Inside The Newsroom with Daniel Levitt

Hello folks, welcome to the relaunch of the Inside The Newsroom podcast! It’s been a while since I got the microphone out, but I’m back and will be podcasting with a top journalist at least monthly from now on. What better way to get back on the horse than have Glenn Greenwald on the airwaves, who the New Statesman recently described as among the greatest journalists of all time. We talked about what it’s like being Glenn, the mental toll of having the U.S. and Brazilian governments after you, the corporatization of journalism, where to start when writing a New York Times bestseller, and Glenn’s best advice for today’s journalists.Say what you like about Glenn, but it’s hard to match his achievements. He believes what he believes, and will quite literally risk his life to defend his position.“You go into journalism in order to do stories like this. If you want to be universally beloved and applauded by people in power, journalism is not the profession to choose.”Earlier this month we celebrated the one-year anniversary of our subscription model. Read all about everything we’ve done so far, and everything we plan to build over the next 12 months. And be sure to check out my Q&A with Walt Hickey, senior data editor at Insider and founder of the Numlock News newsletter. Walt was incredibly candid about what it takes to build an audience and run a profitable business.And lastly, we relaunched Data Corner and Election Dissection last week! Read about how the top newsrooms covered the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan from a data viz angle, as well as the latest on the consequential recent elections in Morocco and Norway.Okay, let’s do this thing! Podcast is up top, and my post-game analysis and Job Corner are down below… Enjoy!Job Corner ✍️We have more than 2,500 jobs and more than 300 internships listed in 1,000+ cities across the U.S., UK and Canada. Below is a preview of the openings you’ll have access to when you subscribe. If you’re a paying member, your jobs sheet link remains the same each week. Interested in a free week’s trial? Reply to this email and we’ll hook you up!Who Is Glenn Greenwald?Glenn is a journalist, former constitutional lawyer, author of four New York Times bestsellers, and co-founder of the Hope dog rescue shelter. In 1996, Glenn co-founded his own law firm in New York City, concentrating on First Amendment and civil rights. In 2005, he became bored of being a litigator and travelled to Brazil to “figure out what I wanted to do with my life”. He immediately fell in love the country and met his now-husband: Brazilian congressman for the Socialism and Liberty party David Miranda. They currently reside in Rio de Janeiro.Around the same time, Glenn started his own blog and began writing about mass surveillance and the changes around civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2007, he was hired as a columnist by Salon, and then joined The Guardian in 2012. It was there that he, along with fellow friend of the podcast Ewen MacAskill, broke arguably the most impactful scandal of this generation: The Edward Snowden CIA leaks.From there Glenn co-founded The Intercept in 2014, but resigned in October 2020 over editorial freedom. You can read all about why Glenn did so here, as well as a rebuttal from The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed. Today Glenn writes about a myriad of topics on Substack, and is always an engaging follow on Twitter. Oh, he and David currently have 26 rescue dogs too.Securing Democracy and Car Wash ScandalGlenn’s latest book, Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Brazil, was published earlier this year. It details the events that led to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro indicting Glenn for his involvement in the Operation Car Wash scandal, arguably the biggest corruption scandal in history. The scandal saw former Brazilian president and clear favorite in the 2018 presidential election Lula da Silva imprisoned, which allowed Bolsonaro to sweep to victory.In 2019, Glenn was contacted by Manuela d’Ávila, a centre-left candidate for vice-president in the election. D’Ávila had been approached by a source who had hacked a trove of phone calls between some of Brazil’s most powerful judges and prosecutors. One of those judges oversaw the Operation Car Wash anti-corruption probe that dominated Brazilian politics for the five years prior. The impact of Glenn’s reporting was explosive.Video: Glenn Greenwald on the Leaked Brazil Archive Exposing Operation Car WashA judge ultimately dismissed the indictment against Glenn, but made clear that he would have accepted it, had it not been for an earlier Brazilian Supreme Court ruling. The ruling stated that any attempt to retaliate against Glenn for his reporting would be barred by the Brazilian constitution and the press freedom guarantee it provides.In our podcast, Glenn talked about how in 2013, Brazil’s parliament was favorable towards him after he exposed the U.S. government’s spying efforts on Brazil amid the fallout from the Snowden CIA leaks. But as Glenn’s husband poignantly pointed out, the Car Wash scandal was completely different and presented more dangers. Aside from now having a truly authoritarian president after him, this time around the folks coming after Glenn were on his doorstep. Having not one but two national governments after you is pretty terrifying, and one can only wonder about the mental toll that will have. The book is a timely reminder of the fragility of democracy.Corporatization of JournalismGlenn’s been a writer for the better part of three decades. As anyone who’s followed his work will know, he argues vehemently against the corporatization of newsrooms — the move toward an increasingly corporate ethos and structure. That’s why he co-founded The Intercept — to become an adversarial newsroom and not a subservient one — and is why he’s now completely independent on Substack. But