We’re celebrating Poynter’s 50th anniversary … with your help

In April 1976, Warner Bros. released the movie “All the President’s Men” starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as legendary Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The story of how the dogged reporters covered the Watergate scandal did two things. The real story helped lead then-President Richard Nixon to eventually resign from office. And the dramatized, edge-of-your-seat thriller inspired more than a generation or two to go into journalism.

I argue that “All the President’s Men” is one of the most important and influential moments in the history of journalism.

The movie debuted less than a year after The Poynter Institute opened in 1975.

Which, if you do some quick math, tells you that Poynter is approaching its 50th anniversary in 2025. The institute has plenty planned to commemorate this golden anniversary, including a project in which you can help. In fact, we’re asking for your help.

We are putting together a list of the 50 most significant media moments and people of the past 50 years. We’re calling it The Poynter 50. This list, which we will unveil throughout 2025, might include the invention of Facebook and Twitter. And inspirational moments, such as, like I just mentioned, the making and impact of “All the President’s Men.” They could center on the most influential people — news leaders and impactful journalists. They could be coverage of the biggest news stories, such as 9/11 and the Gulf War — which helped with the rise of cable news. They could be industry-impacting moments, such as the decision to give away news for free on the internet.

When Poynter opened its doors for the first time, there was no internet, no social media, no cable television. Think of all that has happened since then, all the influential people who have come along, and how the journalism and media industry has changed.

So we want your help coming up with a worthy list. No topic is too big. No topic is too small. No topic is too mainstream, or too niche. We are looking for a wide variety of events, moments, stories and/or people that helped shape our media landscape since the start of 1975.

Please help us by filling out this short, two-question survey with your thoughts on what deserves to make the list. There also is a question asking your name and how you would like to be identified. You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. But, please, share your ideas and suggestions.

Thanks for your help!

Now onto the rest of today’s newsletter …

A MESSAGE FROM POYNTER

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New York Times tech workers end election week strike without contract

For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.

The New York Times Tech Guild, which represents more than 650 tech workers at the company, called off its strike Tuesday, roughly a week after members had walked off the job.

Frustrated by disagreements with the company over contract proposals regarding job protections, wages and remote work policies, workers began their strike the Monday before Election Day. At the time, the guild vowed to strike until it reached a tentative agreement on a contract with the company. But negotiations failed to progress, and union members returned to work Tuesday morning without a contract.

“Management had been super clear that they were just not willing to bargain with us at all while we were on strike,” senior software engineer and union shop steward Kait Hoehne said. “And we just realized it wasn’t worth our unit’s money and time to continue that. Our priority has always been getting to a contract, and so we realized that our energy was better spent going back into the office and getting back to the table.”

In timing its strike with Election Day, the guild — which includes engineers, project and product managers, designers and data analysts — had been hoping to hamper the Times’ coverage and prove its might. The guild warned before the strike that the Times’ maligned election Needle was in jeopardy and that readers may experience technical issues on the Times’ apps and website.

But the Times had its “smoothest site performance during an election ever,” according to spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha. The Needle made an appearance, and it, along with the presidential election results page, received tens of millions of views from Tuesday to Thursday — more than any other piece on the Times’ site since the 2020 elections. Rhoades Ha attributed the site’s performance to months of prep work done by guild members and others at the company in the runup to the election. She also denied that the company refused to bargain with the union, stating that the guild has neither asked nor offered dates for a meeting since Nov. 3.

“While the strike was intended to disrupt our election coverage and undermine our ability to reach our readers, it was unsuccessful,” chief technology officer Jason Sobel and chief growth officer Hannah Yang told Guild members in a note Monday night. “Ultimately, all it did was cost members who participated 2.3% of their annual wages — more than $3,500 on average including today’s paid holiday. Today, we remain as far apart as we were when the strike was announced.”

Still, Hoehne said that the Times had to pull needles for nonpresidential races. Error rates were “elevated,” and the work stoppage forced the Times to spend money on contractors to cover for striking workers, she added. Despite ending the strike, the union’s stance on key contract proposals remains the same.

“Our goals have not changed,” Hoehne said. “And we will take whatever strategy gets us to them.”

Dropping the case

Olivia Nuzzi — the reporter who parted ways with New York magazine after admitting she had an intimate (although not physical) relationship with a subject she covered, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has asked the D.C. Superior Court to dismiss her request for a protective order against her ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, a reporter at Politico.

The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi and Maura Judkis wrote, “Nuzzi had accused Lizza in a court filing last month of harassment, blackmail, hacking her electronic devices and making violent threats — allegedly part of the fallout from revelations of Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy, whom Nuzzi had profiled for her employer, New York magazine. Nuzzi alleged that Lizza attempted to keep her in their relationship, including threatening ‘to make public personal information about me to destroy my life, career, and reputation — a threat he has since carried out.’ Lizza denied the allegations, and accused Nuzzi of ‘abusing protections meant for survivors of domestic violence to ruin my reputation in a last-ditch effort to salvage her own.’”

Nuzzi’s attorney said in a statement, “Ms. Nuzzi has no interest in fighting a public relations battle. For insight into her decision, you can refer to the statements in her motion.”

In a statement Tuesday, Lizza said, “Olivia shamelessly used litigation with false and defamatory allegations as a public relations strategy. When required to do so, she refused to defend her claims in court last month. She then sought to hide my response to her claims from the public by seeking to seal the proceedings that she began. Now, on the eve of a hearing at which she knew her lies would be exposed, she has taken the only course available to her and withdrawn her fabricated claims. Olivia lied to me for almost a year. She lied to her editors. She lied to her readers. She lied to her colleagues. She lied to reporters. And she lied to the judge in this case. I said I would defend myself against her lies vigorously and successfully and I am fully prepared to do so. But for now, I’m pleased this matter is closed.”

