Arkansas Publisher Weekly: June 25, 2020

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FOIA provision kicks in for certain cities Guest Column: Separating fact from fiction

By Dean Ridings

Arkansas Press Association

Publisher Weekly Vol. 15 | No. 26 | Thursday, June 25, 2020 | Serving Press and State Since 1873

UA initiative seeks to increase Student work available to diversity in newsrooms newspapers By van, by intra-state road trip and via an online news platform, Niketa Reed is doing her part to increase the number of racially and ethnically diverse journalists in Arkansas. The founder of the “Arkansas Soul” project hopes Arkansas newspaper publishers and editors will follow suit.

Reed established “Arkansas Soul” last year as a forum for young, minority journalists. The website, www.argotsoul. com, highlights articles and perspectives on race, culture and other timely topics from minority reporters and columnists.

In 2019, Arkansas Soul featured the work of student journalists who spent two weeks criss-crossing the state to share articles and their unique viewpoints on Arkansas travel and tourism. Soon, it will include dispatches from minority student journalists across Arkansas about the impact of COVID-19.

Arkansas newspapers that seek to ensure minority representation in their publications and who would like to highlight the work of Arkansas student journalists are encouraged to consider publishing articles from Arkansas Soul.

The online platform by the University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Communications was created in 2019 as part of a summer media program for Arkansas high school students.

Niketa Reed

Reed, a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Media, said she faces the same challenges in recruiting minority students to the UA’s journalism program as Arkansas newspapers likely do in hiring people of color. She said racial and ethnic minorities may be distrusting of media in general or may not see authentic representations of themselves in the media.

Arkansas Soul gives student journalists a method of building that trust and authenticity, while establishing a forum for their voices. As a recruiter for UA’s journalism program, the website is part of a broad strategy that Reed says Arkansas newspaper publishers could also use when seeking out minority candidates for newsroom positions.

“My advice to someone looking to diversify their newsroom is to go to them and come out there on their level,” Reed said, noting that she will drive to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff herself to meet on that campus with candidates for UA’s graduate program. “I have to meet them on their terms, and I have to use language and media they recognize.”

Minorities account for about 17 percent of employees in American newsrooms, even though more than 40 percent of the U.S. population is comprised of racial and ethnic minorities, according to a 2018 survey by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

When it comes to leadership positions, only 13 percent of newspaper management roles are held by minorities.

Continued on Page 2

Since then, the site, www.argotsoul.com, has posted articles relevant to racial and ethnic minorities in Arkansas and has established a Digital Writing Challenge for high school students in 2020. As part of the challenge, students are asked to submit articles about some way COVID-19 has impacted them or their community.

The Digital Writing Challenge articles will be posted on the website next month, and the UA journalism professors who manage the site said Arkansas newspaper publishers could reprint articles they may find relevant or newsworthy.

“The students would be thrilled,” if local newspapers reprinted their work, said Niketa Reed, a UA professor and founder of Arkansas Soul.

To request permission to print material that first appeared at argotsoul.com, email Reed at nsreed@uark.edu or Rob Wells at rswells@uark.edu.

UA initiative seeks to increase Digital Writing diversity in newsrooms Challenge open Continued from Page 1

Reed said encouraging minority representation in Arkansas media means embracing new distribution methods and new ideas. Print newspaper publishers should expand their online presences and pay more attention to the types of stories their publications cover, she explained.

“I use language and I use phrases that connect,” Reed said. “You can’t keep business as usual and keep your same

health pandemic has somehow affected them or their community. The top five journalists will each receive a $100 prize.

In addition, Arkansas Soul will soon name a Hispanic student and a student of Marshallese descent to work as interns with ArkansasCovid.com, a website that tracks coronavirus cases and provides analysis specific to Arkansas.

Reed’s long-term goal for the Arkansas

to minority students

Arkansas student journalists are invited to submit articles about how COVID-19 has impacted their communities as part of a writing challenge sponsored by the University of Arkansas School of Journalism and Strategic Media.

Writers of the top five articles submitted in the challenge will each receive $100.

As part of UA’s Arkansas Soul online platform, students are asked to “take a cold, hard look at the realities of the pandemic.”

Specifically, articles should be “centered around the COVID-19 experience in Arkansas with the focus on minority populations, including African Americans, Marshallese community, Latinx/Latinos, Indigenous communities and other people of color.”

tone with the same kind of media and same kind of outcome and also see their stories. We can’t use the same old systems because they’re designed to highlight the predominant population, and that just won’t work.”

