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Background:

This past week immigration coverage exploded, with the best in the field producing extraordinary stories and new people covering the topic for the first time in innovative ways. Since it is really hard to keep up, as two experienced immigration reporters*, we decided to try and highlight some of the compelling immigration stories and emerging reporting techniques. 

News Diet Takeaway: Really helpful resource. There’s really nothing like curation by experts. But, even so, it’s a lot to consume. Writing a newsletter that actually tells you what’s in the curated sources, rather than pointing you to them, would be more non-expert-consumer friendly, I think.

Community Takeaway: If you invited everyone mentioned in this first issue to dinner, you’re in good company and could probably start a news organization very easily.

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This is such a great thought exercise to apply to news reading exercises.

“HYPOTHETICAL DINNER PARTIES” is a blog which will propose imaginary scenarios of intriguing people interacting. Each post will consist of a list of guests. The guests will be selected by their role and coverage in the media.

“HYPOTHETICAL DINNER PARTIES” allows readers to envision encounters of extraordinary individuals as they break bread together. My dream is to one day make a hypothetical dinner party a reality.

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Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, spoke to 100 Trump supporters from around the country, after the election. Some online, some offline, and many under the condition of anonymity. These are the questions he asked and some of my favorite, thought-provoking answers. 

What do you like about Trump?

“I’m willing to postpone some further social justice progress, which doesn’t really result in loss of life, in favor of less foreign policy involvement, the opposite of which does.“

“Brown people are always the out-crowd. I think subconsciously, part of the reason I supported him was a way to be in the in-crowd for once.”

What are you nervous about with Trump as president?

“I hate that he discredits the press all the time. That seems to forebode great evil.”

“I worry he will drive us apart as a nation. I believed him when he said that would stop with the campaign, but I haven’t seen signs of it so far.”

What do you think about the left’s response so far?

“You need to give us an opportunity to admit we may have been wrong without saying we’re bad people. I am already thinking I made a mistake, but I feel ostracized from my community.”

“The left is more intolerant than the right.” Note: This concept came up a lot, with real animosity in otherwise pleasant conversations.

What would convince you not to vote for him again?

“If he were to get the US involved in a major military conflict (I think the odds of this have actually decreased versus Hillary, but I'm willing to be proven wrong). If he were to substantially increase the cost of doing business (by increasing regulation or taxes for instance).”

“Another worry is an escalation of overreaches between him and the left that culminates in the breakdown of our system of law.  I'd hold him responsible for that.”

Community Takeaway: It’s fascinating how such a cohesive community can form out of such disparate, nuanced experiences.

News Diet Takeaway: A good example of how fragmented opinions can tell you more than a narrative.

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Problem that the PR industry is now deciding to solve:

Research firm Gallup tells us two out of every three U.S. adults don’t believe the news and that trust in mass media has sunk to an all-time low. Our new leader, President Trump, says reporters are among "the most dishonest people in the world." And The Donald has also taken to calling respected broadcasters "enemies of the American people."

Alan Murray, chief content officer at Time and EIC of Fortune magazine, in his remarks at the Larry Foster Awards for Integrity in Public Relations:

"We in public relations may have other ways to reach stakeholders, but if the credibility of media is undermined, we all lose" and "truth is no longer determined by conformity to proven facts but by how well it meshes with pre-existing feelings." 

He went on to say: "The public relations industry can’t stand by and hope this situation will change. Media literacy may be the social issue of our time. Addressing it is in our own interest."

Steve Barrett, editorial director of PRWeek and author of this article:

I am open to suggestions of all types and look forward to continuing the conversation with a view to providing just some of that convening and leadership. Please let me know what you think in the comments below or by emailing me.

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Takeaways from the transformation of Teen Vogue:

Break norms:

Launched in 2004 as a little sister to US Vogue, Teen Vogue used to focus on the standard cocktail of fashion must-haves and celebrity worship. (A classic coverline from a 2005 edition was How To Get Perfect Party Hair.) But beginning with the August 2015 issue, the team, including then beauty editor Welteroth, engineered a shift. That issue featured three unknown black models on the cover, seemingly breaking all the rules (that you should have a famous person; and that having no Caucasian faces on the cover is a commercial risk).

Be real:

What issues are most important to their young readers? “Identity is big. We want to help make them feel better about themselves, whether that’s giving beauty tips, or empowering them with political information to have smarter conversations and feel they can stand up for themselves.” Career advice “is an evergreen topic”; above all, “young people are craving something real, craving authenticity”.

Educate:

Meanwhile, her ambition for Teen Vogue is “to highlight underrepresented voices and role models, and to create a magazine that didn’t exist for me growing up. I mean,” she leans across her desk, “when I was 14, I did not know what intersectional feminism was.”

Be unafraid of activism if activism means education:

“But we would do it anyway,” Welteroth says when I point out how it must help that opinionated political reporting also turns out to be lucrative. Does she consider herself an activist as much as an editor? She flicks through the magazines in front of her to find a quote from the December issue. “I learn a lot from the girls we feature, and [star of Disney show Girl Meets World] Rowan Blanchard wrote how ‘Activism is a need to know, a need to explain, and a need to help.’ So, by this definition, I am an activist. And I think the readers that we reach would all consider themselves activists, too.”

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Incredibly large and active online forum:

“Hacker News has 3.4 million users per month and 350,000 users per day, with 4 million pageviews a day. There are just under 1 million registered accounts, with several hundred added each day. Users post around 1,000 articles and 6,000 comments to the site per day.“

A take on how it happened (or was happening in 2013), from TechCrunch.

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Very long but thorough report on human rights around the world.

Key point: How rhetoric encourages abuse. Vice summarizes:

Amnesty International is not alone in highlighting what it sees as a worrying trend in the rise of populism. Last month, in its World Report 2017, Human Rights Watch said: “The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world.”

Trump is far from the only world leader highlighted by Amnesty for undermining human rights in the last 12 months and “wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people.”

Others criticized by Amnesty included:

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte — State-sanctioned violence and mass killings by vigilantes claimed more than 6,000 lives following repeated public exhortations by the president for those allegedly involved in drug-related crimes to be killed.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan — A crackdown on dissenting voices during a state of emergency which followed a failed coup attempt saw more than 90,000 public sector employees fired, 118 journalists detained, and 184 media outlets arbitrarily and permanently closed down.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — a change to the constitution allowed the government to declare a state of emergency under broad and vaguely worded conditions, with little democratic oversight. This led to a systematic crackdown on the rights of refugees and immigrants.

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Because of Trump, we are finally focusing on student news consumers.