. We needed to use the equipment for another event that weekend but he wasn't willing to continue to keep the equipment there so we had to crowdsource on social media for another volunteer to host our camera. We were lucky enough to get another resident who was higher up in the building to offer her residence for the camera. “Linda Bachrach, who is retired, resided on the 9th floor and gave us a better perspective once Kaimana (the pup) started to swim further away from Kaimana Beach. The camera was situated
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at Linda’s residence for an additional 20 days before Kaimana was weaned. “While the livestream was going, we would produce weekly broadcasts from the beach via a mobile phone to do Q&A videos with NOAA scientists and press conferences. We mostly broadcasted to Facebook Live via the phone using a Shure Motiv MVI to allow us to plugin pro microphones, like the RE50B, into the phone.”
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he Associated Press Media Editors share in the shock and sadness surrounding the horrific events at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland. While much is still to be learned, the devastating loss of life, lifealtering injury to some and the trauma the co-workers and community members must feel are in our hearts and on our minds. We pledge our support in their recovery and support them in the means it takes to mend the hurt and loss. We will support these journalists to enable them to keep covering their community and standing for the values we all treasure – freedom of the press, an obligation to the truth, being on the frontline as a watchdog and a way for many to have a voice. We respect that journalists who follow this creed are human, have families, are a vital part of this great society and are all too mortal. We are helping in concrete ways to support the recovery, along with our partners in journalism leadership, including ASNE. Join us and, through your support, lift up our extended family at the Capital Gazette.
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2018
APME AWARDS FOR JOURNALISM EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION Winners weave common thread of engaging, challenging audiences
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EW YORK – Journalism that exposed abuse of the public trust and shed light on the human condition earned top honors in The APME Awards for 2018. The Houston Chronicle led the way with two first place awards and an honorable mention. Public radio stations – in Boston, Milwaukee and Missoula – won three first place awards, including two in the storytelling category. And in keeping with APME’s tradition of recognizing work from news organizations of all sizes, winners ranged from the Los Angeles Times to the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia. “The winning entries reflect a few common themes: a continued commitment to pursue strong watchdog reporting, experiment with innovative storytelling and find new, creative ways to directly engage audiences,” said APME President Jim Simon. “As many of my fellow judges noted, the list of winners shows the spirit of public interest journalism remains strong even in many financially strapped newsrooms with diminished resources." The Star Tribune of Minneapolis won the grand Hurricane Harvey prize in the Public Service category for uncovering flaws and incompetence in the handling of elder tering newsroom leaders, empowering journalists to succeed, and abuse cases. cultivating ideas that work. “It’s so well done in every aspect: The beauty of the prose and Teams of judges are composed of APME national board members the photos, the shocking findings themselves, the tremendous govand top editors at The Associated Press. Individual awards have ernmental reaction and response,” judges said. one, two or three size categories, based on tradition and the wishes The Kansas City Star won the grand prize in the First of some sponsors. Amendment category for exposing the culture of secrecy in Kansas Winners will be recognized at the ASNE-APME-APPM News state government, and showing how it undermines the democratic Leadership Conference, Sept. 11-12, in Austin, Texas. process. At the conference, finalists for one of the APME’s most presti“The impact of the Star’s work was swift,” judges said. “In a 12gious awards – Innovator of the Year – will make presentations, and week span, 32 transparency measures were proposed, and the the winner will be selected by conference attendees. This year’s speaker of the House ended the practice of allowing bills to be finalists: introduced anonymously.” • An app created through a collaboration between The Blade of The Houston Chronicle won the grand prize for News Reporting Toledo and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; for its coverage of Hurricane Harvey. “The Houston Chronicle gave • A web template used across GateHouse Media; readers everything they needed to know, and then some. • And an “Idea Fest” hosted by the Capital Times in Madison, Exceptional multi-platform work from beginning to end,” judges Wisconsin. said. The live judging by industry peers is unique among journalism The annual contest honors excellence and innovation in journalawards. ism, and reflects the Associated Press Media Editors’ mission of fos-
