Prominent New York City journalists are banding together to report on and endorse local politicians, CNN reported Friday.
The group, which is currently calling itself the New York Editorial Board, plans to start interviewing politicians after the November elections. They will report their findings, and individual members may make endorsements based on those interviews.
The initiative is in part a reaction to The New York Times’ recent decision to stop endorsing candidates in local elections, Ben Smith, Semafor editor-in-chief and one of the members of the group, told CNN. That decision generated outcry from some readers who told the Times that they viewed the editorial boards’ endorsements as a vital resource.
The Times, however, is part of a growing trend among newspapers to stop endorsing political candidates. The roughly 200 papers belonging to Alden Global Capital, for example, stopped endorsing candidates in 2022.
“This came out of organic conversations among friends about how to fill some of the hole left for independent, experienced journalistic editorial interviews that used to be an important test for public officials,” Smith said. “Public-interest journalism can also be a counterweight to the interest groups and transactions that dominate the politics of America’s greatest city.”
By Angela Fu, media business reporter
Here are two leftovers about media business transformation from last week; pieces on the challenges of delivering serious journalism that will attract an audience. There are no pat solutions but it’s good food for thought.
News providers are letting themselves off the hook
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen has stepped down as director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, but his work in spotting worldwide trends continues.
He summed up his current thinking in a speech last month in Berlin. Its gist: Trust and news avoidance persist, but news providers may be misleading themselves if they keep presenting traditionally framed journalism that’s been recast into a digital format or marketed better to younger demographics or political partisans.
Reuters Institute work, Nielsen said, has shown “the public is essentially telling us every day and in growing numbers that even though they often want what journalism aspires to provide, they’re not feeling that we’re delivering it in a way that makes it worth their while to engage with us. …
“The problem is much more fundamental than convincing people to pay. The problem is that publishers are struggling to convince people to pay attention to news.”
Too often, he continues, providers may be unintentionally falling into “rearguard action,” effectively reverting to a time when the news was written by white men for white men. That won’t do it.
Nielsen said he doesn’t have a solution. But I like his question as one that editors should consider in the mix of coverage they choose and reporters and visual journalists should be asking themselves repeatedly as they do stories.
By Rick Edmonds, media business analyst
The Wichita Beacon — at sea in the middle of Kansas?
Nieman Lab’s Sophie Culpepper published a deep dive into the nonprofit startup the Wichita Beacon, which has experienced inordinate turnover in its small newsroom. Long, as many Nieman pieces are, her story has the virtue of airing out the views of reporters and editors who have left. (By Culpepper’s count, all three of the original reporters and the editor were gone in less than a year from a summer 2021 launch, and at least four more have left since).
The departures seem to add up to a pattern of confusion over the mission, together with a backbreaking workload. Plus there was a feeling that way too many news decisions were coming from the Beacon’s older and bigger sibling in Kansas City, 200 miles away.
Culpepper’s conclusion: Even with adequate startup funding commitment ($4 million) and an idealistic devotion to local news, reporters need to be on board for the exciting work of designing something new.
By Rick Edmonds, media business analyst
