Combat information disorder where you live
New First Draft local fellowship project offers intensive training & financial support
Imposter news sites are springing up like noxious weeds in the deserts left by dead and dying newspapers across the nation. With innocuous names like “Tennessee Star” and “Grand Rapids Reporter,” and ”Minnesota Sun,” such online sites peddle in misinformation and are often run by political operatives, aiming to influence votes.
Why the place-based names? They are taking advantage of people’s trust in local news, which survey data shows is generally higher than in national news sources. Researchers have shown that such imposter sites often drive impressive traffic on social media, with people sharing links far and wide. The same goes for schemes cooked up by scamsters looking to score cash and, yes, foreign actors too.
Who would be better situated to expose fake locals than real, live locals? As humans living and working in the communities they serve, local news reporters should be our go-to sources for what’s real, and what’s not online, and who is paying what to influence our opinions. That link going viral on our neighborhood Facebook page? That tweet with the hashtag making some outrageous claim about a hot button local issue such as guns, abortion, or gentrification? The rumor about a local politician being circulated on WhatsApp, Instagram, a subreddit, insert name of online platform? Who better to expose a bot than a human whose kids may attend your neighborhood school, who you may run into at the supermarket?
But in an environment of scarcity — with so few local reporters on the beat, and the number continuing to dwindle — how can we expect them to take on this important function, when they don’t always even have time and resources to cover the local city council and school board meetings?
As humans living and working in the communities they serve, local news reporters should be our go-to sources for what’s real, and what’s not online, and who is paying what to influence our opinions.
In this election year, when the flow of disinformation will undoubtedly find new channels and eddies to flood, and take new forms, we need as many boots on the ground as possible. First Draft, a nonprofit that works with journalists and researchers around the globe, is already training hundreds of journalists in sophisticated techniques to track disinformation as well as best practices on how to reduce its spread.
Now, thanks to support by Democracy Fund, First Draft announces a new opportunity: local news fellowship in key regions where disinformation is likely to be a major factor. These local news fellows will not only get intensive training and support. Through their newsroom or sponsoring organization, they will receive a $20,000 stipend from First Draft, designed to help support both them and their newsrooms and compensate them for their valuable time.
Rather than serving a single news organization, they will be given support to collaborate with other local news organizations in their region. First Draft research shows that the public is more likely to accept reporting about disinformation from collaborations of news organizations rather than a single source. Meanwhile, across the country, local news organizations have begun to form partnerships to cover issues more deeply than they can do alone — from Resolve Philadelphia’s work on economic inequality to Stories of the Ohio, on environmental concerns with the local water supply.
Local fellows will learn how to train others, create non-branded, locally oriented reporting that can be used as a jumping off point for other newsrooms. They’ll have the opportunity to organize public meetings at libraries, coffee shops, wherever people gather, to help people understand the local online environment.
In testing this approach to supporting local news regionally and collaboratively — approaching these challenges by supporting local news ecosystems — First Draft hopes to build local capacity that will remain long after this election year. If it proves successful, there’s potential to build and expand it in the future. That’s because disinformation disorder is a chronic disease, which we can expect to mutate and continue to grow in new forms in the future. We may never be able to cure it, but through training, education, and developing best practices, we can control it.
To read more about the First Draft local news fellowship, follow this link. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis through January 31, 2020.
