Civil Weekly Newsletter: 2/8/2019 Edition

Here’s what Civil Newsrooms wrote about this week.

• While developers are flocking to some of Chicago’s most sought after neighborhoods, some aldermen in those neighborhoods are reaping the benefits from campaign donations. Block Club Chicago maps where donations are going, and where developers have donated.
• Most of the conversations about gentrification in Colorado center around the capital, Denver. But as real estate prices rise throughout the state, city planners are looking to the city’s example to avoid displacing some vulnerable populations. The Colorado Sun explains, and includes some very interesting philosophies around affordable housing.
• During the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, lawmakers like Rep. Yvette Clark (D-Brooklyn) made sure immigrants who would be affected by President Trump’s policies were in the audience. Documented spoke with Rep. Clarke, who says that the House Homeland Committee will continue to probe immigration enforcement. Read the full story.
• In New Hampshire, groups have been pushing for the legalization of marijuana to ease the burden on police who are tasked with enforcing cannabis brought across the state’s small borders. Cannabis Wire explores the arguments on either side of the issue.
• “The first thing I did when I got sober was immediately tell everyone that I was sober like, for real sober, like for EVER sober.” The Small Bow’s Eva Hagberg Fisher recounts her journey as she grappled with explaining to anyone (including herself) that she was an “alcoholic sober.”
• After the Russian ban in many Olympic competitions, one Hmm Daily journalist was determined to find out more about traces of dope found in various track and field athletes. He contacted a few Russian hackers for a report. They emailed him a ZIP file back. Here’s what he found.
• Since 2009, General Electric has been dredging some of the most toxic parts of the Hudson River, scooping out thousands of pounds of contaminated soil and shipping it over land to be buried in rural Texas. The River asks: has this cleanup been effective — or would it have been better if the company had left the river alone?
• After the U.S. government reopened after being shutdown for 34 days, many people were well-aware of how it caused disarray at many of the nation’s airports. But how did the shutdown affect essential mass transit? It was a major threat, EcoWURD tells us, for cities like Philadelphia.
• “People who aren’t black don’t see what we go through… because people don’t want to.” GroundTruth Project published an interesting glimpse, written and photographed by a white woman, into what it means to be a black man in the United States.
• “As a college student… I learned that Polish Nazis had existed, and that they bore swastikas tattooed in their armpits.” This Popula piece is a powerful account of understanding both World War II and modern Nazis through Polish culture, tradition and family history.
• While they largely oppose Donald Trump’s demand for a border wall, Democrats are calling for “smart, effective border security” measures. Sludge covers the latest on the Democrats’ proposal for a surveillance wall.

For those of you based in or around Boulder, Colorado, join the Colorado Sun team, along with students from the University of Colorado, on February 15 to talk about local journalism — and to celebrate the Sun’s first several months. Register here.

And if you’re based in New York City next week, don’t miss this event co-hosted by Documented to talk immigration policy and registration. Learn more here.

Civil en Español

• La Justicia en Brasil condena a Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva a 12 años de prisión en nuevo caso de corrupción. Lea más en 14ymedio.

Interested in starting your own Civil Newsroom? Learn how you can join the Civil community. Or, for a daily feed from Civil Newsrooms, follow @CivilStories on Twitter.

Sludge becomes the first newsroom to apply to the Civil Registry!

Civil’s launch is just around the corner. If you participated in Civil’s initial token sale, expect to hear from us with details on how to become an official member of the Civil community in the extremely near future.

This week, we recorded another significant milestone on that path: Sludge became the first newsroom to officially apply to the Civil Registry, the hub where the community will be able to discover and interact with all of the newsrooms that form the Civil network:

In addition to Sludge, you can soon expect to see 17 additional newsrooms, as well as as many more newsrooms that we’ll be announcing soon, listed here over the coming weeks. It’s all happening!

“I’m grateful for the coverage exclusively devoted to immigration issues.” Looking back at Documented’s first year.

We spoke with Documented co-founders Mazin Sidahmed and Max Siegelbaum. The two joined Civil’s community as part of the First Fleet almost exactly one year ago, and have been publishing since June.

This week, they reflected on what’s been an exciting and eventful first year. Read the full post here.

The Random Musing Section

Whether or not you’re one of millions of people to subscribe to Netflix and/or Hulu, odds are that you’ve heard something about the controversial Fyre Festival, which was featured in competing documentaries that both platforms launched last month.

Over the past two weeks, a new controversy has emerged, centered around one of the agencies that was signed to promote the festival: Jerry Media. Jerry Media is an advertising company that was launched off of a popular Instagram account and its 10 million+ followers. The company has long been criticized for stealing others’ work without attribution or compensation, and is under a renewed microscope for its role in the Fyre Festival debacle.

This Rolling Stone op-ed from one of the (many) individuals from whom Jerry Media has stolen content sums up the ethical dilemma better than I could in this space. I’m raising it here because it’s a powerful reminder of what a significant issue proving — and enforcing — content ownership has become in the digital age, and the negative impacts it has. Perhaps the biggest issue is that most of us don’t even realize that this IS such a major issue, and that it’s stifling the ability of many smaller, independent creators (journalists, comedians, artists, etc.) to find their audience and develop a sustainable model.

It’s also major reason why Civil is collaborating with the Associated Press to build a better option for tracking and proving content ownership in a more definitive — and enforceable — manner.

At this point, we all know that journalism — and, more broadly, independent media — is facing an existential threat like never before. Much of this is beyond our control, but we’re also capable of exercising significantly more power than we realize. It starts with supporting original work, and refusing to support any organization that violates the principles of content ownership.


— Matt Coolidge