A new press secretary?

Mediaite’s Diana Falzone reports that Alina Habba, the lawyer who has represented Donald Trump in a bunch of his high-profile cases, is the front-runner to be Trump’s White House press secretary.

Falzone wrote, “One source, granted anonymity to speak about internal deliberations, said there are ongoing discussions with Habba about the job but it remains unclear whether she will take it. ‘She’s expected to be at Mar-a-Lago this week for conversations regarding a potential role,’ the source said.”

Habba earned a degree in political science from Lehigh University, and then went to law school after that. Most of her professional background is as an attorney and adviser. Press secretaries come from all sorts of backgrounds, but many served as press secretaries or spokespersons of political candidates before holding such an important position as White House press secretary.

Habba hasn’t necessarily fared so well as Trump’s attorney.

Falzone noted, “​​She joined his legal team in 2021 and represented him in a series of cases, including E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit, which ended in a $83 million verdict against Trump, and the New York civil fraud case that ended in a $454 million judgment against the president-elect. The fraud case is currently being appealed.”

A MESSSAGE FROM POYNTER

A forward-minded look at the state of journalism

Poynter recently brought together a wide array of media experts, leaders and thinkers to discuss the state of the news media industry and themes. You can find the results in Poynter’s recently published OnPoynt report, which highlights current industry trends in areas such as local news and content creators, misinformation and AI innovations.

Read the report now.

Now for more media news, thoughts, tidbits and interesting links …

• In yet another Fox-News-to-the-White-House move, Fox News host Pete Hegseth has been named by Donald Trump as his secretary of defense. Yeah, a bit of a surprise there. CNN’s Jim Acosta tweeted, “In a sign he has been making his cabinet selections while watching TV, Trump picks Fox anchor Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.” The New York Times’ Helene Cooper and Maggie Haberman wrote, “The choice of Mr. Hegseth was outside the norm of the traditional defense secretary. But he was a dedicated supporter of Mr. Trump during his first term, defending his interactions with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, embracing his ‘America First’ agenda of trying to withdraw U.S. troops from abroad and energetically taking up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.”
• Jennifer Rubin’s latest column for The Washington Post is “Democrats need to reclaim reality from the right-wing disinformation machine.” In it, Rubin writes, “In the right-wing media’s world, the economy is in shambles, crime is surging, and kids are being lured into sex-reassignment surgery. In such an atmosphere, Democrats’ positions and proposals become divorced from the public’s perceptions of politics.” Rubin adds, “The answer to combating the avalanche of disinformation, sadly, does not reside primarily in legacy media, which millions upon millions of Americans never see or read. (It certainly does not reside in outlets that offered false equivalence, failed to oppose a fascist candidate, or ignored voters’ lack of interest in democracy and underlying resentment over the loss of White power.) Rather, the solution lies largely in fostering new forms of media to counteract the gusher of right-wing disinformation that fills the brains and shapes the attitudes of many Americans.”
• Axios media reporter Sara Fischer has a well-executed piece about who’s in and who’s out among the media power brokers as Donald Trump prepares for his second term as president. Some of the names you’re going to see are RFK Jr. influencers, independent streamers, Elon Musk, The New York Post, Fox News and many others. Good stuff from Fischer, so check it out.
• Los Angeles Times columnist LZ Granderson with “Trump’s election says a lot about trust in journalism.”
• The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, Drew Harwell and Jacob Bogage with “Trump expected to try to halt TikTok ban, allies say.”
• TheWrap’s Sharon Knolle with “LA Times Owner to Create a New Editorial Board in Light of Trump Presidency – and ‘The Newsroom Is Pissed.’”
• CNN’s Hadas Gold with “Infowars attracts ‘seven-figure’ auction bids that will decide fate of Alex Jones’ empire.”
• Nicholas Carlson, the former top editor of Business Insider, is starting a new company that will focus on video. The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin has more in “He Saw Digital Media Melt Down. His Next Act? A Media Start-Up.”
• Since last week’s election, many are leaving the social media platform X. And many are jumping over to Bluesky. The Guardian’s Luca Ittimani reports that Bluesky has picked up more than 700,000 news users in the past week. Most of that 700,000 has come from the U.S. and the U.K. Bluesky now has 14.5 million users worldwide, up from 9 million in September. ​​Social media researcher Axel Bruns told The Guardian, “It’s become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide, but without all the far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else. The more liberal kind of Twitter community has really now escaped from there and seems to have moved en masse to Bluesky.”
• For Nieman Lab, Laura Hazard Owen with “I’m a journalist and I’m changing the way I read news. This is how.”
• Remember that comedian who told the joke at the Donald Trump rally about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage?” Well, the day after that controversial appearance, that comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, recorded an episode of his “Kill Tony” podcast, which was released earlier this week. In it, he admitted a Trump rally was not the best place for that joke, but he also said, “I apologize to absolutely nobody. Not to the Puerto Ricans, not to the whites, not to the Blacks, not to the Palestinians, not to the Jews, and not to my own mother, who I made fun of during the set. Nobody clipped that. No headlines about me making fun of my own mother.” Variety’s Zack Sharf has more details.
• This story will sound familiar to some of you. I actually heard the same kind of story from a friend just this past weekend about her Thanksgiving plans. For HuffPost, Andrea Tate with “My Husband And His Family Voted For Trump — So I'm Canceling Thanksgiving And Christmas.”
• For The xxxxxx, Scott Conroy with “Trump Voters Should Do Some Soul-Searching Too.”

More resources for journalists

• Get an AI ethics framework for your newsroom. Start here.
• Encourage an outstanding colleague to apply for Leadership Academy for Women in Media.
• Ensure your newsroom is on the cutting edge of evolving criminal justice coverage.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].