Tricky

For our season two finale, Emily and Heather are joined by "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" writer Mike Drucker to talk about all things comedy and journalism. How do the writing staffs at shows like Full Frontal collaborate with researchers to produce investigative segments? How has the rise of social media changed the comedy landscape? Have comedians done a better job of explaining Brexit to Americans than journalists? Plus, Tricky's in-house comedian George Civeris presents a list of innovative suggestions for solving journalism's thorniest problems. 

In "The Digital Maginot Line", Mozilla fellow and disinformation expert Renée DiResta argues that perpetrators of information warfare have shifted from "targeting infrastructure to targeting the minds of civilians." In this week's episode, Renée joins Heather and Emily to talk about how governments and platforms are not doing enough to address this shift. In light of recent debates about the ethics of covering the Christchurch massacre, we talk about best practices for journalists working in an era of democratized propaganda and rampant misinformation. 

In the past few years, coverage of Silicon Valley in the press has shifted away from techno-utopian boosterism towards increasingly critical analysis. On this week's episode, we hear some advice from the New York Times' John Herrman about covering big tech platforms, and then Emily and Heather are joined by the Times' Amanda Hess to discuss her experiences writing about the internet as both a reporter and a critic.

Gawker unionized in 2015, setting off a wave of digital newsroom organizing, invigorated by layoffs and politics that leave journalists feeling embattled. Emily and Heather are joined by long-time labor reporter Steven Greenhouse, Writers Guild of America East organizer Megan McRobert, and writer and WGAE Council member Kelly Stout to explain how unions has been brought into the digital newsroom— and what digital journalism expects from labor.

BuzzFeed, Vice and other leaders in digital media have laid off over 2,000 people so far this year. It seems that nobody can bring in enough revenue from digital advertising to fuel free news online. Meanwhile, printed newspapers continue to lose subscribers. The good news, says University of Texas at Austin associate professor Iris Chyi, is that loyal subscribers are willing to pay more for less— even while newspapers feed their own "death spiral" by cutting newsrooms, hiking prices, and bemoaning their own demise. Nieman Lab director Joshua Benton joins in to discuss and disagree about what the numbers tell us about newspapers' past, and to pitch a future for print. 

How do we measure the reach and impact of online journalism? Does audience data belong in the newsroom? The meaning of audience metrics is often unclear, but their effects on business and editorial decisions are very real (pivot to video, anyone?). Chris Moran, The Guardian's strategic projects editor, talks to Emily about building analytics tools for journalists, navigating misleading numbers, and working in a newsroom that is "data-driven, but not data-led." 

In the second part of Tricky's deep-dive into the relationship between news publishers and tech platforms, Jezebel founding editor Anna Holmes joins Heather and Emily to talk about the glory days of blogs, the evolution of women's digital spaces (RIP Rookie), and what was lost when commenter culture moved to Facebook and Twitter. We also discuss the legacy of Gawker Media, what recent layoffs at digital publishers mean for the industry, and Anna's escape from the 24-hour news cycle as the editor of Topic, an online magazine that publishes once a month.

Writer and journalism professor Anjali Khosla joins Heather and Emily to talk about how we got this fraught relationship between tech platforms and news publishers. They cover the latest Facebook bombshell(s), Jonah Peretti's plans for digital media conglomeration, Anjali's experience as one of the first social media editors, and how future decisions from social media platforms will to shape the viability of journalism. They attempt to end on a positive note several times to mixed results. 

Emily and Heather discuss the fallout from the White House sharing a doctored video of Jim Acosta's heated exchange with President Trump. They then listen to local reporters from around the country share lessons they learned from covering the mid-terms. Plus, Heather interviews Rolling Stone's Jamil Smith about the responsibilities of journalists reporting on a divided electorate as we look towards 2020.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan joins Heather and Emily to discuss Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder and explore what its coverage says about the American media's evolving relationship with the Saudi Arabian government. Plus, Heather and Emily bring back the unboxing to reveal two new recurring segments for the show. It's the beginning of a whole new season of Tricky.

Emily and Heather are back with a new season of Tricky! Starting Nov. 2, we'll unbox the news of the week and untangle the knottiest problems facing journalism. New episodes every other Friday.

Disentangling journalism’s knottiest problems. Heather Chaplin and Emily Bell call on leading thinkers, doers, writers, and designers to tease out where we go from here. From the Journalism and Design program at The New School.

