Newsroom Notes: Covering pandemic, protests provides three valuable reminders

KOMU News is the nation’s only teaching laboratory inside a commercial, network-affiliated TV station. The challenges are no different from other newsrooms—just layered on top of the challenges facing the next generation of journalists. We’re providing a first-hand view (and maybe a little advice) from an industry veteran who agreed to lead the KOMU Newsroom during a faculty search process—just as the COVID-19 crisis began unfolding.

The why of source diversity and inclusive storytelling

Last year, I wrote a feature story for The Hechinger Report about the obstacles students of color face when trying to get into graduate school. I interviewed Black, Asian and Latino students, professors and education experts. When I wrote about the prevalence of skin cancer in Black and Latinos, I used real people and expert sources of color.

Push notifications: Segmenting and connecting with your audience

Why use push notifications?  When it comes to connecting with your audience, push notifications may not be the first thing that comes to mind. Some may even say notifications are outdated or irreverent when compared to the current technology. However, the company One Signal, saw an increase of two billion push notifications sent out each … Continued

Make your reporting more diverse: Try a different network, redefine experts

In the survey of 750 journalists, editors and producers conducted by ExpertFile in conjunction with The Associated Press, journalists acknowledged that there remains a significant gap in representing a more diverse set of experts in their coverage. Despite a recognition of the need for more diverse voices in their coverage, the national survey also found … Continued

Unpublishing project advisory board gets rolling

The unpublishing project has gained significant momentum in the last few weeks, including an unpublishing webinar with editors RJI hosted in August. Much of the work has been behind the scenes, cementing the foundation I need to ensure the final result is valuable to newsrooms across the country. There is much work to be done in … Continued

Scrappy hacks for scrappy visual journalists

As far as I can tell, the Internet is mostly duct-taped together. And why should visual journalism be any different? In a world of flashy D3.js wrappers and React components and the like, sometimes you just need a chart—and you need it as quickly as possible. In other words, you don’t need interactivity; you need … Continued

A pop-up newsroom goes digging on Facebook to share its COVID-19 news

When COVID-19 first hit, the Missouri School of Journalism quickly realized local newsrooms everywhere would be struggling to keep up with news about the virus. So the school created a “pop-up” newsroom called the Missouri Information Corps. We spent the summer reporting issues related to the pandemic and distributing stories and information to news outlets … Continued

Engaging with your audience = eyes, ears and super fans

After the New York City Mayor’s office announced a $20 million donation from the Open Society Foundation to help undocumented immigrants, city officials went on live TV to show the beginning of the delivery of the funds. Many of our users heard this news and messaged us to report that the phone numbers and email addresses … Continued