you haven’t had to be in the game as long as Glenn to witness what he’s talking about.Large corporations have taken advantage of overall falling revenue in journalism, and have applied their ideology of cutting costs to boost profit. The Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that the total number of newspaper owners has declined by 32 percent since 2004, or at an average of 100 newspaper companies per year. More than 2,000 newspaper titles are now owned by the largest 25 companies.I have a whole newsletter worth of thoughts on this, so I’ll spin them into a separate edition in the future. As you know, I experienced this corporatization first hand through my time at the Wall Street Journal. After slaving away for years building myself a voice and trying to help the journalism community, WSJ gave me a choice: shut down Inside The Newsroom or leave.As Glenn put it, journalism isn’t a profession as much as it is a tool for anyone to fight injustice. There shouldn’t be a credential system whereby only those from the richest and most established media organizations have the privilege to cover the most important stories. And inside newsrooms, journalists’ voices shouldn’t be silenced because of hierarchy. Journalism is, and should continue to be, accessible to everyone.Glenn’s Advice For JournalistsWe’ll finish with some advice from Glenn for today’s journalists. I asked what his top piece of advice is to navigate today’s industry, and have paraphrased his answer below.There are a lot of easier ways to earn a living other than being a journalist, especially with the industry’s economic struggles. So make sure you’re entering journalism because of passion. Whether that’s politics, culture, sports, social movements or whatever your thing might be. But passion alone won’t necessarily bring you the success you’re looking for, and along the way you’ll inevitably have to sacrifice something. For many, that means working for an institution. That’s okay and is just something you have to do while you build your audience and pay the bills. But no matter what you do, make sure you always remember and preserve that passion that animated your choice to enter journalism. And even in those dark times of sacrifice, safeguard that passion with everything you have to keep that flame alive and to keep feeding it. Your time will come, so be passionate and prepared for when that time does come.Thanks for making it to the bottom. If you enjoyed today’s newsletter and podcast, please consider supporting what we’re building at Inside The Newsroom. 🙏 This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe

Olga Khazan covers health, gender and science for The Atlantic, and is the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outside in an Insider World. Listen to our fascinating chat... This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe

Josh is one of the world's most well-known storm chasers, and we discussed the record-setting 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, and his future plans... This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe

Dalal Mawad is a senior producer and correspondent for the Associated Press based in Lebanon. She takes us inside what it was like living and reporting through August's explosion... This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe

Louise is The Wall Street Journal's Chief News Strategist and Chief Product and Technology Officer. We talked about quitting books, sunk cost and the future of strategy in the newsroom... This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at insidethenewsroom.substack.com/subscribe

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, as we welcome in Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the foremost behavioural economists to have ever lived. Cass has a new book out in September called Too Much Information, which explores the theory that when information is positive, we eat it up, but when it’s negative we don’t want to even hear it. In the podcast, we dissected his 2008 book Nudge, which still has great influence more than a decade later. Before we do, I wanted to honor the passing of another legend to have walked this planet. Congressman John Lewis passed away over the weekend at the age of 80. John was an absolute icon when it came to civil rights, and carried the torch lit by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks well into the 21st century. Rest in peace, Congressman. Sharing Is CaringPodcasts are fun. I love doing them. But they take a bloody long time to put together. I estimate a single hour podcast and newsletter takes around 12 hours to put together. So how about a cheeky share to show your appreciation? Please and thank you. 🙏Job CornerThe job board has been updated and this week’s deadlines include jobs at CTV, the Financial Times, Newsquest, Poynter, the Pulitzer Center and the City NY. Spread the word. 🤜🤛Who is Cass Sunstein?Cass is considered one of the smartest behavioural economists and legal scholars on the planet. He’s the founder and director of the Program on Behavioural Economics and Public Policy at his alma mater, Harvard Law School, the author of dozens of books — one of which (Nudge) is the subject of the podcast, and was the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009 to 2012 in the Obama administration, of whom he became friends with during their time together at the University of Chicago. I’ve followed Cass’ work for a long time, so it was an absolute treat to hear him speak at the London School of Economics back in January on his then latest book How Change Happens (more on that later). NudgeTogether with Richard Thaler, Cass co-authored perhaps his most influential book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Published in 2008, the book describes the theory that almost all decisions we make in life, whether it’s where and when to buy a house or even as small as picking what to have for lunch from a