News Fix #53: keeping track of the stakes

I'm back with your weekly news fix, and I'm happy we're in this together. If you're new here, welcome! Get in touch anytime; I would love to hear from you.

Summer can feel like a hard time to focus on long form, so I really appreciate everyone who read my piece last week. I’m curious to know if you share my concern or think I’m over-reacting. When you do get a chance to read it, tell me what you think.

Writing about the courts I noticed coverage of the Supreme Court in particular (on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, and CNN at least), following the familiar and shortsighted pattern of covering the horse race and not the stakes. Yes, legal cases are two-sided contests where one side wins and the other loses. By definition, however, the Supreme Court is deciding constitutional questions where the interests go beyond the parties on the docket.

Articles that cover the Courts’ opinions on voting rights, immigration or presidential power as a “win” or a “loss” for the Trump administration obscures the impact of these cases. It also strangely compresses the timeframe of a case into one event, rather than a legal question that takes years to wind its way through the courts and will have long term impacts far after a decision. This is a terrible trend. Do editors out there have an item on their editing checklist a line that says, “stakes not odds”? I'm going to add it to mine.

Serial’s newest podcast, The Last 12 Weeks, is a powerful example of why reporting that centers the stakes is more effective and affecting than a winners v. losers frame. The new series focuses on the three months before the state of Texas is set to execute a man convicted of a string of murders in the 1980s. Through an economical five episodes Reporter Maurice Chammah makes clear why this case, and the integrity of the criminal justice system at large, matter to an expansive group of people; the accused, lawyers, victims, law enforcement, reporters, and all of us listening. In full disclosure, Jennifer Guerra, who edited the series, is a dear friend. I would recommend it anyway, it’s incredibly well crafted and has plenty of heart and surprisingly, humor.

A favor from you

Before I get to a final piece that came across my digital desk that I want to tell you about, I need some feedback.

Please tell me which of the following ideas related to fixing the news you are most interested in engaging with here. I’m interested in them all, but I care far more about sparking ideas and conversations that feel useful and generative for us. Your feedback helps me set priorities. Are you more interested in:

• The role of empathy in journalism and if it’s over-rated, which is my personal take
• What the growing field of civic media has in common with news, and how it's differences might give it unique potential for informing people news organizations often miss
• Our relationship to attention as both a valuable commodity and deeply personal resource

I’d appreciate a quick reply with your pick. If there’s a different conversation you’re eager to have, don’t hold back. I'd love to know.

What I'm reading

One of the most thought-provoking pieces I read last week has a great title, When saving journalism pays better than doing journalism, and an even better central question. Reporter Matt Stroud gathered the 990's of some prominent nonprofit newsrooms and some prominent support organizations-with a few eye-popping compensation numbers-to ask whether nonprofit newsrooms are really rethinking outdated salary hierarchies in news. I'm a proponent for newsroom salary structures where there is less daylight between executive pay and reporter pay, and love this kind of analysis.

Stroud crunches the numbers lots of different ways to calculate how much of the budget executive compensation makes up, how much runway these different organizations have and what their budgets say about their priorities. He identifies one of the central tensions as, “The problem is that the sector often talks about mission in public and management in private.” This is somewhat of an airing of our laundry by an inquisitive reporter. I found the questions fair and welcome.

Until next week, take care, stay cool and check on your neighbors.