Throughout 2022, The Journalist’s Resource produced 104 research roundups, articles, in-depth explainers, tip sheets, comics and expert commentaries. Here are the year’s 10 most popular posts, which supported journalists as they reported some of the biggest news stories of the year — including the U.S. midterm elections, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, several high-profile mass shootings and a rise of antisemitic incidents and hate crimes. This list includes articles and research roundups we published — or significantly updated, expanded and republished — in the past 12 months. Popularity is based on unique page views during this time period.

1. Gun buybacks: What the research says

Gun buybacks allow gun owners to trade their firearms to law enforcement, no questions asked. Clark Merrefield dove into what the research says on whether they work to reduce gun violence. This piece, originally published in 2020 but significantly updated in 2022, was cited by or linked from some 275 websites including The Daily Kos, TheGunMag.com, The Washington Post, CNN, NPR and ABC7Chicago — a reminder that we inform the work of print, digital and broadcast media outlets across the political spectrum.

2. Economic research resurfaces debate about the link between legalized abortion and crime reduction

An influential study finds that legalized abortion following Roe v. Wade accounts for a large portion of the decline in U.S. crime rates since the 1990s. But some economists are not convinced, as Merrefield explained in this article, originally published in 2019 and updated in 2022. “The research has received renewed attention on social media since Politico on May 2 published a draft Supreme Court majority opinion that would overturn Roe,” Merrefield writes.

3. ‘Horse race’ coverage of elections can harm voters, candidates and news outlets

To inform news coverage of the U.S. midterms, Denise-Marie Ordway updated this roundup of research looking at the consequences of one of the most common ways journalists cover elections — with a focus on who’s in the lead and who’s behind instead of policy issues.

4. The four-day school week: Research shows benefits and consequences

To save money and help recruit teachers, many schools are taking Mondays or Fridays off. Scholars are studying how it affects students, teachers and school district budgets. As more and more school districts considered the idea in the wake of COVID-19, Ordway updated her 2018 roundup with new data and new research.

5. Percent change vs. percentage point change: What’s the difference? 4 tips for avoiding math errors

Many people get ‘percent change’ and ‘percentage-point change’ confused, leading to reporting errors. Ordway created this tip sheet, featuring insights from data journalism pioneer Jennifer LaFleur, to help journalists get it right.

6. Trauma-informed journalism: What it is, why it’s important and tips for practicing it

Covering trauma — ranging from storms and fires to sexual assaults and homicides to mass shootings and wars — has always been a part of journalists’ work. But “trauma-informed journalism” is a relatively new concept. Naseem Miller turned to several reliable sources to explain what it means and how to practice it.

7. Antisemitism on the rise: A research roundup

To help journalists identify and report on the rise of antisemitism, freelancer Jordan Fenster turned to several experts to explain what it is and how it happens. He also compiled and summarized several academic studies and commentaries on the subject.

8. 5 things journalists need to know about statistical significance

It’s easy to misunderstand and misuse one of the most common — and important — terms in academic research: statistical significance. Ordway created this tip sheet to help journalists avoid some of the most common errors, which, she notes, “even trained researchers make sometimes.”

9. Should news outlets show images of mass shooting victims? Researchers and other experts weigh in

Multiple mass shootings in 2022 prompted conversations about whether news outlets should consider publishing, graphic images from those shootings. Merrefield shared insights from several media scholars to help journalists address the question.

10. Racial disparities in mental health care: An explainer and research roundup

Miller collected, contextualized and summarized research to help journalists cover disparities in mental health — and access to mental health care — among people of color in the U.S. 

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As the year draws to a close, our team took a few moments to reflect on some of the pieces that meant the most to us over the past 12 months. Here are The Journalist’s Resource’s 2022 team picks:

Clark Merrefield, senior economics editor:

“5 Things Journalists Need to Know About Statistical Significance”  

Denise-Marie Ordway produced many strong pieces this year with practical advice for practicing journalists, but the very first tip in this piece has stood out to me since I first read it in June: “In academic research, significant ≠ important.” That alone is an important reminder for journalists using academic research in their coverage, but Ordway follows by offering immediately useful knowledge on how researchers can manipulate statistical significance and the huge pressure on them to produce statistically significant results.

Pair this piece with another from Ordway, “What’s Standard Deviation? 4 Things Journalists Need to Know,” to learn exactly what standard deviation is and how to interpret it in academic research.

“Racial Disparities in Pulse Oximeter Readings: Research Roundup”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, people around the world have become familiar with medical devices they otherwise might never have noticed. Among them: pulse oximeters — those little devices that clip on your finger to help doctors read blood oxygen levels. In this piece, Naseem Miller does an admirable job covering research on problems with how pulse oximeters work. Crucially, they tend to overestimate blood oxygen levels for people with darker skin. The stakes are high: “This is particularly important for critically ill patients, where doctors constantly rely on pulse oximeter readings to decide how much oxygen to give patients.” 

Pair this piece with another from Miller, “Maternal Mortality: An Explainer and Research Roundup,” which delves into research and insights from top experts in a country where Black people remain “more than three times as likely as white people to die from pregnancy-related causes.”

Naseem Miller, senior health editor:

“Thanksgiving Dinner and Talking Politics: Research Suggests They Can (and Maybe Should) Mix”

In today’s highly polarized America, the dreaded conversations with relatives around the Thanksgiving dinner table — or any holiday dinner for that matter — could be key to achieving civility and compromise in the national political discourse, reports Clark Merrefield. Drawing on several studies and interviews, Merrefield reminds us that most people who are angry about politics want to talk to someone who listens. Knowing it is inappropriate to have a screaming match at Thanksgiving dinner, many realize it is possible to have a polite conversation with someone who has opposing political views. And Americans are largely successful at putting their political differences aside and enjoying Thanksgiving dinner. More importantly, research suggests that regular interactions among people with opposing political views can help reduce partisanship. 

“Percent Change Versus Percentage-Point Change: What’s the Difference? 4 Tips for Avoiding Math Errors”

In simple-to-understand language and four concise tips, Denise-Marie Ordway explains the difference between two common research terms that should not be interchanged: percent change and percentage-point change. Understanding these terms is crucial. As Ordway explains, “percent” describes how much a number has changed in relation to a previous number. “Percentage point,” meanwhile, describes the difference between two percentages that are being compared.

Pair this piece with the accompanying infographic by Merrefield, starring fictional local reporter Sue Chifferton.

Bonus pick: Don’t forget to bookmark our “Know Your Research” section, where you will find many tip sheets and explainers that will help you navigate your way through research studies and explain them accurately to your audiences.

Carmen Nobel, program director and editor-in-chief

“Community Land Trusts: Research Reveals Benefits of an Affordable Housing Model That Could Help Ease the Housing Crisis” 

I’m a big fan of solutions journalism, in which journalists report on responses to societal problems, rather than only focusing on the problems themselves. I’m also a fan of highlighting research that investigates when and whether such responses are effective; such studies can provide terrific story ideas for journalists who practice solutions journalism.

That’s why I’m also a fan of this piece by Clark Merrefield, which highlights a potential way to alleviate the U.S. housing crisis. “The widespread viability of community land trusts has been largely unexplored in the news media,” he writes. “There are more than 225 community land trusts in the U.S. Under the typical model, a nonprofit entity owns and cares for the land with homeowners leasing their properties for a long time, usually 99 years.”

Pair this piece with Merrefield’s important explainer on adjustable rate mortgages, which have made a comeback in the wake of recent federal interest rate hikes.

“Horse Race Coverage of Elections: What to Avoid and How to Get it Right” 

Political reporters are often criticized for covering elections as they’d cover a horse race — focusing on who’s ahead or behind in the polls rather than on the candidates’ policy positions. Indeed, a large body of research shows that so-called “horse race journalism” is linked to distrust in politicians and distrust in news outlets.

Yet this type of reporting has become increasingly more common as public opinion polls have become more sophisticated (and more numerous). That being the case, Denise-Marie Ordway wisely created this tip sheet to help journalists at least improve their horse race coverage.

One key tip: Avoid focusing on a single opinion poll without providing context. Rather, “put its findings into perspective by noting historic trends and what other recent polls show,” Ordway writes. “Consider combining poll results and reporting averages to give audiences the most accurate picture of public sentiment.”

Pair this piece with Ordway’s research roundup about the pitfalls of horse race reporting.

“Five Years After Flint Water Crisis, Mental Health Problems Persist”

It’s hard enough for today’s understaffed newsrooms to keep up with breaking news, let alone to follow up on that news with subsequent stories that add more details, deeper analysis or new developments. But follow-up stories are important, even years after the initial story breaks.

Academic research can be a great source of follow-up stories, as Naseem Miller illustrates in this recent piece, which highlights a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. (The “open” means it’s not behind a paywall.) Researchers surveyed nearly 2,000 residents of Flint, Michigan, five years after their municipal water supply was contaminated with lead. Among the key findings: 1 in 5 Flint residents met the criteria for depression, and 1 in 4 for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Although the statistical findings of the study may not be generalizable to other regions, they add to the existing body of literature documenting the mental health effects of human-caused disasters on communities,” she writes.

Pair this piece with Miller’s research roundup on suicide prevention hotlines.

Denise-Marie Ordway, managing editor:

“Story Ideas from the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book”

I wish I had had Clark Merrefield’s tip sheets focusing on different editions of the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book back when I was working in the newsroom. They’re a terrific resource for journalists of all experience levels. He always does a great job breaking down economic issues so they’re easy to understand. But in these tip sheets, he also spotlights story ideas with an economic angle – a reminder to journalists that economic research and reports can strengthen their news coverage, regardless of their beat and whether they report for a local, regional or national news outlet.

Merrefield created tip sheets for three editions of the Beige Book this year: the March release, the July release and the final Beige Book of 2022, published Nov. 30.

“Trauma-Informed Journalism: What It Is, Why It’s Important and Tips for Practicing It” 

I hadn’t heard of trauma-informed journalism before Naseem Miller created a tip sheet on it earlier this year. But it’s a must-read, considering most journalists will likely cover trauma in some form during their careers, whether they’re reporting on violent crime, chronicling a community rebuilding after disaster or interviewing someone who has survived or witnessed a traumatic event. This piece of advice from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma that Miller included in her piece is gold: Never ask a person who endured trauma, “How do you feel?” — because the question can be distressing. Instead, ask “How are you now?” or “How did you experience that?” or “What do you think about …?”

Journalists who find this tip sheet helpful may also want to read Miller’s explainer and research roundup on racial disparities in access to mental health care. In it, she outlines the major reasons why racial and ethnic minorities often don’t seek help or cannot find mental health professionals where they live. This piece also includes a list of experts who can speak on these issues.

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Throughout 2021, The Journalist’s Resource produced 104 research roundups, articles, in-depth explainers, tip sheets and expert commentaries. Here are our 10 most popular posts of 2021, which supported journalists as they reported some of the biggest news stories of the year — including the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, the truck driver shortage and its effect on the global supply chain, and the debate about critical race theory. This list includes articles and research roundups we published — or significantly expanded and republished — in the past 12 months. Popularity is based on unique page views during this time period.

1. 4 tips for covering religious exemptions to vaccine mandates

In our most popular tip sheet of 2021, Denise-Marie Ordway enlisted insights from Dorit Reiss, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law who researches legal issues related to vaccines. Tip #1: Don’t assume employers, colleges or schools that require COVID-19 vaccinations will offer religious exemptions. And if they do, don’t assume exemption requests will be approved. 

“Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires U.S. employers, including government agencies, to accommodate employees whose religious beliefs and practices conflict with work requirements — so long as it doesn’t create an ‘undue hardship’ for the employer,” Ordway writes. “That means workplace administrators must let employees request an exemption if vaccines are required for work, but don’t have to grant them.”

