It's All Journalism

Back in 2008, when President Barack Obama first took office, he pledged to have the most transparent administration in history. He’s fallen a bit short on that promise. Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter with VICE News (https://news.vice.com), was recently honored as part of Sunshine Week, which pays tribute to reporters and advocates who work to bring documents that should be public to light. He recently spoke on a panel at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., about the Obama administration’s shortcomings in terms of turning over public documents to members of the media and the importance of the Freedom of Information Act. “It was really an opportunity during Sunshine Week to take a look at the law (FOIA), which will turn 50-years old this summer just to kind of discuss some horror stories, some things that are, perhaps, positive developments,” he said. “One of the things we discussed was that the Senate just passed a FOIA reform bill that will go to the house. We’ll see if President Obama signs that into law.” This administration hasn’t been overly transparent, Leopold noted, and many journalists seem to have forgotten the pledges made in 2008. “Just a few months after (Obama) was sworn into office, he had to make the decision whether he was going to honor the release of photographs that would depict the treatment of detainees held by the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan,” as had been ordered by a judge during the final days of the Bush administration in response to a lawsuit filed and won by the ACLU. While Obama initially said he’d honor that ruling, he faced some strong backlash about his intended action and recanted. “Following the backlash, his administration worked with Congress to change FOIA, to weaken FOIA, so that when groups of journalists or the public seek documents or, rather, media, pictures, audio recordings, about the treatment of detainees, they would not be able to get it,” Leopold said. “Congress changed FOIA at the behest of the administration to block it. Right out of the gate they were not transparent. I believe the administration feels the more they say they’re the most transparent, they more people will believe it.” There’s no doubt FOIA is broken and needs to be fixed, he adds, and Congress has made at least seven attempts in the past decade to do so. Between backlogs in responses to FOIA requests, a lack of sufficient staffing to address requests, agencies that use certain exemptions written into the law as excuses for withholding documents and a lack of proactive disclosure of information that could be obtained under a FOIA, it’s clear things need to change. But FOIA “remains a very powerful tool,” Leopold says. “If a requestor knows how to use it, well, the payoff is quite huge, particularly for journalists.” Still, many journalists, including Leopold, have resorted to filing lawsuits to get documents that should be obtainable under FOIA. “Unfortunately, it’s the only way to get information at this point,” he said. — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Jason Leopold, investigative reporter for VICE News (https://news.vice.com), about a recent story (https://news.vice.com/article/it-took-a-foia-lawsuit-to-uncover-how-the-obama-administration-killed-foia-reform) he wrote about how the Obama administration has worked behind the scenes to scuttle legislation aimed at reforming the Freedom Information Act. Leopold talks about the importance of FOIA to investigative journalists and the public, and how he used the law to uncover documents to expose the administration's actions.

Community news organizations, whether newspapers or websites, traditionally have one-sided relationships with their readers. Reporters go out, write the stories they feel are important to the community they serve and hope their readers will enjoy, a...

Community news organizations, whether newspapers or websites, traditionally have one-sided relationships with their readers. Reporters go out, write the stories they feel are important to the community they serve and hope their readers will enjoy, a...

