Mass murders get national attention. Daily murders usually don't. But McClatchy and The Trace came up with a way to change that.
With the one-year anniversary of the Parkland massacre coming up on Thursday, the news outlets have published "Since Parkland," the product of a year-long effort to "document the gun-related death of every youth under 18 years old in the US." The journalists counted almost 1,200 deaths, "the equivalent of a Parkland every FIVE days, in aggregate in the US."
This project began with The Trace -- a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on guns -- and the Miami Herald. Then the Herald partnered with McClatchy's papers in Kansas City, Modesto, Fort Worth, Raleigh, Macon, and other markets "to document patterns in child gun deaths." Here are the results...
Kids writing about the deaths of kids
A key part of the "Since Parkland" project are the portraits of the victims. The portraits were written by 215 student journalists across the country.
"The Trace partnered with journalism educators with decades of experience," the website's managing editor Akoto Ofori-Atta told me.
Why involve students? "Because it's their story to tell," Ofori-Atta said. "Polls show gun violence is a top concern for young people. After Parkland, they rightly admonished the press for focusing too much on mass shootings and not enough on everyday gun violence, so we asked them to join us in our continued effort to correct that imbalance."
"I wish I could take all the bullets for you."
Read this. It is a letter written by Lori Aldaheff to her daughter Alyssa, who was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. "As I remember you, grief washes over me," Lori wrote. "But that grief emboldens me to fight for change. I wish I could take all the bullets for you."
Brooke Baldwin teared up while reading the letter aloud on Tuesday's "CNN Newsroom." Here's the video...
Dave Cullen's new book
"Columbine" author Dave Cullen's new book "Parkland: Birth of a Movement" came out on Tuesday.
"For ten months," CJR's Carlett Spike wrote, Cullen embedded himself with the student survivors who formed Never Again MSD.
"I felt hopeless and just bleak since Columbine," Cullen told her. "It was 19 years into this, and it's not like we had tried and failed. We had done nothing, which is just disgraceful. We failed to pass gun-control legislation. We taught kids to hide better. When I think about lockdowns, it makes me more and more angry. That's the solution? Turn off the lights and close the door? I have real doubts about what that really does." But: "When I met the Parkland kids, they were all really bright, creative, and they were doing something powerful." He said it was a privilege "to go inside their heads and talk about what's going on..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Katie Couric is writing a memoir titled "Unexpected." Little, Brown and Company says it will come out in the spring of 2021... (USA Today)
-- Things are going downhill at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The newsroom's union "wants publisher and EIC JR Block barred from the paper's North Shore office after the guild said Block 'went berserk in the newsroom' on Saturday night..." (The Incline)
-- Activision Blizzard is "laying off 8% of its workforce and restructuring its business to focus on its top games," Paul R. La Monica reported Tuesday. "It's another sign of how much Fornite's popularity has upended the video game industry..." (CNN)
-- "Movie studio MGM Holdings is looking for a strategic partner for its Epix cable channel..." (The Information)
-- Former Sony Entertainment CEO and current Snap chairman Michael Lynton "has been elected non-executive chairman of the board of Warner Music Group..." (Billboard)
Have a Q for me?
For Valentine's Day, I'm handing over the microphone to my wife Jamie. She will be running this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast and interviewing ME. So send her your questions! Whether it's about the media biz, my job or even our marriage, the inbox is open...
What Trump is hearing from his Fox advisers
Here's CNN's latest on the effort to avoid another government shutdown.
On Tuesday Trump said he's not happy about the tentative deal. Neither are his advisers on Fox. Laura Ingraham's show called it a "lame" deal. Sean Hannity railed against the proposal while an on-screen graphic called it a "SWAMPY COMPROMISE." But, he said, he's okay with the president signing the bill, provided a national emergency is declared and more money is freed up for wall construction...
Howard Schultz speaks | | CNN's town hall with Howard Schultz, moderated by Poppy Harlow, just wrapped up. In his first few minutes, Schultz asked the audience to raise a hand "if you think the government is doing well for you." No one did. "That is why I'm here!" Schultz said. "And I've got good news for you. We can fix it!"
He came back to that basic proposition about broken govt later in the town hall. CNN's live blog about the forum has all the takeaways...
>> Schultz spoke "mostly about what he's against," Ryan Lizza said on "CNN Tonight" afterward...
>> Tommy Vietor applauded Harlow's follow-up Q's: "Bring her back for a real debate..."
CNN's next town hall...
...Is with Senator Amy Klobuchar. Don Lemon will moderate the event in New Hampshire next Monday night. CNN's first town hall of the season was with Kamala Harris last month... | |
Today's Bezos updates
Frankly there wasn't much new to report on Tuesday.
-- Trump was asked by a reporter, "Were you aware that AMI was investigating Jeff Bezos?" Trump: "No, no I wasn't."