2. The truck driver shortage and the trucking industry workforce: 5 studies to consider

Industry groups for years have warned of a workforce shortage in trucking, particularly for long-haul truckers who pick up and deliver across state lines. In April, more than 100 supply chain trade groups sent a joint letter to Congress explaining that the pandemic had exacerbated the shortage, partly by forcing driver training schools to close temporarily. To help journalists cover this labor story, Clark Merrefield curated and highlighted five recent studies on the trucking workforce in the U.S. and abroad.

3. Multicultural education: How schools teach it and where educators say it falls short

Ordway looked at what the research says about multicultural education programs — an important topic as school administrators and policy makers decide how and whether to incorporate such programs intro their K-12 curricula. “As American public schools have grown more diverse, educators have introduced multicultural education programs to help kids understand and appreciate the differences among them — differences in terms of race, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual identity and other personal characteristics,” she writes, noting that “it’s important to note there are significant differences between multicultural education and anti-racist education — two types of education discussed with greater frequency in recent years.”

4. Covering critical race theory and the push to keep it out of US public schools: 4 tips for journalists

Ordway asked two scholars to offer insights to help journalists make sense of the recent controversy around critical race theory, a decades-old legal framework for examining how race and racism shaped U.S. history and how current laws and systems perpetuate racism. Tip #1: Familiarize yourself with what critical race theory is and is not. That way, you’ll know when the term is being misused.

5. COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy: What research shows

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for all people 12 years and older, including pregnant people, saying there’s no evidence the vaccine leads to fertility problems, miscarriage or other health issues. To help journalists cover the story, Naseem Miller summarized several academic papers that examine how COVID-19 — and the vaccines created to fight it — affect pregnant people. 

6. ‘Defund the police’: What it means and what the research says on whether more police presence reduces crime

Last summer, more than a year after the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and amid a recent surge in violent crime, political conversations about “defunding the police” in the U.S. were still going strong. To support journalistic coverage of the issue, Merrefield provided a nuanced look at policing and police funding in the U.S., relying on academic literature and input from several scholarly researchers — including, notably, two former police officers.

7. Want fewer cars on the road? Don’t offer parking, research suggests

Merrefield highlighted a study showing a direct correlation between the number of available parking spots and the number of cars owned in an expensive, space-constrained American city. “San Francisco residents who joined affordable housing lotteries from July 2015 to June 2018 and secured units with a free parking spot were more likely to have cars, the research finds,” he writes. “Specifically, lottery-winning residents in buildings that guaranteed each unit at least one parking spot had double the rate of car ownership than residents of buildings without parking. A building’s supply of parking is also a stronger predictor of car ownership than transit access, according to the research.”

8. A $15 minimum wage: What the research says

In January, President Joe Biden proposed a $15 federal minimum wage as part of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Merrefield provided a comprehensive look at what the research says about raising the minimum wage. In addition to summarizing formative findings and more recent studies on the topic, he includes links to some helpful databases — including an inventory of U.S. city and county minimum wage ordinances from Bangor, Maine to Burlingame, California.  

9. Journalists are under stress. What’s the solution?

Amid a seemingly relentless stream of tragic news and a constant onslaught of newsroom layoffs, it’s easy to explain why many journalists feel stressed. A tougher question is what the news industry can do about that. Miller sifted through dozens of studies about journalists’ mental health — and teased out some research-based tips for addressing the stress and trauma of reporting the news. Tip #1: Offer trauma training in journalism schools and newsrooms.

1o. Religious exemptions and required vaccines: Examining the research

In a companion piece to our #1 tip sheet, Ordway gathered and summarized several recent peer-reviewed studies that examine exemption requests among workers as well as kindergarten students, who generally are required to receive a series of childhood vaccinations before starting school. One key finding: “Kindergarteners are less likely to get vaccine exemptions for religious or philosophical reasons when schools require their parents to get medical counseling and a signed form from a health care provider before they can be considered for exemptions,” she writes. 

Check out some of the pieces that meant the most to the editors at The Journalist’s Resource this year.

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In spite of and in light of the ongoing pandemic, The Journalist’s Resource has done some great work this year. 

In January, we eagerly welcomed Naseem Miller, our stellar new senior health editor, whose work has helped journalists navigate the complex topic of COVID-19 vaccines. 

In February, we launched our new website to make it easier to navigate our vast archive of research roundups, tip sheets, articles, explainers, comics and infographics. The updated website introduced our “Know Your Research” section to help journalists understand academic research methods, recognize high-quality research and avoid missteps when reporting on new studies and opinion polls. 

In October, we launched the 2021 reader survey, the results of which we’ll report early next year. If you haven’t filled out the survey yet, please do so by Dec. 17! 

So far in 2021, we have published or significantly updated 100 comprehensive pieces — all serving our mission to inform the news by bridging the gap between academia and journalism. As the year draws to a close, we’re taking a few moments to reflect on some of the pieces that meant the most to us this year. Here are The Journalist’s Resource 2021 team picks from Managing Editor Denise-Marie Ordway, Senior Health Editor Naseem S. Miller, Senior Economics Editor Clark Merrefield and Program Director Carmen Nobel. 


Denise-Marie Ordway, managing editor:

“Racial disparities in opioid addiction treatment: a primer and research roundup”

This is my favorite of Miller’s pieces for several reasons. Besides being well written and researched, it looks at opioid addiction from an angle I hadn’t considered or seen covered by the news media: race- and class-based differences in how people receive treatment for opioid addiction. The main takeaway for me: People with higher-incomes tend to go to their private doctors for a prescription for buprenorphine to take at home while many lower-income individuals must make daily trips to a methadone clinic for a single dose of medication.

Miller’s thought-provoking piece on covering marijuana complements this piece in that it highlights the fact that marijuana is addictive, which many people might not realize (I didn’t!). In it, she also explains some of the research examining marijuana addiction and other long-term consequences of marijuana use. 

“Regional Federal Reserve banks: The ultimate guide”

I was so excited when Merrefield created this guide because more journalists need to know what a goldmine of data and research our regional federal reserve banks are. As usual, Merrefield did a terrific job walking journalists through a topic some might find intimidating to help them see how experts at each of the Federal Reserve’s 12 district banks can bolster their coverage, regardless of their beat.

His guide pairs perfectly with his tip sheet offering story ideas from the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, an excellent resource he describes as “an anecdotal counterpart to the bank’s suite of hard numbers.” These Beige Books, published eight times a year, also contain information helpful to reporters across beats — especially those covering business, education and local and state governments. While his tip sheet focuses on the September 2021 edition of the Beige Book, journalists can easily apply its insights to other editions.


Naseem Miller, senior health editor:

“How racial and ethnic biases are baked into the U.S. tax system”

It’s no secret that historical inequalities cast a long shadow, affecting marginalized groups’ health and wealth today. In this primer, Merrefield explains how the U.S. tax policy affects taxpayers and their ability to build wealth across generations. He does a terrific job of explaining how federal income taxes work and why wealth building across generations varies by race and ethnicity.

Pair this with another piece by Merrefield, “How research covering more than 5,000 years sheds light on income inequality today,” which highlights a study that ties income inequality to when the countries’ governments were established. 

“Reporting on scientific failures and holding the science community accountable: 5 tips for journalists”

Explaining the scientific process to your audience is more important than ever and this piece by Ordway is chock-full of great tips about how to do that. Ordway interviewed Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communication professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Yotam Ophir, an assistant professor of communication at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York for her piece.

Two noteworthy tips: When an academic journal retracts a research article, press for details about what went wrong and how the academic community plans to prevent it from happening again. And, emphasize that mistakes are essential to science. 

“Science is ongoing — it never ends and always keeps checking itself,” Ophir told Ordway. “One thing might appear to be right one day, but new evidence may indicate that it’s not the next day.”

Pair this piece with “Academic journals, journalists perpetuate misinformation in their handling of research retractions, a new study finds,” also by Ordway, which includes four tips for tracking flawed research. 


Clark Merrefield, senior economics editor:

“Death and taxes: Research links neighborhood race, tax delinquency and life expectancy”

In this piece, Miller covers a study from July showing that people in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black neighborhoods have lower life expectancy and higher rates of tax delinquency. Why does that matter? Because tax delinquency captures the “lack of investment in the neighborhood or lack of commercial or infrastructure vibrancy,” one of the study’s authors tells Miller. It’s an important reminder that seemingly separate fields of study or news coverage — like city finances and public health — are, in fact, inextricably interwoven. 

Pair this piece with another from Miller, “New research links racism to higher preterm birth rates in Black women,” which adds convincing new evidence revealing the long shadow that historical redlining casts on maternal health for Black women.

“By changing their framing of scientific failures and discoveries, journalists can bolster trust in science: New research”

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the scientific research can churn fast and furious. In this piece, Ordway solicits advice from two communications professors who urge newsrooms to cover scientific errors and retractions as part of the normal self-correction process that is always happening in science, writ large.

Pair this piece with another from Ordway, “Covering scientific consensus: What to avoid and how to get it right,” in which three researchers explore common pitfalls for journalists covering scientific consensus — and how scientific consensus can be used to battle misinformation. 


Carmen Nobel, program director:

“6 tips for covering COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy” 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that vaccine hesitancy is a spectrum; being nervous about a new vaccine is not the same as being an avid anti-vaxxer. Anticipating a need for journalists to understand and cover the topic, Miller compiled this excellent list of tips back in February — six months before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. (We periodically update the piece with new data and new advice from public health researchers.) 

Pair this piece with “Vaccine hesitancy: A roundup of research summaries and survey data sources,” in which Miller highlights systematic reviews and other studies that delve into the drivers of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among various communities.  

“The multibillion-dollar costs of firearm injuries: Research and resources to consider”

Media coverage of gun violence in the U.S. tends to focus on fatalities. But it’s important for journalists also to consider the enormous toll of gunshot injuries, as Merrefield notes in this compelling research roundup. “The cost of emergency department visits and inpatient admissions related to firearm injury totals almost $3 billion per year,” he writes. “Work-loss costs, calculated in terms of lost wages and other factors, are roughly $50 billion yearly, according to academic research and other estimates, which also figure the value of lost quality of life at more than $200 billion per year in the U.S.”

Pair this piece with Ordway’s tip sheet “7 things journalists should know about guns,” which helps journalists avoid common pitfalls they may encounter in their firearm coverage, as well as briefing them on oft-confused terminology — like the difference between a bullet and a cartridge. “Guns are one of the most divisive topics in the U.S., so it’s crucial for journalists to get the details right,” she writes.

“What’s tribal sovereignty and what does it mean for Native Americans?”

“Tribal sovereignty, often viewed as a legal term, sits at the center of almost every issue affecting tribal nations existing within the United States’ geographical borders,” writes Ordway in this excellent explainer of a topic that deserves more media coverage than it gets. There are 574 federally-recognized American Indian and Alaska Native nations in the U.S., according to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ordway notes — each an entity with its own policies, processes and system of governance.

Pair this explainer with Merrefield’s explainer “McGirt v. Oklahoma: The ongoing importance of a landmark tribal sovereignty case,” exploring the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision that Oklahoma can’t pursue cases against Native Americans for crimes allegedly committed on tribal land. 

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Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa believes newsrooms around the world need to band together — and stop thinking of each other solely as competitors — in order to fight the good fight against misinformation. 

“We’re on the same side,” says Ressa, co-founder of Rappler, an independent Philippine news outlet known for its deep-dive investigations into the administration of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and the spread of online disinformation on social media. “If you are a news group, you are on the side of facts. I think we should be sharing each other. I think we should be working together — letting go of the old-school idea that everything is homegrown, that this is our brand. Because we’re in a battle for facts.” 

Ressa received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.” The Nobel committee noted the laureates “are representative of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”  

For the past year, Ressa and Rappler have been fighting multiple court cases that threaten the future of the publication and Ressa’s personal freedom. In June 2020, she was found guilty of “cyber libel” for a story published on Rappler in 2012. Ressa was executive editor of Rappler at the time, but she neither wrote nor edited the story, which was published four months before Philippines’ cybercrime law even existed.