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PUBLIC SERVICE Grand Prize sponsored by GateHouse Media ($1,000) • Winner: “Left to Suffer,” Star Tribune of Minneapolis Large Newsroom (76 people and up) • Winner: “Left to Suffer,” Star Tribune of Minneapolis For exposing scandalous flaws and incompetence in handling elder abuse cases. It’s so well done in every aspect: The beauty of the prose and the photos, the shocking findings themselves, the tremendous governmental reaction and response. This is an issue that can and will affect many, and the Star Tribune's work did a tremendous public service in exposing these problems and pushing for change. • Honorable Mention: “Developing Storm,” Houston Chronicle For a fascinating and very deep dive into the complex forces that exacerbated Hurricane Harvey's devastation on the Texas Gulf Coast. The details – timeline, players, decisions – were skillfully presented. The entire package had a strong editorial voice and offered possible solutions for going forward. • Honorable Mention: “Evictions,” The Detroit News For revelations about the rental market in Detroit that were both shocking and horrific. Never-before-released data powerfully illustrated the extent of the problem and the huge toll evictions take on families. The video and pictures, while sometimes hard to watch, added emotional power. The series prompted changes in city and state policies. Medium Newsroom (26 to 75 people): • Winner: “Nuclear Negligence,” Patrick Malone, Peter Cary, R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity, of Washington, D.C. For a powerful, scary investigation that painted a frightening portrait of the safety climate in America's most secret and sensitive industry. Great use of FOIA documents and exhaustive, years-long digging. • Honorable Mention: “Jailed to Death,” Dan Kane and David Raynor, The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. For terrific work documenting the number of jail deaths – 51 in five years – which should serve as a wake-up call for the community. Small Newsroom (Up to 25 people): • Winner: “Addicted at Birth,” Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier For a smart, deeply reported and accessibly
presented examination of a little-noticed angle of the opioid problem: babies affected by their mother's use while pregnant. The presentation – from the writing to the headlines to all the visual elements – commanded attention. It was packaged in a very reader-friendly format, offering numerous podcasts, glances, graphics, lists and other chunky bits to both convey key points and pull readers in. Exceptional work. • Honorable Mention: “Waiting in Pain,” John Hill, Honolulu (Hawaii) Civil Beat For outstanding work revealing the effects of Hawaii's bizarre rules allowing insurance companies to choose the doctors who examine injured workers. The series combined deep and detailed investigative work with compelling personal stories that drove home how these rules sometimes play out in real life, and the inequities in a workers' comp system that is dysfunctional and arguably manipulated. • Honorable Mention: “Category 10,” Virgin Islands Daily News of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands For the public service in simply being able to report and publish in the horrific circumstances created by Hurricanes Irma and Marie. Clearly, island residents hungered for news, and had their spirits lifted just by seeing the newspaper published. One judge was nearly in tears reading the letter describing what the staff went through.
FIRST AMENDMENT Grand Prize sponsored by the APME Foundation ($1,000) • Winner: “Why So Secret, Kansas?” The Kansas City Star Large Newsroom (76 people and up): • Winner: “Why So Secret, Kansas?” The Kansas City Star For exposing the pervasiveness of secrecy in Kansas state government and how that culture subverts the democratic process. The impact of the Star’s work was swift: In a 12week span, 32 transparency measures were proposed, and the speaker of the House ended the practice of allowing bills to be introduced anonymously. • Honorable Mention:“Fired, But Fit for Duty,” The Oregonian/Oregonlive of Portland, Ore. For revealing that the state agency licensing police officers had allowed dozens of officers to retain their credentials even after they had been fired for sleeping on the job, showing up drunk to work, refusing to complete reports, failing to show up to court
hearings, and beating handcuffed suspects. The news organization faced stiff resistance, but won every appeal and wound up with 10,000 pages of documents and three databases on police employment, training and discipline. Medium Newsroom (26 to 75 people): • Winner: “Redacted: What We Don’t Know and Why,” Wallace McKelvey, PennLive and The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Penn. For springing into action when the state of Pennsylvania reneged on a promise that the medical marijuana industry would be regulated in transparent fashion. In news stories and editorials, they underscored the absurdity of a system in which applicants for growing and distribution permits decide what information they want the public to see, and the identities of regulators are kept secret. Small Newsroom (Up to 25 people): No award.
INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR FINALISTS Winner selected at ASNE-APME-APPM News Leadership Conference, Sept. 11-12, in Austin, Texas. Grand prize of $1,000 is sponsored by the APME Regents • Finalist: “NewsSlide,” The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For a collaboration that shows the elegant side of storytelling. With stunning visuals, photo galleries and videos, NewsSlide delivers an immersive, dynamic and intuitive experience • Finalist: “Longform template,” GateHouse Media For creating a template that can be used by all GateHouse publications. It allows readers to experience news and features in a whole new way. • Finalist: “Cap Times Idea Fest,” The Capital Times of Madison, Wis. For embracing the role of good newsrooms to promote public discourse and be a community thought leader. The Cap Times did this through an gathering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that drew 70 guest speakers and 20 moderators for a daylong, immersive discussion on the issues of the day.
INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ----- THE AL NEUWARTH AWARD Winning awards sponsored by Gannett Foundation ($1,250 for each size category) >> Continued on next page
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Large Newsroom (51 people and up) • Winner: “Quantity of Care,” Mike Baker and Justin Mayo, The Seattle Times For courageous, painstaking, and lucid reporting that revealed the arrogant and dangerous practices of renowned neuroscience institute Swedish Health, a now-disgraced superstar surgeon, and a culture of sacrificing patient safety for profit. • Honorable Mention: “Fight Club,” Carol Marbin Miller, Audra D.S. Burch and Emily Michot, Miami Herald For exposing chilling, perverse and reprehensible practices including sanctioned beatings, sexual exploitation and vast administrative incompetence in Florida’s juvenile justice system. • Honorable Mention: “Mexico Blackouts,” Raquel Rutledge, Milwaukee (Wis.) Journal Sentinel For revealing the deadly and pervasive presence of tainted bootleg alcohol in upscale Mexico resorts, a culture of callousness and exploitation toward victims, as well as the shameful censorship practices of the influential vacation site TripAdvisor. • Honorable Mention: “The Tax Divide,” Jason Grotto, Sandhya Kambhampati, Ray Long and Hal Dardick, Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois For an examination of the systemic, patently unfair and egregiously fallacious property tax practices of the city of Chicago, as led by its politically powerful tax assessor, through the use of both traditional and innovative reporting techniques. Small Newsroom (Up to 50 people) • Winner: “Nuclear Negligence,” Patrick Malone, R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Cary, Center for Public Integrity of Washington, D.C. For documenting safety hazards at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and beyond. The accounts of a near-disaster at Los Alamos during what amounted to a photo shoot of plutonium rods was simply chilling. • Honorable Mention: “Caged in Van No. 1304,” Christopher Williams, Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine. For taking an over-the-transom letter to the Sun Journal newsroom and digging to reveal unspeakably inhumane conditions that prisoners endure during the transports.
NEWS REPORTING Grand Prize sponsored by Middle Tennessee State University ($1,000) • Winner: “Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Reckoning,” Houston Chronicle Large Newsroom (76 people and up): • Winner: “Hurricane Harvey: Houston’s Reckoning,” Houston Chronicle For truly spectacular coverage in the face of danger and even death. The Houston Chronicle gave readers everything they needed to know, and then some. The coverage included exceptional multi-platform work from beginning to end. Medium Newsroom (26 to 75 people): • Winner: “Northern California Wildfires,” The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif. For amazing breaking news coverage across all platforms the night of the fire, and smart, focused watchdog follow-ups that featured strong reporting and writing. The multimedia work added a layer of compelling complexity. Small Newsroom (Up to 25 people): • Winner: “Category 10,” Virgin Islands Daily News of St. Thomas,
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U.S. Virgin Islands For amazing, brave journalism by a newsroom working through back-to-back Category 5 storms that literally destroyed the island. In the midst of it all, the Virgin Islands Daily News produced compelling stories, incredible photography and strongly designed work.
STORYTELLING Large Newsroom (76 people and up): • Winner: “Alive Inside,” Mike Hixenbaugh and Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle For a touching and informative narrative about the journey of a sheriff’s deputy with a brain injury that left him “in the netherworld between consciousness and brain death.” The story carefully examined how loved ones worked through questions about what life and living really means. The videos and graphics complemented the story without overwhelming it. • Honorable Mention: “A Tale of Two Cities,” Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times For an especially well-written story about how moving work from an American city to a Mexican city changes lives in both places. • Honorable Mention: “My Aryan Princess,” Scott Farwell, The Dallas Morning News For a gritty look inside the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, and the tragic life of a lifelong addict with mental illness who weaves her way deep into the gang and becomes an invaluable spy for law enforcement officials. Medium Newsroom (26 to 75 people): • Winner: “Beyond Sides of History,” Erika Lantz and Frannie Carr Toth, WBUR-FM Boston Public Radio For blending history and humanity in telling how two women became linked – one, the granddaughter of a brutal Nazi officer, the other the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. In a field of excellent entries, this one still clearly stood out. The narrative, video, audio and photos show how one generation influences the next, and the remarkable ways that people go about making themselves whole. Small Newsroom (Up to 25 people): • Winner: “SubSurface: Resisting Montana's Underwater Invaders,” Nicky Ouellet, Montana Public Radio of Missoula, Mont. For an intelligent and compelling examination of how invasive species threaten Montana’s fisheries, and how various agencies and interest groups are not always on the same page in fighting them. • Honorable Mention: “The Good Samaritan,” Stephanie Innes and Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star of Tucson, Ariz. For the heartbreaking story of a married mother of three who was struck by a car while helping a stranded motorist, and lost both her legs.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ----THE SALLY JACOBSEN AWARD Large Newsroom (51 people and up) • Winner: “Civilian Casualties In Iraq,” Molly Hennessy-Fiske, W.J. Hennigan, Marcus Yam and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times For taking readers to places that even American military investigators were avoiding, and drawing remarkable stories out of the victims of horrendous explosions.. Small Newsroom (Up to 50 people) • Winner: “Faith Betrayed,” Anita Hofschneider and Cory Lum, Honolulu (Hawaii) Civil Beat >> Continued on next page
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Alive Inside, Houston Chronicle: Al Coleman and his daughter Kristina Guilbeau lift Mandy Coleman out of her bed in the Coleman's dining room.