-- The whodunit continues: Page Six said multiple suspects, "including Lauren Sanchez," are "being probed as leakers of Bezos nude pics."
-- Alex Shephard, writing for The New Republic, said Bezos is "no hero" and his "adventures in journalism deserve more critical scrutiny."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- David Carr died four years ago Tuesday. Erin Lee Carr, one of his daughters, wrote this about his last night. (Medium)
-- Kelly McBride says Jill Abramson should say she's sorry: "By not calling it plagiarism, you're hurting all of journalism..." (Poynter)
-- Cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, the man Dick Cheney trusts with his heart, tweeted Tuesday: "It's been 4 days since the president underwent his annual physical exam and still no data has been released. What are they hiding?"
-- "Are we bordering on make-believe?" Chuck Todd said the president "seems to be pretending to fulfill his campaign promise by pretending to build his wall..." (Medium)
BuzzFeed votes to unionize after layoffs
Tom Kludt and An Phung write: BuzzFeed's editorial staff have informed EIC Ben Smith of their intentions to unionize, according to the NewsGuild of New York. Bloomberg broke the news on Tuesday evening. NewsGuild said that more than 90% of "eligible editorial employees signed on to the union effort." The company had no immediate comment. Read on...
"Publishers Chafe at Apple's Terms for Subscription News Service"
That's the headline on the WSJ's latest scoop. Ben Mullin, Lukas Alpert and Tripp Mickle report that Apple's plan "to create a subscription service for news is running into resistance from major publishers over the tech giant's proposed financial terms." The company has told some publishers that "it would keep about half of the subscription revenue from the service... The rest of the revenue would go into a pool that would be divided among publishers according to the amount of time users spend engaged with their articles..."
>> Usual caveats here: Negotiations are ongoing, etc. But it's easy to see why news outlets would reject a model that has Apple keeping $5 of every $10 subscription...
>> Meta! The WSJ story says executives at the WSJ also have concerns about the proposed terms, "but its recent conversations with Apple have been productive, one of the people familiar with the matter said..."
Apple planning a big March 25 announcement?
Frank Pallotta emails: Apple's first big event of 2019 will take place on March 25, BuzzFeed's John Paczkowski reported Tuesday. The event is expected to show off Apple's subscription news service, aka its "Netflix for News," but BuzzFeed reported that sources are describing the event "as subscription services focused." Subscription services, plural. Does that mean we'll finally get a look at Apple's mysterious streaming TV service too?
Tucker won't air this interview
Oliver Darcy emails: Tucker Carlson is declining to air an interview he conducted with historian and author Rutger Bregman. According to Bregman, Carlson called him a "f***ing moron" during the pre-recording of the interview after Bregman said Carlson is "a millionaire funded by billionaires." In an email Bregman shared on Twitter (and said was from Carlson), the Fox News host told him that he had "high hopes" for the interview, but that Bregman "turned out to be far dumber" than he expected. Carlson ended the email calling Bregman "an a******."
When I reached out to Fox News for comment, Carlson's senior executive producer, Justin Wells, said, "Tucker is someone who appreciates many points of view. Sadly, the guest turned an opportunity to have a substantive, informative discussion into an obviously calculated personal insult campaign. We were disappointed in the segment and respect our audience's time too much to consider airing it." | |
Reframing the discussion about diversity in newsrooms
An Phung emails: Aaron Miguel Cantú wrote what is arguably one of the strongest rebukes against the American media industry I've read in a while. In this piece for The Baffler, he defines "white supremacy" not as a belief that people of European descent are superior, but he uses it as a label for industries in which high barriers to entry keep "organizations, and political bodies white, concentrating wealth and power primarily in white hands."
Cantú cites example after example of how American newsrooms continue to make editorial and business decisions that sideline non-white voices in both their coverage and staff. "To even begin confronting the threat of ascendant white nationalism today, we need a far more profound conception of white supremacy and how the mainstream press has always been complicit in its maintenance," Cantú writes...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- The Young Turks is expanding "its two hour daily live news show to three hours," effective on Thursday, the online network's 17th anniversary. Bernie Sanders and Adam McKay will be on Thursday's show...
-- WorkingNation, founded by Art Bilger, has hired CNBC and WSJ vet Ramona Schindelheim as its first-ever EIC... (WorkingNation)
-- "How 'Live PD' became cable's breakout hit..." (NY Post)
VIOLENCE AT TRUMP'S RALLY
Press advocacy groups condemn attack on BBC cameraman
The BBC's Jon Sopel said it best: "I would really love to be able to say when I heard about the attack on our cameraman Ron Skeans that I was surprised. Or shocked even. I wasn't."
That's how I felt too. Skeans is okay, thank goodness. No one was seriously hurt when the rallygoer started shoving people inside the press pen at Monday night's Trump rally. But, as CNN's Jim Acosta said Tuesday night, "it's just a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt." Here's our full story... | | The White House's reaction
The White House Correspondents Association said Tuesday that "the president of the United States should make absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable." A couple of hours later, Sarah Sanders said Trump "condemns all acts of violence against any individual or group of people -- including members of the press." But will Trump personally say or do anything?
