I was let go after 24 years in the same job so I’m actively looking. It’s no time for modesty, so tbh I’m the best IT and cybersecurity editor I know, and a great writer too, and my longevity speaks to that. My IT knowledge is deep and I have a gift for seeing the broader implications of a trend and bringing that out. I’m open to work for vendors, publishers, agencies, full- or part-time. Thanks for any boosts/leads!
The people you call "journalists" have as their top priority, if they want to keep their job, to generate clicks on their employers home-page. Many of them are on a quota measured in "click-through per some unit of time" or, if they are lucky "stories per day".
The sane way to do that job, is to concentrate on who and why clicks happen, and spending time on getting to the bottom of things or holding power accountable will distract you from that.
The media is finally getting their shit together and writing accurate headlines about the former president. This is my favorite from today. #Media#Elections#USPolitics#Trump
The press could tell an accurate story about how Biden's 50 yrs of legislative experience helped him pass huge infra & green energy bills through a 50-50 Senate that contributed to a robust recovery. The feedback loop of a million stories about his age leading to a million stories about polls showing that voters to worry about his age was an editorial choice.
The US has probably more influence than anyone in getting aid to Palestinians. If Biden supported genocide, would he be negotiating passage from Gaza to Egypt or ongoing safe windows of time for people to escape Gaza?
I'll admit that saying "I am a Zionist" is not a good look, but Biden has not supported attacks on civilians.
The investigative newsroom I work for, @ProPublica, is raising money right now. We report on abuses of power in the public interest - stories like corruption on the Supreme Court. It was the first outlet to win a Pulitzer for web-first journalism. And if you donate through this link, you'll let our team know that Mastodon is an audience to pay attention to. https://give.propublica.org/give/346528/#!/donation/checkout?c_src=mstdn#journalism#fediverse#mastodon
I have donated to ProPublica over the years (not as much as I should, though!) and I strongly encourage my friends on here to donate now.
ProPublica is a great pro-democracy, anti-corruption resource here in the US, and it would go a long way for them to know Mastodon is an audience aligned with their work.
In that vein, I would be super grateful if you guys had a Mastodon share button on your articles instead of, or in addition to, buttons for Twitter & Facebook.
Holy wow - the Mastodon community really came through. This is huge, and makes a massive difference for our reporting. Thank you everyone - and thank you for showing how active and engaged this network is!
🚀 We're happy to announce DW Innovation has just launched on Mastodon!
Follow us for discussions on media tech and journalism, from ideas and concepts to prototypes and unfolding trends – and ethical dilemmas. Let's dive into the world of digital media together!
As David Roberts is quoted in the above linked post:
"This is not some quirk, it is central to reactionary psychology. Every fascist (and fascist-adjacent) movement ever has told itself the same story: our opponents are destroying everything, they’re forcing us to this, we have no choice but violence."
From focus on the 'soft voice' of extremist #MikeJohnson to soft-selling #Trump's dictatorial plans to calling killing civilians 'a crater,' something's very wrong with the #media today
It's called cowardice
From Gaza City to Capitol Hill, a cowed media is chronicling the death of democracy in a passive voice
2/ "Shocking, incredibly important story on the front page of NYT... warned its readers that Trump — if returned to the WH in 2025 — is grooming a new team of extremist government lawyers who would be more loyal to their Dear Leader than to the rule of law, and could help Trump install a brand of American fascism.
You say you didn’t hear anything about this? That’s not surprising. The editors at the Times made sure to present this major report in the blandest, most inoffensive way possible..."
Let’s call this what it is: Trump is planning a military dictatorship. This is radical stuff that would end America as we know it. It must lead every newscast until every voter fully understands what this is. Yet it’s not even the top story in the Post.
Texas A&M announces a new journalism dean. She's black and she's qualified— and an alum of the school! Ex-New York Times too.
They announce her appointment in a splashy event.
Dark forces of reaction mobilize.
The offer is watered down to one year, with no tenure. She says no way, and withdraws. National news is made. It's negative. And today, the president of A&M resigns!
"Describing [RFK's] views as ‘controversial,’ I think, is dishonest. They’re not controversial. They’re false. He’s not spreading controversial views, he’s spreading lies. And so the framing matters enormously, and that’s something that I foresee being a huge, huge issue in the 2024 campaign."
Agreed!
Some key distinctions made by journalist Seth Mnookin in this sharp interview. (He wrote a book about the anti-vaccine movement in 2011.)
@jayrosen_nyu I don't know why the media all struggle so hard to just say the word "lie." Frankly it's way past time. Every time they just print or say what someone else said word for word but don't add proper distinctions like "they lied about so-and-so" or etc, they add legitimacy to it in people's minds. Just saying "controversial opinion" or etc doesn't fix that at all. I don't know why it works that way with people, but it does.
Want to find ACTIVE journalists on Mastodon? This spreadsheet is just amazing. A couple days ago Martin Holland @mho posted a project of his to promote journalists. It starts with known journalism accounts from the @tchambers list, but also tracks their activity, so you can see who is actually posting regularly.