“If we’re prioritizing toxic sludge, if we’re prioritizing anger, hate, conspiracy theories — everything that feeds on your fear and your us-against-them — then you’ll also preclude the best of humanity, the miracle of how we do impossible things together.”

— Maria Ressa

In general, laws can’t be enforced retroactively in the Philippines. But in 2014, Rappler corrected a typo in the 2012 story – changing the word “evation” to “evasion.” The Department of Justice decided this counted as a republication, and thus decided the story was published after the law went into effect. Ressa is appealing the case, and she implores journalists to keep holding the line for press freedom. 

“I appeal to you — the journalists in this room, the Filipinos who are listening — to protect your rights,” Ressa said in a press conference immediately following that ruling. “We are meant to be a cautionary tale. We are meant to make you afraid. So, I appeal again: Don’t be afraid. Because if you don’t use your rights, you will lose them. Freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you have as a Filipino citizen. If we can’t hold power to account, we can’t do anything.”  

In early November, the Philippine Court of Appeals permitted her to travel to Harvard Kennedy School, where she is a Fall 2021 Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership and a Fall 2021 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy — also home to The Journalist’s Resource. The same court granted her permission to travel to Oslo to receive her Nobel Peace Prize this week.

Before returning to the Philippines at the end of November, Ressa sat down with JR to share tips and insights for journalists who are fighting to hold power to account in the face of relentless harassment and misinformation on social media.

These are four key takeaways from our conversation.  

1. Online attacks are harmful to journalists’ mental health. Newsroom managers can help ensure journalists get the counseling they need, but professional counselors need to understand the specific needs of journalists.

Last spring, UNESCO published a discussion paper called “The Chilling,” a report of online attacks against women who are journalists, based on a book-length study by the International Center for Journalists. The research included a survey of 901 journalists from 125 countries; long-form interviews with 173 international reporters, editors, and press freedom and safety experts; and two case studies of attacks against women whose journalism has exposed problems with online platforms like Facebook — one focusing on Ressa, the other on Carole Cadwalladr, the British journalist who exposed the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018.  

Of the survey respondents who identified as women, 73% said they had experienced online violence (including misogyny and other forms of hate speech), 25% said they had been threatened with physical violence online, and 20% said they had been attacked or abused offline in connection with the online attacks they had experienced. Some 11% reported missing work to recover from online attacks and 2% quit journalism altogether. 

The case study on Ressa includes a big-data analysis of nearly 400,000 tweets targeting Ressa from December 2019 to February 2021, and more than 56,000 Facebook posts and comments about her, published between 2016 and 2021. The data shows that 60% of these online attacks seek to damage Ressa’s professional credibility — calling her a “fake news queen,” for example, or a “presstitute.” Some 40% are personal, including death threats and attacks on her personal appearance. 

“Name any animal, I’ve been called it,” Ressa said calmly during the 2021 Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press  on Nov. 16, which was livestreamed internationally. “I have eczema, extremely dry skin — and the meme they created was ‘Scrotum Face.’” 

This is all to say that Ressa understands the importance of anticipating a harassment onslaught, the importance of transparently acknowledging personal and professional threats, and the importance of helping journalists deal with them. 

While Ressa gets the worst of it, she’s just one of many Rappler journalists facing a routine barrage of hate on social media. “When we all came under attack, we actually became better friends,” she says.  

A couple of years ago, the news organization actively started offering professional counseling for its reporters and social media team. “Because you’ve got to,” Ressa says. “You’ve got to take it home.” 

Asked whether anyone accepted the therapy offer, “Yeah, of course,” Ressa says. “But then, you know what we realized? That our counselors in the Philippines didn’t understand the impact of exponential attacks. So, we had to then go to Dart and ask them to train the trainers.” 

She’s talking about the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, which last summer launched the Journalist Trauma Support Network, a pilot program that teaches therapists about the types of trauma and harassment journalists encounter in the course of their work.  

Early in 2018, the Philippine government initiated multiple legal proceedings against Rappler, including revoking its operating license. Before holding a press conference to tell the world what was happening, the Rappler leadership team met with the newsroom’s reporters.  

“We held a general assembly among our people, and we flagged it for them,” Ressa says. “We’re walking into a different era and a different time. They’re actively trying to shut us down, and everyone is facing different risks. And we told them, ‘If you want to move to another news organization, we will help you.’ No reporter came to us. …Because when we were transparent and told them what to expect and gave them a choice, they committed even more.”  

2. In the battle against misinformation, journalists must promote and share the work of other journalists.

“The biggest shift in the world was that the creation of journalism was separated from distribution,” Ressa says, referring to the way information is spread on social media platforms. “And the principles of distribution allowed facts and lies to be [treated as] identical.” 

She notes that research indicates lies have a distribution edge on social media. In addition to citing reports that Facebook’s algorithms prioritize hateful messages, Ressa points to a 2018 study in the journal Science, “The spread of true and false news online,” in which researchers analyzed the spread of true and false news stories on Twitter from 2006 to 2017.  

The study finds that fake news stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted than real news stories, even when controlling for factors like the age of the Twitter account, the number of followers and followees of the original tweeter, and whether Twitter had verified the account with a blue check. 

“70% more,” Ressa says, her voice rising. “70% more! That’s part of the reason I think you need journalists all around the world to keep standing up to power. Now what we do have are standards and a mission. And courage. Because we’re foolish enough to keep standing up to power even at the detriment to the organization or to the journalist. So that’s what we have. But how can we then get the distribution? We should be thinking about strategies of distribution. So my solution to that is we should be sharing each other. That’s what is in our control, right?”  

3. For journalism to matter, journalists must empower the communities they serve. 

Rappler’s name combines the root words ‘rap’ (to discuss) and ‘ripple’ (to make waves).

“It was born to a new world of possibilities — driven by uncompromising journalism, enabled by technology, and enriched by communities of action,” reads the organization’s mission statement. “For journalism to matter, the community must be a part of it.” 

Ressa maintains that one the biggest and important challenges for news media outlets is to warn their readers, viewers and listeners about the dangers of misinformation on social media.

“How are you going to tell your communities that they’re being manipulated?” she says. “And how can you pull the community together? Think of it like this: If we’re prioritizing toxic sludge, if we’re prioritizing anger, hate, conspiracy theories — everything that feeds on your fear and your us-against-them — then you’ll also preclude the best of humanity, the miracle of how we do impossible things together. And that’s the opportunity loss that I see.

“I get emotional when I talk about this,” she adds, with tears in her eyes.

Ressa now spends more time focused on technology regulation and distribution issues than she does on reporting the news. “If I write something today, it will be about how tech and data are manipulating you, or how it is impacting the world today,” she says.

4. Accept that it’s a terrifying but vital time be a journalist. 

“We have to accept that in this time period, it will be thankless,” Ressa says. “We will be vilified. Everyone will attack us. But we must keep doing what we’re doing because no one else is doing it.”

According to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists, 1,421 journalists have been killed since 1992. And 293 journalists have been imprisoned for their work in 2021 alone. 

“You have to hold the line,” Ressa says. “The quality of the democracy is as good as the quality of the journalist. If the questions aren’t asked, then power gets away with what it wants.”  

To learn more: 

• Among Rappler’s investigations is this recent series of stories about state-sponsored killings under the Duterte regime. The series highlights a lengthy affidavit by a former police officer in the Philippines, which was accepted by the International Criminal Court. “It should have been published by everyone,” Ressa says. (Information about using Rappler’s content can be found on its Site Use Policy page.)

• Frontline produced the documentary “A Thousand Cuts,” which follows Ressa as she navigates Duterte’s crackdown on the news media in the Philippines. You can watch it in full on YouTube.

• In “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists,” UNESCO presents an edited excerpt of a book-length study by the International Center for Journalists. The report begins with a quote from Ressa: “The easiest part is dealing with the impact of online violence and disinformation on me. I just see the impact on the world, and I don’t know why we’re not panicking.”  
  
• The Journalist’s Resource recently published a list of self-care tips and resources for journalists who cover and experience trauma, featuring insights from Dr. Elana Newman, research director at Columbia University’s Dart Center.

• Reporters Without Borders publishes an annual index ranking press freedom in 180 countries.  Norway tops the list for having the most press freedom in 2021, while Eritrea ranks last. The Philippines is 138^th on the list. The United States is 44^th.

• Ressa was the featured speaker for the 2021 Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press. The title of her talk: “What Would You Sacrifice for the Truth?” Watch it below.

The post How to hold the line: 4 journalism survival tips from 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

At the end of 2019, reflecting on that year’s most popular pieces, I made a vague forward-looking statement that turned out to be a bit of an understatement.  “We’re looking forward to working with, informing and supporting you,” I wrote. “We have a hunch 2020 is going to be a big news year.”

As it turns out, 2020 has been an enormous news year — extraordinarily overwhelming, relentless and historic.

The coronavirus pandemic quickly became and continues to be an international, national, regional, local and hyper-local news story spanning almost every beat. The May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the uprisings that followed dominated international headlines for several weeks. In terms of page views, June 5, 2020 was the biggest day in JR’s history, due in large part to our roundup of research on deaths in police custody. And of course there were the ongoing stories of the decennial census and the unusual presidential election.

Throughout 2020, Journalist’s Resource produced 139 research roundups, articles, explainers, tip sheets, data visualizations, columns and comics. Here are our 10 most popular posts of 2020, which supported journalists as they reported some of the decade’s biggest news stories. (The list includes articles and research roundups we published — or significantly expanded and republished — in the past 12 months.)

1. Deaths in police custody in the United States: Research review

Denise-Marie Ordway significantly updated and expanded this research roundup from 2016, which considers deaths in police custody from multiple angles, including restraint methods and police force demographics. In addition to summarizing new research, she highlighted and explained the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013. That law went into effect in 2014 but has yet to be fully implemented — and so the official number of deaths remains unknown.

2. Study: Trump’s support for police served as ‘dog whistle’ to voters with racial resentment

Ordway highlighted a study in the journal Criminology, which shows how voicing support for police can be a “dog whistle” politicians use to appeal to voters threatened by challenges to America’s racial status quo. “Donald Trump’s expressions of support for police, researchers find, served as coded language that mobilized voters who were anxious about the social and economic status of white Americans in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election,” she writes.

3. Gun buybacks: What the research says

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the JR team combed through the Democratic presidential candidates’ platforms and reported what the research says about their policy proposals. We wanted to encourage deep coverage of these proposals — and do our part to help deter “horse race” journalism, which research suggests can lead to inaccurate reporting and an uninformed electorate. Clark Merrefield looked at research on the efficacy of gun buyback programs, which allow gun owners to trade their firearms for vouchers that can be redeemed for cash or other items of value.

4. Online schools: Students’ performance often falls behind kids at other public schools

Early on in the pandemic, school districts were grappling with how and whether to move instruction from physical classrooms to students’ homes via the internet. In response, Ordway significantly updated this research roundup, which looks at how children historically have performed in online schools, including online charter schools.

5. Working from home: What the research says about setting boundaries, staying productive and reshaping cities

The coronavirus pandemic forced millions of employees to begin working from home back in March, the JR staff included. Merrefield looked at what the research says about employee productivity and boundary-setting while working at home, whether teleworking affects career growth, and what will happen to cities if office workers don’t come back. “Work-from-home arrangements will likely expand beyond the tech world — and beyond the pandemic, he writes. “Executives at about 1,750 firms from a variety of industries across the country expect 10% of full-time employees to telework every workday after the pandemic ends, according to the May monthly panel survey by economists at the Atlanta Fed, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.”

6. Decisions, decisions: How national news outlets call presidential winners

The week before Election Day in the U.S., we published this explainer on the ins and outs of how The Associated Press and major television networks decide when to declare a winner in any given race. The main takeaway for news audiences: “With varying rules and processes for how states conduct elections and tens of millions of advance ballots expected to be cast due to the COVID-19 pandemic, major news companies like ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC and The Associated Press are telling their audiences not to expect clear-cut results on election night,” Merrefield writes. Indeed.

