By Susan Hutton
University of Michigan
LSA Magazine
It is the summer of 2017 and Rebecca Blumenstein, a deputy managing editor of the New York Times, is wondering what is going to happen next.
“Everything is changing,” she says, ”from trade policy to taxes to healthcare to social safety nets to relationships with almost every country in the world. Companies’ relationships with the government are changing, and the very notion of whether GM should even have plants in Mexico is being challenged. Retail is falling apart because Amazon is so successful. It’s just a giant story and I feel, like many others, supercharged by it.
“And if you’re a political reporter now,” she adds, “it’s just an endurance test. Rarely has one seen such an intense news cycle last for so long. We are following bigger stories than we’ve seen in many, many years.”
Blumenstein speaks from experience. After four years at the Michigan Daily, including one in which she was editor-in-chief, Blumenstein began her career as a political reporter covering county government at the Tampa Tribune.
“And if you’re a political reporter now,” she adds, “it’s just an endurance test. Rarely has one seen such an intense news cycle last for so long. We are following bigger stories than we’ve seen in many, many years.”
Blumenstein speaks from experience. After four years at the Michigan Daily, including one in which she was editor-in-chief, Blumenstein began her career as a political reporter covering county government at the Tampa Tribune.
An economics major in the Residential College, she moved on to Gannett Newspapers and Newsday before joining the Detroit bureau of the Wall Street Journal to cover General Motors. She stayed with the Journal for more than 20 years, covering technology and telecommunications before becoming the paper’s China Bureau Chief. She continued to climb the ranks until she became the Journal’s deputy editor-in-chief, a position she held until this year when she joined the New York Times.
To manage the steady onslaught of news, consumers are increasingly returning to an old reliable guide: the front page of the daily paper. Digital or physical, the front page curates and organizes the superabundance of stories, and they’re stories people want to read. In the first quarter of 2017, the Times added 300,000 new subscribers.
To manage the steady onslaught of news, consumers are increasingly returning to an old reliable guide: the front page of the daily paper. Digital or physical, the front page curates and organizes the superabundance of stories, and they’re stories people want to read. In the first quarter of 2017, the Times added 300,000 new subscribers.
The Columbia Journalism Review and the Wall Street Journal have seen upticks in their paid support, too. “It crystallizes our job,” Blumenstein says, “simply do journalism that’s good enough that you’re willing to pay for it.”
The Public Distrust
The trail leading up to many major news stories is strewn with missteps. In Newtown, Connecticut, Ryan Lanza was initially identified as the gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School when it was actually his brother Adam.
Days after the Boston Marathon bombing, mainstream news organizations widely reported that a suspect had been taken into custody when, as it turned out, no one had been. Reporting errors have always happened. In 1917, news radio reports relayed fake telegraphs that declared the Titanic was still sailing. And who can forget the notorious edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune that trumpeted Truman’s defeat?
Breaking a fast-moving news story is a snarly, complicated business. It requires piecing together facts and trying to confirm them beneath monstrous pressure to get the story out fast. Reporting errors certainly undercut the media’s credibility, but these days earning readers’ confidence relies on more than reporting chops.
Decades of polarized politics, fortified by a bitter presidential campaign, have made it possible for citizens to live inside their own partisan bubbles that often come equipped with their own sets of facts. While news organizations work to provide the public with accurate accounts, social media works to develop algorithms to give users more of what they want, quietly curating what appears in their newsfeed to reinforce what they already believe — whether it’s true or not.
“There’s a lot that’s been said about fake news, and people have even gone so far as to ask what is the use of facts,” Blumenstein says. “But facts do not belong to some bygone era. I think that’s a dangerous game. News organizations have to remain committed to facts.”
Fake news played an important role in the 2016 presidential election. There was the fake news story that Hillary Clinton had sold weapons to ISIS, and the one that said the Pope endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential election. On Facebook, top fake news stories engaged users almost two million times.
Gallup, Pew, and Quinnipiac University have all conducted polls that show Americans’ trust in the media has steadily declined since the mid-1970s – and Republicans’ faith in the media has declined faster than Democrats’. Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted during the 2016 presidential election, showed that Americans’ confidence in the media had hit a record low 32 percent; among Republicans, it was an abysmal 14 percent.
“I’m struck by, whenever there’s a big news event, how half of what you see on social media is right and half of it is wrong,” Blumenstein says. “People can end up inside their Facebook bubble or their Twitter bubble and stay inside them ad infinitum.
Breaking a fast-moving news story is a snarly, complicated business. It requires piecing together facts and trying to confirm them beneath monstrous pressure to get the story out fast. Reporting errors certainly undercut the media’s credibility, but these days earning readers’ confidence relies on more than reporting chops.
Decades of polarized politics, fortified by a bitter presidential campaign, have made it possible for citizens to live inside their own partisan bubbles that often come equipped with their own sets of facts. While news organizations work to provide the public with accurate accounts, social media works to develop algorithms to give users more of what they want, quietly curating what appears in their newsfeed to reinforce what they already believe — whether it’s true or not.
“There’s a lot that’s been said about fake news, and people have even gone so far as to ask what is the use of facts,” Blumenstein says. “But facts do not belong to some bygone era. I think that’s a dangerous game. News organizations have to remain committed to facts.”
Fake news played an important role in the 2016 presidential election. There was the fake news story that Hillary Clinton had sold weapons to ISIS, and the one that said the Pope endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential election. On Facebook, top fake news stories engaged users almost two million times.
Gallup, Pew, and Quinnipiac University have all conducted polls that show Americans’ trust in the media has steadily declined since the mid-1970s – and Republicans’ faith in the media has declined faster than Democrats’. Gallup’s most recent poll, conducted during the 2016 presidential election, showed that Americans’ confidence in the media had hit a record low 32 percent; among Republicans, it was an abysmal 14 percent.
“I’m struck by, whenever there’s a big news event, how half of what you see on social media is right and half of it is wrong,” Blumenstein says. “People can end up inside their Facebook bubble or their Twitter bubble and stay inside them ad infinitum.
To read the rest of the article, click on link: https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/the-changing-times.html
1 comment:
No entiendo por favor inghis pleassee soy mojado
Post a Comment