For example, Arkansas Soul’s project last year to highlight travel and tourism opportunities was driven by Reed’s own experiences. While working for a Little Rock public relations firm before taking a teaching position in Fayetteville, she was tasked with marketing the Arkansas tourism industry to people of color.

“There’s so much history, so many influential people of color and so many traditions. Arkansas Soul is about capturing that,” Reed said, adding that students realize “you can tell the stories of the community and get paid, and you can make it a career to you.”

Last year, UA awarded scholarships to two of the students who participated in the in-state travel program. With COVID-19 altering plans for a similar travel focus this year, Reed and UA have instead created a statewide writing challenge for student journalists, asking those students to submit articles about how the global

Soul platform is to resume travel writing each year, but with a specific Arkansas destination or region in mind. Next year, she hopes students can explore and write about the El Dorado area.

To be eligible, students must submit a 500word story intended for a general news audience. The entry deadline is Tuesday, June 30. High school students, including just-graduated seniors, may participate.

For full details and to submit an entry, visit argotsoul.com/digital-writing-challenge.

As to newsroom diversity and minority recruitment in general, she’d like to identify ways for minority students at UA to refine and focus on their craft without the necessity of working jobs unrelated to media and communications. Often, students may work retail or restaurant jobs to pay the bills rather than be set up for success in a job or internship that allows them to use their writing or contentcreation skills.

Reed also encourages students to join organizations like the National Association of Black Journalists or the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“A lot of our students don’t have those kinds of opportunities, and networking is just so important. You’ve got to have the connections,” she said. “As a journalist, you have to have sources. You have to start building relationships with people in the community, and we teach that early on.”

Arkansas Publisher Weekly 2

June 25, 2020

FOIA provision kicks in for certain cities Hope-Prescott News applies for An amendment to the Arkansas Freedom Meanwhile, public entities continue to of Information Act adopted by the 2019 be subject to a special provision in FOIA APA membership General Assembly takes effect on July implemented by the Legislature in April.

The Hope-Prescott News, a weekly newspaper covering Hempstead and Nevada counties in southwest Arkansas, has applied for membership to the Arkansas Press Association. The APA Constitution and Bylaws require three notifications of the application to APA membership. This is the first of those three notifications.

The News is owned by Mark Keith and Wendell Hoover. Keith is the editor of the publication and Hoover is the business manager. It was first printed in October 2018 after the closure of newspapers in both Hope and Prescott. The newspaper, having been published weekly for more than one year, is now eligible for full APA membership.

Any APA member who objects to the News’s membership in APA may provide a written letter of objection to APA Executive Director Ashley Wimberley, 411 S. Victory St., Little Rock AR 72201 or email info@arkansaspress.org

1 for Arkansas’s second-class cities and incorporated towns.

The provision authorizes governing bodies to meet by electronic means during the

The new law requires governing bodies of those communities to make audio recordings of their meetings, pursuant to the FOIA and Act 1028 of 2019. Last year’s act, sponsored by Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, mandates that there must be audio recordings of all public meetings, and those recordings must be kept and must be accessible to the public for at least one year. All other public entities were subject to the change last year, however, second-class cities and incorporated towns had until July 1, 2020, to comply.

COVID-19 pandemic as long as the public is notified and the meeting is accessible to members of the public. In addition, the meeting must be recorded in whatever fashion it was conducted, meaning that public entities must record and maintain a video recording if the governing body of that entity meets by video conference.

That specific, emergency amendment to FOIA expires Dec. 31, 2020 or whenever Gov. Asa Hutchinson rescinds his emergency declaration, whichever comes first.

Report for America seeks applications

Report for America will begin accepting applications July 13 for news organizations interested in hosting journalists in 2021.

half, though newspapers are encouraged to obtain donations within the local

An initiative of the Groundtruth Project, Report for America helps fund journalists in locations across the country identified as news deserts.

The nonprofit group currently has 225 journalists working in 163 newsrooms in 46 states. A new group of journalists will join newsrooms in June 2021. The group’s goal is to field 1,000 emerging journalists in the next few years.

If a news organization is selected, Report for America finds a great slate of emerging journalists a newsroom can choose from. Report for America pays half the salary, up to $20,000. The newsroom is responsible for the other Arkansas Publisher Weekly

community, and the program helps in that endeavor. Report for America also provides extensive training and support for journalists throughout the year.

To learn more about hosting a journalist, or to apply for the program, visit www. reportforamerica.org 3

June 24, 2020

INDUSTRY QUOTE “Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.”

Free digital, sales webinars offered in July America’s Newspapers, the association created last year when Inland Press Association merged with the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, is offering two free webinars for its members next month.

