The strains of AC/DC blasted, but the lyrics were about gerrymandering. In another episode, the music to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” rat-a-tatted, with new verses on Trump associates and indicted campaign workers.
The Vox podcast “Today, Explained,” isn’t a millennial update of “Schoolhouse Rock,” but host Sean Rameswaram and executive producer Irene Noguchi are seeking to inject something new into a suddenly profitable space that includes “The Daily” from The New York Times and NPR’s “Up First.”
“I don’t think the news needs to sound like the world is going to end in six minutes,” says Rameswaram, a former reporter for WNYC’s “Radiolab” and “Studio 360” as well as the PRI podcast “Sideshow.”
In roughly 20-minute chunks, the six-member “Explained” team attempts a journalistic high-wire act: go deep on one issue a day, explaining, entertaining and hoping to leave listeners with a lingering takeaway. They combine an emerging newsroom’s curiosity and public-radio-level audio quality, as Noguchi, a former daily show producer at KQED, helps keep the pace and topics fresh.
Vox reporters and first-person contributors aim to keep it informal, which they explain to guests.
“Then I’m taking off my pants,” one remote guest responded to Rameswaram.
Fine.
Since the show’s debut on Feb. 19, “Explained” has had indelible episodes, such as the conversation between a Parkland survivor and a Columbine survivor, or an interview with a former Border Patrol agent who grew disgusted and quit.
“At the end of the day, you realize you’re sending them back to the place they want to flee,” the former agent, Francisco Cantú, soberly concluded.
Here’s the link to download “Explained,” as well as audio from an end-credits sequence like you’ve never heard, via @today_explained.
Journalist for hire
A year ago, Rob Byers helped guide his paper to a Pulitzer Prize. Today, he is out of a job.
“I’ve been unemployed for 10 days, and this is the first time I’ve had this experience,” says the suddenly former executive editor of the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Thursday, a victim of cost-cutting by his employer.
Indeed, the journalist the HuffPost calls “the perfect watchdog for the Trump era” joined the West Virginia paper on Dec. 23, 1991, two days after his college graduation.
“I told them I would work on Christmas, I was so happy to have a job.”
Byers, the son of a coal miner from southwestern Pennsylvania, had deep ties to the state. His daughter is at West Virginia University and his son is a third-grader. He’s already fielding offers from out of state. To reporter Jason Cherkis, “no editor seemed better suited to cover the American Rust Belt under Trump.”
Here’s Cherkis’ profile of Byers — and Byers’ email address.
Now, here's what else is going on in our world.
Quick hits
THE BAD IMPULSE ON PULSE: Why did so many outlets get the coverage of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting so wrong? There was no evidence of homophobia, or Grindr membership, or that the shooter had been to the nightclub before, or that he even knew it was a gay bar. In appears he chose it randomly an hour before the shooting; prosecutors said he’d originally considered the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex, writes HuffPost’s Melissa Jeltsen.
MISSING: 400 copies of a Washington community college’s student paper after it printed a story about a sex scandal and the resignation of the school’s president. The missing copies represent about a third of the paper’s circulation. Jason Nix, faculty adviser to the Spokane Falls Community College paper, said in a campus-wide email that he was working with campus security and local law enforcement on the theft. “Censoring of student media through theft and vandalism on this campus is unethical, illegal and will not be tolerated under any circumstances.”
A NEW FACEBOOK: Author Tim Wu says we need a public service social network, non-profit or fee-supported, not reliant on massive, ad-driven user surveillance. The model was the 1950s call for a public broadcasting as an alternative to the ad-driven TV and radio networks. CJR’s Mathew Ingram writes one thing such an idea would depend upon: a way to ensure data could be shifted from Facebook to an alternative network. ProPublica’s Julia Angwin reviews four other proposals: imposing fines for data breaches, policing political advertising, installing ethics review boards, and making tech companies liable for objectionable content.
SINCLAIR STRIKES BACK: The conservative broadcast chain rescinded a $25,000 donation pledge to the National Press Photographers Association after the NPPA issued a mild criticism of Sinclair’s scripted on-air political messages from its local TV anchors. Poynter’s Al Tompkins reports on that and explains how Sinclair could have handled the situation differently.