The next time a cable or network news reporter comments on a “statistical tie” in a national political poll, know that Sean McMinn is shaking his head. Sean McMinn is a data reporter at CQ Roll Call.[/caption] A data journalist with CQ Roll Call in Washington, D.C., McMinn says it’s easier to say that two (or more) candidates have basically the same level of support than, calling that a statistical tie, than to actually delve into the numbers. “A statistical tie has nothing to do with if the difference between the proportions of voters polling for these two candidates is statistically valid, which is a whole other formula,” he said. “They’re taking the easy way out. You don’t have to explain it or do this complicated statistical analysis. I harp on that in the newsroom all the time. You take a different look at some of these numbers in stories when you have a background in statistics.” For any journalists out there who might cringe at the idea of crunching numbers and analyzing them for meaning, dreading math as journalists do, McMinn has some words of reassurance. “Statistics isn’t math," he said. "Journalists are bad at math, that’s a true statement. Statistics is answering questions just like journalists do. It’s taking data and performing analyses on it to see if this is going to find a result that’s worthwhile, statistically valid. Journalism is the same thing: You’re going out and collecting information and saying this is a story.” McMinn is a member of a relatively new six-person team at CQ Roll Call, created about seven or eight months ago to not only provide infographics for print and online editions but to take advantage of nearly 100 years’ worth of data, charts, graphs and information stored in the newsroom’s archives. “I found out today we have the home address after every Speaker left his post in Congress dating back to the 18th century,” he laughed. The team is working on a project to explore where the Speakers go. “Does everyone live within three blocks of each other in Northwest Washington? How many leave the District entirely? Is (Paul) Ryan the only one not living in the District?” Of course, news gathering and reporting has changed just as much as the names being reported in the publication’s long history, and data journalism is another part of that evolution. It’s not just enough to think about whether a graphic will work well with a story or as a standalone piece, but McMinn has to think whether a graphic needs to be smaller or larger to be readable on Facebook and Twitter, which have different size requirements. There are also considerations to be made about mobile vs. desktop vs. newspaper display. All these considerations have changed the way McMinn looks at data from the beginning of each project. “When you’re looking at the data initially, and if you train yourself that way, you’re already thinking this is a bar chart, this is a time series graphic with a line, this is a chart with areas to represent how big something is, or a map," he said. "Maybe that’s another way you look at the information differently as a data journalist, you’re thinking about it visually from the get-go.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism, producer Michael O'Connell talks to Sean McMinn, a data journalist at CQ Roll Call (http://cqrollcall.com), which tracks state and congressional legislation. They talk about using statistics to tell a story and what goes into making a newsroom data team.

The next time a cable or network news reporter comments on a “statistical tie” in a national political poll, know that Sean McMinn is shaking his head. Sean McMinn is a data reporter at CQ Roll Call.[/caption] A data journalist with CQ Roll Call in Washington, D.C., McMinn says it’s easier to say that two (or more) candidates have basically the same level of support than, calling that a statistical tie, than to actually delve into the numbers. “A statistical tie has nothing to do with if the difference between the proportions of voters polling for these two candidates is statistically valid, which is a whole other formula,” he said. “They’re taking the easy way out. You don’t have to explain it or do this complicated statistical analysis. I harp on that in the newsroom all the time. You take a different look at some of these numbers in stories when you have a background in statistics.” For any journalists out there who might cringe at the idea of crunching numbers and analyzing them for meaning, dreading math as journalists do, McMinn has some words of reassurance. “Statistics isn’t math," he said. "Journalists are bad at math, that’s a true statement. Statistics is answering questions just like journalists do. It’s taking data and performing analyses on it to see if this is going to find a result that’s worthwhile, statistically valid. Journalism is the same thing: You’re going out and collecting information and saying this is a story.” McMinn is a member of a relatively new six-person team at CQ Roll Call, created about seven or eight months ago to not only provide infographics for print and online editions but to take advantage of nearly 100 years’ worth of data, charts, graphs and information stored in the newsroom’s archives. “I found out today we have the home address after every Speaker left his post in Congress dating back to the 18th century,” he laughed. The team is working on a project to explore where the Speakers go. “Does everyone live within three blocks of each other in Northwest Washington? How many leave the District entirely? Is (Paul) Ryan the only one not living in the District?” Of course, news gathering and reporting has changed just as much as the names being reported in the publication’s long history, and data journalism is another part of that evolution. It’s not just enough to think about whether a graphic will work well with a story or as a standalone piece, but McMinn has to think whether a graphic needs to be smaller or larger to be readable on Facebook and Twitter, which have different size requirements. There are also considerations to be made about mobile vs. desktop vs. newspaper display. All these considerations have changed the way McMinn looks at data from the beginning of each project. “When you’re looking at the data initially, and if you train yourself that way, you’re already thinking this is a bar chart, this is a time series graphic with a line, this is a chart with areas to represent how big something is, or a map," he said. "Maybe that’s another way you look at the information differently as a data journalist, you’re thinking about it visually from the get-go.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism, producer Michael O'Connell talks to Sean McMinn, a data journalist at CQ Roll Call (http://cqrollcall.com), which tracks state and congressional legislation. They talk about using statistics to tell a story and what goes into making a newsroom data team.

