Chart from Reporters Without Borders
Media Literacy
Community Media Pioneer Dies
Article in Democracy Now! by Staff, 5/29/26
Headline: “Philadelphia Community Access Media Founder Gretjen Clausing Dies at 61”
“Gretjen Clausing, the founding executive director of Philadelphia Community Access Media, has passed away at the age of 61. Clausing dedicated decades of her life advocating for public access to the media and freedom of expression and was actively involved in national campaigns in support of community media and local journalism. . .”
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Picture or Imagine That?
Article in Poynter by Mark E. Johnson
Headline: “Article about free images ‘contradicts everything I hold true about journalism’ “
“. . .With one post, two people who I have worked closely with attempted to raze everything I have done over the last quarter century.
“Their story, titled, ‘These tools will help you find the right images for your stories,’ contradicts everything I hold true about journalism — textual and visual:
“Journalism is specific, journalism is not generic.
Journalism is precise, journalism is not vague.
Journalism illuminates, journalism does not decorate.
“To believe otherwise is to demean visual journalists, to believe they are lesser, to establish a class system. . .”
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Thinking About AI Media
Article in Poynter by Alex Mahadevan, 4/24/26
Headline: “Opinion | Why can’t newsroom leaders just be normal about AI?”
Subhead: “A series of tumultuous generative artificial intelligence rollouts make clear that leaders need to listen before leaping”
“I’m more optimistic about generative artificial intelligence in journalism than most of my peers. So it pains me to see AI rollouts that are short-sighted — or even offensive — threaten the fragile truce between reporters and the technology. . .”
“Simply creating more content for the hell of it is like putting a new steering wheel on a Geo Metro. If your AI experiment doesn’t start with a clear problem that your audience or your newsroom actually has, no amount of technology will save it. . .”
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https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2026/why-cant-newsroom-leaders-just-be-normal-about-ai/
Disappearing Climate Coverage
Article in FAIR by Olivia Riggio, 3/14/26
Headline: “Climate Coverage Plunges, Though Crisis More Dire Than Ever”
“The UN just released its 2025 Global Climate Report, and, predictably, the outlook for our earth is incredibly dire. . .”
“There is no shortage of urgent climate news right now. The scientific consensus that we need to phase out fossil fuels fast has not changed, despite President Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies rolling back environmental protections and clean energy growth. But data shows coverage about climate change in US news outlets has plunged. . .”
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https://fair.org/home/climate-coverage-plunges-though-crisis-more-dire-than-ever/
Democracy Needs Journalism
Article in FAIR by Janine Jackson, 4/10/26
Headline: ” ‘Local News Is a Genuine Public Good We Need for Our Democracy’ “
Subhead: “CounterSpin interview with Alex Frandsen on Local News Day”
“Janine Jackson: News media can be like the old joke about the weather: Everybody complains, but nobody does anything. But as we’ve seen billionaire owners turning news into yet another profit-driven enterprise—not, to be clear, entities that need to sustain themselves, but that need to generate ever-higher quarterly profits for shareholders—the truth is there has been plenty of, not just protest and criticism, but ground-level organizing to find other ways to support the work we need from journalism in the public interest. . .”
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https://fair.org/home/local-news-is-a-genuine-public-good-we-need-for-our-democracy/
Betting on the News
Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Klaudia Jazwinska, 4/3/26
Headline: “The Problem with Binding News and Prediction Markets”
Subhead: “Polymarket and Kalshi are quickly making deals with news publishers, with potential implications for the regulation of prediction markets. It’s unclear how journalism wins.”
“Prediction markets—platforms where users can place wagers on the outcomes of future events —are suddenly all over the news. Every day we’re seeing headlines—allegations of insider trading, states accusing prediction markets of violating gambling laws, warnings about the “depravity economy.” We’re also seeing prediction markets’ efforts at becoming part of the news ecosystem. . .”
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Watching Who’s Watching You
Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Luch Scholler, 3/18/26
Headline: “Look Who’s Tracking”
Subhead: “A growing number of reporters and researchers are covering immigration through the lens of surveillance.”
” ‘Look for the margarita machine,’ Francesca D’Annunzio’s source told her. D’Annunzio, an investigative reporting fellow at the Texas Observer, was delving into Operation Lone Star, Texas governor Greg Abbott’s more-than-eleven-billion-dollar anti-immigration crusade that the American Civil Liberties Union has flagged in a report for ‘unchecked cruelty’. .”
“That ‘so much can be learned about us and our patterns of life without a warrant,’ she said, ‘is something that should concern everybody, regardless of their political persuasion’. . .”
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Nonprofit Lifeline for Journalism?
Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Emily Bell and Heatger Chaplin, 2/19/26
Headline: “Profit or Nonprofit? A Debate over Journalism’s Future”
Subhead: “While the newspaper industry continues to contract, nonprofit news outlets have proliferated over the past decade. But dismissing profitable models for journalism is premature. “
“How can journalism survive? Perhaps the question would once have sounded unduly panicked, but it has only grown more pressing over the past twenty years. Between 2004 and 2019, newspapers lost an astonishing 77 percent of their jobs—more than any other industry on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. . .”
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Local Minneapolis Journalists
Article in Poynter by Kristen Hare, 1/26/26
Headline: “What’s happening in Minneapolis? Hear it from the journalists who live there.”
Subhead: “In a moment of national attention, local reporters are offering clarity, context and accountability from the ground”
“Even after more than a decade of covering the local news industry, it still takes me time to remember to get off social media, my phone, national news and wherever else I’m getting information and go directly to the source — the people who live there, who pay taxes there, who worship and shop and vote and raise their families there.
“In the last few weeks, that source has been journalists and newsrooms in Minnesota after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed Renee Good and Border Patrol officers shot and killed Alex Pretti. . .”
Read the full article at:
https://www.poynter.org/local-news/2026/minneapolis-ice-shootings-local-journalists-news/