7. Covering COVID-19 and the coronavirus: 5 tips from a Harvard epidemiology professor

In the interest of helping journalists improve their coronavirus coverage in the early days of the pandemic, Ordway reached out to Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who has served as a trusted media source throughout 2020. Ordway compiled five of Hanage’s best tips for covering the outbreak. Tip #1: “Choose experts carefully. Receiving a Nobel Prize for one scientific subject doesn’t make someone an authority on all science topics. Nor does having a PhD or teaching at a prestigious medical school.”

8. Raising public school teacher pay: What the research says

As policymakers, elected officials and presidential candidates debated the best way to compensate educators, Ordway turned to what the research says. Overall, she writes, studies show “raising teacher pay is associated with improved teacher retention, gains in student performance, a larger percentage of high-achieving college students taking courses in education, and an increased likelihood of hiring teachers who earned top scores on their educator certification exams.”

9. The Electoral College: How America picks its president

Americans have never voted directly for president. The U.S. Constitution specifies that state electors — not everyday citizens registered to vote — elect the president and vice president. Amid an extraordinary election year, Merrefield guided readers through the history and intricacies of the Electoral College and compiled a list of individual electors in several swing states.

10. Political sectarianism in America and 3 things driving ‘the ascendance of political hatred’

Merrefield highlighted multidisciplinary research published in the prestigious journal Science, which delves into political sectarianism in America. “The authors argue that American political sects are bonded by faith that their side is morally superior to the other — echoing the ties that sometimes bind the religiously faithful,” Merrefield writes. “The effect is that politicians have little incentive to represent all their constituents in policy and lawmaking, since political sectarians rarely cross the aisle to vote for candidates outside their party.”

Want to know which of our pieces meant the most to the JR staff this year? Check out our 2020 team picks. 

The post The 10 most popular Journalist’s Resource posts of 2020 appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Josh Neufeld is a cartoonist and journalist whose comics have covered a wide range of topics, including public health crises, academic research and journalism itself. He is best known for his book A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, which tells the true story of several New Orleans residents who lived through Hurricane Katrina. He is also the co-author of The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, an illustrated history of journalism and numerous other works — including a comics journalism piece about social science research on consumer behavior.

Neufeld authored our new feature, “A Tale of Two Pandemics: Historical Insights on Persistent Racial Disparities,” which uses the form of comics journalism to highlight a recent research article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

In that article, medical doctors Lakshmi Krishnan, S. Michelle Ogunwole and Lisa A. Cooper discuss racial health disparities during the 1918 influenza pandemic, with an eye toward the future. Their research, the doctors explain, “reveals that critical structural inequities and health care gaps have historically contributed to and continue to compound disparate health outcomes among communities of color” and “frames a discussion of racial health disparities through a resilience approach rather than a deficit approach and offers a blueprint for approaching the COVID-19 crisis and its afterlives through the lens of health equity.”

“A Tale of Two Pandemics” draws on the research article itself as well as interviews with Krishnan, Ogunwole and Cooper, in which they elaborate on the disturbing parallels between the spread of misinformation during both the 1918 and COVID-19 pandemics. The doctors are the main characters in the comic, and their speech-bubble quotes come directly from the interviews.  (In cases where Neufeld is quoting directly from their research article, he depicts the authors speaking in unison — akin to a Greek chorus.)

“I let their voices guide the narrative,” Neufeld says. “I’m so grateful that they spoke to me about their article!”

Via an e-mail interview, Journalist’s Resource asked Neufeld to discuss the benefits, challenges and processes of practicing comics journalism. This Q&A has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

Journalist’s Resource: For starters, what is comics journalism?

Josh Neufeld: True to its name, it’s journalism using the comics form. As a comics journalist, I research, report, and tell true-life stories — but with the added component of pictures, word balloons, and captions. The characters I portray are real people, and the text in their word balloons are actual quotes from my interviews with them.

JR: What can comics journalism do that other forms of journalism cannot? What are its limitations?

Neufeld: At its best, comics journalism brings the reader into the story in an immersive way that other mediums can’t compete with. A comics story has a certain immediacy — it feels like it’s happening right now, rather than retrospectively — and comics engender a strong sense of empathy for the “characters” in the stories. Stories featuring compelling characters in fraught situations are particularly powerful when told in comics form.

Comics embody a unique alchemy of words and pictures, so the form can also be effective in breaking down complex concepts into their component parts, or bringing life to dry charts and statistics.

Explanatory stories, for instance, work well when they can incorporate quotes from real people who can connect with the reader. But stories that require a lot of exposition, and move quickly from scene to scene, don’t work so well as comics. In my opinion, comics journalism stories are most effective when they are told “in-scene” with people talking, as opposed to using a lot of explanatory captions. But the most creative comics journalists are able to make any kind of story work in comics form!

Also, since most comics journalism stories require a lot of time to produce, they’re not really ideal for breaking news or daily reporting. I usually think of even my shorter pieces as a type of long-form journalism.

JR: Do you draw in the course of reporting, or do you wait until the interviews/research are finished before you start drawing? What are some of the visual strategies you use to achieve journalistic authenticity in your work? 

Neufeld: My typical reporting process starts with preliminary research (including visual research) and then interviews with the subjects.

With interviews/reporting, some artists do in-person sketching, but I tend to focus on taking lots and lots of photographs — not only of my subjects, but of their homes, their pets, the neighborhood and so on — anything I think I might need to draw afterward. I often will draw detailed floor plans of important interiors, so that when I draw a scene I’ll always know what furniture and “props” are in the background of that panel.

After compiling this material, I think about the most effective presentation for the story, in terms of its narrative structure and the most punchy visual components. I usually also draw some sketch “turnarounds” of my main characters — views of them from the front, side and back, to get a sense of how they will look and interact with the environment.

I then write a full script, formatted in a similar manner to a screenplay. I describe what will be visually represented in each panel and what captions or word balloons will be included. I try to create a dynamic narrative, one that has the feel of, say, an exciting television show or movie.

One of the freedoms that the form allows is that the reader accepts that some amount of creative license will be employed — obviously, as the storyteller, I wasn’t there when the character I interviewed survived the flooding of their city  or was attacked by the police during a peaceful demonstration. And even if I have photographic or video reference from an event, I’m still “making up” details or background characters to fill out a scene.

But in my scripts, I always stick to the facts as I have gleaned them from interviews, data and other reporting.

After the script is written and approved by my editor, I lay out the story, dropping in the text where necessary so my editor can read through the piece and sign off it. At that point, I start drawing, continually referring to photo reference and details I got from talking to my subjects/witnesses. Once the penciling is done, the editor once again signs off before I move to the final inking and coloring stage.

It’s a laborious process, with a lot of check-ins along the way, but I don’t mind because my primary goal is to serve the truth of the people whose story I am telling.

JR: What are some of the biggest challenges and toughest choices you have to make when creating any given comic?

Neufeld: Comics are an incredibly pithy form — long-winded quotations and lots of explanatory text make a tiresome reading experience. So when it comes to quotes and narration, I’m always cutting, cutting, cutting, trying to find that perfect image choice (or facial expression) that can carry the bulk of the narrative weight. Like any other form of writing, in the initial drafts there’s always a lot of “killing your darlings” — cutting great quotes and the like because they just don’t fit or would distract from the through-line of the story.

Tone is also really important to a piece of comics journalism (especially because of the hurdle of “believability” I mention later). So even though humor and exaggeration are powerful tools of comics, I sometimes have to restrain my impulse in that direction if I (or my editor) feels it would take away from the story’s authenticity. I still try to use those tools, but probably in more moderation than I would in a fiction piece.

JR: What are some common misconceptions/misperceptions about comics journalism?

Neufeld: One of the biggest hurdles comics journalism stories face is the entrenched expectation that all comics stories are fictional. Historically, the comics produced in our country have mostly centered on humor, adventure and superheroes, so it’s still a struggle to convince your average reader that a nonfiction story told in comics form is “legitimate.” Thank goodness for the work of creators like Will Eisner, Harvey Pekar, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel and Marjane Satrapi who have elevated the perception of the comics form in recent decades!

The other perception that comics journalism struggles against is subjectivity. People often think that because the work is drawn, it is more subjective than other forms of journalism. But of course subjectivity comes into play in all other journalistic media, from the video and audio edits made in TV and radio studios to the various edits and omissions made to events and quotes in print stories. Comics journalism is just more obvious about it, which makes it easier to target!

That’s why I always try to be as transparent as possible when I discuss my work: showing photos of the people I interviewed and places I am depicting, talking about my process and freely admitting to places in the narrative where I used creative license.

JR: For those who want to learn more about the genre — and to read more of it, could you please suggest some further reading?

Neufeld: My introduction to the form came by way of Maltese-American cartoonist Joe Sacco, who is known for his long-form narratives about areas of conflict in the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia. Books to look for of his include Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde, among many others. Sacco is a rigorous journalist and an incredible draftsman. He popularized the form and to me is still the standard-bearer.

Comics journalist Dan Archer created a wonderful two-pager on comics journalism for Poynter [Institute] some years back. It goes over the history of the form (dating back to the 19th century), mentions some creators and discusses the methods (as well as those who criticize the form).

The Nib is a great site for current works of comics journalism and is updated almost every day. They make a point of featuring female cartoonists and work by people of color and there’s always a new, incredible piece of comics journalism on the site. (They also publish sharp-edged political and editorial cartoons.)  A few times a year, The Nib publishes a print edition of comics on a particular theme.

Two European English-language sites, both published out of the Netherlands, also feature comics journalism: Drawing The Times and Cartoon Movement.

And, of course, my own website has a large collection of comics journalism pieces I have done over the years.

The post Documenting serious issues with comics journalism: An interview with Josh Neufeld appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Many readers of Journalist’s Resource fall into one of two camps: hardworking journalists and hardworking academics. Recently, in hopes of providing an opportunity for the two groups to learn from each other, we posed two questions in our weekly newsletter and on Twitter.

Our question for the scholars among you: Have you noticed any common mistakes or missteps in news stories about scientific research during the COVID-19 pandemic?  And our question for the journalists: What would you like academic researchers to understand about the job of a journalist — especially in the wake of a pandemic?

We received many thoughtful responses. Among the main takeaways: Journalists would like more academics to explain the practical relevance of their research — preferably in accessible language. And academics would like more journalists to understand that facts are complicated and context is important.

Posted below are several of the responses we received via e-mail or Twitter. We’ll update this post with future responses, and we’ll pose more questions in future e-mail newsletters. If you’d like to share your own response to either of the questions above, please send an e-mail to journalists_resource@hks.harvard.edu. You can also reach out to us via Facebook or Twitter.

Anna Boiko-Wayrauch, reporter at KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio (via e-mail): “I would like academics to know that when journalists like me turn to research we are trying to figure out how it applies and can help our readers, the average person. Often, it seems like researchers embark on a project looking to show how it can advance the scientific dialogue, how it can answer a specific question that other researchers have not answered yet. For journalists, I’m looking at how a research paper can answer a question that my readers have. How can it help them live better or understand the world around them better? I’m a general assignment reporter, so I don’t care if a paper is a ‘contribution to the field.’ I care if it’s a contribution to my audience members, Laura, Rachel, and Dave (to name a few folks I know are tuning in). I wish more academics would be able to address why their research matters to anyone who is not an academic. Some folks are quite good at this, some folks are not.”

Dr. Kira Newman, resident physician at the Adult Medicine Clinic at Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington (via Twitter): “Coverage often overstates the ability of studies to prove the effect of an exposure or treatment. Most #coronavirus studies are observational, meaning they can’t prove that X causes Y, just that X and Y are more often found at the same time or in the same people.”

Lydia Timmins, associate professor at the University of Delaware Department of Communication (via e-mail): “In response to the questions you posted, I can see both sides of journalist-professor. I spent 22 years in TV news (mostly as a producer) and am in my 10^th year as a professor.

