Caught in a vise grip

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Media statistic of the week

According to a new study published in the journal Science, 2,107 registered U.S. voters accounted for 80% of the “fake news” shared on Twitter during the 2020 election. The study also found that these “supersharers,” who reached 5.2% of registered voters on Twitter (now X), “had a significant overrepresentation of women, older adults, and registered Republicans.” 

Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch has more from that study and another study on vaccine misinformation, also published in Science. As Coldewey writes, the studies offer “evidence not only that misinformation on social media changes minds, but that a small group of committed ‘supersharers,’ predominantly older Republican women, were responsible for the vast majority of the ‘fake news’ in the period looked at.”

This past week in the media industry 

Shakeup at The Post

On Monday, Michelle Ye Hee Lee of The Washington Post linked to some “Huge work news today.” Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis announced late Sunday that Sally Buzbee has stepped down as executive editor of The Post and will be replaced by Matt Murray, the former editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal. 

The Post’s Elahe Izadi and Amy Argetsinger report that the announcement surprised many in the newsroom. Buzbee, who was previously executive editor of The Associated Press, became the first woman to lead the nearly 150-year-old Post when she was hired as executive editor in May of 2021.

Elahe Izadi summarizes the rest of shakeup: “Sally Buzbee out as executive editor of the Washington Post. Publisher and CEO William Lewis also announced a new structure. Three editorial operations: 1) Core coverage areas 2) Service and social media journalism 3) And (unchanged), Opinions.” 

In a thread on X, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik shared his thoughts “based on conversations with six people with knowledge of events, overlaid with a touch of analysis.” Here’s his full write-up for NPR. 

Facing the staff

The Post’s Sarah Ellison, Jeremy Barr and Izadi reported on Monday’s staff meeting with new editor Matt Murray and noted, “Buzbee was not present for the staff meeting Monday but received a healthy round of applause from Post colleagues, who questioned her treatment by company leaders.”

Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson of The New York Times obtained a recording of the meeting and reported the Post newsroom was reeling from Buzbee’s sudden exit. They highlight one exchange in which political reporter Ashley Parker “asked how the newspaper had arrived at its decision, adding that one skeptical interpretation might be that Mr. Lewis was simply hiring his associates to help run The Post.”

Farnaz Fassihi describes it as an “Insightful piece on how Washington Post newsroom is reeling at the upheaval. Will Lewis, the publisher, in many ways, orchestrated a reunion with white men that he worked with during earlier chapters of his career.”

Charlotte Klein of Vanity Fair also reported on the meeting, “I Can’t Sugarcoat It Anymore”: Will Lewis Bluntly Defends Washington Post Shake-Up, and Richard J. Tofel notices in her piece the “Worst signs for WaPo here: the publisher using ‘I’ too much, ‘you’ to refer to the newsroom and ‘we’ not at all. “

Here’s more from David Bauder and Emma Tucker of The Associated Press, With its top editor abruptly gone, The Washington Post grapples with a hastily announced restructure. 

When things work

Kyle Chayka admits, “my @NewYorker column has lately been about how the Internet sucks. But today's column is about a GREAT part of social media right now: a new generation of smart, accessible, fun cultural curators who show you really cool stuff in music, fashion, and books.”

Check out Chayka’s latest New Yorker column, The New Generation of Online Culture Curators.

And from Alexandra Alter of The New York Times, here’s the story of the TikTok-fueled success of Keila Shaheen’s “The Shadow Work Journal”: How a Self-Published Book Broke 'All the Rules' and Became a Best Seller.

Sucharita Kodali says, “This is really a story about when TikTok shop can work. And how. Think lots of infomercial-type sales tactics.”

“One of the best selling books of the year is a self-published ‘workbook’ — that's a gloss on jung — written by 25 year old digital marketer that is being relentlessly flogged via tiktok's direct sales platform,” tweets Matthew Zeitlin, who adds, “Every generation gets the Jung For Babies it deserves: boomers and Joseph Campbell, millennials and Jordan Peterson, zoomers and the Shadow Work Journal.”

A news org to watch

Last up, Jeremy Barr of The Washington Post sat down with Robert Allbritton, the founder and former owner of Politico, to talk about his latest project, nonprofit news site NOTUS: Robert Allbritton’s new mission is creating more journalists. Why?

As Barr explains, Allbritton’s pitch with his nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute is “Let me be your HR department.” 

“The idea,” writes Barr, “is that every year, a class of 10 fellows from across the country receive training in Washington from some of the brightest minds in political journalism. The fellows spend nearly two years working as full-time reporters for a new website — called NOTUS, for News of the United States.”

The experiment seems to be paying off so far. Herb Scribner thinks “NOTUS is definitely a news org to watch these days. Lots of impressive work with immense talent in their newsroom.”

As Kenneth Vogel notes, “.@R_Allbritton has run news outlets (@politico, @7NewsDC, etc) that molded & propelled top reporters, like @maggieNYT @PamelaBrownCNN & @jdawsey1. Now he's started a nonprofit to train the next generation. In the process, @NOTUSreports is notching scoops.”

More notable media stories

• Semafor’s Max Tani has the scoop on internal tensions at The Intercept: Money woes, staff issues strain the Intercept. “Intercept caught in a vise grip between the Big Tech referral crunch and a philanthropy shortfall,” notes Matt Pearce.
• For GQ, Alex Kirshner interviewed ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on the State of Sports Journalism, Touching the “Third Rail,” and Whether He's Underpaid.
• In a Q&A for Poynter, Annie Aguiar sat down with Guardian US democracy editor Kira Lerner to find out, Are the democracy beat reporters OK? And in a Q&A for Nieman Lab, Richard J. Tofel talked with The Guardian US’s managing editor, Steve Sachs, who told him. “The way we raise the money at The Guardian is different than any place I’ve ever been.” 
• A national network of local news sites is publishing AI-written articles under fake bylines. Experts are raising alarm. CNN’s Hadas Gold has that story. Russell Brandom of Rest of World spoke with Irene Solaiman, head of global policy for Hugging Face, to get her take on What the AI boom is getting wrong (and right).
• At CNBC, Lillian Rizzo and Alex Sherman have the latest on the merger deal between Paramount and Skydance.
• Per John Carreyrou of The New York Times, in a dispute with Hollywood director Carl Erik Rinsch over a science-fiction series that never aired, an arbitrator has ruled in Netflix’s favor, awarding the streaming giant $8.8 million in damages.
• Kurt Wagner of Bloomberg News explains the impetus behind Meta’s years-long pivot to “recommendations”: Meta Revamped Facebook’s Feed to Fend off TikTok, Win Back Younger Users.
• For his The Ed's Up newsletter, Ed Yong wrote about Judging the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
• Via a new initiative through Press Forward, Video Consortium, which provides workshops and mentorship programs to documentary filmmakers, is partnering with local newsrooms to help build out and strengthen their video strategy. Mia Galuppo has more at The Hollywood Reporter.
• Dave Seglins is “Thrilled to launch this new free resource for industry, newsrooms and J-schools”: Trauma Aware Journalism is an educational project by the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada) and the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma.

From the Muck Rack Team

Muck Rack’s State of Journalism report is a great place to learn about the overall journalism trends that impact the industry and influence the PR world. We’ve been digging deeper into the data and sharing insights from broadcast journalists to better understand how this group works and how to best pitch them. Head over to the blog to hear from the journalists themselves about how to pitch broadcast journalists.