If you are an advertiser, click here.

As advertisers boycott Facebook due to concerns about their ads appearing next to questionable content, let them know that your news publication provides quality content that is reviewed by professionals, offering them an option for their ads where they can feel confident about the content alongside which they appear.

Dear Facebook Advertisers:

Worried about your ads appearing next to disinformation, misinformation or hate speech?

Our journalism is written and edited by professionals. We take responsibility for what we do.

Our audiences continue to grow. The public wants and needs quality news and information more than ever.

Let’s talk.

#SupportRealNews

Download the ad:

Alliance members can download and run this ad from the News Media Alliance, designed exclusively for members.

Below, we have provided PDF and EPS files of the color ad, in full- and quarter-page sizes, as well as digital.

News publishers may add their logo and/or contact information in the space provided in the bottom-right corner.

Print Ads:

Click on the links below to download and run the ad.

Full-page (PDF) (11.55″ x 21″)
Full-page (EPS) (11.55″ x 21″) (via Dropbox)
Quarter-page (PDF) (5.7″ x 10.5″)
Quarter-page (EPS) (5.7″ x 10.5″) (via Dropbox)

Digital Ad:

Click on the image and then right-click and select “Save image as…” to download the ad. Link to your advertising web page or homepage. You can also add your logo using the editable EPS file below.

Digital cube (300 x 250 px)

Digital cube editable EPS file (via Dropbox)

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The post Ad: Dear Facebook Advertisers – Let’s Talk appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

What brought you to the news media industry and API?

I didn’t really have a background in journalism practices. I graduated with a Creative Writing degree and started working as a writer and editor for a professional association magazine. I wasn’t really passionate about the work I was doing there, so I found a job at the Newseum, where I took care of communications and marketing, as well as their newsletter. That position gave me the insights and passion in journalism to apply for a job at API.

What are you working on to help API’s membership?

The Need to Know newsletter, definitely. I spend most of the day searching for the best articles to send out to our members. They not only consist of news, but tips to help journalists perform better in their jobs. I have also included a Net Promoter survey in our newsletter, which helps me to get a better understanding of our readers’ satisfaction and possible ways to enhance their experience. So far, we’ve gotten good results, so I think we’re doing a good job at keeping them happy.

What do you consider to be the biggest challenge facing the news media industry in 2019?

The business model aspect of it, of course—especially now that we cannot fully rely on advertising revenue. Another challenge that we are facing is battling against the growing distrust and negative perception of the public against media. I think we are making a mistake by not working harder to address this issue.

What is the most promising opportunity for news publishers in 2019?

I think a lot of it depends on the publisher, but definitely implementing sustainable platforms like newsletters, subscription models, etc. I think that one of the most important things a publisher should consider right now is choosing a very particular audience to satisfy their needs for certain information.

What are you most excited about in your role at API for the rest of this year?

I am really looking forward to analyzing the readers’ feedback and coming up with new ways to re-design the newsletter to give it a fresher and more engaging look. I also want to come up with new, innovative ways to promote API in our communications. I think we’ve been missing a big opportunity in the Need to Know newsletter.

The post 5 Answers with Stephanie Castellano, Editorial Manager at American Press Institute appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Managing a newsroom is no easy feat. Most newsroom leaders wear multiple hats – they have to be journalists, editors, designers, webmasters – and managers. And, if you’ve worked your way up through the ranks of your newsroom, chances are you’ve spent more time outside the newsroom than in it, chasing stories and chatting up sources, meaning you might be completely new to management, as well as being in a nine-to-five role.

To help all the newsroom managers out there, whether new to the role or just in need of some new tips and tricks, we’ve compiled a list of blogs, podcasts and management thought leaders that can help you with everything from the day-to-day to the most obscure issues.

HBR IdeaCast

From the team at the Harvard Business Review, IdeaCast is a weekly podcast that delves into issues pertinent to all business owners and managers. Topics covered include abstract subjects, such as creating joy and improving psychological safety and civility in the office, to more concrete subjects such as negotiation, mentorship and avoiding “initiative overload.” Guests on the show include anyone from professors and academics to CEOs and managers, to John Kerry, the former Secretary of State.