-Doris Kearns Goodwin

LET’S GET SOCIAL Follow us on Facebook & Twitter

@ArkansasPressAssociation

@ARPressAssoc

The first, “Think COVID-19 Flattened Your Classifieds? Think Again,” is set for Thursday, July 16, at 1 p.m. It features Janet DeGeorge of the San Jose Mercury News. She will discuss how newspapers have weathered the challenges like

Craigslist and the Great Recession and how there is a way to rebuild classified ads “and make them an important part of your newspaper again.”On Thursday, July 23, participants will learn about the most upto-date digital trends of 2020. Tyson Bird, the digital strategy manager for Texas Highway Magazine, will lead the webinar.

Earlier this year, in another webinar, Bird identified the expected digital trends of 2020.

This follow-up webinar will discuss what’s happening with those 16 trends and whether other trends have emerged because of the coronavirus pandemic. The “Keeping Up with Digital Trends in 2020” webinar starts at 1 p.m. that day.

For more information, or to register for either webinar, visit newspapers.org

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June 25, 2020

Guest Column: Separating fact from fiction

By Dean Ridings Fake news. Those two words have likely created more confusion and distrust of the news media than any other. While it is easy to understand why those of us who work in the news media despise the term, it should also be apparent that the general public has a vested interest in discerning facts from falsehoods.

Some of the louder news voices of the past few decades have been the cable news networks that provide news, analysis and opinion. But the opinion side now dominates on CNN, FOX and many of the major news outlets. If you lean conservative, it is easy to find commentary you agree with on FOX, and if you’re liberal, you will likely consider MSNBC your source. There is nothing wrong with the news media providing opinions, and it often plays an important role in explaining what the facts may mean. The problem comes when the audience doesn’t discern the difference between news and opinion.

Opinions on newspaper editorial pages have been in the news recently. So, this is a good time to look at why newspapers print editorials, and how readers should regard their worth, their impact and their relationship to how news is covered by newspapers.

On June 7, The New York Times’ editorial page editor resigned and a deputy editorial page editor stepped down for a new job after the newspaper’s website published U.S. Senator Tom Cotton’s controversial opinion piece justifying using the armed forces on American soil during civil unrest. About the same time, there were announcements from several papers around the country that they would be cutting back, even in some cases eliminating, the editorials they publish.

And looming over all this is the presidential election in November. If history is any guide, a record number of newspapers will decline to say who should lead the United States at a time of racial protest, uncertain progress in the COVID-19 pandemic and economic turmoil.

Arkansas Publisher Weekly

Newspaper editorial and opinion pages have long engendered misunderstanding among readers, and much of the confusion is, frankly, the fault of newspapers ourselves. Since we understand the very important distinctions between news and opinions, we too often fail to remind our audience of the firewall we’ve established between the reporting of our journalists and the opining of editorial writers. Additionally, we don’t always label the opinion pieces as clearly as is needed.

Here’s what editorials do, and what is often misunderstood: Yes, editorials represent the views of the newspaper, sometimes determined by individual owners, sometimes by independent editorial boards or by corporate owners of many publications. But the editorials that emerge from those views are usually the products of deep research. They clarify the issues of the day and serve to give readers insights into those issues — whether those issues concern how to straighten out the traffic mess at the edge of town or how to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Editorials are another service that newspapers provide for readers.

A quick couple of definitions: The most common meaning of an “editorial” is the unsigned opinion piece that represents the view of the newspaper itself. An op-ed or column presents the individual view of an identified person who might or might not work for the newspaper.

Let’s focus on those unsigned editorials, and why they matter.

First, here’s what editorials don’t do: They do not affect in any manner the way newspaper reporters cover the news, whether the news is about the city council or the president of the United States.

Editorials are not marching orders for journalists. When journalists are educated and trained, one of the first tenets they learn is to state the facts and keep their opinions out of the story.

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But, to repeat, it is a service too often misunderstood.

Newspaper editors often hear from — and opinion polls reflect — a significant minority of readers who think that a newspaper’s editorial endorsement of a particular candidate colors its reporters’ coverage of the campaign. Newspapers, these folks will say, are trying to “dictate” how people should vote, a surely inappropriate thing.

Newspapers can — and do — provide fair and fearless reporting while offering strong and insightful opinion on the other side of their newsroom/opinion page firewalls. But there are still two needed components for our country to trust their news sources.

Newspapers have a responsibility to label opinion pieces appropriately and to keep the news objective, but the reader also has the responsibility to take the time to understand the difference. Until then, we will likely continue to hear cries of fake news when the reader doesn’t like what they read. And that’s when we all lose.

Dean Ridings Newspapers.

is

CEO

of America’s June 25, 2020