restaurant menu, are influenced by the decisions and frames, or “nudges”, made by other humans, aka “choice architects”. For example, would you go bungee jumping if the instructor told you there was a 90 percent chance nothing bad would happen? Probably. But what about if the instructor told you there was a 10 percent chance you’ll die if you jump? Probably not, right? The book was well-received among free market policy makers as a way to increase economic activity. But you can apply the theory in almost every aspect of life, such as where in a new school an architect chooses to place the bathroom will determine how often students go to the toilet. Cass and Thaler have been heavily influenced by another pair of behavioural scientists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, whose friendship helped shape the world we live in today…The Undoing ProjectThe friendship between Tversky and Kahneman is among the most important in recent history, and was excellently chronicled by author Michael Lewis in The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World. Lewis documents how the two Israeli psychologists identified in the late 1960s how humans tend to make decisions based on emotion over rationality — see Moneyball. Before Tversky and Kahneman, not much was known about why we make the decisions we do, and their work has since influenced most, if not all, behavioural economic theory we have today, including that of Cass and Thaler. Check out Lewis speak about the book and friendship to Malcolm Gladwell below…Related Podcasts 🎙️#61 — Rachel Botsman (University of Oxford) on issues with trusting people and the media#58 — Art Markman (University of Texas) on knowing ourselves and the power of introversion#44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe, The Perfect Storm) on how some humans are addicted to war because it unites themHow Change HappensAs mentioned earlier, I was lucky enough to catch Cass speak at the LSE about his latest book on how social change happens. Why is that after around 150,000 years that we Homo Sapiens have occupied this planet, that it took until the early 19th century for women in many countries to vote? And how did the social movement that led to women in Saudi Arabia being able to vote in 2015 even start? Once we understand what’s happened in the past then we can begin to dismantle other archaic and repressive policies around the world. Check out Cass’ talk by clicking on the button below…What is Luck?So many of our decisions influenced by other people. Cass elicits that 100 percent of our decisions are controlled by choice architects, whether it’s intentional or not. It raises the question of whether luck is real or a fictional concept we’ve made up over past centuries and millennia. The answer to this question depends on the situation. According to Merriam Webster, luck is “the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual”. So let’s break it down with a few examples personal to me, but please apply to your own circumstances as we go along…Let’s start with how I believe I got my current job at The Wall Street Journal. Back in February, a member of the graphics team got in touch about a possible opening and told me I should apply. One might call that lucky, but said member follows this very newsletter and thus was familiar with my work. They wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t published this newsletter, so I don’t think my new job was down to luck. That’s something I indirectly controlled, i.e. the quality and quantity of my work. But there are still many things that I’ve had zero control over. The most prominent in all of our lives are things such as which country we’re born in, our sex at birth and what name our parents give us. We have absolutely no control over any of that, which means that some degree of luck is involved that’ll determine where we live, how much money we’ll earn and whether we’ll face a lifetime of racism or not, for example. In what ways has luck played a part in your lives?The Future of Behavioural EconomicsTversky and Kahneman only started to theorize in the late 1960s, which makes the field of behavioural economics incredibly young. Already in the past half a century, we’ve learned so much about ourselves and how our brains are wired. As we head into the next 50 years, Cass fully expects the explosion of knowledge to continue at a rapid rate. He referenced books such as Scarcity: Why having too little means so much, which explores why people in difficult circumstances tend to make objectively bad decisions. For example, why is it that people in poverty don’t take advantage of opportunities to save when they can? Why are poor people perceived as less capable than rich people? I know a lottttt of wealthy folks that are stupid asses!Now that we have a decent understanding of how our brains work, we can continue to build from Cass’ work and apply this knowledge to improve people’s lives. Cass referenced the idea of getting rid of the ‘sludge’ — he apologized for the similar-sounding name to this book, Nudge — to make our lives far easier. Sludge is the burdens and hoops institutions make us jump through in order to complete important and sometimes trivial tasks. For example, to my knowledge Transport For London don’t tell you if you’ve crossed into a congestion charge zone — it costs at least £15 to drive in certain areas in central London — which is a form of choice architecture that has created ‘sludge’ for drivers in not knowing whether they need to pay. And in the U.S., the process of finding a healthcare provider, filling out the forms and receiving a payout is a tedious task created by humans that can be easily avoided. Now that we know sludge exists and we have a snazzy word for it, we can figure out ways to reduce it. See you later this week… 👋 Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom! Today’s podcast is the first in a while, so it felt great to get back on the horse and