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For examining how decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests has torn apart the overwhelmingly Catholic community on Guam. The ability to get so many people to open up was remarkable; the straightforward writing was critical to telling a story so unsettling.
MOBILE PLAFORM • Winner: “NewsSlide,” The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For a development that is reader friendly, intuitive, colorful and bright. The app invites readers to dive in, browse around, and spend time engaging with content.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Large Newsroom (51 people and up) • Winner: “The Reentry Project” Philadelphia Media Network For leveraging innovative partnerships across news organizations,
and creating a project of stunning breadth and clear engagement with the community. The journalism was exceptionally strong; the infographic especially impressive. • Honorable Mention: “Costs of Growth and Change in Nashville,” David Plazas, The Tennessean of Nashville, Tenn. For an informative look at how efforts to move Nashville forward and develop it into a mecca of the South have left some people behind, and resulted in a a shortage of affordable housing. Small Newsroom (Up to 50 people) • Winner: "WUWM and the Milwaukee Community: All Hands On Deck," WUWM-FM Milwaukee Public Radio of Milwaukee, Wis. For transforming the culture of its newsroom, involving every reporter and producer in actively listening to the community, and experimenting with ways to encourage audience participation. The convincing metrics that resulted show the audience is on board, and people are talking.
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editors in the news
Industry’s promotions, appointments, awards and recognition
Craig named publisher at Daily Sentinel Rick Craig, formerly of the Hood County News, has been named
publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches, Texas. A third-generation newspaperman, Craig started his career early by going to the office of the Hamlin Herald with his parents as a pre-schooler. He returned to the Herald after college and became the editor and publisher of the Herald in 1981.
AP names Steven Sloan political editor The Associated Press named Steven Sloan as news editor overseeing political coverage, including the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential campaign. Sloan will oversee AP's national reporting team and work closely with reporters in Washington, as well as around the United States. Sloan joins the AP from CNN, where he most recently served as director of enterprise reporting in Washington.
Ex-L.A. Times managing editor named new Express-News editor Former Los Angeles Times managing editor Marc Duvoisin has been appointed the new editor and vice president of the San Antonio Express-News. The 62-yearold veteran journalist succeeds Mike Leary, who retired May 18 after six years as leader of Express-News journalism.
DUVOISIN
Alabama publisher moves to Missouri SLOAN
The publisher of an Alabama newspaper is leaving for Missouri, to take over operations for a group of community newspapers. Rex Maynor has been publisher at the Opelika-Auburn News since 2013. He will work in Branson, Missouri, as a publisher for Tri-Lakes Newspapers Inc., which is owned by Gadsden-based Lancaster Management Inc. The regional publisher for the newspaper's parent company BH Media Group, Steve Smith, will assume Maynor's duties as publisher.
Kathy Kiely named Lee Hills Chair Kathy Kiely, a veteran reporter and editor with a multimedia port-
folio and a passion for transparency, free speech and teaching, has been named the Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism
Kissel ends 34-year AP career to join hometown newspaper in Baton Rouge Veteran Mike Feeley named executive editor for The New Journal of Wilmington Mike Feeley, a veteran news executive from Pennsylvania, has been
named executive editor of The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware's largest-circulation daily newspaper. Feeley, who also will lead the News Journal’s website, Delaware Online, replaces David Ledford, who retired in March. Feeley has served as senior director of content for PennLive and The Patriot-News in Harrisburg. He helped lead a team that won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for coverage of the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal at Penn State University.