Ask A Manager

A blog (and book) written by former nonprofit chief of staff and manager Alison Green, Ask a Manager lets anyone write in with questions about dealing with life in an office, whether that’s managing an intern or low-level staffer, coping with a difficult boss, dealing with getting fired or laid off, or even what to do if someone keeps stealing your lunch out of the shared fridge. If you have a work-related concern, chances are, Green has answered it – often, multiple times.

Jill Geisler

Jill Geisler is a management coach as well as the Bill Plante Chair in Leadership and Media Integrity at Loyola University Chicago – which is to say, she knows a thing or two about how to manage the disparate personalities that make up your average newsroom. Through her columns for Columbia Journalism Review spanning more than four years, she’s covered a range of newsroom management topics, including how you can help prepare your team for covering natural disasters and newsroom scandals, as well as how to improve diversity and even what to do when your newsroom unexpectedly shuts down. She also produced a podcast series for Loyola’s School of Communication, which comprises 70 episodes and  wrote 25 tips for managing changing newsrooms for Poynter in 2009 that remains relevant today.

Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk honed her management skills over the course of running four startups, so she knows how to manage from the top down – and from the bottom up. She offers advice not only through her blog entries (which go back more than five years), but also through her newest startup, Quistic, which offers online courses aimed at helping people advance their careers.

The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

People don’t always think about being happy at work, at least not when it comes to management issues, but Alexander Kjerulf is all about making people’s work lives a little happier. His posts cover everything from how to disagree with your boss, to why you shouldn’t try to motivate people only through money, to why you need to make time to engage with your team if you want to succeed.

The post Newsroom Management Advice to Help You Start the Year Off On the Right Foot appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Cannabis is a confusing and complex topic, even for seasoned journalists who’ve been on the beat for years. And as more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana — and even more start pushing to have legalization put on the ballot — more and more reporters will have to parachute into this world to deliver the news to their readers (61 percent of whom believe marijuana should be legalized). But with the laws in D.C. being so confusing, imagine how much you have to know to cover this topic well on a regular basis.

From finding more stories in the billion-dollar industry to learning how to discuss marijuana and the products derived from the plant, reporters today have a lot of catching up to do to be able to give readers the information they need. Readers want to know the facts before they make decisions about signing legalization petitions and choosing to use pot recreationally or medically, and the community needs to know how legal weed businesses will affect their economy and their quality of life.

Marijuana is still such a complicated and stigmatized topic that it’s not as simple as being thrown on the local business beat or being sent to cover the school board. I talked to some experts who’ve been covering the industry for years to find out what you need to know to provide the best coverage possible; whether you’re writing from California and Colorado, where pot is recreationally legal; New York, where it’s medically legal in only the most necessary situations; Vermont, where it’s newly legal this week; or places like Florida and Alabama, where legalization is still a far-off possibility, but the topic is no less important.

Cover the entire canna-business, not just the user experience.

“There’s a tendency to write a lot about the consumer angle, [but] it’s kind of missing the boat that this is a big industry in many states,” says Chris Walsh, the vice president of editorial and strategic development for Marijuana Business Daily. “The business departments of newspapers and other media outlets should be covering it regularly like a normal beat.”

That’s because, as Walsh and others point out, the cannabis industry isn’t a self-contained world. Cannabis touches on dozens of other industries, from agriculture (for farming the plants) to marketing (to inform the public of businesses and available products), to banking and financial advising, to the job market (when people are hired to do all of these jobs). If even one dispensary opens in your coverage area, dozens, if not hundreds of people are affected, and that’s before you take into account the societal implications of the new business.

Legalization is only part of the story.

“The story continues after legalization, whether it’s medical or recreational,” says Alyson Martin, co-founder of Cannabis Wire and author of A New Leaf: The End of Cannabis Prohibition. “[Legalization] is just the catalyst. Everything that comes after is where the important coverage comes in.”

Two of the biggest stories Martin sees right now are banking issues surrounding the cannabis industry and the problem of stoned driving. But they aren’t the only stories that reporters should be focusing on, and you don’t need to wait for legalization to pass in your area before you start adding cannabis coverage to your beat.