This is an unusual election cycle, surely, but in some ways it’s more of the same. While neither party has officially crowned its nominee, it’s apparent both parties are starting to focus on the likely candidates, and the way votes are weighted in states will soon make it hard for anyone who’s not the front runner to catch up, said Gabrielle Levy, a political reporter with U.S. News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com). The Democratic Party divides all delegates based on the proportion of votes received by a candidate. While Bernie Sanders is expected to win Vermont and do well in some Midwestern states, he’s likely reaching a tipping point where he’ll stop presenting a real challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton. And, of course, the entire conversation on the Republican side is Donald Trump. “I’m not thrilled with how that race has been covered,” Levy said. “From a particularly journalistic standpoint — it’s frustrating to see how shallow the coverage has been and lacking of substance. It’s been about the show, and that has a lot to do with who the front runner is. He’s a showman. He’s playing the news media, particularly the cable networks, like a fiddle. We’re not pushing hard enough on him as well as the other candidates on what it would be like for that person to become president of the United States. I don’t know what Donald Trump would be like as president, do you? He’s given almost no indication of what he would be like as president, other than completely unpredictable.” In many ways, however, even with Trump’s unpredictability and talent with evading questions and remaking his own statements, this election is demonstrating that the Republican Party continues to struggle with its difficulty in bringing non-white voters to its table. Minority groups, particularly Latinos and African American women, are becoming an increasingly powerful based on their numbers alone, Levy said. But when the apparent front runner comes to the stage in Nevada and claims he won the night thanks to Latino voters, it’s a misrepresentation of the actual population, she said. “Technically, he did, in that he got 46 percent of the Hispanics who voted in the Republican caucus," Levy said. "But that was only about 8 percent of the total turnout of the Republican primary, and Nevada is a heavily Hispanic state. I think it was 19 percent of the Democrat’s electorate the previous Saturday, and that was the largest non-white group to the Democrats' polls.” Following the 2012 election, the Republican Party gauged its health with minority voters, realizing Mitt Romney never came close to defeating Barack Obama. The party identified shortcomings among Latinos, African Americans and young, unmarried women but have done almost nothing to fix the situation and appeal to those voters. “They’ve really not shown much interest or ability in fixing the problems that they themselves highlighted four years ago,” she says. “It’s hard to see how, if demographics are destiny, how they win in November or in any subsequent year, unless they’re able to find a way, a message, a platform, that can convince more African American and Latino voters in particular to come to their side.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Gabrielle Levy, political reporter for U.S. News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com) about the highs and lows of the 2016 presidential campaign. They also discuss how woman are portrayed in the media and how some journalists would never consider describing a male candidate as "shrill".

This is an unusual election cycle, surely, but in some ways it’s more of the same. While neither party has officially crowned its nominee, it’s apparent both parties are starting to focus on the likely candidates, and the way votes are weighted in states will soon make it hard for anyone who’s not the front runner to catch up, said Gabrielle Levy, a political reporter with U.S. News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com). The Democratic Party divides all delegates based on the proportion of votes received by a candidate. While Bernie Sanders is expected to win Vermont and do well in some Midwestern states, he’s likely reaching a tipping point where he’ll stop presenting a real challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton. And, of course, the entire conversation on the Republican side is Donald Trump. “I’m not thrilled with how that race has been covered,” Levy said. “From a particularly journalistic standpoint — it’s frustrating to see how shallow the coverage has been and lacking of substance. It’s been about the show, and that has a lot to do with who the front runner is. He’s a showman. He’s playing the news media, particularly the cable networks, like a fiddle. We’re not pushing hard enough on him as well as the other candidates on what it would be like for that person to become president of the United States. I don’t know what Donald Trump would be like as president, do you? He’s given almost no indication of what he would be like as president, other than completely unpredictable.” In many ways, however, even with Trump’s unpredictability and talent with evading questions and remaking his own statements, this election is demonstrating that the Republican Party continues to struggle with its difficulty in bringing non-white voters to its table. Minority groups, particularly Latinos and African American women, are becoming an increasingly powerful based on their numbers alone, Levy said. But when the apparent front runner comes to the stage in Nevada and claims he won the night thanks to Latino voters, it’s a misrepresentation of the actual population, she said. “Technically, he did, in that he got 46 percent of the Hispanics who voted in the Republican caucus," Levy said. "But that was only about 8 percent of the total turnout of the Republican primary, and Nevada is a heavily Hispanic state. I think it was 19 percent of the Democrat’s electorate the previous Saturday, and that was the largest non-white group to the Democrats' polls.” Following the 2012 election, the Republican Party gauged its health with minority voters, realizing Mitt Romney never came close to defeating Barack Obama. The party identified shortcomings among Latinos, African Americans and young, unmarried women but have done almost nothing to fix the situation and appeal to those voters. “They’ve really not shown much interest or ability in fixing the problems that they themselves highlighted four years ago,” she says. “It’s hard to see how, if demographics are destiny, how they win in November or in any subsequent year, unless they’re able to find a way, a message, a platform, that can convince more African American and Latino voters in particular to come to their side.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Gabrielle Levy, political reporter for U.S. News and World Report (http://www.usnews.com) about the highs and lows of the 2016 presidential campaign. They also discuss how woman are portrayed in the media and how some journalists would never consider describing a male candidate as "shrill".

