Treasures from NYT photo archive; one small California paper's fire coverage; the royal link to Khashoggi's killing
How does a newsroom make sense of a treasure trove of photographs? Folders with labels like "Night Workers," images marked up with red pencil for publication. History amid the quotidian; the beauty of images featured exactly once in their lifetime in The New York Times — or outtakes that were never used.
When The New York Times worked with Google Cloud to digitize its photo archive, the paper decided to create "Past Tense," a twice-weekly feature highlighting its findings. Past Tense has a top editor, a second editor, two photo editors and a researcher and writer, said NYT assistant managing editor Monica Drake. A second team does the scanning.
The team's first all-out effort appeared this weekend, a stunning look at the way The Times covered California over the past century. It featured an introduction by novelist Walter Mosley, who recounted that California was an escape from Jim Crow. "Any able-bodied woman or man was welcome to work a job, or two or three. You could buy property, send your kids to school and go out for a drive to nowhere at all, do anything — as long as you stayed within certain parameters, like Watts or the Barrio," wrote Mosley, the creator of LA mysteries featuring the African-American detective Easy Rawlins.
Why feature California, currently struggling with two enormous wildfires and the aftermath of a mass shooting?
The Times, Drake said, had "really embraced it as a place of exploration … California is the place where the topography and the landscape have dramatically changed.’’
It was Ronald Reagan and Cesar Chavez and Angela Davis and Steve Jobs, all included in the story. It was the place that took the Giants and Dodgers from New York and Brooklyn nearly six decades ago, and eclipsed the Big Apple in popular entertainment and in technological innovation. Mosley's mom came from the Bronx, and he wrote that the new place pulsated with "hard jazz on Central Avenue and black women so beautiful that Hollywood had to feel the shame of its ways." Accompanying that Mosley line was an image of actress Dorothy Dandridge, part of a major feature on the actress in 1954 for "Carmen Jones."
Sometimes, as in that half-page photograph and major feature on Dandridge, the NYT got it right, Drake said. In other archived photos, the tone was off, such as in "jokey" pictures of babies and pets. Many times, the paper simply declined to publish images, such as a casual shot of a black singer and the New York mayor. (The omitted photos during the civil rights era became a Black History Month feature in 2016. That project was an inspiration for the broader unearthing of the photo archives, Drake said.)
The Times is including the metadata, typed or handwritten captions or general information found with the photographs. Future features will include personalities reacting to a set of photographs, Drake said, crediting Veronica Chambers, editorial lead for archival storytelling, with driving much of the content.
At times, The Times found itself, perhaps by accident, witnessing history just by being there — or by being given photographs of that moment, Drake said. Maybe publishing that history will help readers better understand the present.
Quick hits
A ROLLERCOASTER: The editor of northern California's Chico Enterprise-Record spent much of the weekend worrying not just about the state's deadliest fire, which had destroyed thousands of homes in his coverage area, but about the whereabouts of three of his employees. By late Sunday, David Little had tracked them down, but he's kept the focus on helping others on his website. Front and center are three numbers to report missing people. Late Monday, breaking news included reports of a utility's transmission tower problem at the source of the Camp Fire, before it started. The Camp Fire has been blamed for the deaths of 42 people so far. The state has launched investigations into California's two largest utilities. Here's how several other newsrooms are covering California's gigantic blazes.
BE RIGHT FIRST: Margaret Sullivan urges journalists to slow the hell down on election judgments, following last week's egregious misfires that ignored late votes. In the latest example, the Arizona Senate race, mistakenly projected a week ago by many outlets as a GOP victory, was declared late Monday for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
'THE DEED WAS DONE': A monitored phone call has tied a Saudi kill team to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the assassination and decapitation of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, The New York Times reports.
FLORIDA REALIGNMENT: Tribune’s two big properties in Florida will share an editor and focus regional reporting on politics, environment/weather and public health. The Orlando Sentinel replaced its editor and publisher, Avido Khahaifa, with a separate editor and publisher, both assuming new duties while running South Florida’s Sun Sentinel, three hours south on Florida’s Turnpike. Here’s my separate story on this.
GONE: The Los Angeles Times' recently appointed transformation editor, as of Thursday. A statement Monday by spokeswoman Hillary Manning said simply: "Kris Viesselman is no longer with The Times. We thank Kris for her service and wish her well in her future endeavors." Viesselman arrived over the summer from CQ and RollCall, where she was senior vice president and editor-in-chief. Her duties, which included transformation, creative, data reporting and digital efforts, will be divided among several senior editors, including recently arrived deputy managing editor Sewell Chan. Previously she was managing editor and VP/product at The San Diego Union-Tribune during the rocky ownership of Doug Manchester.
PODCAST TO STREAMING?: The New Yorker examines the rise of podcasts and the next phase for a medium in the middle of a boom. Talent agencies already are seeking to exploit the powerful themes and the episodic storytelling of a podcast for streaming or a TV series such as Bravo’s retelling of the Dirty John podcast. An issue Rebecca Mead raises: Will “truth” be sublimated for episodic story arcs?
PAYWALL MANIA: New York Magazine is the latest company to announce a paywall, $5 a month, leading to the question: How many sites will a person pay for? And does that total include monthly media billings for WiFi, cell service, Spotify, and video streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon? And what about "cause-based" media nonprofits?
R.I.P. NIKKI DELAMOTTE: The Cleveland.com culture reporter was found shot to death, a suspected homicide, in her uncle's trailer in western Ohio. Her uncle's body also was found there. Delamotte, 30, brought a kindness to her feature stories, her editors said. “She had strong positions and backed down from no one, but she did so with gentleness and, always, respect," Cleveland.com editor Chris Quinn said. "She was such a bright light, and Cleveland has a dimmer future for her loss.” Pulitzer-winning columnist Connie Schultz said Delamotte loved her job and shared a few of the writer's favorite stories. "There was no one like Nikki Delamotte — as a journalist who loved the people of this city, and as a spirit who walked among us," Schultz wrote.
MOVES: Anne Kornblut, formerly of The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, has been named to the new position of Director of News, New Initiatives at Facebook. Kornblut had most recently served as director of strategic communications. … Jenn Abelson is leaving the Globe’s Spotlight team to join The Washington Post’s investigative unit … New York magazine’s David Marchese, who has built a reputation for incisive interviews with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Quincy Jones, is joining The New York Times Magazine in December as the new Talk columnist.
BLUE TEXAS?: If Latino voters keep up their level of participation, political experts say that 2020 might see a wholesale political shift in the Lone Star state, write Dianne Solis and Obed Manuel for the Dallas Morning News. (Here’s a Poynter profile of Manuel from August).
JONESTOWN ANNIVERSARY: “Within seconds he was dead with a final shot to the head. And the film in his camera, shakily show(ed) the attack that ended his life and those of four others, including the first U.S. congressman ever to be killed in the line of duty." The San Francisco Chronicle, amid one current tragedy, remembers, 40 years ago, the mass killing of followers of a Bay Area-based cult in their “utopia” in the South American nation of Guyana. By Kevin Fagan.
On Poynter.org
-
Scant fact-checking by local news outlets during the midterms, Poynter's Daniel Funke reports.
-
WhatsApp awards $1 million for misinformation research. By Daniel Funke.
Want to get this briefing in your inbox every weekday morning? Sign up here.
Got a tip or a link? Please email me at dbeard@poynter.org or reach me @dabeard.
Have a good Tuesday. See you tomorrow.