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AP’s Arkansas supervisory correspondent in Little Rock and a longtime AP news editor, Kelly Kissel has been named the new metro editor of The Advocate in Baton Rouge, Louisiana ----- his hometown newspaper. Kissel started his 34-year AP career as a temporary staffer in New Orleans in 1984, hired by CoB Hank Ackerman, a week before he graduated from LSU.Kissel moved to Jackson, Mississippi, for another temporary job and then got his first permanent position in Charleston, West Virginia. From there he moved on to correspondent in State College, Pennsylvania, and Little Rock as news editor in 1994. >> Continued on next page
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Veteran newsman Matt Murray named editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal named newsroom veteran Matt Murray as its new editor in chief, succeeding Gerard Baker, who oversaw broad changes to the news organization in his 5½-year tenure as it dealt with a fading print-advertising business and the rise of digital journalism. Baker, 56, will take on the position of editor at large, which will involve hosting conferences and events, writing and television presenting. Murray was formerly the Journal’s executive editor.
Associated Press names Mullen U.S. West deputy director for storytelling The Associated Press has named Stephanie Mullen as its new deputy director of storytelling and photography for its U.S. West region, a position that will oversee the presentation of AP's breaking news and enterprise journalism across media formats in 13 states.
Las Vegas Review-Journal newsman Cook named executive editor MURRAY
Alison Smith to take over as editor of the Twin Falls Times-News Alison Smith, an award-winning journalist and editor, will be the new editor at the Twin Falls Times-News. She replaces Matt Christensen, who in March took the position of executive editor at the Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa. Smith joined the TimesNews staff in 2011 as breaking news, crime and courts reporter.
IndyStar editor Taylor promoted to USA TODAY post; Ramos to lead news operation Jeff Taylor, the top editor who oversaw IndyStar’s USA Gymnastics
investigation that led to 100-year-plus prison sentences for Larry Nassar in sexual assault and child pornography cases, has been named executive editor for news at USA TODAY. Gannett Co. Inc., the parent company of IndyStar and USA TODAY, has named Ronnie Ramos executive editor in Indianapolis. Ramos, a CubanAmerican, is the first minority to lead IndyStar’s news operation. In addition to Ramos’ expanded role, IndyStar also announced the hiring of Ginger Rough, who will be the No. 2 editor in the newsroom. Rough is joining IndyStar from The Arizona Republic, where she is the features editor and founder of allthemoms.com, a website geared toward a family audience.
AP named Dustin Weaver as Congress news editor The Associated Press named Dustin Weaver as news editor overseeing coverage of Congress, a key leadership role in AP's Washington bureau. Weaver joins the AP from The Hill, where he was news editor overseeing the paper's print and digital coverage of Congress, the White House and other Washington beats. Weaver previously WEAVER served as The Hill's business and lobbying editor. He has also held editing positions at The Washington Post Express and The Washington Examiner.
Matt Lindberg named new managing editor of three Nebraska newspapers Matt Lindberg is the new managing editor of three Nebraska newspapers: the Columbus Telegram, David City Banner-Press and Schuyler Sun. For nearly the past two years, Lindberg has served as the managing editor for the Montrose Daily Press in Montrose, Colorado. He and his news team recently won 19 Colorado Press Association awards, including the categories of General Excellence and Editorial Sweepstakes.
Longtime Las Vegas Review-Journal newsman Glenn Cook has been promoted to the position of executive editor and vice president for news. The newspaper reported the move after Review-Journal Editor-in-Chief J. Keith Moyer was promoted to the position of publisher.
Poynter chooses McClatchy editor Cheryl Carpenter for leadership faculty The Poynter Institute has named Cheryl Carpenter as its new leadership faculty member. Carpenter, the digitally savvy editor who previously served as the McClatchy Bureau Chief in Washington and Managing Editor at The Charlotte Observer, will direct Poynter’s growing leadership and local news innovation initiatives.
Veteran Michigan managing editor Patti Klevorn to take on new career Patti Klevorn is stepping down
from her role as managing editor of the Ludington (Michigan) Daily News, putting an end to a 25-year career that helped define an era for a newspaper and informed a community. Klevorn will become the director of communications and marketing in the community of Epworth.
AP names Tom Berman as news director for U.S. Central Region
KLEVORN
The Associated Press has named Tom Berman as regional news director for the central United States, a new position overseeing AP's journalism and news operations across media formats in 14 states stretching from Texas to the upper Midwest. Berman will be based in Chicago, AP's Central regional hub, where he has been regional editor since August 2014.
AP names Benac as White House editor Nancy Benac, a veteran Washington journalist who has covered the presidency and national political campaigns, has been named White House news editor at The Associated Press. Benac will lead a team of AP reporters covering all aspects of President Donald Trump’s White House, one of the most competitive and closely watched beats in the world.
