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August 14, 2020
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As racism and the treatment of people of color in and out of newsrooms has surged to the forefront of conversations, against the backdrop of a pandemic that disproportionately impacts people of color, journalists face many questions: When do ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ mask inequity? How do journalists move from covering protests to systemically telling stories that root out racist treatment in health care, education and other social spheres? And how can journalists practice antiracism in their everyday work?

Join us as Leah Donnella of NPR’s Code Switch, Cassie Haynes of Resolve Philly and Robert Samuels of The Washington Post discuss “What would antiracist journalism look like?”

Registration is open for this program, which will take place on Friday, Aug. 21, 2020.
Seeing your work in print never gets old. Spokesman-Review designer Charles Apple is experiencing that thrill several editions over. 

For four months, he’s shared his full-page Further Review designs at no cost to any news organization that asks. In all, about 30 have published them, including Apple’s hometown paper.  

“It was a matter of ‘pass it forward,’” Apple said. “The hope is that papers will find readers love these pages.”

And they have: Pop culture and historic event pages are particularly popular. 

We reached out to Apple for an update on his project, which we originally covered in March

How do you select what topics you'll research and design in this format? 

Apple: Some are based on the news or on news topics that are percolating beneath page one. One of my specialties is politics, so I’ve done a number of pages on elections, polls, historical control of Congress and so on.

And I have a huge interest in history. So I love finding historical anniversaries and then telling readers the story behind the story. Or putting events into perspective with numbers or a timeline. 

I’ve been getting the most feedback, however, on Further Review pages that I’ll call “pop culture” — basically “features” topics. Just last week, for example, all four of my pages were “pop culture” pages: The 60th anniversary of the release of Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham,” the first appearance of Betty Boop 90 years ago, Vampire movies (which tied into the release of the new Stephanie Meyer book) and a look at the highest-charting novelty songs. 

Of course, the visual angle is important. I try to aim for topics that have a visual “hook” of some sort: Some numbers I can build around, or a timeline or a list. Or a big photo that can run down the side of my page. For that “Green Eggs and Ham” page, I took the list of the 50 words Theodor Geisel used and built a giant chart, running down the side of the page that showed how often he used each one. I made that bar chart green and then used the orange book cover. That gave me a striking look for that page.


View and request the pages Apple has made available at no cost to news organizations. 
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This newsletter is written & edited by the National Press Club Journalism Institute staff: Beth Francesco, Holly Butcher Grant, and Julie Moos. Send us your questions and suggestions for topics to cover.

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