NPR Fan Girl News Roundup | Tuesday, November 30
News roundup, Giving Tuesday edition.
Welcome to the second weekly edition of the NPR Fan Girl News Roundup. Every week I share my favorite pieces of reporting that I’ve come across. If there’s a piece of journalism you read or listened to over the last week that you loved and is not included in the roundup, feel free to comment below so we can circulate all of the journalism that deserves elevating.
GIVING TUESDAY EDIT: Today, Tuesday, November 30, is Giving Tuesday, a global day of giving. There are many nonprofit news entities that could use your help and generosity this holiday season. One of the ways to give that will benefit the most number of newsrooms is through donating to NewsMatch, a coalition of nonprofits that run an annual matching campaign from November 1 - December 31, distributing funds to hundreds of newsrooms across the United States. Since 2016,
News About the News
Recent weeks have featured a lot of news about news. From the departure of two commentators from the Tucker Carlson Show to the Wirecutter union negotiation with The New York Times, I’m always fascinated by how the media does (or doesn’t) do its own gatekeeping. Here’s a roundup of written and audio pieces covering news.
Audio
“Two Fox News commentators resign over Tucker Carlson series on the Jan. 6 siege” (3 minutes) from David Folkenflik on NPR’s Morning Edition. NPR’s media correspondent broke the news on a segment during Monday’s Morning Edition show. Conservative pundits Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes were the two who left their Fox roles, citing “a pattern of incendiary and fabricated claims by the network's opinion hosts in support of former President Donald Trump.”
“It’s Time for the Media to Choose: Neutrality or Democracy?” (76 minutes) from The Ezra Klein Show, a New York Times podcast. At this point, Ezra Klein has a prominent public profile, but I include this link if anyone reading this hasn’t dived into this podcast yet, which launched earlier this year. Publishing biweekly (and once weekly for December 2021), this episode features guest host Dr. Nicole Hemmer interviewing Jay Rosen, NYU journalism professor and media critic. Hemmer and Rosen dive into how “both sides journalism” is a broken reporting model, degrading American democracy, and propose how [journalism] should move forward.
Written
“What We Lost When Gannett Came to Town” by Elaine Godfrey for The Atlantic. This article explores how Gannett, a media conglomerate, is tearing at the fabric of local newspapers around the United States, weakening civic engagement and community ties in the places the company operates.
“Here’s the Best Strike for the Most People” by Choire Sicha for New York Magazine’s “The Intelligencer.” Wirecutter, the New York Times product-reviewing imprint, went on strike from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, asking readers to not make any purchases through Wirecutter articles, which is how the imprint makes money (when you click on a link and purchase an item from said link, Wirecutter gets commission). Wirecutter union employees are going back to the bargaining table with The New York Times Company on December 6 to fight for high salaries and guaranteed minimum income. You can keep up with the union’s work on Twitter and the union’s website.
The Best of the Rest
Audio
“What We Know About the Omicron Variant” (22 minutes) from The Daily, a New York Times podcast. Today’s episode breaks down what we do know about the variant and why there is cause for concern, not panic. Today’s guest was Apoovra Mandavilli, a New York Times reporter who covers science and global health. I thought her framing of the variant’s discovery in South Africa was particularly important. Mandavilli highlights that we don’t know if the variant originated in South Africa, but rather it was first detected there. Some of the media’s framing around the virus being detected in South Africa stigmatizes the health landscape across the entire African continent.
“The Mashpee Wampanoag want you to know the full history behind Thanksgiving” (7 minutes) from NPR’s All Things Considered. Aired on Thanksgiving day, this segment explores the origins of Thanksgiving and how the narrative has been misshapen in the last 400 years. Audie Cornish interviews Paula Peters for the story, a writer, historian, and member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, whose ancestral land is now known as Mashpee, Massachusetts on Cape Cod.
Written
“Shopping online surged during Covid. Now the environmental costs are becoming clearer” by Catherine Bordeau for POLITICO. The article’s title says it all. A good read to consider amid the holiday season.