My takeaway
News outlets are going to be re-examining their security posture in the wake of this incident. As I wrote last fall, TV networks sometimes send private security guards to accompany crews to Trump rallies. I suspect we're going to see more of that happening...
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"It's been unacceptable since 2015. The President's own rhetoric causes this. His words. What's deeply demoralizing is how his own party hasn't condemned him into stopping."
--NBC's Katy Tur, reacting to the violence at Monday night's rally...
How about a Terror Alert Level, but for breaking news?
Comedian Eric Stangel might be joking, but I think he's onto something here!
"There is so much breaking news on a given day I think we need a color coded ranking system because the term 'breaking news' has become practically meaningless," he tweeted...
Glenn Thrush's assignment
Oliver Darcy emails: After Glenn Thrush returned to work at NYT following sexual misconduct allegations, he was reassigned and taken off the White House beat. But, lately, Thrush's byline has appeared on stories related to Trump. For instance, on February 5, Thrush authored a story about the "takeaways from Trump's 2019 State of the Union address." Most recently, on Tuesday, Thrush co-authored a story with Peter Baker about Trump's position on the border deal.
A Times spokesperson told me that Thrush is "subbing for someone on the Hill who is on book leave." (I believe Julie Davis.) The spokesperson added that, in regards to Tuesday's story on the border wall, "reporting from" the Hill "merged with WH reporting," hence Thrush's byline.
"LOL League" members suspended in France
Hadas Gold emails: Several prominent French journalists have been suspended and another could lose his job over their participation in a secret Facebook group that encouraged the online harassment of women. The existence of the private group was first reported last week by French newspaper Liberation, which said it was founded in 2009. The group called itself the "LOL League" and was made up mainly of men. They'd arrange targeted cyberbullying of women... One victim likened the experience to "running away from a sniper..." Full story here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Some CBS shareholders are suing CBS, pointing to $200 million in "insider stock sales prior to Les Moonves expose," Eriq Gardner reports... (THR)
-- "'Criminal Minds' star A.J. Cook is suing her former manager, David Guillod, for not disclosing that he faced multiple sexual assault accusations — and says he should repay money he earned from her and other actresses, including Gina Rodriguez, Kristin Chenoweth and Paula Patton," Tim Molloy reports. Guillod rep calls the lawsuit "frivolous" and says "no criminal or civil charges have ever been brought" against him... (The Wrap)
21 Savage will be released from ICE custody on Wednesday
Via CNN's Nick Valencia and Eric Levenson: "London-born and Atlanta-raised rapper 21 Savage will be released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Wednesday morning after spending more than a week in ICE detention, his immigration attorney Charles Kuck said." He'll be released on bond... Details here...
| | Lowry's take on the Oscars telecast changes
Brian Lowry emails: The decision to present some of the below-the-line Oscars during commercial breaks to streamline the telecast not surprisingly produced blowback, both in terms of disrespecting those nominees and questioning (as Variety's Brent Lang did) whether a shorter three-hour telecast would actually boost ratings. Cinematographers registered their unhappiness, as did much of "film Twitter." But there seems to be a bit of willful myopia about the fact that the Academy has taken ABC's money and ceded some of its control in exchange for that. The one tactical misstep, as Steven Zeitchik noted, was not outlining plans to have technical awards rotate into that commercial-break status in the years ahead, although given the discombobulated way the current process played out, it's like the Academy isn't comfortable planning anything much beyond Feb. 24...
Last call for "Last Call"
Frank Pallotta emails: Carson Daly is stepping away from his NBC late late late show, "Last Call with Carson Daly," the network said on Tuesday. Daly wants to focus on his other hosting duties -- the "Today" show and "The Voice" -- and spend more time with his family.
"My 20's was about finding a good job. My 30's was about taking on as many of them as I could," Daly said in a statement. "Now, in my 40's, I'm focused on quality over quantity."
"Last Call" at 1:35 a.m. never garnered much attention, but Daly's accomplishment shouldn't be understated. The show ran for nearly 20 years and 2,000 episodes...
Kate Gosselin is returning to TV...
Brian Lowry emails: Kate Gosselin raised her children on television, and appeared at TCA to promote a new series that's coming out about her dating life. But her assertion that subjecting her kids to that level of exposure "enriched their lives" seems self-serving in the extreme...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- Lisa Respers France emails: She should have been celebrating her historic Grammys win. Instead Cardi B deactivated her Instagram account after some Grammys / Nicki Minaj / BET drama...
-- One more from Lisa: Chris Pratt has responded to Ellen Page's claim that his church is anti-LGBT...
-- Paramount has set a "Coming to America" sequel for 2020... Chloe Melas has the details here...
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