“A lot of the focus is more consumer-facing, but I look at it from the business side, and I think that’s still where there’s a lot of room for improvement and great impactful storytelling,” Walsh says. “Look at the business owners in [the industry] and how they are doing. How are they rolling with these changes and how are they making their livelihoods from it?

“I don’t see a lot of business profile pieces in the mainstream media of cannabis business owners,” he adds. “When I was a business journalist, we were always doing profiles of interesting companies or an entrepreneur or [a business] owner. You rarely see them do that with people in the marijuana industry. It’s almost like the people in the industry don’t exist.”

There are hundreds of possible stories about businesspeople in the cannabis field, though, and plenty of ways to get them. “There are so many PR companies that focus on weed now, so if you’re ever looking for an idea, you can reach out to them and they’ll send you more story ideas than you’ll know what to do with,” says Michelle Janikian, a cannabis reporter who writes for High Times, among other outlets.

Remember that there are two sides to every story.

Janikian says it’s also important to not leave out either side of the cannabis story. A story about a new pot business or the passage of legalization should include pro-legalization activists as well as those who fought against the measure, just as any story about medical uses needs to include not only the success stories, but the research and all the failures.

One outlet doing this well, Martin says, is AL.com, a website from a group of Alabama-based local newspapers. Their “Marijuana in Alabama” series includes interviews with Alabama locals who question whether the use of cannabis is a sin.

“There’s a verse in the Bible [that] legalization advocates always twisted a little bit to their benefit, something along the lines of ‘every seed exists for your consumption,’ and they take that to mean cannabis is fine,” Martin explains. So for AL.com to approach that and ask their readers to respond shows a deep understanding of the unique issues faced by the cannabis industry in the Bible Belt, which is drastically different from the fight the industry has faced in other states.

Not all laws are created equal.

“It’s a good idea for a general news journalist to understand, for example, that Vermont’s version of legalization that’s coming down the pike doesn’t include a system to tax and regulate sales, which means it won’t look like Colorado,” Martin says. “And you mentioned sales aren’t allowed in D.C. even though cannabis is legal there.

“I think it’s also a very good idea for journalists — general news journalists specifically — to familiarize themselves with terminology,” Martin continues.

As an example, Martin says that an edibles producer might mention that they print the ratio of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to cannabidiol (CBD) on their packaging. That can sound complex, but what a reporter needs to know is that all they’re saying is, “We tell you about how high this will get you.”

“It’s the same thing as a general news journalist covering some aspect of the automotive industry and not understanding some kind of state-of-the-art technology that’s being brought to the market,” Martin says. “I think that there’s a foundational level of knowledge that would be really helpful.”

Martin and her partner at Cannabis Wire, Nushin Rashidian, offer a course at Poynter on covering cannabis for those who want to delve deeper into the industry and get a basic knowledge of the business and the product.

Words matter, but so do images.

But learning the basics isn’t enough. News organizations also need to change the way in which they present the information. The imagery of the typical marijuana story can be off-putting for many readers. Walsh says that the default for many people is to use closeup shots of marijuana buds, or women in bikinis with bongs, but while those images work for High Times, they aren’t going to work for newspapers.

Those images also don’t convey the full story. There are stories out there now about people using medical marijuana, but they are using a patch, or sublingual drops, which aren’t the typical joint people think of. Martin says photo editors and photographers, as much as journalists, need to familiarize themselves with the many cannabis products available and how they’re used to better share these stories with their readers.

Click through to see the full slideshow glossary.

There’s also a problem with pun-filled headlines, and Walsh points out that while many of those headlines have disappeared as legalization has crossed the country, they’re still out there, and they make news about the cannabis industry seem unimportant and not worth taking seriously.

Still, the media as a whole is getting better at knowing when to put the jokes aside. “Six, seven years ago the headlines [about Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ hardening stance on marijuana laws] would have been something like ‘Jeff Sessions puff-puff-passes on Barack Obama over marijuana policy.’ But now it was much more serious,” Walsh says.

Avoid the stereotypes.

