Civil Weekly Newsletter: 12/14 Edition

This week’s highlights from around Civil Newsrooms.

“It’s fairly common for politicians, their staff, think tanks and the like to assign an ideology or an agenda to reporters when they ask honest questions about conflicts of interest. It’s much easier to justify your own conflicts, or the appearance of conflicts, when you think, or pretend, that the person asking the questions is conflicted herself.”

So said Sludge’s Alex Kotch, in an op-ed focused on the revelations — and subsequent social media firestorm — that 2018 Senate (and potential 2020 presidential) candidate Beto O’Rourke accepted campaign contributions from oil and gas executives.

It marked the first time Sludge used the “Opinion” tag, and it has quickly become one of their most widely read articles to date. The story behind the story is equally fascinating; we spoke with Alex about that earlier this week.

Here’s what else Civil Newsrooms were up to over the past seven days:

• Six years after marijuana was legalized in Colorado, some police dogs are still trained to alert officers when they smell pot. The Colorado Sun explores how Colorado laws are hazy about when a pot-sniffing pooch can start a police-led vehicle search. And it raises a broader legal question: does cannabis legalization actually mean that marijuana is legal?
• “Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy?” This question from a friend prompted The Small Bow’s Amie Barrodale to explore how she has used “just sitting” in Buddhist meditation to come to terms with the often uncomfortable, unbearable unknown.
• When strangers began calling her from all over the city citing a roar contest, one Chicago resident knew she had been pranked, reports Block Club Chicago. Read how her coworker’s quest for revenge led to over 200 Chewbacca-inspired voicemails.
• After an incoming call from the U.S. Social Security Administration, one Popula author broke down in tears as she gave her social security number to the man on the phone. Read how she realized she was actually being scammed a little too late.
• Casino gambling has been advocated as means to drive tourism and restore life to a slumping local economy in the Hudson Valley. But The River finds that some of the largest companies supporting gambling in the region aren’t necessarily dealing all-in.
• Heat waves are the nation’s deadliest weather hazard, reports an atmospheric scientist on behalf of ecoWURD. This can have deadly consequences for those in low-income urban neighborhoods, where residents are more vulnerable to above average temperatures.
• Is a problem with reading news online that there’s simply too much of it? On this week’s ZigZag, one ex-Twitter and one ex-Facebook executive talk about how they’re building an app to change how we consume daily news.
• One relentless — and previously anonymous — immigration judge in New York has been referenced among thousand of pages of complaints detailing improper courtroom behavior. Documented read transcripts of these complaints, and painted a damning picture of immigration courts that fail to hold out-of-order judges accountable for their actions.
• During the formative 2015 climate summit in Paris, a coalition of nations threatened to walk away from negotiations if limiting the warming of Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees was not included in global goals. More than three years later, this goal is now requiring harsh policies that may pit fossil-fuel-producing nations against the rest of the world, reports GroundTruth Project.
• Hemp was legalized this week, and that’s a huge deal with much deeper ramifications than most people realize. Cannabis Wire walks through some of the biggest outstanding questions and issues about the crop’s legalization in the United States.
• “[The Squiz] had to cut through the clutter and feel like it was somebody updating you. Newspaper emails miss the mark because they’re generic, cut-and-paste jobs, not a note to someone. They are just news and a bunch of links.” Splice interviewed Claire Kimball of Australian political newsletter The Squiz about how she’s become one of the country’s rising media stars.
• Though YouTube is owned by Google, YouTube’s search results are increasingly more extreme as people continue watching videos. HmmDaily explains and elaborates on the Vox piece written about this topic, while offering a different perspective on why this may be the case.
• Over at FAQ NYC, we hear from two separate women who’ve experienced sexual harassment in government jobs, and what they’re doing to reform the system for others.

Civil en español

• Expertos médicos aseguraron que 25 diplomáticos en Cuba tienen una “disfunción del organismo interno del oído que afecta el equilibrio” que no son producto de sus imaginaciónes, dice 14ymedio.

Have an idea for a story about a Civil Newsroom? Maybe you’re curious about the research involved in an investigative piece, or you’re interested in how a journalist found out about an issue. Email us with ideas about what you’d like highlighted on Civil’s blog.

And if you’re in New York City this weekend, consider attending this event and live interview co-produced by Documented on December 16 that will tell the stories of formerly incarcerated men and women.

Finally, for a daily feed from Civil Newsrooms, follow @CivilStories on Twitter.

Meet the Civil Foundation.

The Civil Foundation is an independent organization dedicated to promoting ethical, sustainable journalism around the world. From day one on Civil, new newsrooms can expect to interact with the Foundation to help position them as trusted sources of news to the public. To find out how to become part of the community of newsrooms running on Civil, visit civil.co.

Want to meet the actual humans (and their dozens of years of experience) who are helping newsrooms along the way? Meet the Foundation team.

The Random Musing Section

It’s mid-December, and that can only mean one thing: we are in peak “list” season. It’s the time to collectively detail everything from the best/worst movies, books, memes, etc. of the past 12 months. While it may be a bit cliché at this point, I still click on a good many of them — and I bet you do, too! And full disclosure: we’re working on one of our own. We’ll be sharing each Civil newsroom’s favorite story of 2018, and a bit more detail into how and why it was reported, in our 12/28 newsletter. Keep an eye out for that one.

One of the more enduring and significant end-of-year honors is TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year. This year, TIME honored the “guardians,” a disparate group of journalists from around the world whose work led to extreme sacrifices. In the case of Reuters’ Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and The Rappler’s Maria Ressa (who is also a founding member of the Civil Council), that meant being persecuted by hostile regimes for whom they refused to bend as in covering them honestly and critically. For the Washington Post’s Jamal Khashoggi and five employees at Maryland’s Capital Gazette, that meant being killed in cold blood because of their chosen profession.

It’s one of the most powerful reminders of how important journalism is, and the cold, hard truth is that honest journalists around the world are facing threats like never before. Hats off to TIME for using its platform to shine such a powerful light on this issue. Here’s to keeping that conversation going, and letting the powers that be know that journalism is a force for good that will always hold them accountable, and which can’t simply be stamped out by the will of powerful individuals or institutions.


— Matt Coolidge


PS — be sure to keep an eye out for next week’s newsletter, which will contain some significant updates for those of you who have been patiently waiting to learn about Civil’s launch plans!