Fast Company / Chris Morris
Block Club Chicago / Stephanie Lulay
Block Club Chicago debuts a new investigative team →The five-person team will “root out corruption, wrongdoing and inequality on the South and West sides.” “The Watch is made possible by a three-year, $1.6 million grant from the McCormick Foundation, additional funding from the Driehaus Foundation, and the unwavering support of our subscribers.”
The Walrus / Soraya Amiri
“The Taliban is dangerous to me. I’m dangerous to the Taliban.” →“The best way to protect the lives of Afghan people is to protect journalists. If we want to know what’s happening there, we need to help journalists continue their work. Otherwise, the disaster of the 1990s, when the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan, will repeat itself. It is already starting to.”
New York Times / Clay Risen
Press Gazette / Bron Maher
Telegraph Media Group hits target of one million subscriptions →“More than 70% of the subscriptions are digital … It has become the third UK national newspaper company to reach a major one million milestone, after The Guardian and Financial Times which reached a million paying readers online in December 2021 and March 2022 respectively.”
New York Times / Jeremy W. Peters
Reporting an anti-gay slur could put a Wisconsin local news site out of business →“In late April 2023, a judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that [Cory] Tomczyk had not met the legal standard for proving that the report defamed him. But that was not the end of the matter for the small and financially pinched Pilot & Review, a nonprofit that has already racked up close to $150,000 in legal bills from the case. Mr. Tomczyk has filed an appeal. And the publication’s founder and editor, Shereen Siewert, said she has no idea how she can continue paying both her lawyers and her staff of four.”
New York Times / Reggie Ugwu
They review movies on TikTok, but don’t call them critics →“Unlike film departments at major metropolitan newspapers or national magazines, individuals on MovieTok generally don’t aspire to review every noteworthy film. And while most expressed admiration for traditional critics’ grasp of film history, they tended to associate the profession as a whole with false or unearned authority.”
CalMatters / John Osborn D'Agostino and Jeremia Kimelman
CalMatters launches a wildfire-tracking dashboard →A wildfire map — updated daily — combines state and federal information with current and historical context. “If this is war, it seems Californians are losing, with billions spent to combat fires yet an alarming rise in lives and property lost.”