SINCLAIR ANCHOR SPEAKS: If you want to stop this “fake news” propaganda from my Trump-friendly bosses, lobby your lawmaker to stop Sinclair’s proposed takeover of Tribune TV stations, the anchor says. Also: “The Boris Epshteyn pieces, I mean, yeah, they’re crazy. “
DAMAGE CONTROL: Sinclair execs are quietly apologizing to anchors, saying they didn’t mean for them to look like “hostages” on the widely criticized, corporate written, on-air commentaries, the Daily Beast‘s Max Tani reports.
BEFORE SINCLAIR: America had a history of broadcasting propaganda, at least before tighter World War II-era regulation, writes Michael J. Socolow for The Conversation. "In 1936, both CBS and NBC aired Nazi propaganda from the Berlin Olympic Games. They also broadcast live from the Communist Party of the United States of America nominating convention."
SUSPENDED: Twitter has suspended more than 1.2 million terrorism-related accounts since 2015, Recode reports.
FIRED: Columnist Kevin Williamson, from The Atlantic, after evidence his views about hanging women who had abortions were deeper than one ill-considered tweet. The Huffington Post headline: “Atlantic Fires Kevin Williamson After Suddenly Realizing He Believes The Things He Says.” (Hat-tip: Mona Eltahawy)
PROMOTED: Two new senior NPR digital positions have been created, with Kerry Lenahan becoming NPR's first VP/Product and Joel Sucherman promoted to VP/New Platform Partnerships. Before joining NPR, Lenahan was a digital expert with the U.S. Digital Service in the White House and an executive at Living Social. Sucherman has been a prime mover of NPR's digital strategy for almost a decade, and before that was a digital executive at USA Today.
ACCOUNTABILITY: “We will continue to challenge elected officials, business people and civic leaders to raise the bar for Dallas,” new Dallas Morning News publisher Grant Moise told readers Wednesday. He asked readers to hold his news outlet responsible as well.
FOLLOW-UP: People in five states have asked to take in a Long Island teen-ager featured in a ProPublica story about him, his flight from the MS-13 gang and his fight against deportation. After a four-hour hearing Thursday, a judge postponed a ruling on his deportation until May 22.
What we’re reading
PRUITT COUNTDOWN: In ethical hot water for having his housing subsidized by an energy lobbyist, EPA head Scott Pruitt came under more scrutiny Thursday with reports that five EPA officials were sidelined after raising concerns about his management and spending. For those who want this in limerick form:
There was an old fellow named Pruitt
Whose EPA goal was to screw it.
He quickly demoted
Officials who noted
The ways he attempted to do it.— Limericking (@Limericking) April 5, 2018
3 GOP REPS URGE PRUITT TO RESIGN: Elise Stefanik of New York on Thursday joined Florida representatives Carlos Curbelo and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in calling upon Pruitt to exit the EPA over multiple ethics scandals.
TRUST: People don’t have enough of it in journalism. That’s a problem that many similarly named organizations want to solve. Nieman Lab’s Christine Schmidt lists and defines seven of those groups.
DO YOU LEAN AUTHORITARIAN?: Thomas B. Edsall presents four questions. The answers go a long way toward explaining today’s political divide, he writes.
WAR ON DRUGS: Here’s how police fought it in one small New York town — they stopped “policing.” They started getting addicts in Chatham, N.Y., the medical assistance needed to detox and enrolled them in rehab, City Lab reports. “I just thought I couldn’t ever talk to a cop about what I’m going through, because they’re not going to understand,” says Riley Hoops, 20, who sought help at the police station after heroin addiction. “But they got me into a rehab instead of sending me to jail.”
THAT’S 309 CANDIDATES: Already there's a record number of women running for the U.S. House this year — and filing deadlines haven't ended in half the states. By Kara Voght.
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CORRECTION: Reade Brower is the Maine publisher. In Thursday’s newsletter, we misspelled his first name.
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