One day after announcing a restructuring that would cut certain audience, editor and fact-checking positions, The Appeal decided to pause layoffs while it holds discussions with its newly formed union.
The Appeal first announced a round of layoffs Monday, five minutes after its staff went public with their union drive. The layoffs were part of a larger effort to make the nonprofit newsroom financially independent from its sponsors, Tides Advocacy and Tides Center. As part of the restructuring, the entire audience team would be cut, and certain editors, fact-checkers and executives would lose their jobs.
The Appeal Union called the layoffs retaliatory. Leadership denied the allegation, saying that they had been discussing the restructuring for months.
Media unions denounced The Appeal’s actions, and The Appeal Union organized a letter-writing campaign that led to more than 400 letters being sent to newsroom leaders.
On Tuesday, The Appeal informed the union it would voluntarily recognize them and pause layoffs. One fact-checker who was laid off Monday morning was given his job back.
“This is a positive step. It gives our union time to negotiate with management about the future of The Appeal and our staff,” the union tweeted Tuesday. “But there is still work to do. We hope management will cancel the layoffs altogether, and are still seeking clarity on the status of certain staffers.”
2021 National Headliner Award winners announced
The National Headliner Awards, one of the oldest annual contests recognizing journalism, announced its winners Tuesday. The categories span journalism across newspapers, magazines, photography, online, radio and television. The awards program detailed the winners, including some comments from judges, in two separate documents on its website.
The Best in Show Newspapers award this year went to two journalists, Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi of the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times, for their 2020 investigation titled “Targeted.” “With a stunning hit-parade of police body cam footage and starkly written narrative, the Tampa Bay Times uncovers a shocking police practice that amounts to harassing potential wrongdoers from the unwelcoming precincts of Pasco County, Florida,” the judges said.
Here are a few more notable winners:
- The Los Angeles Times won 15 awards, including six first places. The Times’ Marcus Yam and Alan Hagman won the Best in Show Photography award for Yam’s portfolio titled “The Long Road: An Exodus from Venezuela.” Hagman, a veteran photographer, died in 2019 at age 55.
- The Star Tribune in Minneapolis won nine awards, including six first places.
- National Public Radio won eight awards, including three first places.
- CBS News won 16 awards, including five first places.
For the entire list of winners, and judges’ comments, check out this list, and this one.
The journalists behind the news
In March, after eight people were killed in Atlanta, journalists and newsrooms struggled to get the story of anti-Asian hate right. Poynter’s Kristen Hare reported on how the Asian American Journalists Association worked that day and in the days that followed to offer support to members, call out racist coverage and provide nuanced guidance for newsrooms and journalists. TEGNA newsrooms are among those that were grateful for the chance to pause in a busy news cycle and work to get the story right.
“When we’re in that situation, to have an organization like AAJA put out a guide that forces us to pause … it lets us do a check of our work and helps us move forward more responsibly,” said Joanie Vasiliadis, TEGNA’s vice president of digital content. “In a perfect world, our brains are hardwired to do those things in conjunction, to act quickly with these inclusive practices in mind, but I think everyone in news knows that we have a ways to get there.”
Time to release Winner?
The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes Wednesday about Reality Winner, a former contractor with the National Security Agency, who shared a copy of a classified document with The Intercept about Russia’s attempts at hacking into election websites.
Sullivan writes “A heartbreaking — and infuriating — new documentary about how the Trump Justice Department went after her reinforced my long-held belief that, although her prison term is due to end in November, it’s high time for our government to set Winner free.”
A novel initiative to report on poverty honored
The Economic Hardship Reporting Project supports articles, essays, documentaries and other coverage of poverty and economic injustice. It was honored this week as the best nontraditional news organization in a new online awards contest sponsored by New York University’s journalism school.
The project’s eclectic portfolio includes an upcoming Netflix documentary, “Maid,” based on a domestic worker’s book; a Washington Post op-ed by television journalist Ray Suarez about the consequences of incurring huge bills after having lost his dental insurance; and a personal essay on the poorest Americans and their pets for a dog magazine, The Bark.
With a three-person staff, the project seeks, it said in a release, “to support independent journalists so they can create gripping stories that counter common poor-shaming narratives and then inject these stories into the mainstream media, mobilizing readers to change systems that perpetuate economic hardship.”
The group was founded by author Barbara Ehrenreich, whose 2001 book “Nickel and Dimed” is considered a classic expose of the miserable working conditions of fast-food workers, house cleaners and others in the low-wage economy.
Elizabeth Bruenig joins The Atlantic
New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig will join The Atlantic as a staff writer later this month, the magazine announced Wednesday. She will cover the intersection of politics, religion and culture as part of the Ideas team.
Bruenig was the last person at The New York Times to hold the title of opinion writer, Politico reported. She is the fifth journalist to leave the Times for The Atlantic this year.
Goodbye, Ellen
