Good morning. Here are 10 media stories.
- ‘Defensive,’ ‘poker-faced,’ ‘anodyne’
Those are all words used by the press to describe Hillary Clinton’s performance after the former Secretary of State sat down with CNN’s Brianna Keilar Tuesday for Clinton’s first nationally televised interview since announcing her candidacy earlier this year. “She may be the frontrunner in the presidential race, but Clinton still comes across as guarded, quibbling, and poker-faced under the TV lights.” (The Daily Beast) | “Clinton’s first such performance, though, makes clear that there are no guarantees that such access will come with actual answers.” (Slate) | “The first national interview of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign did not go well.” (Politico) | Here’s a recap. (CNN)
- NYT shakes up video unit
The New York Times finalized some big changes to its video operation Tuesday when the newspaper told staff that managing editor for video Bruce Headlam and general manager of video Rebecca Howard were leaving. Headlam is taking another “senior role” in the newsroom. (Capital New York) | Howard is leaving The Times entirely. Masthead editor Steve Duenes will oversee the department, per a staff memo from Executive Editor Dean Baquet. (Capital New York) | “The video department at The Times has grown significantly in recent years, the company said, and now comprises about 75 people across the newsroom and business sides.” (The New York Times) | Elsewhere at The Times: “New York Times to set up London team focusing on native ads” (The Guardian)
- New York Daily News doesn’t mince words
The headline of a scathing editorial condemning comedian Bill Cosby in light of his admittance of purchasing Quaaludes to use on women he wanted to have sex with: “Bill Cosby, dead to us.” “While the statute of limitations on criminal prosecutions may have expired, his disgrace will live forever. Just imagine the first sentence of his obituary.” (New York Daily News)
- Why can’t we agree on metrics?
Over at FiveThirtyEight, Sam Dean has a takeout examining the difference between internal and external traffic numbers and explaining why there isn’t universal accord about who is reading what. It has to do with Web cookies, small files that function like online memory. “Those huge, parenthetical, internal traffic numbers are the raw cookie counts — the number of humans who visited a site, multiplied by all the browsers, machines and accidental deletions.” (FiveThirtyEight)
- Journalism and mental illness
Jeff Bercovici, San Francisco bureau chief of Inc., advises reporters to be more conscious of mental illnesses that might manifest themselves quietly among sources. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur that Bercovici mocked was bipolar and killed himself in May. “Silence kills, but saying that to a person with mental illness is a form of victim blaming or passing the buck. It’s not their responsibility to talk about it until the rest of us understand. It’s ours.” (Inc.) | Poynter has resources for covering mental illness. (Poynter)
- NYT reporter turns down hit of LSD
Hunter S. Thompson would be so disappointed. While covering the final (?) Grateful Dead concert featuring the surviving members of the original band, reporter Joe Coscarelli opted not to indulge in a hit of LSD from a fan’s Visine bottle. “I passed, even though he insisted it would make my writing better.” In all seriousness, his preparation for the show is to be admired: “To minimize my sense of being an impostor, I spent the weeks before the show ears-deep in Grateful Dead history and ephemera.” (The New York Times)
- Longshot candidates deserve ink, too
Even amid a crowded field, the press has an obligation to cover every presidential aspirant, Politico’s Jack Shafer wrote Tuesday. “Perhaps not every minute of every day of every campaign swing. Not every coffee with supporters and every speech. Not every campaign paper and definitely not every handshake outside the factory entrance. But, yes, if an aspirant rises to the level of a candidate—by poll placement or the balance in his campaign checkbook—the press must take note.” (Politico Magazine) | Also on Tuesday, a New York Times reporter wrote about covering longshot Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. (The New York Times) | Meanwhile, in frontrunner land, the Clinton beat remains a hard slog. (Huffington Post)
- How it’s made: Cancer interactive
Yue Qiu, a news app developer at the Center for Public Integrity, offered a look behind the scenes of an interactive visualization explaining how American workers are exposed to carcinogenic chemicals. (Center for Public Integrity)
- Front page of the day, selected by Kristen Hare
On Wednesday, Liberation in France led with the Greek debt crisis. (Courtesy The Newseum)
- Job moves:
Lee Hill is now managing editor for Digital at WNYC. He is an alum of NPR News. (Email) | Dave Weigel will be a national political reporter at The Washington Post. He is a reporter at Bloomberg Politics. (Washington Post) | Christina Bellantoni will be assistant managing editor for politics at the Los Angeles Times. She is editor-in-chief of Roll Call. Job of the day: Storyful is looking for a trends journalist. Get your résumés in! (Mediagazer) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
Corrections? Tips? Please email me: bmullin@poynter.org. Would you like to get this roundup emailed to you every morning? Sign up here.
