For as slow as our industry is to change, sometimes, it happens relatively quickly.

Examples: In the last few years, a lot of newsrooms have stopped using mugshots, aware of “the lasting impact of putting these photos on the internet, where they live forever, media outlets are increasingly doing away with the galleries of people on the worst days of their lives,” Keri Blakinger wrote for Poynter in 2020.

Many publications are no longer naming mass shooters.

Newsrooms have also started creating policies of their own for unpublishing, the process of taking something down from a digital site.

It’s progress, and it’s just the beginning. Today I want to share two projects with you that aim to help journalists rethink two major areas of coverage — crime and addiction.

For crime, you’ll find a Q&A between my colleagues, Barbara Allen and Kelly McBride, about McBride’s Transforming Crime Into Public Safety Reporting project. (And here's a longer version of that conversation.) Newsroom applications are open for that now.

For addiction, I spoke with the team at Reporting on Addiction, which is a collaborative project from Opioid Policy Institute and 100 Days in Appalachia. It offers tons of resources and a brand-new Opioid Settlement Transparency Resource Hub.

Let’s start with crime: 

Barbara: Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to realize that you really wanted to dedicate yourself to this kind of training?

Kelly: I was a police reporter for years. I covered the gamut, from small-town to metropolitan center. As journalists, we are disingenuous about why we cover crime. We tell ourselves that we cover it so that the public can keep itself safe. And yet the information that we give them doesn't help anybody keep themselves safe. There's a huge disconnect between why we say we cover crime and how we actually cover crime. That disconnect makes journalism part of the problem when it comes to reforming our criminal justice system, when journalism really shouldn't be part of the solution. 

Barbara: Why is this work important to you personally?

Kelly: I really do believe that journalism is important to democracy. And if that is going to continue to be true, the journalism itself has to be good. Crime news, for the most part, is not good. It's either mediocre or outright harmful. And it's such a substantial portion of our daily news report that we can't continue to say we are supporting democracy when we have this deeply flawed approach to a really big portion of the work that we do.

You can find more information on transforming crime coverage here. 

Reporting on Addiction takes a three-prong approach by working with journalists, universities and experts and offers resources for all three. The project, a collaboration between Opioid Policy Institute and 100 Days in Appalachia, launched in 2021. 

“It doesn't matter what beat you cover, addiction at some point will come across your desk, but we as a profession have the responsibility to cover addiction ethically — in a way that's based on the latest medical science and highlights the voices of the real experts in this field — no matter what beat we're on,” said Ashton Marra, the executive editor of 100 Days in Appalachia. 

Reporting on Addiction offers a style guide, an expert database with people who are experts both through training and life experiences, newsroom training and sensitivity reads. There’s also a new resource hub for covering opioid settlement money that includes a newsletter, a Slack channel and more.

“Covering the opioid lawsuit settlements could be done by health reporters, but it could also fall under the responsibility of a court reporter or a political, legislative or city hall reporter, or, for so many small weeklies, the only reporter in the newsroom whose job requires them to cover it all,” Marra said. “We know the topic is complicated, and we want to help. We want to help journalists hold their local officials accountable and make sure this money is spent in a way that's truly going to result in change for our communities. They deserve it.”

You can learn more about reporting on addiction here.



Two more things to share before I go: In a previous edition of this newsletter, I spoke with The New York Times’ Dean Baquet about the Times’ new local news fellowship. You can see who is in the first class and read the first story to get published. 

That's it for me. I'm grateful to be surrounded by smart humans this week at Poynter's first Leadership Academy for Women in Media for 2023.

Thanks for reading, 

Kristen