7 Journalism Lessons That I Learned From The Information’s News School
Over July, I participated in The Information’s News Summer School, which explored some of the biggest opportunities in journalism at this moment. If you are not familiar with The Information, it is a very high-quality digital publication with deeply reported articles about the industry that you probably won’t find elsewhere.
As someone who has been practicing data science journalism over the past two years, I was highly interested in obtaining best practices from different types of journalism to improve my writing and explore the boundaries of other mediums. Below are my notes from the seven lectures that I attended in the program:
1 — On Reporting In Public
Ben Smith, New York Times media columnist and former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief, shared his experience of public reporting in the digital age. Here are my key takeaways:
- Figure out what questions are not being answered, and then answer them.
- Build expertise in a narrow lane via newsletters and podcasts.
- Think about the “permanence” of your stories. What piece of information would be relevant weeks or months from the time of publishing?
- Email stories to your sources for fact-check. Always treat your sources with a lot of respect while getting information.
- Technology can bring tremendous opportunities to journalism in the future. Leverage the tools out there to make your job more effective.
2 — On Digital Design and Creativity
Stephanie Mehta and Mike Schnaidt from Fast Company gave a talk on digital design, creativity, and the future of magazines. Sticking with the motto of “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” they shared the seven ways to simplify visual storytelling:
- Simplify to a Word: For example, this piece simplifies Marie Kondo to a single word — “Joy.”
- Simplify to a Theme: The Recommender is a section on Fast Company that recommends articles for the readers. Skim through it, and you feel a bright summer vibe.
- Simplify, then Exaggerate: Look at this fantastic visualization of the five technologies that revolutionize baseball. It serves a teaser for the full story on the website.
- Simplify to an Attention Span: Earlier this year, Fast Company did this story on income inequality. To keep readers engaged on Instagram (which is fundamentally different from the website), their team dug into the numbers in the story and created this fantastic slideshow.
- Screw Simplicity: Simplicity doesn’t always mean minimalism, oftentimes we need to resort to busy solutions. This recent story on open offices has a strikingly beautiful cover photo to abstract the concept of open offices and draw emotional connections from the readers.
- A Simple Answer Might Be in Front of You: They shared an example of how they came up with the typographic opener for their 2020 World-Changing Ideas piece. A rounded typeface with bright colors was chosen to represent positive changes. Because of this simplicity, they were able to add extra complexity to both the online experience and the Instagram post.
- Remember Two Simple Words: Consistency and Variety. In this gorgeous piece to honor the best design in business, from products to buildings to UX, different colors (variety) are held together by the color palette (consistency).
3 — On TV and Video
Isaac Lee, the founder of EXILE Content and former chief content officer of Univision, made some predictions for the future of television and video journalism:
- The decline in traditional residential pay-TV penetration of US households has accelerated in the last three years. Instead, streaming videos are increasing in popularity, thanks to the abundance of platforms such as Netflix, Amazon, Prime Video Users, Hulu, HBO Now, etc.
- Sports and news are the only topics that are somewhat still in demand, as shown by ratings and engagement from his analysis.
- For broadcast programming and motion pictures, tentpoles become much more critical. These are programs or films that substantially support the financial performance of a film studio or TV network. Some examples that Isaac brought up include the Latin Grammy awards, the Graduate Together event, the Global Citizen Concert.
- Mobile usage is increasing. On average, millennials spend about 7 hours a day watching videos on their phones. Almost 70% of digital ad spending on mobile devices go to Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
- There are various new platforms outside of the traditional ones: TikTok and Snapchat are disrupting Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, YouTube.
- Original programming has entered a world of niche content. There are increased representations of people and stories that have been historically overlooked.
Given these trends, Isaac gave a couple of sound advice for aspiring journalists:
- Take the time to do reporting with depth, then use platforms such as Substack and Patreon to amplify your messages.
- Broaden the scope of your topics: Latin America is overlooked. Women creators are also ignored.
- Be interested in global stories and international cultures.
4 — On Podcasts
Peter Kafka, the host of Recode Media, and Lydia Polgreen, the head of content at Gimlet Media, provided some solid takes on building a career in podcasting and where the format is headed:
- To find popular podcasts, look at the Spotify and Apple charts, along with what’s being covered in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
- The foundational layer of any good podcast hosts includes knowing how to ask the right questions and having a thorough understanding of the audio medium.
- Podcast is still a new medium (compared to newspaper, TV, videos, etc.). Thus, it is still tough to get discovered if you are on the creator side.
- Is there a possible social model for podcasting? One option is to collaborate with established podcasters to amplify your podcast. Another option is to tap into existing communities on platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Facebook groups, etc. who are already interested in your content.
- Choose evergreen content! People listen to podcasts asynchronously.
- A common mistake of many podcast creators is not understanding the content landscape. To avoid this mistake, experiment with different podcasting style.
- Monetization is probably an after-thought, but arguably the most significant piece. Always take full ownership of your podcast, whether you choose an ad-based or subscription-based business model. Just look at the recent controversy on “Call Her Daddy” as an example.
5 — On Political Reporting
The editor of Politico, Carrie Budoff Brown, shared some fantastic lessons from her career covering politics:
- Report in person and learn how to be fair, accurate, and credible.
- Explore the country by taking jobs outside of the traditional hubs.
- Be authentic and figure out your reporting and leadership style.
- Continually expand your source network by making investments to connect with new sources and calling a certain number of people every day. Source building is like making friends.
- Read your stories line by line after the editor is done.
- Double or triple check your facts. A simple gut-check is that will you be able to sleep tonight if your story is public tomorrow?
- Excel every day in your current job, then ask for that promotion.
- Be kind and expect the same from others.
6 — On Building News Product
Kevin Delaney, the Quartz founder and New York Times Senior Editor, revealed how to innovate at the intersection of news and product. He brought the process of how the team at Quartz built Quart Brief mobile app — which provides the latest business news, original journalism from around the world, and insights from Quartz’s reporters and members.
- He emphasized the importance of having journalists, engineers, designers, and product managers sitting together to work on the product. Journalists have valuable observations and convictions around the best sources of ideas regarding how news product should operate.
- Having a conversational tone with readers matters. Quartz Brief interacts with readers and offers up news stories which readers can choose to get more information about or move on to the next. There is also plenty of playful emojis and GIFs in the user interface.
7 — On Inclusive Journalism
Marcus Mabry, vice president of global programming at CNN Digital, emphasized the importance of inclusive journalism. Journalists have the power to influence the public’s perception of our social and political reality; therefore, they are responsible for offering fair and unbiased coverage and seeking out a variety of voices and perspectives. But while diversity and inclusion have been the talk of the industry for decades, progress is slow.
- To be inclusive, journalists need to use diverse sources and seek out diverse subjects to profile. To do that, they need to have the urge to fight bias in reporting.
- Some good questions to ask yourself while reporting a story are: (1) What are my biases on this subject or this story? and (2) What would someone with the opposite or different biases believe?
- Overall, bias is a massive challenge for journalism because of the damage perception that it causes.
In a world of texting and social media, we are often caged within a terrifying level of immediacy and impaired attention span. Ultimately, good journalism allows us to think independently, edit and revise our beliefs over time, and maintain a healthy discourse towards the public good. Regardless of the choice of mediums and domain knowledge, these principles remain crucial.