In the days of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and even Peter Jennings, the reporter served his or her community as the conduit through which all important information passed. Those days are over. Not only do consumers have a multitude of channels through which to get their information —literal channels, like radio and TV stations, in addition to newspapers — the floodgates of social media make it possible for any person to obtain any kind of information of personal interest and cut out anything that fails to capture his or her attention or goes against an enshrined political view. Journalists are “not the only gatekeepers anymore,” said Logan Molyneux (http://www.loganmolyneux.com), an assistant professor at Temple University. Journalists used to rely on their news judgment skills to determine the information people read in their newspapers, heard on their radios or watched on the evening news. “Now we have newsmakers making their own gatekeeping decisions about what they want to put into the public eye or what they want fed to journalists. It’s difficult to measure how much one gatekeeper is influencing a larger conversation.” Add social media into the mix and it’s a brand new world. Journalism students and those just starting out in their careers are encouraged to have a personal website that acts as a kind of online portfolio for their work. “It’s not just good for getting a job, but it’s good practice for when you’re an active journalist," Molyneux said. "You want to build a reputation among your community and be seen as an expert on something.” But lines start to blur when journalists start to add social media layers to their personal branding and platforms. Between the party conventions and the 2012 general election, Molyneux and a colleague monitored the Twitter feeds of 430 political journalists, to see what kinds of information they posted on social media. “Journalists use Twitter very differently than they would use their polished news products in television or print or even online,” he said. “They tend to include more opinion, more humor and elements of what a colleague and I have started calling personal branding in journalism.” For example, journalists are supposed to have no public bias or opinion in the subject matter they cover, yet Molyneux's research found that roughly a quarter of the tweets sent by those political journalists had some opinion to them. Most of the tweets that portrayed opinion were things the reporters had retweeted, a distinction Molyneux found particularly interesting. “From an audience’s perspective, it’s all part of the same stream," he said. "Whether a journalist is tweeting in his own voice or passing along information from somebody else, it’s still coming from the same person. As an audience member, I’m not really parsing out, oh, he just retweeted that. It’s all just part of the conversation.” Many journalists might have a caveat in their public social media profiles that retweets aren’t endorsements, but whether readers acknowledge or take that to heart is difficult to determine. “I don’t think, at least from the audience’s perspective, you [as a journalist] have no responsibility for the things you retweet,” Molyneux said. — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Logan Molyneux (http://www.loganmolyneux.com), an assistant professor at Temple University, about his research looking into how journalists are using social media to cover the news and build their personal brands. They also discuss whether saying "retweets are not an endorsement" in your Twitter profile really matters or not.