The big challenge for journalists is that we are used to, and expect, an expert to have answers. Answers that we can definitively report as fact, and then move on. That’s why they are experts, they know the answers. We want to write in active voice, sentences that state the fact of the matter in 8-10 seconds. We don’t like ‘maybe’ and ‘further research needed’ and ‘small sample size’ and ‘preliminary results’ and essentially NOT SURE OF THE CORRECT ANSWER. That makes journalists nervous.

Professors and researchers realize there really are few hard and fast facts. Things can change, the more research that gets done and peer-reviewed. What seemed like a fact last week is now updated. Professors know there’s always more and more to learn, even the experts are still learning and just don’t always have the final definitive answer. Science is not a textbook that gets handed out every year and never changes (at least it shouldn’t be!)

Journalists remember science class and how boring it was and hard to understand. (OK, making a HUGE generalization in that case.) I always joked that I became a journalist after failing math, chem and bio.

Now, I have developed and am co-teaching, with a scientist, a class designed to help scientists ‘make science make sense.’ I believe there is a profound gap between many (not all) journalists and many (not all) scientists. Each expects the other to understand where they are coming from, and that they speak the same language—but they don’t.”

Michael Fitzgerald, articles editor for Boston Globe Magazine (via e-mail): “Journalists work for audiences, and general interest audiences typically come away from a story with one thing that sticks. We need to tell our audiences Why Something Matters. We want that to be as simple and clear as possible. The story is going to have a headline, or an intro, and these also need to make a concise point. So we push academics and researchers to tell us Why Something Matters. And there’s often not just one reason why, and perhaps it isn’t clear. Also, academics, kind of like lawyers, are trying to plug every possible hole in their argument so that it doesn’t get ripped to shreds in peer-review. That does not lend itself well to making one big point.”

Noah Haber, post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center (via Twitter): “One of the biggest general problems I have observed has been outlets uncritically covering individual studies as if their conclusions are the truth. Most studies offer limited evidence, and should be thought of as proposals for debate to potentially add evidence to the consensus.”

Tim Riley, associate professor of journalism and graduate program director at Emerson College (via e-mail): “I’m so tired of reading headlines like ‘TULSA SURGES WITH 89 DEATHS,’ a number that has no context, no relevance, and very little to recommend it in a head … early on, journalists could have agreed upon some tools for how to share data coming from hospitals and medical [communications] …

For example, ‘TULSA REPORTS 89 DEATHS, DOWN FROM WEEKLY AVG OF 104,’ OR, better: ‘89 DEATHS IN TULSA, 1.5% PER CAPITA, DOWN WHOPPING 60 PERCENT FROM LAST WEEK.’

Announcing the NUMBER of deaths MISREPORTS because it doesn’t have ANY FRAME OF REFERENCE.”

The post Readers respond on COVID-19 coverage: Tips from scholars to journalists (and vice versa) appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Across the political divide, a majority of U.S. residents don’t think their states should reopen their economies yet, according to the results of a new national survey gauging public opinion on a wide range of topics related to COVID-19.

The survey, which polled nearly 23,000 respondents in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., was conducted April 17-26 by David Lazer, a political science and computer science professor at Northeastern University; Matthew A. Baum, a public policy and communications professor at Harvard Kennedy School; Katherine Ognyanova, an assistant professor of communications at Rutgers University; and John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard Kennedy School.

“A bipartisan consensus opposes a rapid ‘reopening’ of the economy,” the researchers write in their 298-page survey report, which includes national-level response data as well as data for each individual state — including state-level margins of error. “Only 7% support immediate reopening of the economy, and the median respondent supports waiting four to six weeks. There is a bipartisan consensus on waiting (89% of Republicans as compared to 96% of Democrats opposed immediate re-opening), and Republicans support a somewhat faster re-opening of the economy than Democrats, where the median Republican supports waiting two to four weeks versus median Democrat six to eight weeks … even in those Republican-led states which are moving toward re-opening, few people support reopening immediately.”

Among the other key findings of the survey at the national level:

“The most trusted groups and organizations regarding the crisis embody expertise,” they report. “The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] (CDC) is the most trusted government entity, with nearly 9 in 10 (88%) indicating that they trusted the CDC ‘some’ or ‘a lot.’ A remarkable 96% indicate trust in hospitals and doctors (only 1% ‘not at all’); and 93% trusted scientists and researchers. This trust is bipartisan, but there are partisan differences in the degree of trust (i.e., ‘a lot’ versus ‘some’ trust), where 42% of Republicans versus 55% of Democrats report trusting the CDC a lot; 54% of Republicans versus 66% of Democrats report trusting scientists and researchers a lot; and 73% of Republicans versus 76% of Democrats report trusting doctors and hospitals a lot.”

News media don’t fare as well on the trust scale, with 41% of respondents reporting they trusted the news media “some,” and 13% “a lot.”

In terms of where U.S. residents receive information about the COVID-19 crisis, “Television ranks at the top as a source of information, with local television cited by 55% and network television by 48%. Older (65+) Americans were more likely to rely on local television (70%), network television (60%), cable television (48%), as compared to younger (18-24-year-olds) Americans (41%, 39%, 32%, respectively).”

Some key findings at the state level:

“Residents of all 50 states are more concerned about their own and their family’s risks of contracting COVID-19 than about losing their jobs or suffering financial hardships,” the researchers report. “But comparing average levels of concern over contracting the virus (self and family) with average levels of economic concern (jobs and finances), this differential, which averages 19 percentage points, varies widely across the states (from a low of 9 percentage points in Colorado to a high of 31 points in Maine). Residents of New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island top the states in terms of concerns over contracting COVID with 80% or more of respondents, on average, indicating concern (“somewhat” or “a great deal”) over the risk to themselves or their family members. Nevada and Hawaii residents are most concerned about jobs and financial hardships, with 62% of respondents in both states expressing such concerns, followed by New Jersey at 61%, and then Texas, Arkansas, and New York, at 60%.”

“In every state in the union, residents approve of their own governor’s handling of the COVID crisis (defined as ‘approve’ or ‘strongly approve’) more highly than they rate that of President Trump,” the researchers report. “The average gap across the 50 states was 22 percentage points (66% for governors compared to 44% for Trump). That said, the gaps between the governor and the president vary widely, ranging from around 2 percentage points in Oklahoma to a cavernous gap approaching or exceeding 40 points in several solidly Democratic states, like Rhode Island and California. Interestingly, three of the four states with the largest such gaps (40-42 percentage points) are reliably blue states with Republican governors: Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont. The highest rated governors include the governors of Ohio (83%), Kentucky (81%), Maryland (80%), and Massachusetts (80%).”

If you would like to embed the map in this piece in your own online publication, you can do so with this code:  <iframe src=”//datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9QSsB/1/” width=”100%” height=”620″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowtransparency=”true”></iframe>

For more information, please check out our other coronavirus-related resources, including tips on covering biomedical research preprints and a roundup of research that looks at how infectious disease outbreaks affect people’s mental health.

The post COVID-19 50-state survey: Majority of US residents oppose rapid reopening of economy appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

As we wind down the year, we’re counting down the most-read Journalist’s Resource posts of 2019 — articles and research roundups we published (or significantly updated and republished) in the past year.

After you revisit the year’s most popular posts, please think about the subjects you’d like us to cover in the future. You can reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail at Journalists_Resource@hks.harvard.edu. We’re looking forward to working with, informing and supporting you. We have a hunch 2020 is going to be a big news year.

Here are JR’s most-read posts of 2019:

#10. Should states ban religious exemptions for student vaccinations? Researchers weigh in

Denise-Marie Ordway highlighted three recent academic studies that suggest banning religious exemptions might not be the most effective way to improve childhood vaccination rates. In fact, the research indicates banning these exemptions could backfire.

#9. Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour: What the research says

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the Journalist’s Resource team is combing through the Democratic presidential candidates’ platforms and reporting what the research says about their policy proposals. Clark Merrefield kicked off this series with this piece about the federal minimum wage.

#8. New economic research resurfaces debate about the link between legalized abortion and crime reduction

Merrefield highlighted new research by economists John Donohue and Steve Levitt, who find that legalized abortion following Roe v. Wade accounts for 45% of the decline in U.S. crime rates over the past three decades. (Some other economists are not convinced.)

#7. What Game of Thrones tells us about ourselves: A GoT research roundup

“Game of Thrones” isn’t just a cultural phenomenon — it’s an academic one too. Academics have analyzed GoT from many angles — race, history, politics, gender and power, and linguistics — to find out what a fictional show based on past events can tell us about our real present. Merrefield dug into recent GoT research.

#6. Black men 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, new research estimates

A black man in the U.S. has an estimated 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police during his lifetime, according to a study published in August by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Merrefield explained the findings.

#5. Prince Harry in Afghanistan: Miguel Head shares the story of a historic media blackout

For 10 weeks in late 2007 and early 2008, hundreds of news organizations agreed to embargo a big story:  Prince Harry had been deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan, serving with the British Army. Miguel Head sat down with Carmen Nobel to share the inside story of how and why a cutthroat press kept a major secret about a beloved public figure.

#4: The health effects of screen time on children

Chloe Reichel’s research roundup looked at the effects of screen time on children’s health. The studies she included range from childhood to adolescence and focus on topics including sleep, developmental progress, depression and successful interventions to reduce screen time.

#3. What the research says about border walls

Border security remains a newsy topic. Ordway’s roundup of research focused on what border barriers are, why they have become popular, whether they actually help countries control their borders and how they affect the environment and local communities.

#2. Cutting through the clutter: What research says about tidying up

Early in 2019, thrift stores across the United States were inundated with donations in the wake of Netflix’s January 2019 release of “Tidying Up,” a series starring Marie Kondo, professional organizer. Is tidying really that beneficial to well-being? Reichel looked into the research on the benefits of decluttering.

#1. The four-day school week: Research behind the trend

To save money and help with teacher recruitment, a growing number of public schools across the United States are taking Fridays off. Ordway gathered research on the benefits and consequences of four-day school weeks.

The post Here are our 10 most-read posts of 2019 appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

It has been a productive and exciting year at Journalist’s Resource. We welcomed a new team member, economic research reporter extraordinaire Clark Merrefield. We established a great collaborative relationship with The Burlington Free Press. We created a series of behind-the-scenes stories featuring journalists who were finalists for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. We delved deep into the 2020 census. And we began to look at what the research says about some of the Democratic presidential candidates’ policy proposals. So far in 2019, our small team has published or significantly updated 159 tip sheets, research roundups and other resources aimed at helping journalists cover the policy topics they needed to explain to the public.

Next week, we’ll reveal the 10 most-read pieces that we published over the past year. But today we’re sharing some of the JR team’s favorite pieces. Here are our 2019 staff picks.

Chloe Reichel, health research reporter:

8 tips on how to cover drinking responsibly

With holiday festivities in full swing, I thought I’d feature 8 tips on how to cover drinking responsibly as a reminder: Each year in the U.S. more people die from alcohol-related causes than overdoses from all other drugs, combined. Research suggests that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption, which has been causally linked to over 200 disease and injury conditions. And yet media coverage of alcohol tends not to focus on the risks of drinking, instead highlighting benefits in lighthearted lifestyle coverage. Which is why I think this tip sheet is so important — the media can and should do a better job of covering alcohol as a public health issue.

Carbon taxes + cap and trade = Tackling climate change like an economist

I’d like to call 2019 the year of Clark Merrefield, at least for Journalist’s Resource. I’m so glad for the humor, creativity and expertise our new colleague has brought to the project. Carbon taxes + cap and trade = Tackling climate change like an economist is the perfect example. Clark pitched the idea to participate in Covering Climate Now, an international journalism campaign to strengthen coverage of climate change; wrote this informative, accessible piece as one of his contributions; annotated it using Genius; and made me literally LOL in the process. Here’s the line, see for yourself: “In Washington circles, a lot of people think carbon taxes are going to be much more politically feasible,” Harvard University economist Robert Stavins says. “My view is, if it was possible to demonize cap-and-trade as a tax, it is highly likely that it will be possible to demonize a carbon tax as a tax.”  

