Have you ever hunted a python for work? Email not displaying correctly?
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Associated Press photo, Poynter illustration

Layoffs are such a part of our industry that it might feel easy to get numb to them if you or your newsroom aren’t directly impacted. For me, reporting on them, and now reading about them, wards off any chance of getting used to them. My colleague Angela Fu is now doing that work, and I wanted to highlight it this week, as well as a few bright spots.

On August 4, Poynter’s Rick Edmonds reported on the dreary second quarter results for Gannett ([link removed]) , the largest newspaper chain in the United States. On August 12, Fu started covering the layoffs that followed. ([link removed])

Fu’s reporting counted at least 70 layoffs across 54 newsrooms, and those are just the ones she can confirm.

“A lot of the layoffs seem to be targeting smaller and mid-sized papers, including weeklies, and there are a few papers that will shut down completely,” Fu told me. “It's difficult to know when the layoffs will end, especially since Gannett has not been forthcoming with that information. Gannett started laying off people August 12, but throughout the last week, I've heard of others who have also gotten termination notices.”
If you have any tips, please send them to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
Bright spots
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Image via Lenfest Institute

This week, the Lenfest Institute started publishing a new series: Signposts on the Road Map for Local News. ([link removed]) This essay series, published with the Aspen Institute, aims to help newsrooms answer the question “what now?” It includes smart essays from S. Mitra Kalita on designing news products to better serve communities ([link removed]) ; Amanda Zamora on healing polarized communities ([link removed]) ; Jim Friedlich on what nonprofit and for-profit newsrooms can learn from each other ([link removed]) ; Elizabeth Hansen Shapiro on taking an ecosystem approach to building local news
([link removed]) ; and Deb Roy on how local journalism can pull communities together. ([link removed])

A (very thrilling) day in the life
Axios Tampa Bay reporters Selene San Felice and Ben Montgomery went hunting. (Screenshot)

Poynter’s Annie Aguiar launched a new series on TikTok ([link removed]) and Instagram ([link removed]) this week featuring a day in the life of a journalist. Aguiar starts with the one and only Selene San Felice from Axios Tampa Bay doing something I can only watch and think “no, no, nope, nope, nooooo."

“As a frequent TikTok watcher, I've seen so many day in the life videos that I couldn't help but wonder what those would look like for journalists,” Aguiar told me. “We have wildly different workdays, from public meetings to python hunting, and that just begs to be shared.”

Aguiar wanted to show people what physically goes into making the news and the people behind the bylines.

“The other big thing is that there are so many ways to be a journalist,” she said. “It's important to me with this series to get a sampling of people across beats, markets and mediums and show that they're all journalists in service of this larger project of informing the public.”
You can watch the day in the life on TikTok ([link removed]) and Instagram ([link removed]) .

Want to take part? Reach out to Aguiar via email at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) and tell her:
* A little about your current role
* A specific upcoming assignment/day on the job you would want to showcase
* What your availability looks like for a zoom call to talk about how this would all shake out

That’s it for me. My Twitter got hacked last week and I got it back over the weekend. I am now older and wiser and would like to share this sage advice with you – never click the link. 🫢

Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])

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I designed our newest training, Level Up: Critical Skills for Local Reporters ([link removed]) , to help reporters build on their foundational skills and dig deeper, tell more compelling stories and make a bigger impact on their communities.
This weekly online training takes place Tuesdays in October and November (except for Election Day,) and comes with a roster of fantastic journalists, including NPR’s Cheryl W. Thompson, the Wall Street Journal’s Erin Ailworth and master editor Maria Carrillo, who recently retired from the Tampa Bay Times. We’ll also spend time each week building the soft skills journalists need to sustain satisfying careers, including pitching passion projects and managing their lives in and out of work.
The cost of this six-week training is $750, and the deadline is Sept. 6. You can learn more here. ([link removed])

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