In the days of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and even Peter Jennings, the reporter served his or her community as the conduit through which all important information passed. Those days are over. Not only do consumers have a multitude of channels through which to get their information —literal channels, like radio and TV stations, in addition to newspapers — the floodgates of social media make it possible for any person to obtain any kind of information of personal interest and cut out anything that fails to capture his or her attention or goes against an enshrined political view. Journalists are “not the only gatekeepers anymore,” said Logan Molyneux (http://www.loganmolyneux.com), an assistant professor at Temple University. Journalists used to rely on their news judgment skills to determine the information people read in their newspapers, heard on their radios or watched on the evening news. “Now we have newsmakers making their own gatekeeping decisions about what they want to put into the public eye or what they want fed to journalists. It’s difficult to measure how much one gatekeeper is influencing a larger conversation.” Add social media into the mix and it’s a brand new world. Journalism students and those just starting out in their careers are encouraged to have a personal website that acts as a kind of online portfolio for their work. “It’s not just good for getting a job, but it’s good practice for when you’re an active journalist," Molyneux said. "You want to build a reputation among your community and be seen as an expert on something.” But lines start to blur when journalists start to add social media layers to their personal branding and platforms. Between the party conventions and the 2012 general election, Molyneux and a colleague monitored the Twitter feeds of 430 political journalists, to see what kinds of information they posted on social media. “Journalists use Twitter very differently than they would use their polished news products in television or print or even online,” he said. “They tend to include more opinion, more humor and elements of what a colleague and I have started calling personal branding in journalism.” For example, journalists are supposed to have no public bias or opinion in the subject matter they cover, yet Molyneux's research found that roughly a quarter of the tweets sent by those political journalists had some opinion to them. Most of the tweets that portrayed opinion were things the reporters had retweeted, a distinction Molyneux found particularly interesting. “From an audience’s perspective, it’s all part of the same stream," he said. "Whether a journalist is tweeting in his own voice or passing along information from somebody else, it’s still coming from the same person. As an audience member, I’m not really parsing out, oh, he just retweeted that. It’s all just part of the conversation.” Many journalists might have a caveat in their public social media profiles that retweets aren’t endorsements, but whether readers acknowledge or take that to heart is difficult to determine. “I don’t think, at least from the audience’s perspective, you [as a journalist] have no responsibility for the things you retweet,” Molyneux said. — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Logan Molyneux (http://www.loganmolyneux.com), an assistant professor at Temple University, about his research looking into how journalists are using social media to cover the news and build their personal brands. They also discuss whether saying "retweets are not an endorsement" in your Twitter profile really matters or not.

Having a high-profile, exclusive interview is a wonderful thing for a publication. Failing to include the name of a massively influential artist in said exclusive interview will make that article pretty much invisible online. Such is the importance of understanding the difference between technical and editorial search engine optimization, or SEO, explains Mark Pratt and Michael Romano, the editorial content and provider editor and designer and project manager, respectively, for Metro Publisher (https://www.metropublisher.com/index.html), which characterizes itself as a cloud and mobile content management system (CMS) for publishers. Metro Publisher is “constantly rolling out updates, turning things that were complicated and required working with a developer into something that just happens” for websites and Web-based publishers that might not have the funding for a full-time specialist, Pratt said. Buzzwords like SEO and CMS might be enough to make professional publishers cringe and feel overwhelmed, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or scary, Romano said. What SEO, for example, comes down to is presenting copy in a way that search engines want it to be formatted, and that, ultimately, is the responsibility of the publisher. “A huge part of it is being seen in their niche or their particular area as an authority,” he said. ‘Publishers of content, magazines or otherwise, already have a strong, major benefit. They are producers of content and search engines want to find real content that’s valid about a certain topic.” Corporations that want to appear to be experts are often just promoting their own products and are weeded out by SEO mechanics as being just that — promoters of a product. “When people first talk about SEO, they make it sound very mysterious,” said Pratt. Search engines don’t always do their jobs correctly, which is where publishers can make it even easier to bring traffic to their own sites by paying attention to how their content is presented. “We had a publisher call us and say I’m super excited, when I do a search for (singer) Tori Amos and my city, right now we’re the number one result,” he recalls. The publisher also said that the publication had run an exclusive interview with Amos but couldn’t find the article anywhere using a search engine. “It turns out, they had managed to write an interview with her where they, not once in the article, mentioned her name,” Pratt said. “That’s a great illustration between technical SEO and editorial SEO. ... The technology needs to work — and that’s the stuff we worry about — but (publishers are) definitely responsible for following some basic editorial practices. It really isn’t all that hard.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Mark Pratt and Michael Romano of Metro Publisher. They discuss search engine optimization (SEO), data analytics and different advertising models publications are using to help spread their message and establish their identity online. Metro Publisher is producing informational videos on its website that answer basic questions publishers might have about presenting content online. View the videos here (https://blog.metropublisher.com).