Denise-Marie Ordway, managing editor:

10 tips for covering white supremacy and far-right extremists

This is one of my favorite JR tip sheets because it does two things well: It educates journalists about a national and local problem that tends to be misunderstood and it offers practical tips they can use immediately to do their jobs better. The tip sheet also introduces journalists to two top scholars who’ve thought a lot about how journalists portray white supremacy and help white supremacists spread their message.

What happens to a community when a rural school closes?

I chose this piece because I’m personally interested in this topic, and because it’s a great example of how our team can work with a newsroom to help it ground and frame its coverage using academic research. The studies of rural schools that Clark found add a lot to this Burlington Free Press article by helping us better understand the role schools play in small communities and what these communities experience when their only school closes.

Clark Merrefield, economic research reporter:

Data journalism at two elite news outlets lacked transparency: Research

Whether elementary or in-depth statistical analysis, data plays a huge role in the work of many journalists. This paper Denise covered has so many important reminders and tips that can help reporters live up to their own standards for transparency. It’s a must-read for new and veteran journalists alike.

The opioid prescribing problem: A JR long read

It would be impossible for any reporter covering addiction in America not to find something thought-provoking in this long-read from Chloe. She’s been covering research on opioid addiction for years and brought together the most consequential current research on how opioid prescribing helped fuel the opioid epidemic, in this incredibly informative and readable piece.

New economic research resurfaces debate about the link between legalized abortion and crime reduction

This story I wrote offers an interesting juxtaposition between pop-economics and traditional academic economics. The paper at the center of the article is an update of an original paper that helped launch the Freakonomics franchise. This piece offers some interesting looks behind the academic curtain, of how academics who disagree interact with each other.

Carmen Nobel, program director:

Prince Harry in Afghanistan: Miguel Head shares the story of a historic media blackout

For 10 weeks in late 2007 and early 2008, hundreds of news organizations agreed to embargo a big story: Prince Harry had been deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan, serving with the British Army. Miguel Head served as the chief press officer for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence at the time. Last April, he sat down with me to share the inside story of how and why a cutthroat press decided to keep a major secret about a beloved public figure. The resultant oral history garnered attention from several popular lifestyle publications. Town and Country wrote its own article about our piece. So did The Frisky. So did Lainey Gossip. And the popular fashion blog Go Fug Yourself featured us in their weekly “Royals Roundup.”

A graphic guide to the 2020 US census

We hired the brilliant Josh Neufeld to create our first piece of graphic nonfiction, which explains the risk of undercounts, the potential ramifications of an inaccurate count, the threat of misinformation and disinformation campaigns, and important dates on the census calendar. It also includes cartoon cameo appearances by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross — donning a New Year’s Eve party hat.

Happy holidays, readers. Come back next week to see JR’s most-read features of 2019.

The post The 2019 JR staff picks: Our favorite tip sheets, stories and research roundups appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

On July 17, former special counsel Robert Mueller is scheduled to testify in public hearings before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. The subject: his “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” more commonly known as the Mueller report.

The report was made public April 18. Weeks later, on May 29, Mueller finally made a public statement, during which he stressed that the report “speaks for itself.”

Mueller’s report is historic and important. It’s also 448 pages long. Knowing most people haven’t made time to read the whole thing, Harvard Kennedy School professor Tom Patterson has created an abridged version of 123 pages: “Summary of the Mueller Report, for Those Too Busy to Read It All.”

“Although I had intended for weeks to read the Mueller Report, I hadn’t found the time, despite its importance,” says Patterson, the Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at the Harvard Kennedy School and the research director of Journalist’s Resource. “It occurred to me that a lot of other Americans might be in the same boat. I abridged it for them.”

Patterson’s abridged version focuses on the question of whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice by trying to impede the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“It is the portion that raised the issue of whether Donald Trump had committed impeachable offenses,” Patterson writes in the introduction to his summary. “Impeachment is not an action to be taken lightly, or without taking public opinion into account. It is in this context that ‘informed’ public opinion is critical. Impeachment action undertaken, or blocked, for purely partisan reasons is unworthy of America’s democracy. A careful weighing of the known facts is vital. The Mueller Report lays out those facts, allowing each of us, as citizens, to judge the issue.”

Via email, we talked to Patterson about how and why he created this new version of the report. Below are our questions and Patterson’s responses, which have been lightly edited to reflect Journalist’s Resource’s editorial style.

Journalist’s Resource: A Google search yields many summaries of the Mueller report. But your abridged version is different in that you don’t paraphrase anything; with the exception of the introduction, all the words in your abridged version come directly from the original report. Why is it important to read the report in the legal team’s own words?

Patterson: In his first public statement after release of the report, [then] special counsel Robert Mueller said the report “speaks for itself.” Upon reading it in preparation for the abridgment, I found his statement to be accurate. As a result, my goal was to faithfully reproduce it.

JR: An important question for careful editors everywhere: How did you ensure that your interpretations of the facts didn’t influence what you chose to delete?

Patterson: I was careful not to delete anything that might alter the report’s findings or affect the interpretation that a reader might derive from the content of the original report. I invite anyone with the time or interest to compare the original with my abridgment to test the fidelity of my effort.

The abridged version is based on Volume II of the Mueller report, which focuses on the question of whether Donald Trump obstructed justice. Within that constraint, virtually all of my deletions were of three types. First, I deleted all the footnotes — the great majority of which provided the date of a particular interview, news story or event. Second, redundant material was cut — there’s a lot of repetition in the report. Third, peripheral material was cut, much of which referred to numbered statutes and court cases – useful to readers with legal training but otherwise a bit like trying to make sense of an unfamiliar foreign language.

JR: Having studied the Mueller report, what do you think has been missing from news coverage so far?

Patterson: In the first day or two after the report’s release, there was a focus on the actual findings in the report. Since then, the voices we hear in the news are those of partisans who would impeach, or block impeachment, based on what they claim the report says. There’s a lot of material in the report that could be the basis for thoughtful non-partisan analysis. The evidence in the report doesn’t point in one direction only. News stories of that type are what’s in short supply.

JR: You end the introduction by saying, “I leave the judgment of whether President Trump obstructed justice to you, the citizen reader.” That is a question Mueller may be pressed to answer on July 17. For readers who are not legal scholars, could you offer some advice for how to determine whether an action meets the definition of “obstruction of justice?” 

Patterson: A solid feature of the Mueller report is that it provides a clear explanation of “obstruction of justice.” It has three elements: “an obstructive act,” “a nexus to an official proceeding” (e.g., a grand jury investigation), and “intent.” Then, for each subject of investigation, such as the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and Trump campaign staff, the Mueller report applies the three elements to the available evidence. It’s all there in the report, which is why I leave the final judgment to the reader. But you have to read the report if you want to make an informed judgment on the question of whether President Trump obstructed justice.

For more on the Mueller report, see our interview with journalist Garrett Graff, who has written two books about Mueller. And check out our interview with the Wall Street Journal reporters who uncovered secret payoffs that Trump and his associates arranged during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

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From the London tabloids to the public broadcasters, the British media have a reputation as competitive, fractured and often eager to report every tidbit of news about the Royal Family. But for 10 weeks in late 2007 and early 2008, hundreds of news organizations agreed to embargo a big story:  Prince Harry had been deployed to Helmand, Afghanistan, serving with the British Army. The media blackout lasted for 10 weeks — until The Drudge Report, which was not included in the agreement, reported the story on Feb. 28. Out of concern for his security and that of the soldiers around him, Prince Harry was immediately rushed back home.

Miguel Head is arguably best known for his public relations role in the Royal Household, where he served as press secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry and then as private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge (Prince William) from September 2008 to March 2018. But immediately prior, between March 2007 to September 2008, he was the chief press officer for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence [sic — that’s the British spelling], where he played a key role in orchestrating the historic blackout.

Head is spending the spring 2019 semester at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where he is researching how socioeconomic inequalities in Britain have fomented divisive politics. He sat down with Journalist’s Resource Program Director Carmen Nobel to share the inside story of how and why a cutthroat press kept a major secret about a beloved public figure. What follows is a lightly edited oral history. Head notes that he was speaking solely from memory, recalling events that happened more than a decade ago.

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“In the year 2006, Prince William, Prince Harry’s elder brother, was a troop commander in the Household Cavalry.

His troop came up for their turn in Southern Iraq. The Ministry of Defence decided that the best way to get Prince William out to Southern Iraq was to keep it a secret — to keep the knowledge in the hands of a handful of people. They knew that if it leaked that he was going, he probably couldn’t go. Unfortunately, it leaked.

The prime minister and the secretary of state for defense made the decision that Prince William couldn’t go, not just because the Ministry of Defence didn’t want to endanger his life — he was in direct line to the throne — but more because of endangering the lives of people around him if he was targeted.

And Prince William was gutted about it. He understood intellectually why that decision was taken, but he was personally gutted. I mean, he’s a soldier to his core. He was really upset that, having trained for it, he couldn’t then go with his men, as their officer.

Roll forward a year and a bit, and Prince Harry and his troop are now coming up for their turn — in this case to go into Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence looked at this and they said, “We can’t attempt to do what we did last time, so we need to find a different way of getting him into Afghanistan.”

A bunch of us approached a small industry body called The Society of Editors. They represented mainly regional media in the U.K., but they did have formal links to the national media as well. We thought they might have some ideas of what we could do. We hadn’t thought then that we could do a blackout. I mean, that seemed impossible, for all the reasons you say: It’s a fractured, competitive media. But they spoke to their members and brought in the national newspapers. And the newspapers said, “OK, well, if you do a deal with us, we will honor that blackout. But you need to include the broadcasters. Otherwise it won’t work.’”

So we included the broadcasters, and we then widened it out to include the American broadcasters, too. The internet was only just beginning to be used as a news source at that point.

The deal was that there would be no mention at all of his deployment to Afghanistan until he was safely back. And in exchange, Prince Harry would do interviews before deployment, during deployment and after deployment — but those interviews would be kept until he was safely back.

The circle of trust

We shared with them that we were going to be completely transparent about his deployment — when it was going to take place, and where it would be.  We decided that the best course of action would be to bring them into what we called the circle of trust. And we were very transparent about everything.

The Society of Editors held a conference where they shared the news with their members [all members of the print media], but with us present.

The broadcasters, we brought into our building. They didn’t know why they were coming in, and we sat them down and said, “Look, this is going to happen. We don’t know how it’s going to happen, but we want it to happen and we need your help. And the press here have come up with the idea of a blackout agreement, so let’s discuss how it might work for you.”

Initially, all the broadcasters said no, no, no, that would never work. And then, one by one, they all started to say yes, it’s fine, with the exception of the BBC, who held out for a very long time. They said it would be against their editorial guidelines to have such an agreement, and they held out for a while.

But eventually they were persuaded, too — by nothing we did, really. The BBC, like other broadcasters, do respect issues of national security when they’re asked to do so. They will not report on ongoing court cases if a seal is being put on that court case. There is lots of precedence for broadcasters not publishing things when it’s quite clearly in the public interest not to do so. And that’s, of course, a balance journalists have to weigh up all the time.

In the end, it came down to the argument that this wasn’t just about allowing Prince Harry going out and doing something that a young prince wanted to do; this was also about not endangering people around him. That’s something they took very seriously. In the end, that’s what persuaded them.

It was a rare example of two things combining. The first was good faith on the part of the media, who wanted this to work for all sorts of good reasons, including economic reasons as well as a genuine sense of the rightness of Prince Harry having been trained for years as an officer — that he should be allowed to go out and do what he was trained to do.

And the second thing was that the competitive nature of media had the inverse effect of none of them wanting to be the bad person. Prince Harry is so popular, and back then he was still very young. It had been only 10 years since [the princes’ mother] Diana, Princess of Wales, had died. There was still a very strong sense in the country of the public, in effect, bringing the two young princes into their arms and saying, “We will look after them. And you, press, you had better keep your hands off them. Don’t you dare do to them what you did to their mother.”