Another part of making cannabis stories more relatable to readers? Average people. “I’d love to see stories about regular people who smoke marijuana,” Janikian says. “Stories where it’s not sensationalized and it’s not [presented as] surprising, but where you hear about regular, smart people who use cannabis.”

With such a rich, untapped market of potential stories, there’s no reason for reporters to not be covering cannabis, regardless of whether it’s legal in their state.

If you’re covering cannabis at your newspaper, let me know what sort of stories you’re doing, and if you’re not, I want to know why. You can reach me via email at jennifer@newsmediaalliance.org, or on Twitter at @EditrixJen. And tell me what other topics you’re interested in learning more about this year. If there’s a topic you think more people should be covering, a piece of tech you want to learn about or a business opportunity that’s got you curious, tell me and the Alliance will do its best to get you some answers.

The post How To: Cover Cannabis and the Growing Marijuana Industry appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

If you cover a beat, you often find yourself in a recurring cycle of news, with the same issues popping up over and over, and it can feel like you’ve already done it all. Even freelancers can get bogged down by idea block, because having the opportunity to write about anything and everything means you have to narrow down your ideas. That can be problematic in a 24-hour news cycle when, by the time you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), it feels like every idea has been taken by someone else.

There are, however, ways to beat the “I have nothing left to say” blues.

Be willing to recycle ideas. When I wrote about veterans’ affairs for a popular men’s magazine, we worked with as much as six months of lead time, so every idea I had was covered in another outlet before we had completed a publishing cycle. To work around this problem, I started looking at what was getting my favorite reporters talking. One journalist I loved was Katie Drummond, and I found an old piece she’d written on military burn pits. Her article came out in 2012, and by the time I was writing the issue in 2013, very little had changed — and in this instance, no news was big news. So, I explained the issue to my readers in a way that worked for them. It turned out I was on the right track, too, because a few weeks after my article published, Drummond published her own follow-up on the burn pits. But Drummond’s original story also inspired me to look for other similar issues, and I eventually found a story about Navy veterans suffering from problems caused by contaminated water on their ships, as well as a story about post-traumatic stress. And those only came about because of Drummond’s original idea.

Look for connections. Don’t want to recycle? You can still borrow to get to the story by finding the trends. Maybe you’re seeing a lot of stories in the national news about the run-up to the Olympics. Maybe equipment used by the athletes is made in your city, or perhaps you have former Olympic hopefuls living in the area. You can even cover stories that don’t necessarily have a local angle off the bat. With California legalizing recreational marijuana, you can write about what that means for your region’s legalization efforts, or you can dig into non-THC cannabis products, like the newly popular CBD-infused health and beauty products, which are legal in all 50 states. There’s always a way to connect a story to your audience if you dig deep enough.

Know your audience. Reporters can feel like something is old news even if the rest of the world thinks it’s breaking news, so it’s crucial to think about who you’re writing for.

“I approach writing the way I approach planning a party,” Olivier Knox told me last year. “I know what kind of food I want to eat, what I want to drink, what kind of music [I want to hear]. I know I need a sign that says where the bathroom is. So while some stories [are driven by] my curiosity, I also try to think of what the reader would want to know.”

You may know everything you’d want to know about a particular topic, especially as a beat writer, but you’re not writing for yourself.

Know your purpose. “A story will either get a reader or keep a reader,” says Joanne Cleaver, a freelance business and personal finance writer. In her beat, that means that a story on buying your first home, while it’s not new, will be new to a segment of the population, and could attract new readers to your outlet. Such a story also has the potential to keep an older, more engaged reader active, because they may want to pass that story along to someone else, or use the information you’ve provided them to advise a younger family member or colleague for whom that information is new.

Be curious. Knox, Yahoo’s chief Washington correspondent, told me that curiosity is a big part of what drives his feature storytelling. That should be a driver for every reporter. Chances are, of course, that after a while you’re no longer curious about your beat — especially if you’ve been on the same one for years — but you’re definitely curious about something. So, figure out what that is and find a way to apply it to your newswriting. 

