From the editor
“When you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Danielle C. Belton, editor-in-chief of HuffPost, cites this advice, often attributed to Winston Churchill, in her piece on how journalism can move forward in an age of disinformation and distrust. This age of disruption, she argues, is a kind of hell, as society reckons with political polarization, anti-intellectualism, and the toxic legacies of colonialism, racism, and sexism.
Of course, it’s not just American journalists who are striving to bring the clarity of fact to issues beset by mis- and disinformation. Vidya Krishnan writes about the independent Indian newsrooms still holding the government to account, despite a crackdown on the free press by the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They are also dealing with the ongoing ravages of Covid, which killed 595 reporters as of July, making India among the world’s worst in terms of Covid-related deaths of journalists.
The coronavirus pandemic, the movement for racial justice, and the pervasiveness of disinformation are prompting newsrooms to rethink long-standing norms, as Allegra Hobbs maps out in her exploration of how traditional ideas of neutrality, the use of invasive tracking data, and source relationships with law enforcement are shifting.
Despite the challenges, Belton remains defiantly optimistic. “The press can’t afford to fall into disarray and depression while reporting on the collapsing world around us,” she writes in her essay, part of our ongoing Lessons from The Pandemic series. “Not when we’re more important than ever as a beacon of truth in a swamp of mis- and disinformation. This is the time where we put up or will be shut up by the darkness, and I, for one, have no interest in silence.”
As Nieman Reports continues to cover how newsrooms keep going, despite sometimes hellish circumstances, I’m delighted to welcome two new colleagues. Laura Colarusso is our new senior editor, joining Nieman from GBH News, where she was digital managing editor; and Natalie De Rosa, a recent graduate of Amherst College, where she was editor-in-chief of The Amherst Student, is our new assistant editor. You’ll be hearing more from them in future editions of this newsletter.
Sincerely,
James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports
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