On the finale of the first season of Tricky, Emily and Heather are joined by media critic and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen to discuss the journalism that exposed the Trump administration's atrocities at the border and the role of the American press in an era of competing realities.  Reading List: ProPublica's initial reporting from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility: https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy  Our friend Margaret Sullivan's column about reporter Olivia Nuzzi's decision to play the ProPublica clip during a White House press briefing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-reporter-at-the-white-house-decided-to-play-the-audio-of-children-sobbing-somebody-had-to/2018/06/19/bbb8d814-73aa-11e8-805c-4b67019fcfe4_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.db8b0e4c5b4f  On the aftermath of Trump's executive order ending family separations: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-new-border-crisis-following-trumps-executive-order  A New York Times explainer on how due process works for undocumented immigrants: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/us/politics/due-process-undocumented-immigrants.html  Our guest Jay Rosen's latest blog post about the media's relationship with the Trump administration: http://pressthink.org/2018/06/its-time-for-the-press-to-suspend-normal-relations-with-the-trump-presidency/ 

How many fact-checking organizations does it take to change the proverbial fake news lightbulb? Elon Musk thinks we need at least one more. But maybe more like a popularity contest than a fact check, with journalists and institutions competing for credibility ratings.  Emily and Heather ask what is the point in the dozens of recently launched fact-checking initiatives, and the director of Poynter’s international fact-checking network Alexios Mantzarlis provides them with answers. Reading List:   Explainer on the Elon Musk & “Pravda” https://www.vox.com/2018/5/24/17389388/elon-musk-twitter-pravda Nate Silver’s response: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/999370434108944384 Ben Smith’s response: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/elon-musk-doesnt-know-what-hes-talking-about?utm_term=.poQVePjPl#.pcqEYlOla Our guest Alexios Mantzarlis’ response: “Four serious questions about Elon Musk's silly credibility score” https://www.poynter.org/news/four-serious-questions-about-elon-musks-silly-credibility-score Interview with Journalism professor Lucas Graves on the history of fact-checking: https://www.poynter.org/news/who-decides-whats-true-politics-history-rise-political-fact-checking Survey of fact-checking projects around the world: http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/02/a-2018-survey-of-fact-checking-projects-around-the-world-finds-a-booming-field-with-at-least-149-dedicated-initiatives/

Heather and Emily are joined by David Uberti of Splinter News, one of the authors of “Univision is a Fucking Mess” about his employer. But, seeking silver linings wherever they go, they also talk with Almudena Toral from Univision News Digital about some of the award-winning investigative work coming out of the Miami newsroom. Plus, Emily has all the latest on the Royal Wedding.   Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/episode-8-the-unraveling-of-univision/   Theme music: The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Emily and Heather consider what place opinion journalism has in public discourse today. With Jeet Heer of The New Republic, and Katie Kingsbury of the New York Times, the two ask: Is intellectual diversity possible? Can, and should, legacy news organizations provide thought leadership? When do provocations and thought experiments actually foster debate and when are they just straight trolling? And what’s that smell? Is it the daily bonfire of hot takes?   Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/episode-7-a-bonfire-of-hot-takes/   Theme music: The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Heather and Emily hunker down in the journalistic equivalent of a nuclear bunker with Storyful’s Mandy Jenkins and design technologist Rick Barraza to explore the looming crisis of AI-generated fakery that threatens our understanding of what’s real. Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/episode-6-getting-ready-for-the-infocalypse/ The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

A perverted sex act in a company-owned Mercedes, and a shriveled local media ecosystem. Heather and Emily are joined by Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan and Texas Tribune founder John Thornton to unpack the tricky problem of how to save local news from bankruptcy and bias.   Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/episode-5-whats-in-the-sinclair-broadcasting-box/   Theme music: The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Heather Chaplin and Emily Bell talk to Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale, about misinformation, conspiracy theories, and how journalism can survive in systems flooded with propaganda, with tips on tackling fake news from Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass. And Emily gives us an audio whiteboard sketch of the complexities of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data story. Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/episode-4-propaganda-and-pink-hair/   Theme music: The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

In this episode of Tricky, Heather and Emily talk to Sarah L. Roberts, the woman who coined the term “commercial content moderation,” about how elements of online discourse are governed by outsourced and unseen low-paid workers, who sift through “the grossness of humanity.” And they ask Andrew Losowsky of the Coral Project whether newsrooms and journalists still have a part to play in fostering civil discourse, on and offline. Plus: the bubonic plague, dance mania, Karen Carpenter, and pointy shoes. Read the full transcript below. Reading list: https://journalismdesign.com/please-dont-read-comments/   Theme music: The Insider Theme by The Insider is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.