Monthly Archives: April 2021

Join the UW–Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication in April 23 for “2021: JOURNALISM ETHICS & LOCAL NEWS NOW.” Register here.

For the better part of a decade, cuts and closures have significantly affected the quantity and quality of Americans’ local news coverage, driving political polarization, decreasing democratic participation locally and leaving community leaders to act without watchdogs. Then came the pandemic with its cascading (and unequal) effects on communities, the killing of George Floyd, a summer of protest and more. In the areas of health care, education, the economy and racial justice, local news has many critical stories to tell. With fewer resources than ever, how can local outlets cover these stories fully, equitably and ethically? And what new approaches can help overcome the challenges of doing local news now?

AGENDA

9 a.m. CT: KEYNOTE ON LOCAL NEWS FROM BYRON PITTS (ABC NEWS)

Byron Pitts was named co-anchor of ABC News’ “Nightline” in 2014. He has covered national news stories and in-depth features for the network, reporting across the news division, including “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight with David Muir,” “This Week” and “20/20.”

Pitts is a multiple Emmy award winning journalist and news veteran with over 20 years of experience known for his thoughtful storytelling, on-the-ground reporting and in-depth interviews. After less than 24 hours at ABC News, Pitts immediately joined the network’s live special coverage of the Boston marathon bombing investigation. Since then, Pitts has gone on to report live from Baltimore, Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., during each cities’ recent riots and protests. He also co-anchored a special edition of “Nightline” with Juju Chang from Los Angeles looking back on the city 25 years after the riots that broke out following the Rodney King verdict.

Pitts began his career at WNCT-TV in Greenville, N.C., where he covered local news and served as weekend sports anchor. He graduated from Ohio

Wesleyan University in 1982, where he studied journalism and speech communication. Pitts is a native of Baltimore and currently lives in New York City.

9:45 a.m. CT: INNOVATIONS IN LOCAL NEWS

What new approaches can help overcome the challenges of doing local news now? How can publishers build sustainable business models to ensure their longevity and support continued community-focused reporting? In this session, leading publishers will discuss how they’re working to address these challenges.

• Moderator: Joseph Lichterman, communication and editorial director, Lenfest Institute for Journalism
• Lauren Gustus, executive editor, Salt Lake Tribune
• Sara Lomax-Reese, president/CEO, WURD Radio (Philadelphia)
• Ayan Mittra, editor, Texas Tribune
• Manuel Torres, regional editor, The Marshall Project

10:45 a.m. CT: INTRODUCING THE SHADID CURRICULU

This panel is specifically targeted towards journalism educators at the college and high school level. Drawn from the outstanding journalism of those who have won or been named a finalist of the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics, this new curriculum enables student journalists to place themselves in the position of making difficult journalistic decisions.

• Kathleen Bartzen Culver, James E. Burgess Chair in Journalism Ethics, associate professor in UW–Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics
• Luke Daniel Cross, UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication graduate student and Shadid Curriculum Fellow

Register here.

RTDNA is pushing for the passage of two bills and asking journalists to sign a petition of support for the Journalist Protection Act and introduce the Right to Record Police Act. 

You can read more here and find a link to the petition here.

Most Americans will soon be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, so how should journalists be reporting on it?

Poynter is providing advice on this topic.

The Madison Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists is hosting a free training session on April 21 to help journalists improve their source diversity. The session will be led by WPR’s Hannah Haynes.

Learn more:

Local journalists are invited to learn how to conduct a source audit to assess the range of voices featured in their coverage and make plans for more inclusive reporting during a free virtual training session hosted by SPJ Madison on April 21.

The session — the first in a series of diversity, equity and inclusion programming that’ll stretch over the remainder of the year — will be led by Wisconsin Public Radio’s Hannah Haynes.