Having a high-profile, exclusive interview is a wonderful thing for a publication. Failing to include the name of a massively influential artist in said exclusive interview will make that article pretty much invisible online. Such is the importance of understanding the difference between technical and editorial search engine optimization, or SEO, explains Mark Pratt and Michael Romano, the editorial content and provider editor and designer and project manager, respectively, for Metro Publisher (https://www.metropublisher.com/index.html), which characterizes itself as a cloud and mobile content management system (CMS) for publishers. Metro Publisher is “constantly rolling out updates, turning things that were complicated and required working with a developer into something that just happens” for websites and Web-based publishers that might not have the funding for a full-time specialist, Pratt said. Buzzwords like SEO and CMS might be enough to make professional publishers cringe and feel overwhelmed, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or scary, Romano said. What SEO, for example, comes down to is presenting copy in a way that search engines want it to be formatted, and that, ultimately, is the responsibility of the publisher. “A huge part of it is being seen in their niche or their particular area as an authority,” he said. ‘Publishers of content, magazines or otherwise, already have a strong, major benefit. They are producers of content and search engines want to find real content that’s valid about a certain topic.” Corporations that want to appear to be experts are often just promoting their own products and are weeded out by SEO mechanics as being just that — promoters of a product. “When people first talk about SEO, they make it sound very mysterious,” said Pratt. Search engines don’t always do their jobs correctly, which is where publishers can make it even easier to bring traffic to their own sites by paying attention to how their content is presented. “We had a publisher call us and say I’m super excited, when I do a search for (singer) Tori Amos and my city, right now we’re the number one result,” he recalls. The publisher also said that the publication had run an exclusive interview with Amos but couldn’t find the article anywhere using a search engine. “It turns out, they had managed to write an interview with her where they, not once in the article, mentioned her name,” Pratt said. “That’s a great illustration between technical SEO and editorial SEO. ... The technology needs to work — and that’s the stuff we worry about — but (publishers are) definitely responsible for following some basic editorial practices. It really isn’t all that hard.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, Producer Michael O'Connell talks to Mark Pratt and Michael Romano of Metro Publisher. They discuss search engine optimization (SEO), data analytics and different advertising models publications are using to help spread their message and establish their identity online. Metro Publisher is producing informational videos on its website that answer basic questions publishers might have about presenting content online. View the videos here (https://blog.metropublisher.com).

It’s Oscar season and Jason Fraley is all packed and ready to go to L.A. for the big night. As entertainment reporter for WTOP (http://wtop.com) radio, Fraley got his start as a morning drive-time movie critic at the station before moving up to entertainment editor about 18 months ago. At first, it seemed a daunting task: Fill a calendar with appointments, interviews, concerts, shows, movies and other cultural happenings around Washington, D.C. “You do a great interview with some celebrity and then you post it, and you want to sit back and enjoy it,” he said. “But then you see there’s 25 more days on the calendar” in that month, so there’s no time to rest. Now he’s struggling to determine which opportunities to turn down, instead of hunting for things to cover. “There’s no shortage of stuff going on in town,” Fraley said. “D.C.’s almost underrated as an entertainment town. ... There’s always some kind of national award going on,” or celebrities coming into town to drop off props and sets from their TV shows, as was the case recently with Jon Hamm from Mad Men and Vince Gilligan, Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad. Still, sometimes the job demands out-of-town travel. While Fraley has live-tweeted award ceremonies like the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, this year he’s going to the big show himself. “We’ll be doing live shots out there for the first time,” he said. Among the movies he’s hoping might bring home Oscar gold: Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting that caused massive controversy in the Catholic Church; Room, about a mother and son isolated from the world in a single room until breaking free; and Love and Mercy, a biopic about the Beach Boys’ resident troubled genius, Brian Wilson. “I thought it was a really gutsy, timely, daring filmmaking,” he said. And as for the controversy surrounding this year’s nominees, namely the lack of diversity among the top acting awards, Fraley said that while “winning an Oscar is supposed to be hard,” the bigger problem is the uniformity among the people who make up the committee that selects nominees: overwhelmingly older white men. “The people that vote for these things should be somewhat representative of the population,” he said. “To me, the bigger problem is, I think, giving access to people of color to make movies in the first place. I think that what’s being fed into the awards season, the festival circuit, is sort of a narrow representation anyway.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, producer Michael O'Connell talks to Jason Fraley of WTOP (http://wtop.com) radio about covering the entertainment beat in Washington, D.C. They also discuss Fraley's favorite movies from 2015, the lack of diversity among this year's Oscar nominees and his upcoming trip to Los Angeles to cover the Academy Awards.