When I started working on defense stories for VICE News, I brought some of my curiosity about my previous profession writing for men’s magazines with me. When I was tasked with writing about the advancements of the intelligence community, instead of writing straight news, I compared the agencies to old-school men’s pin-up magazines, how that industry evolved and how the internet changed that field completely. It turned out there were surprising similarities between the two industries’ growth, and my approach made the story easy to understand and accessible to readers who might not be familiar with the inner workings of the intelligence community. (And that article has since been used as a teaching resource in at least one college class and one military training class.)

Ask stupid questions. Every journalist does their research before starting a story, so by the time you’re interviewing a source, you know as much about the topic as possible. But that means you probably aren’t asking the super-simple, very basic questions. “Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions,” said Sarah Gray Miller, editor-in-chief for Modern Farmer, when I spoke to her in November. Often, she says, you’ll get a new angle for your story from asking something as simple as “What does this mean?” or “Why does this matter?” This is especially important for reporters who are covering a niche topic for a general audience. “Some of our stories come from just asking the really obvious question and then doing a deep dive into it,” Miller explains.

Find what isn’t news. This may sound counterintuitive, but things that aren’t news can be news, if you try. Cleaver, who often covers personal finance matters, says 401ks are never big news, but there are plenty of stories you can tell about them. Off the top of her head, she rattled off more than a half-dozen ideas that journalists could cover in January as people are thinking about their contributions to their plans. “There are a lot of angles [to every story],” Cleaver says.

The important thing to remember is not to get so bogged down by the news — or lack of news — that you lose sight of the story ideas that are all around you.

If you have tricks for beating the block, or if there are other topics you’d like to see covered in the new Alliance how-to series, please reach out. You can email me at jennifer@newsmediaalliance.org or tweet me at @editrixjen.

The post How To: Generate Story Ideas When You’re Drawing a Blank appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Brian, who is one of News Media Alliance’s Rising Stars, is a night editor at Baltimore Sun Media Group, where he has worked for almost two and a half years. At only 25 years old, he helps with final decisions before the paper goes out in the mornings. At night, he tackles how to cover breaking news, layout and format options as well as any other decisions that need to be made in the absence of the daytime editor-in-chief.

Although Brian is now passionate about news – describing himself as “fully immersed” – he says he was never one of those kids who ran around interviewing neighbors or had nightly dreams of a career in journalism. It wasn’t until he was applying to college that he realized what his passion really was.

Brian had always been comfortable in the newsroom setting that he had experienced as a high school student. After his acceptance to the University of Maryland-College Park, he started exploring the news media field right off the bat. He credits the preparation provided by his school for the success he has seen as a young person in the industry. Through experimenting with copy editing, reporting, and other news media sectors in the classes offered by the highly-accredited Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Brian latched on to editing.

Once he graduated college, Brian started an internship with the Tampa Bay Times. Here, he was a Dow Jones copy editing intern for ten months. He then returned to his home state of Maryland where he began working with the Carroll County Times, a part of the Baltimore Sun Media Group. Here he was the night editor, where he helped with breaking news, social media and eventually editing and design work.

“This was a huge stepping stone in my life,” says Brian. “When the editor left for the night, I was in charge.”

From deciding how to present news during the Oscars to Baltimore Orioles’ games, Brian’s work leaves him with a sense of purpose. He believes it is crucial to have more people reading the news. By encouraging consumers to digest news outside of their comfortable source, it will result in more informed readers. Brian says this is especially relevant in a time like today.

“Now, the President is calling the media the enemy of the people,” Brian says. “It’s especially important to remember journalism is a key component of our American democracy and society in general.”

One thing Brian is certain about is the need for restoration of trust in the news media industry. He believes this can be done through more candidness and transparency by news organizations.
“Everyone thinks they know about journalism since everyone encounters it,” says Brian. “But media literacy is not in a good place. People don’t know how news organizations work, like how they choose their stories or how they treat their sources.”

He wants to see more openness from news organizations in the future. An example being reporters on Twitter and podcasts, which he says is a different way to get through to readers.

Brian believes restoring trust in the news media will help the industry overcome the challenges it is currently facing.

The post Rising Star: Brian Compere appeared first on News/Media Alliance.