This is an absolutely wonder resource, and a great asset for the fediverse!
Martin @mho has also created a similar spreadsheet that lists and tracks activity for state owned accounts. The lists are ranked by number of followers or the date of their last post. The biggest is the @EU_Commission.
Collating reams of journalist accounts is a good thing.
The problem I have with most of the folks on that list is that it's almost misleading, in some respects. The old Twitter mentality is persistent with the perceptions of these journalists (that's our fault), and as a result, we get a tease and a link, and depending on the particular Fediverse platform or client we're using, we may or may not get a link preview.
The volume of journalist published information is minimal, much akin to what things like Lemmy and Kbin, HackerNews, or Reddit might afford us - and it's unnecessary. A list of external, 3rd party news resources is great, but I am here.Right here - In the Fediverse, with my Fediverse client (That's my reader), and a shitload of journalists who themselves have already migrated over. I have RSS, ActivityPub Follow and alert capabilities, and can appreciate journalists actually publishing their articles here, in the Fediverse, much more than elsewhere that I have to travel to, so to speak... and maybe hit a God damned paywall.
I think part of the problem here is that many of the journalists flowing into the Fediverse are indoctrinated with the old mastodon/twitter decrepit shortcomings that left them with little capability other than to publish elsewhere and link to it from here. I don't want to have to go somewhere else to read the things that interest me - and there's no need. All the tools are here. In the Fediverse. Now.
Most Fediverse platforms don't constrain the users and publishers like the old mastopub way of doing things. i.e., lack of #Markdown or other #Rich_Text capabilities and the inclusion of inline graphics or other multimedia file types in articles, or that persistent, cringy, paltry, 500 character limit that the draconian mastodon interfaces are constrained with, along with their inability to Quote-post. This is why the so-called #mastoforks have been so successful, overcoming many, if not most of those barriers, although they're still almost indistinguishable from the typical #mastopub interface.
We're building critical mass amongst journalists, and this is remarkable, yet we need to encourage greater awareness initiatives on just what the Fediverse platforms have to offer nowadays (and it's only getting better).
Those journalists that I've had the pleasure of admiring here have for the most part, leveraged things like one of the Misskey family of platforms with multiple link previews per post, and quite the rich formatting of their text to make their articles pop with life and entice the reader to visit.
Another issue? Many of these journalists and commentators publish their articles and provide links, but they resolve to paywall sites. I think we need to rethink our ability to, at the instance level for each and every individual user, block shit that links to paywalls. We already have several good browser plugins that do so.
The sooner we sufficiently inform the lions share of these journalists to the opportunities they have on Fediverse platforms that are more contemporary and capable than mastodon, the sooner they can get down to the business of focusing on the monetization of their repertoire here in the Fediverse (and keep ALL the money earned); in turn, we (the rest of us) get quality, original, unique content here, compelling even more folks from the world of the proprietary, privacy disrespecting, deprecated monolithic silos to come and co-exist here with us as fellow Fedizens.
Already, several Fediverse platforms enable the full immersion into the ecosystem here with facilities for monetization - either native to the platform or as a plugin. For example, one of the quickest ways for a journalist to take advantage of a "Substack", "Medium" or other popular monetized platform in the Fediverse is to merely create an account on one that provides these utilities - Like WordPress or Mitra or WriteFreely - create an account, plugin your donation/subscription payment info, and start publishing interesting, informative, original content :)
***One thing we as consumers of the news can do right now, is take the time to individually contact each person we can on this list of journalists and let them know these things. Point them to this article with a link, or to the actual resources that they can experiment with and deploy their unbridled and untapped resources to reach out and in turn themselves be reached.
I'll leave links below, to a couple of the Fediverse platforms I've referenced above. If you're viewing this post on a platform that is one of the Misskey family of forks, then you'll see the graphic below as well as all of those link previews for all of those resources.
Meta blocked a story critical of its climate change ad policies on all of its platform. An independent journalist asked permission to repost the story verbatim on her substack. It was blocked too.
This article should be required reading so people know what is happening to our environment. ⚠️
When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future
The World Meteorological Organization issued a “red alert” as it released its latest report on the “State of the Global Climate” earlier this month, noting that 2023 was the warmest year in recorded human history — and 2024 will likely surpass it.
@jackiegardina if anyone wonders why Meta is taking so long to properly support ActivityPub federation (ie. allow Threads users to follow us, not just the other way around), and what is in store if/when it finally does, this article should give you a good idea.
Meta is making sure any incoming AP feeds on Threads are put through their content filtering algorithm reliably, so that inbound federation stays UNreliable and Threads can remain a vapid feed of cats, minions, bragposts and corporate brandposts.
Meta is also betting on this having the side effect of maintaining an imbalance of information flow in their favour. If The Algorithm randomly buries, filters or blocks inbound fedi content for being "political" they'll just say "hey we are just making this a Safe Place for our users!" as an excuse to severely restrict federation.
THAT is what will truly choke off AP information flow, not the Fedipact instances preemptively limiting federation with Threads.
