Meeting #1: The Final Countdown
Hello hello!
Thanks for signing up for this reading experiment. It’s great to have you here.
What we’re reading📚
For our July book club, we’ve chosen News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media by Joseph Torres and Juan González. It’s not too late to start reading!
When we’re meeting🤳🏽
We’re going to be meeting at 4 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 19.
To reduce the risk of Zoom bombing, I will be sending the meeting login privately to each subscriber. If you don’t see it in your inbox by EOD, let me know!
And, of course, co-author Juan González will be joining us. To submit your questions for him, fill out this Google Form as many times as you need.
Extracurricular reads🤓
If you’re seeking more info about the authors, the book, or its contents, look no further. . .
Juan González is the co-founder of Democracy Now! and a professor of journalism at Rutgers University. Columbia Magazine profiled him in 2013, back when he was still a columnist at the New York Daily News. (If you only click one link, make sure it’s this one!)
Joseph Torres is the senior external affairs director for Free Press, an advocacy group working for net neutrality, internet access for all, press freedom, and journalistic diversity.
For more on González’s activism in the ‘60s and ‘70s, I’d recommend this primer on the Columbia student strike and this Democracy Now! episode on The Young Lords, the Puerto Rican direct-action group González co-founded.
González and Torres did a Q&A with the Columbia Journalism Review when their book was released in 2011. They also appeared on NPR on a segment with the inauspicious web title, “Racist History of American News Media?” (Um, yeah.)
If you’re enjoying the book club selection, González is also the author of Roll Down Your Window: Stories from a Forgotten America and Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse (the story behind this one is crazy!) and Reclaiming Gotham: Bill de Blasio and the Future of Urban America and Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America. That last one—his most famous—“spans five centuries-from the first New World colonies to the first decade of the new millennium” and is required reading at hundreds of colleges across the country.
News You Can Use🗞
Wesley Lowery recently expounded on his thoughts about the future of journalism in an NYT Opinion piece, “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists.”
In response, Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute wrote a mind-bending thread about what journalistic “objectivity” really means, how so much reporting came to be “factually accurate but substantially untrue,” and why he believes “subjectivity” is not the solution.
Also addressing Wesley’s work? Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, who was on the Longform Podcast in an epic 90-minute episode.
Prachi Gupta, who recently tweeted about her dehumanizing experiences at Cosmo, wrote about “performing gratitude” in newsrooms.
If that WaPo story about blackface struck you as odd, well, even people inside the newsroom agree with you, according to New York Mag’s reporting on what happened behind the scenes.
Speaking of: This week, Ben Smith’s NYT media column focused on the legacy of Marty Baron. Made me want to rewatch Spotlight.
Bill Simmons isn’t interested in your criticisms! One choice quote: On the lack of diversity in Ringer podcasts, he said, “It’s a business. This isn’t Open Mic Night.” Oof.
Nicole Taylor wrote about how nondisclosure agreements—a common feature of media severance agreements—can stop healing for journalists of color.
I needed this 🥺“Where Did My Ambition Go?” Maris Kreizman wrote, about how her personal “path forward is less clear than ever. At the same time, my ambition for my community and the wider world has gotten bigger and broader.”
Delivery notice 📬I recently subscribed to my local Black-owned newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News, and just got my first issue. You can find your nearest outlet here and subscribe!
Event alert 🚨Margaret Sullivan will be discussing her new book, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy, with Dan Rather on July 13. The free, public virtual event is hosted by the Columbia Journalism Review. I’ll be attending!
Get in touch✍🏽
Questions, comments, concerns, reading recommendations—I’ll take it all! You can reach me at elliepses@gmail.com or on Twitter @elliepses (DMs are open).
And, as always, the full History of Journalism reading List is available here.
Thanks to Adam Avenir for suggesting Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society by Victor Pickard (now on the reading list!) and to Rachael Lallensack for prompting me to subscribe to my local Black-owned paper.