It’s been a busy year.
The Poynter newsroom covers moments in news, current events that local newsrooms can look to for story ideas, ethics, media literacy and the business behind the news industry. We’ve had a lot to cover.
In lieu of writing a depressing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to send off the year in news media, here’s a look back at the most popular stories from Poynter’s newsroom in 2022.
10. There are a lot of great journalism movies. Here are our top 25.
“Spotlight” stars Brian d’Arcy James, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Michael Keaton at the 2016 SAG Awards on Jan. 30, 2016, in Los Angeles. (Featureflash Photo Agency/Shutterstock)
In 2022, you wanted to watch journalism movies. Fine by us!
We wrote this ranking in December 2021, but found that you kept discovering it across the next 12 months. Side note: we just asked you what your faves were.
9 From respected journalist to trolling opinionist: What happened to Lara Logan?
Lara Logan in 2017. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan’s turn to right-wing fringe in recent years has been surprising.
“She started at CBS in 2002 and quickly gained a solid reputation for doing good reporting from dangerous war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq,” Tom Jones writes in this piece.
After leaving CBS, Logan became a fierce critic of the “liberal media” and has made controversial comments including comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
Jones sums it up in one word: “Seriously?”
8. “They keep threatening to arrest us.’ The obstacles facing local news in Uvalde
Two bikers from Guardians of the Children use their hats to block photojournalist Kevin Downs from covering a funeral service for Nevaeh Bravo, one of the victims killed in the elementary school shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, Thursday, June 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead instantly raised questions about law enforcement: Why didn’t they intervene sooner? What was the policy in place? How could this happen?
The journalists who wanted to answer those questions soon found opposition at every turn from law enforcement officials, changing accounts and building trauma. Poynter contributor Amaris Castillo interviewed San Antonio Express-News editor Nora López about the newsroom’s struggle against law enforcement to get accurate information about the shooting.
“In addition to the trauma of covering such an event, then to have to deal with all this harassment and attempts to stop us from reporting this story has been really disconcerting,” López told Castillo.
7. Are we missing COVID-19’s new symptoms?
A member of the Salt Lake County Health Department COVID-19 testing staff performs a COVID-19 test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
In the third year of COVID-19, the word of the year was “subvariant”: Delta, Omicron, BQ.1, XBB, each one with a wave of worry on symptoms and transmissibility as the virus continued to evolve.
As COVID-19 cases rose in the United Kingdom, this Oct. 5 newsletter from Poynter senior faculty Al Tompkins pointed to the different symptoms those patients were reporting: a sore throat instead of the expected fever and loss of smell.
6. How to spot video and photo fakes as Russia invades Ukraine
A destroyed tank near the village of Malaya Rohan, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Monday, May 16, 2022. Misleading posts about the war, among other issues, have elevated global concerns about the spread of inaccurate information and rumors, especially in digital media. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, war footage blanketed the internet in a rush that at times outpaced verification as fake and out-of-context images spread misinformation.
In the leadup to the invasion, the Biden administration warned of Russian sources releasing “false flag” photos and videos to make it look like Ukraine was the aggressor of an unprovoked attack.
To spread caution about sharing invasion information without checking it out, this newsletter from Poynter senior faculty Al Tompkins, written on Feb. 24, leads readers through tips on understanding a file’s metadata and how it can be manipulated,.
5. What is an oligarch?
The yacht Amore Vero is docked in the Mediterranean resort of La Ciotat, Thursday March 3, 2022. French authorities have seized the yacht linked to Igor Sechin, a Putin ally who runs Russian oil giant Rosneft, as part of EU sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The boat arrived in La Ciotat on Jan. 3 for repairs and was slated to stay until April 1 and was seized to prevent this attempted departure. (AP. Photo/Bishr Eltoni)
In 2022, a lot of Americans had to Google the word “oligarch.”
Some of them came across this March 4 article from Poynter senior faculty Al Tompkins, who had the same question while trying to better understand the term and its usage in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The implication is if you are rich and Russian, you are corrupt and are enmeshed in the invasion of Ukraine,” Tompkins writes. “But let’s press further on how oligarchs play into Russian politics and Ukraine.”
4. Businesses and 80 million workers await a Supreme Court decision on the COVID-19 vaccination/testing mandate
The Supreme Court is seen as sundown in Washington, Friday afternoon, Nov. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
This Jan. 10 newsletter from senior faculty Al Tompkins was a deep dive into the then-pending Supreme Court decision on whether to block the Biden administration’s workplace COVID-19 policy giving Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) the authority to mandate vaccines and testing in workplaces.
3. Should you trust media bias charts?
(Courtesy: Ad Fontes)
Can you trust what you’re reading to tell you if you can trust what you’re reading? Confusing, I know, but the discussion over whether media bias charts are biased can get a bit meta.
This piece from former MediaWise reporter Jake Sheridan interviewing the people behind two popular media bias charts about their methodology and reasoning, and some ethics experts weighing in on their usefulness, was popular throughout 2022. Three cheers for media literacy.
2. The work-from-home backlash grows
Dallas Morning News intern Natalie Walters works from her hometown of Augusta, Georgia, more than 900 miles away from the city she covered during the internship. (Courtesy: Dr. Alan Walters)
The ebbs and flows of COVID-19 infection rates throughout the year caused waxing and waning in-office attendance at work, with employees enjoying hybrid and remote opportunities and management still paying the commercial lease — and wanting to bring people back.
This Al Tompkins newsletter turns to studies that have begun to try and quantify the effect of work from home on businesses, with one 2021 University of Chicago study saying that employees worked more hours, but their productivity declined.
For context: before the pandemic, about 5% of American employees worked from home. During the pandemic, the number rose to a third of the workforce.
1. The House approved it, so when will the U.S. legalize marijuana?
A demonstrator waves a flag with marijuana leaves depicted on it during a protest calling for the legalization of marijuana, outside of the White House on April 2, 2016, in Washington. President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, as his administration takes a dramatic step toward decriminalizing the drug and addressing charging practices that disproportionately impact people of color. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
After the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would decriminalize marijuana, a lot of people had the same question as this April headline from an Al Tompkins newsletter: When will the U.S. legalize weed?
It’s more complicated than a snap of the fingers, it turns out. When the House voted to decriminalize weed in 2020, the Senate didn’t even consider it. The newer bill is now still in committee, marijuana is still illegal in the United States, and people are still Googling and finding this article.
