The process of transformation continues in newsrooms across the planet. I remind my Columbia University journalism students that when they first enter the job market in 2023, they’ll likely work for a boss who may still not be totally comfortable functioning in a multiplatform media world. While a majority of those in the audience continue to consume news and information on mobile devices, much content is still conceptualized and prepared for consumption on larger, more horizontal platforms — either the larger screen of a desktop or laptop computer or, in some cases (although thankfully fewer these days!), for print.

I’m an organizer with Empowerment Avenue, a program started at San Quentin State Prison to help incarcerated writers and journalists (who don’t have access to internet or email) get their work outside prison walls, get published, and paid for it. We began in 2020, seeing what would happen if we paired editors and writers on the outside with incarcerated writers, to help them build their writing careers. 2022 marked exciting new territory for the program: We began supporting incarcerated writers pursue investigative reporting from inside prison.

As you might imagine, this isn’t easy work — incarcerated writers don’t have access to many research tools or materials and they’re investigating a system designed to hide its oppressions from the outside world. Incarcerated journalists take tremendous risk to do this work.

USA TODAY’s weekly chart of top-selling books is on indefinite hiatus after the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett, laid off the editor in charge of compiling the list that’s closely followed in the publishing industry.

“USA TODAY’s Books list will be on hiatus for the remainder of the year,” a spokesperson told The Associated Press on Monday. “We will share further updates in 2023.”

In an increasingly complex media landscape, communicators hoping to place pitches must stay keenly aware of new trends on the horizon including how audiences are consuming information differently through new mediums and membership models. At Monday’s PR Daily’s Media Relations Awards, former Hearst publisher Michael Clinton spoke to nearly 100 communications pros from all parts of the industry about what he sees on the horizon in the media world and lessons that can be learned from them. Clinton’s years of valuable experience provided an expert lens on a seemingly fragmented future of media.

The release of American basketball star Brittney Griner from a Russian penal colony after over nine months of wrongful detention Thursday came as an immeasurable relief for her family and country. It also brought renewed concern about the apparently more difficult case of Paul Whelan, a former Marine held hostage in Russia for nearly four years and ultimately excluded from the prisoner swap that freed Griner.

The Biden administration’s success in releasing Griner also provides occasion to hope for and urge progress on liberating another former Marine held overseas for years — several more years than Whelan, unfortunately. Austin Tice was a 31-year-old veteran turned journalist covering the devastating Syrian civil war for McClatchy and others when he was abducted near Damascus in 2012. Last summer, his family and friends marked 10 years since his disappearance, which, of scores of Americans wrongly detained abroad, would make him the longest-suffering.

Tice’s family hailed Griner’s release Thursday while doubting whether administration officials had uniformly followed President Joe Biden’s directive to engage with Syrian officials. “If the U.S. government can work with Russia,” a family statement said, “there is no excuse for not directly engaging Syria.”