You might see friends today suggesting you support Hard Drive on Patreon today. You know, the funny video games version of The Onion? As a journalist, I will firmly tell you DO NOT GIVE THEM A DIME.
The CEO has pushed out all former staff that have built the site up to its current greatness and has been pushing use of AI to write articles. The staff begged to have a Patreon before basically all being fired, but the idea was refused until now, when it will only line the pockets of a single person instead of hard working writers.
I know they might have provided laughs before, but Hard Drive is a shell of what it was once. Let it die and support the people who actually made those moments of joy possible.
Kevin Podas is just among one former employee speaking out on the subject over on the bird site, there are other corroborating this evidence and dropping more.
Seriously, DO NOT SUPPORT HARD DRIVE! Their CEO does not deserve to rake in profits after exploiting their entire staff.
That's my shortand for the organizing principle we most need from journalists covering the 2024 election. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences for our democracy. Not the odds, but the stakes.
Today the New York Times published an example of stakes reporting:
"Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government...."
I wish the headline hadn't normalized, for want of a better word, Trump's plans as normal U.S. politics. Trump is planning to try to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. The "strategy" is authoritarianism. The headline soft-soaps it more than the story, but the story doesn't frankly and truthfully call it what it is.
Pay attention to what's happening in this case: the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just essentially ruled that it's fully legal to jail journalists for reporting leaked information, or any information they obtain from government officials without going through "proper channels."
Nouvelle importante: j'ai quitté 20 Minutes après 5 ans de présence. Le journal a subi un plan social l'été dernier et beaucoup de mes collègues que j'appréciais sont partis. Je cherche une nouvelle place en rédaction ou peut-être à la pige. Si jamais vous entendez parler d'un poste. Merci #Travail#Journalisme#Media#Politique#Info#Actualite#Emploi
No doubt, Big Journalism will speak as one to denounce this almost certainly illegal raid and confiscation of computers and more.
I hope our nation's journalism will realize that the extremists who run one of our two major parties are itching to bring our news media to heel, and killing democracy is the way they will start.
This AP story about the arrest of a Texas woman who threatened Judge Chutkan omitted the fact that she called the judge, who is Black, a “dumb slave” and the N-word. They seem really invested in downplaying this belligerent extremism that’s so pervasive on the right—even in a story about someone making death threats. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-tanya-chutkan-judge-threats-texas-7d90ad3c8b552b49e269a3f842a6700c
@JoshuaHolland It also would have made more sense to use a photo of the "Texas woman accused of threatening to kill." Pairing a Black face with that headline is not an accident.
"America is on the brink, so of course the #media doesn't get it. Last week, the disconnect between rising GOP #fascism - on a debate stage, in #Trump's arrest posturing - and journalists covering 'a normal election' was really jarring
Now what?
The media is really not getting it about 2024, GOP authoritarianism and the election"
3/ "..There was little discussion of why this accused felon was getting a phalanx of dozens of motorcycle cops, comprising police who are drawn to Trump’s authoritarian bluster like moths to light. Trump’s glowering mugshot instantly became the most-talked-about picture in American history—yet not one pundit was able to explain why tens of millions of everyday voters are so eager to return to the White House this man who attempted a coup on Jan6, or why his poll numbers rise w each indictment"
4/ "America is entering its most important, pivotal year since 1860 & media doing terrible job explaining what is actually happening. Too many still covering elections like it was 20th cent., as if old touchstones like debates or 30-sec spot still matter.
What we are building toward on 11/5/2024, might have outward trappings of election but it is really show of force. What we call GOP is barely a political party...but a dangerous antisocial movement that has embraced many tenets of fascism"
This article, a very good AP piece about #Klamath dam removal, does many things right: they quoted someone from an impacted tribe (this is a low bar, but you’d be astonished at how many articles don’t even bother to do this); they provided robust context for past and future challenges surrounding dam removal; they even gave Indigenous people the last word.
Saying tribes historically “survived” on salmon, instead of e.g. “flourished” or “succeeded,” makes Native people sound primitive and unsophisticated.
This is an amazingly common trope amongst even the most well-meaning non-Native writers. It frames us in a way that implies Natives were saved by colonization.
In fact, colonization killed most Klamath salmon, and forced area tribes to rely on grocery stores to survive—but the reservations there don’t even have grocery stores. They’re food deserts. So saying they “historically survived” on salmon, while technically accurate, does not convey the reality—that tribes historically lived in abundance before colonization, and still rely on salmon today as they work to restore fish populations so both they and the fish can survive colonization.
After reading many posts after the #introductions and some of the frustrations of people leaving Mastodon, one of the leading reasons was access to journalists. I've taken @tchambers 's journalist tracker google doc and converted it to the simple followers import format. Edit your profile, select Import/Export->Import, and upload to directly add 1000+ journalists. File here:
@aoalfred@tchambers you may want to modify your screenshot to emphasize the "merge" option. Otherwise some folks might accidentally overwrite their followers instead.