It’s Oscar season and Jason Fraley is all packed and ready to go to L.A. for the big night. As entertainment reporter for WTOP (http://wtop.com) radio, Fraley got his start as a morning drive-time movie critic at the station before moving up to entertainment editor about 18 months ago. At first, it seemed a daunting task: Fill a calendar with appointments, interviews, concerts, shows, movies and other cultural happenings around Washington, D.C. “You do a great interview with some celebrity and then you post it, and you want to sit back and enjoy it,” he said. “But then you see there’s 25 more days on the calendar” in that month, so there’s no time to rest. Now he’s struggling to determine which opportunities to turn down, instead of hunting for things to cover. “There’s no shortage of stuff going on in town,” Fraley said. “D.C.’s almost underrated as an entertainment town. ... There’s always some kind of national award going on,” or celebrities coming into town to drop off props and sets from their TV shows, as was the case recently with Jon Hamm from Mad Men and Vince Gilligan, Aaron Paul and Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad. Still, sometimes the job demands out-of-town travel. While Fraley has live-tweeted award ceremonies like the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, this year he’s going to the big show himself. “We’ll be doing live shots out there for the first time,” he said. Among the movies he’s hoping might bring home Oscar gold: Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting that caused massive controversy in the Catholic Church; Room, about a mother and son isolated from the world in a single room until breaking free; and Love and Mercy, a biopic about the Beach Boys’ resident troubled genius, Brian Wilson. “I thought it was a really gutsy, timely, daring filmmaking,” he said. And as for the controversy surrounding this year’s nominees, namely the lack of diversity among the top acting awards, Fraley said that while “winning an Oscar is supposed to be hard,” the bigger problem is the uniformity among the people who make up the committee that selects nominees: overwhelmingly older white men. “The people that vote for these things should be somewhat representative of the population,” he said. “To me, the bigger problem is, I think, giving access to people of color to make movies in the first place. I think that what’s being fed into the awards season, the festival circuit, is sort of a narrow representation anyway.” — Amber Healy (mailto:phfyrebyrd@gmail.com) On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, producer Michael O'Connell talks to Jason Fraley of WTOP (http://wtop.com) radio about covering the entertainment beat in Washington, D.C. They also discuss Fraley's favorite movies from 2015, the lack of diversity among this year's Oscar nominees and his upcoming trip to Los Angeles to cover the Academy Awards.