New AP global enterprise team is named Vice President for Global Enterprise Marjorie Miller announced AP's new global enterprise reporting team. It will be dedicated to >> Continued on next page
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helping AP journalists around the world produce ambitious, multiformat journalism that breaks news and offers customers distinctive enterprise that they cannot get elsewhere. In the field, the global enterprise team of award-winning journalists (including U.S. national writers) will report to Pauline Arrillaga, the U.S. enterprise editor, and to Mary Rajkumar, the international enterprise editor. Jeannie Ohm is the enterprise video editor. Enric Marti is the enterprise photo editor. And Natalie Castaneda is joining Raghu Vadarevu's enterprise digital storytelling team as a producer.
J. Todd Foster new editor at The Daily Times in Tennessee A new editor has been named for The Daily Times in Maryville, Tennessee. J. Todd Foster succeeds Frank “Buzz” Trexler. Trexler retired Nov. 30 after leading the newsroom for nearly three decades.
BRENNAN
CBS names Margaret Brennan as ‘Face the Nation’ anchor
FRANCK
Kurt Franck named president of The Blade newspaper in Toledo Block Communications Inc. has named Kurt Franck as president and general manager of business operations of The Blade in Toledo. Franck also will remain executive editor of the newspaper. He joined The Blade in 2000 as managing editor and became executive editor in 2009. He is a member of the APME Board of Directors.
Veteran journalist Mark Trahant named editor of Indian County Today A veteran journalist who has worked for outlets including the Navajo Times, the Arizona Republic and the Seattle Times has been named editor of Indian Country Today. The National Congress of American Indians announced the selection of Mark Trahant. Trahant is a member of Idaho’s Shoshone-Bannock Tribe and a former Native American Journalists Association president.
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In appointing Margaret Brennan as moderator of “Face the Nation,” CBS News gets the first person with day-to-day experience covering the Trump administration as host of a Sunday morning political talk show. Brennan, 37, replaces John Dickerson. Dickerson recently moved to New York to become one of the three anchors of “CBS This Morning.”
Herald-Dispatch editor and publisher Dawson retiring Ed Dawson, editor and publisher of The Herald-
Dispatch in Huntington, West Virginia, has announced his retirement effective at the end of the month. The Herald-Dispatch reports the 68year-old Dawson is retiring after about 17 years with the newspaper.
DAWSON
Utah’s Spetrum newspaper names Melissa Galbraith as top editor The Spectrum newspaper in southern Utah has a new executive editor, a Utah native who spent more than a decade at the Arizona Republic. The Spectrum reported that Melissa Galbraith held several roles at the Phoenix newspaper, including assistant news editor, features desk chief and digital producer. She replaces Steve Kiggins, who resigned in December to take a job in California. GALBRAITH >> Continued on next page
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Kelly Brown, the Eagle’s first female editor, resigns and joins Texas A&M The first woman to serve as the top newsroom executive at The Eagle of Bryan-College Station, Texas, has resigned to accept a vice presidency at Texas A&M University. The Eagle reports Kelly Brown resigned as editor of the newspaper to accept the newly created position of associate vice president of marketing and communication at A&M. Managing Editor Darren Benson is being promoted to succeed her and will be replaced by special projects editor Rob Clark. Brown had been managing editor for nine years when she was promoted to editor in 2010. Benson, who is 43, succeeded her as managing editor.
become the deputy national editor and regional editor for papers in north Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Other regional editor appointments are: • Scott Underwood, editor of the Anderson, Indiana, Herald Bulletin: Indiana and Illinois. • Carol Stark, editor of the Joplin (Missouri) Globe: Missouri and Eastern Oklahoma. • Rob Collins, editor of the Enid (Oklahoma) News & Eagle: Western Oklahoma. • Chip Minemyer, editor of the Johnstown (Pennsylvania) TribuneDemocrat: Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. • David Joyner, editor of the North Andover (Massachusetts) EagleTribune: Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York. • Damon Cain, editor of the Beckley (West Virginia) Register-Herald: West Virginia. • Nathan Payne, editor of the Traverse City (Michigan) RecordEagle: Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa. • Susan Duncan, editor of the Jeffersonville (Indiana) News and Tribune: Kentucky and Tennessee.
MASCARO
Associated Press names Lisa Mascaro as chief congressional correspondent The Associated Press has named Lisa Mascaro as chief congressional correspondent, a senior reporting role leading AP’s coverage of Capitol Hill. The appointment was announced by Julie Pace, AP’s Washington bureau chief. Mascaro joins the AP from the Los Angeles Times, where she has covered Congress since 2010. She’s also traveled the country covering congressional races and presidential politics.
Jeffry Couch named editor, general manager of Belleville News-Democrat Jeffry Couch has been appointed editor and general manager of
the Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat. Couch has led the BND’s newsroom for nearly 14 years. Tony Berg, Midwest regional publisher for McClatchy, the BND’s owner, announced Couch’s expanded role during a recent staff meeting.