That paternal sense that the public felt toward the two young princes held very true. To an extent, it still holds true to this day. And for the print press in particular, no newspaper wanted to be the one that repeated the excesses of the past and put Prince Harry in danger. And that form of reverse competition actually was what allowed it to last 10 weeks.

Contingency plans

We expected this blackout to last 48 hours before [it leaked]. Privately, we had a contingency plan of what we would do and say when the news broke that he was out there. We thought it might happen almost immediately. When that happened, we would have to bring him straight back. But from Prince Harry’s point of view, he would know we had done our best to get him out there without endangering people around him. Our relationship with the Royal House was a very important relationship, and it was very important that we at least had tried.

[The blackout] wasn’t a legal agreement. We talked about making it legal, but everyone decided that we didn’t want to involve the lawyers. And so it was a gentlemen’s agreement. But it was written down on paper; it was codified about who would get access to what, and who would conduct which interviews.

There was a lot of debate about broadcasters getting their reporters to ask the questions. And in the end, we decided it should be a neutral voice that the audiences wouldn’t recognize as a well-known journalist, who would ask the questions on behalf of all the broadcasters. Separately, the print media had their own requirements for interviews and for photography.

It was a very delicate negotiation. But the prize was the [opportunity to report] that Prince Harry, a very popular young prince, would be the first member of the Royal Family to deploy on active duty since the Falklands War. Prince Harry was a superstar. This was the media’s only way of capturing that story, because anything else would fall short of creating the conditions that would allow him to go to Afghanistan.

When Prince Harry departed, 48 hours passed, and then 72 hours. It continued for 10 weeks. And we didn’t expect that to happen.

There are a couple of little-known facts about it, which I think are really quite telling. One is that on the day the Drudge Report broke Prince Harry’s deployment, that very morning I sat down with my team to determine our [communications] plan for him doing a full deployment along with his troop. We had contingencies in case we had to bring him back early, we had contingencies in case he was wounded, we had contingencies in case he was killed. But what we never had was a plan for if he did his normal tour of duty and came back with his troop on his normal aircraft.

That morning I said to the team, “It’s time that we actually plan for this.” And I feel like the cosmos almost jinxed us for sitting down and discussing it.  That morning was when the Drudge Report published what they published and we had to bring him home later that afternoon.

The leak

There’s a second little-known fact about it, and this tells you something about the internet at the time. Four weeks after Prince Harry deployed to Afghanistan, an Australian magazine called New Idea somehow found out that Prince Harry was in Afghanistan. They were not part of the agreement, and so they didn’t know there was a blackout at all. They published a very anodyne story on the front of their website saying Prince Harry was in Afghanistan.

We saw this in the press office and thought, oof, this is it. It’s over, four weeks in. It’s done.  But we decided to hold our nerve. This was still in the early days where many magazines were beginning to publish their stuff online, but most people weren’t really looking to the web as their source for news. So we decided to hold our nerve and see whether any of the people who were part of the agreement would say whether that was enough of a cause to break the agreement.

In the spirit of transparency, we told [all the media in the blackout agreement], “For those of you who haven’t noticed it … ” — which, by the way, most of them hadn’t; search engines in those days weren’t sophisticated and so on — we said, “This has been published. You have got to decide whether this means the agreement is over, but we’re not going to be the ones to signal the end of the agreement.”

And the press all looked at each other to see which one of them was going to blink first, and none of them blinked. None of them felt this was big enough.

People in Australia presumably read it, but nobody who read it realized there was a media blackout.

The Sun newspaper spotted it and they told us privately. They didn’t want to unilaterally break the agreement — there was still a sense that nobody wanted to be the first to go — and we shared it with everyone else.

We didn’t approach New Idea afterwards. We decided just to leave it. Because we decided if we tell them to bring it down, it may actually alert other Australian newspapers that something is up. And we hadn’t brought Australian press into the agreement.

We get to week 10 of the deployment, and the Drudge Report spots this story on New Idea. And they knew what they had found. They realized this was big. They didn’t know there was an agreement in place, and it wouldn’t have mattered to them, I suspect, even if they did. That’s not how they operated.

And so they published it.

They did a we-found-this-online story, which is how they operated and actually how much of the internet operates to this day. They just published it and it went BOOM on the website … At that point, because the Drudge Report was one of the few household names for online news sources, certainly in the U.K., there was no way we could hold the news back.

The Drudge Report came into a lot of criticism both by American and British public … But the Drudge Report cited New Idea in their piece. And poor old New Idea, this little known, very friendly magazine in Australia, came into the worst criticism — particularly in Australia, where the monarchy is very popular. But they just didn’t know any better. And the editor, whose name I’ve forgotten, she appeared on Australian television to apologize for what she had done. At no point had she realized that she had done anything wrong. She felt very bad about it. And for months afterward, their newsroom was filled with hate mail.

I feel very sorry for her. You might expect to put up with that if you realize you’re publishing the scoop of the century, but they published the scoop of the century and just didn’t realize it. And no one took any notice of them until the Drudge Report story.

Prince Harry returns

He was in a very remote base at the time in Afghanistan, so he had to be flown from that base back to the main British base where he was then put on an airplane coming back to Britain that night.

I was one of the people who greeted him when he arrived back.

He was very upset, actually. He was really down. I wouldn’t describe him as angry — he’s far more mature than that, and he understood why it had happened. He was just very sad about it. In that time, you develop such a close bond with your troop. And it’s a job that he evidently was very good at, and passionate about. To suddenly have to cut it short, in the middle of a day as well … His commanding officer literally tapped him on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, Prince Harry, but this has happened”… Well, he wouldn’t have called him “Prince Harry.” He was called “Lieutenant Wales.” The officer said, “This has happened, there’s a helicopter on its way now to pick you up … Pack up your bag. You’re off.”

It was very sudden for him. What was very sweet was that his father and his brother came to meet him at the airport as well. And that was the first time I met Prince William. I’d met Prince Harry in the run-up to his going to Afghanistan, part of the sitting in for the interviews he gave, but Prince William I hadn’t met before.

It was the first time I realized, that I saw with my own eyes, the closeness of the relationship between the two brothers. Think about the mixed emotions Prince William would have had, because he wasn’t allowed … he never got to go. So he would have known how Prince Harry felt, and he was very protective of him.

I sat waiting for him at RAF Brize Norton; it’s the Royal Air Force base where there were several flights a day coming in from Afghanistan, with wounded people mainly. I think Prince Harry shared an aircraft with three seriously wounded men. He came into a room and sat down in front. This was minutes after stepping off the aircraft; he had briefly said hello to his father, and effectively said to his father, “I’ll catch up with you in a second. I’ve got to do this interview.”

A split-second choice

He comes upstairs with me, sits down in a chair, and the interviewer starts going with his questions …

I can’t remember the interviewer’s name, and it’s quite telling that I can’t, because we had made an agreement that the interviewer had to be a producer. It had to be a producer so that it wouldn’t be a well-known voice. When the audience heard the questions, they wouldn’t recognize it as a BBC journalist.  [The focus would be] the subject.

It is an interview technique, by the way, that we then introduced into the Royal Household, and the Royal Household is still using that technique to this day.

So Prince Harry comes off his aircraft, and he’s exhausted. He hasn’t washed for a day and a half. He’s still wearing what he was wearing in the desert in Afghanistan. He still has sand all over him. And so he’s really tired; he slept overnight on the plane. And he’s also just deeply upset. The interviewer and the producer start asking the pre-agreed questions that have been very carefully negotiated by all the broadcasters, who all have slightly different angles regarding what they want to ask Prince Harry about.

We get about two questions into this list of questions, and Prince William suddenly stands up. He’s at the back of the room — he stood kind of behind me. He stands up and does a cutting motion with his hand across his throat, saying, this is over.

It was simply a brother realizing that at that point nothing was more important than his welfare, and none of the other agreements mattered at that point. And it says something about the closeness of the two brothers and their authenticity, as well. They will not fake who they are simply to play a game or to go along with other people’s expectations. And they are perfectly courteous and loyal and they will abide by agreements up to a point. But there will come a point where they say, “Well, actually our humanity is more important.”

And so I look at Prince William. I look at the broadcasters. And I think, I have a split-second choice here. Do I go with this very carefully calibrated agreement with the broadcasters and just say to Prince William, “No, I’m sorry; this has got to continue?” Or, do I go with Prince William, who is going to be the king one day? This is the first time I’ve ever met him, and at that point I had no idea, by the way, that I’d ever work for him.

And then I looked at Prince Harry and thought, you’re exhausted. This is not the time or the place for you to be here doing an interview. And so I did something I’ve never done any other time in my career. I stood up and said, “Thank you very much, gentlemen. This is over.”

Prince Harry looked at me. I remember the relief in his face. And he left the room. And I got screamed at — I mean, literally screamed at, particularly by the BBC producer — who’s a man I’m actually still very good friends with to this day. But he was apoplectic that this interview had been cut short. And of course when all of it is then played later, and I think the embargo is set for later that day, when all the material can be used, none of the audience know that the interview has been cut short. He still answered two or three very good questions. He answered them very well.

Coincidentally, the two princes were looking for their own press secretary for the first time. Anyway, I think partly because of that interview and how it went, and partly because of the way the media blackout went, a few weeks later their father’s press secretary — a man called Paddy Haverson — tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Would you like to put your name forward to be their press secretary?”

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Editor’s note: On March 12, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy will award the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting to a stellar investigative report that has had a direct impact on government, politics and policy at the national, state or local levels. Seven reporting teams have been chosen as finalists for the 2019 prize, which carries a $10,000 award for finalists and $25,000 for the winner. This year, for the first time, Journalist’s Resource is publishing a series of interviews with the finalists, in the interest of giving a behind-the-scenes explanation of the process, tools, and legwork it takes to create an important piece of investigative journalism. Journalist’s Resource is a project of the Shorenstein Center, but had no involvement with or influence on the judging process for the Goldsmith Prize finalists or winner.

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Over the course of 2018, Alabama Media Group reporter Connor Sheets single-handedly revealed how a local sheriff had pocketed more than $2 million in state and federal funds earmarked for jail food while inmates were served graying, processed meat from packages labeled “Not Fit for Human Consumption.”

Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin lost his re-election bid in the wake of Sheets’ reporting, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Alabama Ethics Commission launched separate investigations into his use of inmate food funds.

Sheets’ stories on Entrekin illustrate the journalistic power of public records, innovative sourcing, detailed narrative and local reporting. The series is a finalist for the 2019 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, awarded annually by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.

It began with a tip from Matt Qualls, a teenager who had spent a summer mowing Entrekin’s lawn for $10 an hour. Qualls wondered why the sheriff paid him with checks that read “Food Provision Account” in the upper left-hand corner.

Sheets followed up on the tip, resulting in a Feb. 18, 2018 story that highlighted an 80-year-old state law technically allowing sheriffs to keep “excess” funds designated to feed county jail inmates; if food spending ran under budget, the sheriff could keep the difference. Qualls was quoted in the story, which confirmed the existence of Entrekin’s “food provision” account. Four days later, local police arrested Qualls on charges of felony drug trafficking, alleging in a warrant — signed by Entrekin — that they had found more than 1,000 grams of cannabis in his possession.

Sheets followed up on that story, too, reporting that what the police actually found was a big container of homemade cannabis-infused butter — five cups of butter mixed with 14 grams of marijuana.

The marijuana butter story garnered an outcry among members of the popular website Reddit, many of whom posted comments to report that they had called and e-mailed the Etowah County Sheriff’s Office to complain on Qualls’ behalf. Days later, the charges against Qualls were reduced to a misdemeanor and he was released from jail.

The “Beach House Sheriff” story

Sheets had suspected there might be more to the inmate-food-fund story, and Qualls’ arrest further fueled that suspicion. So the reporter cast a wide internet search for public records on Entrekin’s income and spending history. “Every government official has an information trail on the internet,” Sheets said in a phone interview with Journalist’s Resource.