Is podcasting the radio of the 21st century? There’s certainly a lot of overlap, and if nothing more, a podcast is certainly an evolutionary step up from radio broadcasts. Steve Lubetkin, co-author with Donna Papacosta of The Business of Podcasting, got his start in radio in the ’70s, courtesy of Fort Monmouth, the Army base where his father worked. It was also where military personnel were trained in communications. “There was a robust closed-circuit network with 30 channels, and they trained people for Armed Forces Radio,” Lubetkin said. “One fateful afternoon, my dad got me access to that studio and I spent the afternoon learning how to queue records. I went home that night and set up a radio studio with an old reel -to-reel tape recorder and a turntable to play vinyl records. I even taped some commercials off the radio” to make the broadcasts seem more real. He’d play back his “broadcasts” to his best friend, because that was the only mode of distribution available to him at the time. Lubetkin got his broadcasting license from the Federal Communications Commissions while in college, allowing him to work the board at an Asbury Park, New Jersey, radio station late Sunday nights to broadcast a local public affairs show. He had the radio bug and would’ve made it his life, if not for an equally burning passion to eat. “At some point along the way, I had to make a decision,” Lubetkin said. “You can either be on the radio or you can buy groceries. You can’t usually do both.” So, Lubetkin did what so many do: He went into public relations. He still had the chance to use some of the skills he gained from broadcasting, but he didn’t get involved in this newfangled podcast world until about 11 years ago, when the platform was just starting to eke out over the horizon of “new media,” what’s now called social media. “I started listening to what I was hearing and it was a lot of people sounding like what we did in college radio,” he said. Lubetkin set about relearning some of the basics — “When I was in radio, we were editing with a razorblade and a grease pencil”—and has since launched a series of podcasts. Along the way, Lubetkin's learned that the best podcasts are the ones that stay true to a focused, targeted audience. “It’s not about going viral, it’s not about having 20 million people” listening on a regular basis, he said. “That’s the old advertising model. The best use of a podcast is for a very narrow focus, for an audience that lies awake at night trying to solve a problem, then Googles that problem and finds a company with a problem where their subject matter expert talked about how they can solve that problem.” On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, producers Michael O'Connell and Nicole Ogrysko talk to Steve Lubetkin, who wrote The Business of Podcasting with Donna Papacosta. Lubetkin discusses the technical and business challenges many novice podcasters face, as well as some of the solutions out there for building a successful podcast.

Is podcasting the radio of the 21st century? There’s certainly a lot of overlap, and if nothing more, a podcast is certainly an evolutionary step up from radio broadcasts. Steve Lubetkin, co-author with Donna Papacosta of The Business of Podcasting, got his start in radio in the ’70s, courtesy of Fort Monmouth, the Army base where his father worked. It was also where military personnel were trained in communications. “There was a robust closed-circuit network with 30 channels, and they trained people for Armed Forces Radio,” Lubetkin said. “One fateful afternoon, my dad got me access to that studio and I spent the afternoon learning how to queue records. I went home that night and set up a radio studio with an old reel -to-reel tape recorder and a turntable to play vinyl records. I even taped some commercials off the radio” to make the broadcasts seem more real. He’d play back his “broadcasts” to his best friend, because that was the only mode of distribution available to him at the time. Lubetkin got his broadcasting license from the Federal Communications Commissions while in college, allowing him to work the board at an Asbury Park, New Jersey, radio station late Sunday nights to broadcast a local public affairs show. He had the radio bug and would’ve made it his life, if not for an equally burning passion to eat. “At some point along the way, I had to make a decision,” Lubetkin said. “You can either be on the radio or you can buy groceries. You can’t usually do both.” So, Lubetkin did what so many do: He went into public relations. He still had the chance to use some of the skills he gained from broadcasting, but he didn’t get involved in this newfangled podcast world until about 11 years ago, when the platform was just starting to eke out over the horizon of “new media,” what’s now called social media. “I started listening to what I was hearing and it was a lot of people sounding like what we did in college radio,” he said. Lubetkin set about relearning some of the basics — “When I was in radio, we were editing with a razorblade and a grease pencil”—and has since launched a series of podcasts. Along the way, Lubetkin's learned that the best podcasts are the ones that stay true to a focused, targeted audience. “It’s not about going viral, it’s not about having 20 million people” listening on a regular basis, he said. “That’s the old advertising model. The best use of a podcast is for a very narrow focus, for an audience that lies awake at night trying to solve a problem, then Googles that problem and finds a company with a problem where their subject matter expert talked about how they can solve that problem.” On this week's It's All Journalism podcast, producers Michael O'Connell and Nicole Ogrysko talk to Steve Lubetkin, who wrote The Business of Podcasting with Donna Papacosta. Lubetkin discusses the technical and business challenges many novice podcasters face, as well as some of the solutions out there for building a successful podcast.