Inside Newsjunkie

Hello Newsjunkies,

Peter Landau here, managing editor, with a look back at some of the notable articles we’ve recently published and a look forward at what’s to come.

We’ve all been working hard building a weekly publication that acts as a resource guide for journalists offering transparency into the news ecosystem. We also feature original reporting on journalists, journalism and the disappearance of public data. 

Whether you’re part of the knowledge sector, from archivists to academics, scientists, and researchers looking to access our vast Guide to Public Archives, a media figure seeking information on ownership tracking, including our graph database that maps relationships between people, organizations, events, and articles in the media industry, or part of the digital resistance concerned about the threat to data science, and working towards the preservation of public scientific records, Newsjunkie is your common ground.

A special announcement

If that’s not enough to keep us busy, publisher Gordon Whiting is writing a book he describes as an inquiry into the nature of news and information (hint: it’s not a service or a product). He will be serializing it on Newsjunkie, building on his ongoing “Newspapers and Civilization” column. 

Here’s just a taste of what has already been published, along with a new introductory note where Gordon outlines how much has changed since it first appeared. Sadly, it’s only one example among many illustrating the dismantling of our democratic standards. As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we appear to be losing touch with the values of the American Revolution..

An American in Manila

[Note: The excerpt below is from my column about the classic, long-running American newspaper Stars and Stripes, published mainly for members of the military. Recently it suffered an attack on its editorial independence when the Pentagon, which funds it, made changes to "refocus its content away from woke distractions." The paper's ombudsman (public editor) was fired. There was an outcry among servicemembers and military families over the meddling, but so far the changes have stuck. Members of Congress are mounting an effort to pass a bill restoring the paper's independence.—Gordon Whiting ]

The moist heat of Luzon was bearable in the still of morning. Starting school at sunrise meant I got home in the early afternoon and had the rest of the sweltering day to relax. Hopping off the bus in front of our home at 34 Cambridge Circle, I rushed through the door, tossed my book bag onto a chair, and reached for the Stars and Stripes. Flopping onto the sofa, I would quickly flip to the ball scores, then devour the comics, and later skim the bold black headlines shouting about the war. There was a lot going on in 1968.

I learned the habit of news-reading by following the Stars and Stripes. This well-put-together tabloid became my pipeline to the greater world of culture, commerce, and conflict. I followed the Dodgers: Don Drysdale pitched six consecutive shutouts that year; and Yankees: Mickey Mantle’s final season. I got caught up in the daily doings of the comics page characters: Maggie and Jiggs in Bringing Up Father, Oop and Ooola in Alley Oop, Blondie and Dagwood in Blondie, Charlie Brown and Lucy in Peanuts, Mandrake the Magician, Katzenjammer Kids—all of them, even Mary Worth. I ventured into the business pages, memorizing the thirty companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Index. Why? Curiosity, and to prepare my eleven-year-old brain for the big future of grand possibilities.

Read the full article

What you might have missed

• Cofounders Gordon Whiting and Andrew Blaisdell wrote President loses a battle in his war on libraries, a detailed autopsy of the Trump administration’s battle with libraries. 

• I spoke with Joe Sacco, the comics journalist famous for his books on the Palestinian struggle. He recently published The Once and Future Riot, a Rashomon-like report on the Muslim-Hindu riot in Uttar Pradesh in 2013. He’s also publishing Requiem in Gaza, a book with journalist Chris Hedges, this fall.

• Staff reporter and Prairie Fire editor Morgan Kriesel spoke with Ari Lamstein, a data scientist who has created open-source software tools that are a boon for data journalists and researchers. 

Stay tuned

• Morgan Kriesel has an interview with Rachel Santarsiero, the director of the National Security Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project. The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy. They are currently working on a chronology of disappearing data, which Newsjunkie will help compile. (Read Gordon Whiting’s first part of a two-part interview with Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.)

• The third installment of our ongoing poetry column, Journo Verse, where journalism and poetry meet, features Stephen Crane’s posthumously published poem “A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices.” The author of The Red Badge of Courage and a three-time war correspondent for the New York Journal (owned by William Randolph Hearst), the New York World (owned by Joseph Pulitzer), and the British-based Blackwood's Magazine, points a critical eye at the industry. 

• Be sure to stop by the Guide to Public Archives to explore entries on museums, government publication repositories, presidential libraries and much more. Our archive of the week for Memorial Day is the University of Victoria Digital Archives World War I Photographs.

That’s it for now, Newsjunkies. I’ve got to get back to work and crack the whip on those deadline-ignoring journalists. But rest assured, each week and often more frequently, be sure to visit Newsjunkie.net. It’s the only place you’ll get data and the reportage to back it up. The media landscape is changing, don’t be left behind.

Carry on, Newsjunkies,

Peter