He used basic search tools like Nexis and Google to find real estate records, campaign finance forms and Statement of Economic Interest (SEI) forms, which all elected officials in Alabama are legally required to file. The public records turned out to be a goldmine of information about Entrekin. “There are a lot of stories in documents,” Sheets said. “This was just an example of the power of basic journalism.”

On his SEI forms, Entrekin had openly reported he pocketed “more than $250,000” annually in state inmate feeding funds over three years. Real estate records showed that Entrekin and his wife had purchased a four-bedroom beach house for $740,000 the previous September, financed by a $592,000 mortgage. Public salary records showed that Entrekin’s annual salary was $93,178.80. The records search yielded the March 2018 story “Etowah sheriff pockets $750k in jail food funds, buys $740k beach house.” (In the fall Sheets was able to update the figure to “more than $922,000” of those funds between 2015 and 2017, because he got exact figures from Entrekin’s 2015 and 2016 personal income tax returns, which the sheriff had released by that point.)

The “beach house sheriff” story went viral, garnering follow-up press on NPR and in The Washington Post, for example — not to mention a lengthy segment on “The Daily Show.” (“He’s probably the only person who watched ‘Shawshank Redemption’ and was inspired by the warden,” host Trevor Noah said of Entrekin.)

Sheets continued to dig for data and follow leads from local sources who had grown to count on and trust his reporting.

Public requests for internal office documents generated an October 2018 story revealing that Entrekin had funded TV commercials for his reelection campaign using county pistol permit fees. Sheets received the documents in paper form, driving to the sheriff’s office to collect stacks of printed-out spreadsheets and reports. In order to figure out where the money had come from and where it had gone, he re-entered data from hundreds of documents into his own Excel spreadsheet – essentially digitizing the data by hand before analyzing it.

“It was really messy and it took me three full days,” Sheets said. “But by making it digital, I was able to see the whole thing … My spreadsheet showed me what he was spending money on in a short period of time.”

Further investigation revealed that the sheriff’s office had been profiting from federal inmate food funds, too, thanks to an arrangement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As Sheets explained in a December 30, 2018 story, “Entrekin is not alone in keeping leftover funds intended to feed inmates. He and other Alabama sheriffs have argued that a Depression-era state law allows them to keep state jail food funds. But Entrekin … is the only Alabama sheriff whose jail houses hundreds of immigration detainees for the federal government.”

“I was able to report that over the three-year period beginning in October 2011, Entrekin personally pocketed more than $1.5 million worth of federal inmate-feeding funds,” Sheets explained in an e-mail to Journalist’s Resource. “That information came from internal sheriff’s office documents I obtained that only covered that three-year period. So overall, we can say he definitely personally pocketed more than $2.422 million since 2011. But it is in actuality almost definitely a significantly higher (perhaps multiples of that number) amount.”

“Not fit for human consumption”

While numbers largely told the story of Entrekin’s actions, Sheets relied on anecdotal evidence and detailed narrative to show how pocketing the food funds affected inmates in the Etowah County Jail/Detention Center. Interviews with multiple former inmates reaped personal tales of food poisonings and parasites, and former staff members confirmed that the “food” served in the jail was awful and potentially dangerous.

In great detail, former jail kitchen workers and inmates told Sheets that the jail fed them donated and spoiled meat. “We called them starfish patties because they look more like a starfish than anything,” said one former inmate quoted in an April 2018 story. “They literally said in bold red letters plain as day on the top, bottom and sides of the box, ‘Not Fit For Human Consumption.” (A 2016 Immigration and Customs Enforcement inspection report on the Etowah County facility lent support to the anecdotes, stating, for example, “daily caloric totals for meals vary and do not always meet those required under the dietitian-approved master menu.”)

“The only way to make it something people want to read is to have human voices,” Sheets said. “It really almost is not worth doing the story if there are no human stories. Data and documents are reflections of things that have happened to people.”

Tips for journalists:

Sheets offered these tips for reporters who are new to investigative journalism — or new to the small community they are covering:

1.      Find sources on Facebook, and try communicating via Facebook Messenger.

Sheets said he learned a great deal about community concerns by reading posts on Facebook groups dedicated to Etowah County, where citizens openly discussed issues related to his stories. He was also able to find former inmates who had tagged themselves in pictures on other people’s Facebook pages. The platform’s messaging tool, meanwhile, often yielded more information than a phone call. “Facebook Messenger is shockingly helpful,” Sheets said. “When I talk to inmates in jails and prisons, Facebook Messenger is one of the best tools. A lot of people feel more comfortable with Facebook than with [a phone call].”

2.      New in town? Make yourself visible to the community you cover.

“One thing I do a lot of is driving around the state and meet people,” said Sheets, who moved to Alabama from New York in 2015, following a stint at International Business Times. At Alabama Media Group, he is based in Birmingham, which is an hour’s drive from Etowah County.

“It’s very important to me to put faces to names,” he said. “If you have a conversation in person, you’re going to get a lot more information … and people keep seeing you and see that you’re invested in that topic.”

As to whether being a relative outsider makes it harder to report on a small Alabama community, “Not being from Alabama has been a lot less of an issue than I expected,” he said. “Being from the outside, I don’t have any allegiances. I think that’s very helpful because … people see me as just, like, this journalist.”

Regarding the potential cultural divide, “I think people are more judgmental of Southern people in the North than Southern people are judgmental of people from the North,” he said.

3.       Don’t be afraid of or awed by public officials, and remember you wield power, too.

Sheets recalled the story of a cub reporter at a community newspaper. The young journalist had been thrilled by with a chance to interview “a famous person” — a city councilor in Queens. Thus, Sheets wants to stress that city officials aren’t royalty.

“They work for you,” Sheets said. “You pay their salary and you elect them. That’s something I wish I had instilled in me earlier on. You have this power also. There are a lot of issues that can’t be solved when the media isn’t involved.”

Interested in the other Goldsmith Prize finalists? Read about how two journalists’ tenacity, language skills and cultural competency helped them investigate a teen labor trafficking scheme in Ohio, how public records helped reporters investigate police abuse of power and how ProPublica helped to shape national immigration policy through their investigation of children’s shelters.

The post How he did it: A reporter investigates an Alabama sheriff who pocketed over $2 million in jail food funds appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Many readers of Journalist’s Resource fall into one of two camps: hardworking journalists and hardworking academics. Recently, in hopes of providing an opportunity for the two groups to learn from each other, we posed two questions in our weekly newsletter.

Our question to the scholars: Have you noticed any common mistakes in news stories about academic research? And our question to the journalists: What’s one thing you’d like academic researchers to understand about journalism?

We received thoughtful responses from lifelong journalists, lifelong scholars, scholars who are also journalists, and communications officers. Among the main takeaways: Journalists would like academics to understand their tight deadlines. And academics would like journalists to take a statistics class.

Several of the responses we received are posted below. We’ll update this post with future responses, and we’ll pose more questions in future e-mail newsletters. If you’d like to share your own response to either of the questions above, please send an e-mail to journalists_resource@hks.harvard.edu. You can also reach out to us via Facebook or Twitter.

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Margins of error and bodies of work

Clay Shirky, vice provost for educational technologies at New York University:  “Far and away the most common mistake is to convey studies as the output of scientific consensus, instead of being the input to that consensus.

If a raft of studies finds a correlation between A and B, and a single new study finds no correlation, at least one possible explanation is that the newest study was flawed. Instead, journalists almost always present ‘Study X contradicts conventional wisdom’ as if recency trumps accumulated testing.

In a way, this is not a mistake, or not just a mistake, because the attention-seeking model of journalism, coupled with the implicit promise that the reporter will both simplify and clarify the world, means journalists have every incentive to overplay individual studies. This is especially true if they find something different from the previous consensus.

Related but smaller versions of the same problem happen in reporting margins of error (when effect X was at 52% previously and is at 51% now, the incentive is to report that X is falling, not that it remains unchanged), or switching between average and median as if they mean the same thing.

In almost all cases, better reporting about academic work will mean more hedging and more minimization of the likely future effects. Some results do indeed create significant new paradigms in science (and in academia in general), but those shifts tend to be generational at best, while journalistic outlets present them as happening far more frequently.”

Greg Blonder, professor of product design and engineering, Boston University:  “The biggest problem discussing academic research in public is the need to better explain that a published peer reviewed paper by itself, is not an established fact. It is an opportunity for the academic community to continue a discussion, using the highest quality arguments. Eventually, settled facts emerge, but the process is messy and, often, the line between speculation and confirmation moves around for a while until it settles down. When the public watches the line quiver, they infer there is great uncertainty around the entire field, when in fact, the academics are often arguing over a fine point.

Journalists, and academics, must be clearer *in every article* about the nature of this process, and what is settled precedent, and what is open to debate.”

Augie Grant, Ph.D., J. Rion McKissick Professor of Journalism and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of South Carolina:  “The biggest complaint I have is that some journalists report sample statistics from research as absolute numbers, even though they all have a margin of error that has to be reported in order to interpret the number. The most common mistakes are made in reporting poll numbers and Nielsen ratings, but the same issue must be considered when reporting any academic research based upon a sample.”

Carolyn O’Donnell, communications director of the California Strawberry Commission:  “On the academic side, I find that they (or their university communications office[s]) tend to mask an association as a causation. It’s somewhat understandable, as it brings publicity to the department and university, and it helps build the case for continued funding for research in that particular area. On the journalist side, the publication is also looking for ‘eyes’ and ‘engagement’ with a story, and may not always dig into the details. A little bit of science education and statistics goes a long way towards better understanding the analysis, rather than just being dazzled by the data.”

On deadline(s)

Tamara Jeffries, associate professor and interim chair of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina; former executive editor of Essence magazine:  “My academic colleagues have a hard time understanding the news cycle –how quickly they need to turn something around for it to be timely and relevant. Publication for them means working on an article for a year; for us, it may mean finishing an article before sundown — or sooner.

Some of them are reluctant to engage in social media because they are so (rightly) committed to having information be exactly right. They don’t want to do 280 characters because that won’t allow them to explain the methodology, the p-values, etc.

Then I have learned that, at least in some disciplines, a scholar doesn’t want to be seen as too engaged in media. The term ‘public scholar’ is anathema to some folks. They want to be seen as focused on scholarly work only, not courting the press.

I’d like for my academic colleagues to understand that journalists are JUST as committed to getting the facts right as researchers are. (We are researchers, too, after all.) But our work has to be explained in a way that enables the ‘average’ reader to a.) understand and b.) care about the topic.  Dense academic language doesn’t do much toward that goal.”

Shula Neuman, executive editor at St. Louis Public Radio:  “Here is my answer to academics: 1.) When your PR people (or you) put out a news release about research, please make sure you are available to talk about it and not out of the country or at some planned conference. 2.) Please talk like a human and drop the jargon. That’s really for scientists more than journalist academics.”

Pedro Canario, editor-in-chief, ConJur, a law and justice news publication in San Paulo, Brazil:  “What would I want academic researchers to understand about journalism? Our conception of time and style are completely different. At least in Brazil, academic researchers tend to value content over form, [which] tends to alienate most readers. And our job as journalists is the complete opposite: we have the obligation of passing the message in the most approachable way possible, [which] brings an inevitable concern with style and with presenting a well-written story. So we often fall into conflict over the terms in a story, or details that are huge in the academic world, but minor to the so-called ‘common reader.’

That leads me to time. We do not have two years to work on a thesis and we often need help to understand the basics. I know it’s exhausting to a PhD to explain some undergraduate level matters, but the newspaper has to be on newsstands by morning, whether we’re finished with our revolutionary and groundbreaking piece or not. Sometimes we make mistakes, obviously, but that shouldn’t be a synonym of lazy work or stupidity, as professors usually say. Our job is ungrateful and we have to summarize years of research in a paragraph or two.”

The post Readers respond: Pro tips from scholars for journalists (and vice versa) appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.