CNHI publishing company forms regional editor system Alabama-based publishing company CNHI announced that it is restructuring its leadership. CNHI said in a statement that it is moving to a regional editor system for its more than 100 community newspapers. Sunbury (Pennsylvania) Daily Item editor Dennis Lyons will become the national editor and work with nine regional editors. Valdosta (Georgia) Daily Times editor James Zachary will
PEARLSTINE
Decorated journalist Norman Pearlstine named L.A. Times executive editor Veteran journalist Norman Pearlstine, a leader at media giants including Time, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, was named executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, when the paper's new owner officially took control. Pearlstine, 75, had been serving for two months as an adviser to Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who spent $500 million to buy the Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Spanishlanguage newspaper Hoy and some community newspapers from Chicago-based Tronc. Pearlstine becomes the Times’ fourth top editor in less than a year — and its 18th since the newspaper began publishing in 1881. He succeeds Jim Kirk, whose seven-month tenure culminated with the sale of the paper.
Mark Chase promoted to editor at The Times in Munster, Indiana The Times Media Co. in Munster, Indiana, has a new editor. Marc Chase was promoted to local news editor and Erin Orr was named deputy local news editor. Chase previously served as editorial page editor and Orr as managing editor.
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By Paula Froke
AP Stylebook minute Essential and timeless advice for writers and editors
I
n condensing speeches or interviews, see that you correctly represent the sense of what the speaker says. A fragmentary verbatim quotation, taken out of the context without explanation, may absolutely misquote him. To careless and inconsiderate quotation of this sort is due much of the criticism of newspapers as unreliable. True, the sentence structure is a bit archaic. And these days the AP Stylebook would call for rephrasing to avoid him as a pronoun. But overall, that guidance issued 107 years ago remains crucial today. It’s part of a treasure trove of wisdom relayed to AP journalists in the early 1900s, recently uncovered by Valerie Komor, the AP’s director of corporate archives. These small volumes were not Stylebooks, per se, but rather manuals covering all manner of do’s and don’ts (“If all the telegraph routes are down, the telephone should be utilized, and failing this, it often is possible to establish a service by train or trolley lines.”) As editor of the modern Stylebook and an AP manager for three decades, I’m fascinated by how much of this guidance remains on target today. While we and all of you evolve so quickly and in so many ways, some principles remain firmly at our core. Some samples from the 1911 edition of Instructions for Correspondents of The Associated Press: ACCURACY – It would be difficult to say whether Promptness or Accuracy is the more important – both are cardinal in Associated Press service; neither should be subordinated to the other. The ideal correspondent is he who, habitually getting his dispatches to the wire faster than any competitor, has gained also a reputation for accuracy such that his signature will be accepted as sufficient to guarantee the truth of his most amazing statement. “By The Associated Press” should indicate accuracy beyond a reasonable doubt. IMPARTIALITY – Consisting as it does of persons representing every shade of political and religious belief, The Associated Press has no policies to promote, no interests to serve, attack or defend; it is and must be always utterly non-partisan and non-sectarian. So far as its service is concerned, the correspondent must have no friends, no enemies and no interests. ... It is a requisite of Associated Press correspondents that they be honest, fair, just and courteous to all, and that they should in return demand fair treatment, justice and respect from those with whom they deal. By making his work and demeanor commend themselves for courtesy, integrity and fairness, the correspondent will always have access to any source of news. STYLE – With due allowance for suitable descriptive color and for bright treatment of “features” and “human interest stories,” The Associated Press prefers clear, straightforward statement of the facts of the news, as briefly as is consistent with an adequate and intelligent account of what has taken place. Attempts at “fine writing” to consume space cannot be permitted, and slang should be scrupulously avoided, as also should be unnecessary adjectives and
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epithets expressive of the bias, opinions or emotions of the writer. Let the facts describe the murder as “brutal,” the murderer as a “human fiend.” Before you start your story, have clearly in mind a valid reason for sending it, and especially have plain in your thought the precise feature which makes that story distinctive. Put that feature, which is the news of that story, in the first paragraph. ... Good style favors short words, short sentences, short paragraphs, short stories. Be sure that your dispatch says what you mean, leaving no room for misinterpretation. ... Remember that neither the editor nor the newspaper reader can be expected to read into your dispatch something necessary to clearness that you have not written there.
