The Taliban now control Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war with the U.S., leaving the world stunned and many Afghans living with fear and despair. As we try to make sense of this news, Poynter’s Tom Jones stresses the importance of tuning into the media outlets reporting the what and why, rather than the who in this insightful column on poynter.org. As Jones writes, how we consume media today will help us better understand how this historic moment in time will impact Americans, now and in the future.

Thanks to individuals like you who value high-integrity journalism, Poynter can ensure you have the information you need to be an active citizen in a democratic society. 

In a release this week, Poynter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning digital fact-checking organization, PolitiFact, announced a collaboration with Arizona State University and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication to expand training in fact-checking journalism, create a new website to fact-check Arizona politicians, and grow our teaching footprint in the nation’s capital. With an expanded profile in Washington, Poynter will enhance our efforts to support today’s fact-checking professionals, prepare the next generation of journalists, protect the free press, and invite journalists and citizens alike to join the cause.

This collaboration comes at a particularly exciting time for PolitiFact as Arizona is positioned to be a key battleground state in the country’s upcoming elections. 

When you give to Poynter, you give journalists access to career-accelerating resources. Thank you for investing in the future of journalism. 

With positive COVID-19 cases on the rise, Poynter’s Al Tompkins continues to track the latest developments to keep your communities safe and journalists informed in his daily Covering COVID-19 newsletter. In this edition, he examines how booster shots work and whether public places are trending toward requiring proof of vaccination. He also dives into new research to find who is considered to be immunocompromised and eligible for an additional vaccine dose. 

Poynter’s nonprofit newsroom depends on your support. Thank you for helping us deliver news and analysis to thousands of inboxes every day.

More than 900 journalists, educators and students across the nation enrolled in Poynter’s free Census Stories Beyond the Numbers online training that took place earlier this month. Experts from Pew Research Center and respected news organizations taught journalists how to generate story ideas using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 report. The panel also taught the participants how the new demographic information will influence the way they report their hometown’s stories for years to come. We’ll do more training in the weeks and months to come as additional data and new analysis tools become available.

Thank you to Google News Initiative, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, Stanford’s Big Local News and an anonymous individual donor for making this training possible.