Haynes was instrumental in WPR’s efforts to track the demographics of every source who was interviewed and appeared on air for a news story, feature, talk show or included in a Wisconsin Life piece. At a time when many journalists are striving to make their coverage better represent the communities they serve, Haynes will offer other journalists a behind-the-scenes look at how her team did it — and what they learned.

Following a year-long internal review process, WPR published in September 2020 a demographic assessment of more than 3,700 individuals who appeared on air between August 2019 and July 2020. The assessment found an overwhelming majority of those sources were white.

The results prompted WPR to develop a plan for improvement that included creating a source librarian to work with reporters to “improve the demographic diversity of people on air,” WPR wrote in its report. Read the full report and review the survey findings here.

Haynes, during an April 21 online discussion from 12 to 1 p.m., will discuss WPR’s source audit process, highlight the outlet’s findings and recommendations, and outline how other newsrooms — or individual reporters themselves — can undertake their own audits.

And, for reporters and editors interested in what they can do outside of a newsroom-wide initiative, SPJ board member and Cap Times reporter Natalie Yahr will also share simple methods she has used to independently audit her own reporting.

Those interested in attending can register for the free event here. Registration closes on Friday, April 16 at 5 p.m.

The upcoming event is one of three online trainings that SPJ Madison will host over the remainder of the year focused on giving reporters the tools to rethink how they approach and prioritize their beats.

More information about upcoming events, designed to help reporters and others promote diversity and inclusion in their coverage, will be announced in the coming weeks.

For more information, email spjmadisononline@gmail.com.

It happens all the time. 

A member of the public or representative of the press will file a request under Wisconsin’s open records law, which applies to all state and local government entities. But instead of records, the requester gets a bill.

“The city will require pre-payment in full before we begin fulfilling your request,” read one such response, dated March 17, to a citizen requester by the assistant city attorney of Fond du Lac. “Please remit $642.42 to cover the above-referenced costs.” The notice said this was just an estimate and, if necessary, “we will bill you for the additional cost.”

Two weeks earlier, the same assistant city attorney demanded that the same citizen requester, Christine Brennan, pay $6,887.79 on top of the $1,000 she had already remitted to cover the cost of locating records in a different request.

Wisconsin’s open records law, passed in 1981, allows records custodians to charge for the “actual, necessary and direct” cost of making and sending copies, as well as the “actual, necessary and direct” cost of locating them, if this latter charge exceeds $50. And even though these searches are supposed to be done by the lowest-paid employee capable of performing the task, they often add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars, causing many requesters to walk away without receiving the records to which they are entitled.

In some cases, this may be the intended result.

Last November, the Wisconsin Examiner news website reported on a 2016 email it has obtained in which Wauwatosa Police Department Detective John Milotzky advised a colleague that “many departments combat the issue (of records requests) by charging a high price to fill those requests, so maybe that’s something to look at in the future.”

In years past, some custodians even charged requesters for the time it took them to pore over records looking for things to black out, until the state Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that this was not an allowable cost. But custodians are still finding ways to demand huge sums from people seeking public information.

In Fond du Lac, the $1,000 that citizen requester Brennan paid to obtain records regarding a proposed (and subsequently approved) park development project using public funds yielded a 2019 email from a city council member advising others involved in this process, “Please keep that we are in talks on this on the down low. Stakeholders should be the only people who know that these conversations are happening.”   

Officials who behave this way should not be able to escape accountability by making the cost of locating the records that prove their perfidy unaffordable.

Gov. Tony Evers, in his proposed executive budget, calls for raising the threshold at which custodians can charge location fees to $100. Adjusted for inflation, $50 in 1981 is nearly $150 today.

This welcome measure deserves bipartisan support, as it protects the ability of all citizens to obtain public records. But the Legislature should go further, and consider ending location fees altogether. Their use invites abuse and creates a disincentive for custodians to efficiently maintain and retrieve records.

If a government office actually must spend $7,000 of staff time to locate records, perhaps it needs a better filing system. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders, the editor of The Progressive, is the council’s president.