Welcome to the inaugural (re)launch edition of the Minnesota Journalism Center newsletter, which we’re sending you one time only because we’ve had contact with you in the past. This will be a monthly update of what we’re doing at the MJC, a research and education center for local news within the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. More importantly, our goal is to make this newsletter a go-to resource for journalists (and anyone interested in the future of local news) across Minnesota. If you’d like to opt-in to hear from us once a month, you can sign up here.

On Friday we relaunched the MJC with an event highlighting director Benjamin Toff’s new research: Minnesota's Local News Ecosystem Report 2024, the most comprehensive effort to date to assess the state of local news in Minnesota. The project seeks to monitor the health of Minnesota’s news organizations, track where outlets are closing and starting, and more generally understand the changing supply of local news and information statewide. The event featured a conversation about the health of Minnesota’s local news ecosystem with John Gaddo from the Root River Current, Marshall Helmberger from the Timberjay, Jackie Renzetti from Documenters, Kirk Varner from KSTP, and Heidi Holtan from KAXE as moderator. Watch it here.

With the Minnesota Journalism Center’s reorganization, our goal is to support a more vibrant, equitable, and sustainable ecosystem for journalism in Minnesota through educational initiatives (led by Gayle Golden - G.G.), applied research (led by Ben Toff) and engagement with newsrooms and journalists across the state (led by me, Regina McCombs). Meg Martin has also been working on a special project, conducting listening sessions and interviews with journalists and publishers statewide to help us understand how we can best serve the state’s journalism. The project will continue at least through October. Reach out if you want to talk.

While many of you may know one or more of us, we hope to get to know even more of you as we go along.

We’re working on ways to bring people together that we’ll be talking about soon. We’re focused on how we can support the work you’re doing.

Thanks for reading – and stay in touch.

Regina, G.G., Ben and Meg

For Journalists

Here are an assortment of ideas, events, training opportunities and more that we hope are useful to anyone working in Minnesota journalism. To help you keep track, we’ve launched a page with a calendar of journalism training events and other resources. Check it out!

Disinformation training

Our first official (and free) training is coming up on Monday, Oct. 7, 1-2:30 pm. Explore ways to fight back against disinformation during elections in this hands-on workshop with Mike Reilley, founder of Journalist’s Toolbox. We’ll use tools such as Google Fact-Check Explorer, reverse image search and others to check election claims, break down doctored video and audio, and look at the innovative Rolliapp to track disinformation spreaders. Bring a laptop! You can attend either in person at Murphy Hall, or virtually via Zoom. There is no cost, but please pre-register to get the code for links you will need to set up ahead of time.

Election Resources

An interesting edition of the American Press Institute newsletter offers help on reporting on election polls (so very many election polls), in collaboration with the Associated Press. The Journalist’s Resource has five tips to help journalists spot problems in polls. 

These tips from the Management Center might be helpful: 5 Things Managers Can Do to Get Election-Ready. They’re not specific to journalism organizations, but still seem relevant.

More election resources: AAJA has a page of safety resources for journalists, plus links to voting information in many languages. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has an extensive legal guide, with a section specific to Minnesota. Better News has a piece on how one small news organization used Reddit for election reporting, and another on how to use events to “supercharge” your election reporting. Hearken has an extensive list of resources around the elections for news organizations of all sizes, including engagement and trust-building best practices. Also from API, Plan your day-of and post-election coverage with these resources.  

And ICYMI, the NYT had a story on how long it may take to get election results, and how large news organizations are prepping for election night coverage.

Flu Webinar

Beyond elections, Poynter is offering a free webinar this Thursday, Oct. 3, with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta talking about COVID conspiracies, flu facts and respiratory realness: The journalists’ guide to debunking health misinformation that seems timely for reporters covering fall flu season. 

ONA (and Tech) Highlights

I just spent part of a week at the Online News Association conference, and came away with some ideas that may be useful for Minnesota journalists (if you want more from the conference, here are the Nieman Lab team’s ONA take-aways).

For newsrooms that desperately need a staff photographer, Catchlight and Report for America are teaming up to develop a local visual journalism corp, and to provide photo editing support. Find more details here. Deadline for news organizations to apply is Oct. 21. 

Microsoft’s Journalism Hub has a wealth of free resources, including AI tools, content provenance tools and if you’re MS365 users, lots of add-ons. They also have resources for nonprofit newsrooms, including pro bono legal services. There is free cybersecurity training for any journalist that will help you improve account and device security, make plans for hacks and doxxing, and stay safe on social media. Sign up for the 1-hour certificate program here. 

For Spanish-language outlets, Factchequeado is a non-partisan and non-profit initiative sharing fact-checking content for the Hispanic community. 

Here’s a handout from Tegna’s Verify team on Honing your Spidey-Sense for Spotting AI Images, Audio and Video. 

More AI

There was a ton of talk about it at ONA – tools for small newsrooms, issues around transparency, and building ethics policies around AI use. More details soon, but we’re sponsoring an event at the MNA Convention in January with Hacks/Hackers on lowering the barriers to using AI in local news.

Community News

It was fun to see retired Duluth News Tribune reporter John Myers receive a Citizen Recognition Award from the St. Louis County Board of Commissioners for his 38 years covering the region, including almost 10 covering the board.  

We’re looking to highlight some of the strong work being done around the state, so send us links (preferably that will get us behind any paywall) of great stories, photos, videos, projects, events or even social posts. 

A first example comes from Eric Ortiz, talking about the "Youth Community Journalism — Episode 2: 5 Years of Opioids Awareness With Conversaciones de Salud." The program was designed to raise awareness, share stories, and discuss the solutions to the opioid crisis.

If there are other training or discussion topics you’re particularly interested in, please let me know. And send us your examples we can share with others.

Regina

Hubbard student C.J. Julstrom in the Brainerd Dispatch newsroom this summer.

Editors from the Mankato Free-Press, the West Central Tribune and the Brainerd Dispatch, expressed enthusiasm about the work of Hubbard School students who participated in the 2024 Report for Minnesota summer internship experience. In a survey following the program, the editors said the engagement provided “extra boots on the ground” and a “win/win” by assisting the newsrooms during busy months and giving students real-world experience covering the critical matters their communities face, including government spending, regulations, local activities, social issues, crime, culture, jobs and economic health. “The main value,” said Brainerd Dispatch Editor Matt Erickson, “is showing student reporters there are good jobs in outstate Minnesota and the reporting we do is no less interesting, exciting or vital than in a metro area.” 

If any news organization is interested in hosting a student for summer 2025, please contact Gayle (G.G.) Golden at ggolden@umn.edu.

Ongoing Research

The MJC research team is working on extensions of the ecosystem mapping research, examining the content of local news to better understand what topics and what communities are and are not being covered. The team is also planning to look at the employment landscape to understand the link between journalism jobs and the quality of local coverage. They are studying how young adults think about news delivered via short-form video on Instagram and TikTok, examining the impact of SMS-based initiatives for engaging with news avoiders and news skeptics, as well as partnering with the Texas Tribune to better understand the potential for news organization events to build connections with otherwise underserved audiences.

Grad student Cydney Grannan recently published a piece in Poynter summarizing some of their research on how newsrooms are approaching the challenge of tracking the diversity of their sources. Cydney and Ben spoke with the staff of the American Press Institute about this project on October 1. 

Ben has been working closely with the nonprofit Trusting News focusing on helping newsrooms think through how to disclose their use of AI and understanding audience expectations. We’ll be sharing more of this research as it develops.

Stay in touch!