From A Guide for Filing Editors in 1930: • Leads of stories of court procedure or decisions are most interesting and best understood when the news is stated succinctly, without being entangled in an account of the legal situation. Such legalistic details as are necessary can be related subsequently. • Exaggeration of events and situations, or unwarranted use of superlatives, or attaching undue importance to a story should be guarded against. • Expressions coined by any one man or organization or applied as between two organizations, or to individuals, such as “noble experiment,” or “reds,” or “sons of the wild jackass,” become editorial expressions unless attributed to those so employing them. It is not sufficient to place quotation marks around such designations or epithets to indicate that the words are taken from other sources. Such expressions are to be avoided unless quoting the person or organization responsible. • In controversial matters where representatives of opposing interests are issuing statements, it is always well to join the statements or claims of the opposing parties in such a manner as to give them equal prominence. • The text of a direct quote should never be changed. To eliminate qualifying phrases within a quote is unfair and dangerous. Whenever it is necessary to rewrite a direct quotation into direct discourse, care should be taken to preserve the full meaning. • Avoidance of bromides in general enhances readability, and of hackneyed descriptions in particular contributes to accuracy.
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2018
Our communication vehicles
APME BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Officers President: Jim Simon, Managing Editor, Honolulu Civil Beat, @jsimon88 Vice President: Angie Muhs, Editor, State Journal-Register, Springfield, Illinois, @amuhs Secretary: Michael Days, Editor, Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia, @mikedays Leadership Initiatives Chair: Mark Baldwin, Executive Editor, Rockford (Ill.) Register Star, @MarkFBaldwin Treasurer: Alison Gerber, Editor, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tennessee, @aligerb
Executive Committee (officers above plus) Past President: Bill Church, Senior Vice President | News, GateHouse Media, Austin, Texas, @BillChurchMedia APME Executive Director: Paula Froke, The Associated Press @PaulaFroke AP Ex-Officio: Sally Buzbee, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President, The Associated Press, New York, @SallyBuzbee AP Ex-Officio: Sarah Nordgren, Deputy Managing Editor, The Associated Press, New York, @sarahnordgren Program Co-Chair: Bill Church, Senior Vice President | News, GateHouse Media, Austin, Texas, @BillChurchMedia Program Co-Chair: Sandra Clark, Vice President for News and Civic Dialogue, WHYY, Philadelphia, @SandraSWClark Program Co-Chair: Traci Bauer, Executive Editor, Lohud.com and The Journal News, New York, @tbauer Marketing/Engagement Co-Chair: Summer Moore, Digital Project Manager, GateHouse Media, @summerbmoore Marketing/Engagement Co-Chair: Maria Caporizzo, Managing Editor-Digital, The Providence Journal, ?@mariacap
Directors (Terms expiring in 2018) Ronnie Agnew, Executive Director, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, @ronagnew Michael Anastasi, Executive Editor, The Tennessean, @ma_anastasi Tom Arviso, Publisher, Navajo Times, Window Rock, Arizona, @ArvisoTom
www.apme.com www.facebook.com/APMEnews www.twitter.com/APME www.facebook.com/NewsTrain https://twitter.com/NewsTrain and, APME Update: www.apme.com/?page=Newsletters
Traci Bauer, Executive Editor, Lohud.com and The Journal News, New York, @tbauer Anne Brennan, Editor in Chief, The MetroWest Daily News and The Milford Daily News in Massachusetts, @AnneBrennanCCT Alison Gerber, Editor, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tennessee Lane Michaelsen, Group News Director, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Hunt Valley, MD, @lanetv Carlos Sanchez, Politics & News Editor, Texas Monthly magazine, @CarlosASanchez (Terms Expiring in 2019) Dennis Anderson, Executive Editor, Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star, @dennisedit Kathy Best, Editor, The Missoulian, Missoula, Mont., @kbest Sandra Clark, Vice President for News and Civic Dialogue, WHYY, Philadelphia, @SandraSWClark Katrice Hardy, Executive Editor, The Greenville (S.C.) News and GreenvilleOnline.com, @kkatgurll1 Thomas Koetting, Deputy Managing Editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, @tkoetting Summer Moore, Digital Project Manager, GateHouse Media, @summerbmoore Autumn Phillips, Managing Editor, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C., @AutumnEditt (Terms expiring in 2020) Maria Caporizzo, Managing Editor-Digital, The Providence Journal, ?@mariacap Matt Christensen, Executive Editor, Quad-City Times, @TimesNewsEditor Kurt Franck, President/Executive Editor/Vice President, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, @KGFranck_Blade Juli Metzger, Journalism Instructor, Ball State University, Toledo, Ohio, @julimetzger George Rodrigue, Editor, The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, @gprodrigue3 Sally Stapleton, Managing Editor, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, @sestapleton
APME News Editor Andrew Oppmann, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, @aoppmann J U LY 2 0 1 8
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2018 APME-ASNE NEWS LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
AUSTIN
see you in
September 11-12, 2018