Need to Know: May 23, 2022

You might have heard: Meta rethinks news partnerships as priorities shift (The Information) 

But did you know: The news industry’s $1 billion question: Is Meta about to unfriend journalism? (Press Gazette) 

News industry leaders believe that Facebook owner Meta is planning to change its partnership program with publishers, writes William Turvill, but the question is how far it will go. As governments around the world consider regulations to force tech companies to pay providers more for news, some publishers fear Meta could pull out of licensing deals that are worth millions to some news organizations. An official at one major U.S. news company said that they fear Meta is signaling that “the good times are over” for publishers with Facebook news deals. Others say Meta knows it needs the credibility of professional news and that the company is just posturing in anticipation of new regulations.

+ Related: Campbell Brown to oversee new media partnerships team at Meta (Axios)

+ Noted: Top CNN digital executive Meredith Artley to depart (Deadline); Pentagon seizes foreign reporter’s phone during official travel (Politico)

API UPDATE 

API is hiring a Vice President, Journalism Programs

The Vice President, Journalism Programs, has a direct role in setting organizational strategy, managing the staff in concert with the CEO/Executive Director and others on the executive team, and being a thought leader for API and its partners in cultural transformation and business sustainability. The successful candidate must be comfortable with change and be able to lead with authority. The candidate must have a deep knowledge of journalism and digital media. They must also be able to recognize the impact of systems on issues of equity, identify news industry needs, and articulate and support a vision for how API can collaborate with news organizations, philanthropy, and other nonprofits. This is a full-time position with a salary between $150,000 and $180,000, commensurate with skills and experience. To apply, email a resume and cover letter to jobs@pressinstitute.org. 

TRY THIS AT HOME

Pearls of wisdom from savvy project managers (Medium, The Whole Story)

Project managers are important in individual newsrooms, but they are essential when several news organizations collaborate, writes Delaney Butler. The skills that a project manager must possess involve more than the reporting techniques that reporters must master or competency in editing; they involve coaching, persuading and mediating, among others, writes Butler, who gathered insights from project managers who worked on solutions-focused news collaboratives. Some of them stressed the importance of identifying what strengths each participant brings to the group. “Think about the assets of each partner at the beginning. Your strongest contributors may not necessarily be the most ‘resourced’ or largest outlets,” said Chris Rudisill of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative.

+ Report: Developing journalism collaborations for local impact (Center for Cooperative Media) 

OFFSHORE

Afghanistan’s female TV presenters cover their faces (BBC)

Women news presenters in Afghanistan covered their faces to go on the air on Sunday, complying with an order from the Taliban’s Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue. After some of the women had gone on TV without covering their faces on Saturday, they said the channels came under pressure from the Taliban, who said the women would be fired or transferred to other jobs if they didn’t follow the rule. Farida Sial, a presenter with TOLOnews, told the BBC that she hoped the international community would pressure the Taliban to reverse the policy. “They want to erase women from social and political life,” she said.

+ Earlier: Female Afghan TV journalists describe a ‘psychological prison’ amid Taliban order to cover their faces on air (CNN)

OFFBEAT

Pub in village of Vogue tells Vogue magazine: No, we’re not changing our name (CBC Radio) 

The owner of a pub called The Star Inn at Vogue in southern England received a framed letter of apology from Condé Nast after the Vogue Magazine publisher retracted a demand that he change the pub’s name. The owner, Mark Graham, said he had recently registered the pub as a limited company, which “flagged up some sort of nuisance to them that their readers might confuse us with them and divert their traffic to us.” Graham said he told Conde Nast no, and explained the pub’s long history. The publisher responded that he was right, and later sent a framed copy of a letter retracting its demand along with a handwritten note saying, “From one Vogue to another — please accept our apologies.” 

UP FOR DEBATE

Crash course: News organizations need to relearn how to cover car collisions — especially when the victims are on foot (Slate)

When pedestrians or cyclists are killed in crashes with cars, news outlets nationwide write their stories and headlines in ways that focus on the vehicles instead of the driver, writes David Zipper. “Research suggests that American reporting is much more likely to focus on the pedestrian or cyclist who is struck, rather than the driver behind the wheel,” he says, which can have the effect of seeming to blame the victim. Zipper tells the story of a pedestrian who was killed in Arlington, Va., after which a local television reporter went to the scene and was able to look at skid marks and obtain footage to put together the details of how the victim died. The reporting, Zipper writes, was “notable because it was exceptional.” Newspapers often give low priority to such stories, which are considered part of the “cops and courts” beat, he writes. 

SHAREABLE 

It’s time for local journalists to reckon with the racism we overlooked (The Washington Post)

Local news organizations need to “take a harder and more sustained look than ever before at the ugly inequality” that was exposed by the mass shooting in Buffalo, writes Margaret Sullivan. She says that cutbacks at local media outlets mean they do not have the resources to do the watchdog journalism necessary to cover local decisions on development and policing practices that disproportionately hurt predominantly Black neighborhoods. “It’s not that these topics and these neighborhoods get no coverage, or no support from commentators or editorial pages. But it hasn’t been nearly enough, and that goes back a long way,” she writes.

+ Related: Resources for reporters and editors covering the shooting in Buffalo (The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma); Buffalo massacre kills citizen journalist and activist Katherine Massey (The Pivot Fund)