devour some knowledge. Today’s guest is Janelle Shane, research scientist in artificial intelligence, and author of the recently-published You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, a book about the weirdest artificial intelligence out there. We got into all sorts of AI questions and even had a discussion on trucks with giant testicles dangling down from the back of them, so whatever you’re into there’s something for everyone. In all seriousness, AI is crucial yet so misunderstood, so I’m hoping the podcast above and newsletter below go some way in breaking down barriers for understanding its place in this world. Enjoy 🤓Job CornerSeveral deadlines coming up in the next few days, including at CBC, ITV, The Independent and The Texas Tribune. Check out almost 400 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance contracts. Please spread the word.Who is Janelle Shane?Janelle is a research scientist specializing in artificial intelligence, TED2019 speaker, and author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, a book on how AI works and why it’s making the world weirder. The book is an expansion of Janelle’s popular blog, aiweirdness.com, which makes fun at some of the stranger AI trends and innovations, like cockroaches being able to masquerade as giraffes to fool security. Janelle’s also written for The New York Times, Popular Science and Slate.Buy the book 👇❤️Like What You See?❤️Each podcast and newsletter takes about 12 hours to put together, so please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the little heart up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.You Look Like a Thing and I Love YouJanelle published her first book late last year titled You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, a book on how AI works and why it’s making the world a weirder place. Maybe it’s me and the line of work I’m in, but AI is more often than not associated with negatives, such as machines taking our jobs, racist algorithms, or fatal self-driving cars crashes. While there’s certainly cause for concern over the outcomes of machines overstepping the mark in terms of invading our privacy and threatening our security, it’s of course us humans programming AI that’s the problem. In the same vein, Janelle looks at some of the weirder AIs that humans have created, such as truck nuts…Truck nuts you ask? Yeah I did a double take too. One of the things I love about America is some people’s inability to control their testosterone, and the latest way this group of people are displaying their manliness is by dangling a pair of giant testicles from the back of their trucks. But in fine fashion, the AI from a Tesla recently recognized the oversized nuts as a traffic cone, a beautiful reminder of AI’s naivety and that we can all reduce some individuals with overflowing arousal to a traffic cone. What is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?Pinching this next bit from my podcast with Francesco Marconi, former R&D Chief at The Wall Street Journal and now co-founder of Applied XLabs. The never ending rise of power and influence of technology companies in our lives means we hear and read about terms such as artificial intelligence and machine learning seemingly every day. AI as we know it arguably started in the first half of the 20th century, just as computers were gaining steam. While AI and ML are closely linked and overlap in many ways, they are different.Artificial intelligence is:The overarching umbrella term for the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think like humans and mimic our actions.Whereas machine learning is:The concept that a computer program can learn and adapt to new data without human interference. Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence that keeps a computer’s algorithms current regardless of external changes. For example, autocorrect or self-driving cars.Essentially, you need AI researchers to build the smart machines, and you need machine learning experts to make them super intelligent. You can’t have one without the other.Is AI Misunderstood? 🤔This is a question that’s been rattling around my brain for months now, and is one I’m starting to understand better the more I dissect its pros and cons. Like many of you reading, I got swept up in the fear and hysteria over automation eliminating up to 800 millions jobs in the next decade, paranoid that the machines are coming to get us! Like with most things in life, the more I learn about AI and the more experts I talk to on the podcast, the more I realize that AI can and should be a helluva lot less intimidating than it’s currently perceived.Two main factors come to mind that give AI a bad name. Firstly, as we discussed earlier, when AI does bad things, whether it’s intentional or unintentional, human decisions are behind it, such as the Chinese government’s decision to spy on its citizens and give everyone a social credit score based on trivial offences such as jaywalking. Automation has shaped economies for centuries. Whether it was the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century that sent factory production soaring, or the invention of the internet that has all but killed off the printing press, people have lost jobs due to machines for as long as we can remember. But that’s not the problem — free markets will always endeavour to find savings. Which brings us onto the second point. The problem has been dormant governments failing to react quick enough to changing industries, if at all. Across the Midwest and South, economic wastelands have sprung up over the past decade because federal and state governments failed to reinvest in these communities through teaching people necessary skills, and through a lack of incentive to keep innovative companies at home. And in the UK, jobs left empty because of Brexit will ironically be filled by robots. Until we truly understand what automation is and what it can do, the stigma around AI will only become dirtier. Credit: Axios 👇Which Country Is Best At AI?Like with most areas of life, I love a good bloody index to show who’s better than who on a particular subject. While rankings are just rankings, they do provide a decent snapshot of which country prioritises certain issues over others. When it comes to AI, Tortoise Media’s index looks at the level of investment, innovation and actual implementation of AI by country, while Stanford University’s index looks at the vibrancy of each nation including public perception and societal considerations. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, are number one and two on both indices.Source: Tortoise Media 👇Delving into the U.S. deeper, researchers at Stanford concluded that while larger states with the biggest economies may not be at the top of the standings in terms of AI job growth, that’s because they’ve already had their AI surge. It’s part of the reason they’re still at the top. Oil also helps… Talking of which, oil-rich states such as North Dakota and Wyoming have seen AI jobs in their states boom of the past decade, and goes to show that you don’t need to be in California or New York to jump into AI.Related podcasts…#77 — Francesco Marconi (Newlab) on artificial intelligence and its role in the future of journalism#72 — Ryan Broderick (BuzzFeed) on the 15th anniversary of YouTube#70 — Amy Webb (Future Today Institute) on the lack of government preparation for the coronavirus and the latest 2020 technology trends#61 — Rachel Botsman (Trust Issues) on the why people believe fake newsLast week … 🇺🇸 America's Protests: We Must Now Focus on Voter SuppressionThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Happy Friday folks, and welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, where today we’ll have the latest in our series of candidates running for public office. This time it’s the turn of Mark Gamba, who’s vying to represent Oregon’s 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mark’s biggest test won’t be November’s general election, instead it’ll be Tuesday’s Democratic primary where he must topple 12-year incumbent Kurt Schrader, who’s one of the most senior Democrats in the country. We got into how the race has changed since going 100 percent digital amid the coronavirus lockdown, as well as how Mark’s 30-year career as a photojournalist exposed him to some of the worst effects of climate change, and how the emergency is fuelling the world’s wars and mass migration. Up top is the podcast, down below is the post-game, but first my picks of the week and today’s Job Corner. Enjoy! 🤓Picks of the WeekHow To Get Away With Murder — Goodbye to one of the most complex black women on TV 🥂Buzzfeed, Quartz — Buzzfeed announced it’s shutting its UK and Australian newsrooms, and Quartz is laying off 80 peopleMoMA — Explore 139,000 artworks displayed in the Museum of Modern Art with this spectacular interactive visualization Job CornerLots of deadlines this weekend for more than 350 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs. Companies include the Associated Press, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, Politico Europe and Telemundo. Spread the word far and wide!Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Who is Mark Gamba?Mark is a former photojournalist of 30 years who decided that journalism wasn’t enough, and turned to public service to make a bigger impact. He became mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon, a city of around 20,000 people in 2015, and won reelection in 2018. Having worked with the likes of National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, Mark’s work took him to all parts of the U.S. and rest of the world, exposing him to different cultures, languages and the harsh reality of climate change. It’s why he believes he’s the right person to represent Oregon’s 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives in November. Mark’s biggest test will be to defeat incumbent Democrat Kurt Schrader, who was first elected in 2008, in Tuesday’s primary. Schrader won 87 percent of the Democratic vote in 2018, but Mark’s challenge is the most serious Schrader’s received in years, and his centrist position could land him in trouble amid the age of growing left-wing populism in the U.S.History of Oregon Politics Oregon is a blue stalwart on paper, having voted for a Democratic president in every election since 1988. But as we’ve discussed tirelessly in this newsletter, there are endless nuances under the hood/bonnet in each state, whether it be the weirdness of West Virginia’s state legislature, or the fact that Maine has voted for a Democratic president in every election since 1992, but hasn’t had a blue U.S. Senator since 1995. In Oregon, the intrigue stems from the fact that in 2016, voters turned out for the two main parties in their lowest percentage in 20 years, when third-party candidate Ross Perot won nine percent for his Reform Party, after he won 24 percent in 1992. This could mean that Oregonians are tired of the same old two-party system and are ready for new leadership, meaning the five sitting U.S. Representatives, who have a combined 97 years of service, could be in trouble come November. Balancing BudgetsIn Milwaukie, Mark and his team have done their best to offset the immediate and future financial losses his city’s workers and businesses will suffer due to the coronavirus. But Milwaukie just isn’t big enough to have the money saved in its coffers to deal with such a crisis. The same can be said of many states, who are beginning to struggle to foot the bill of unemployment claims due to the millions of layoffs and furloughs in recent months. A report by Tax Foundation shows that several states have enough money saved to survive several months, and Wyoming’s estimated to be able to cover its people for more than six years. Meanwhile the likes of California, Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Massachusetts can only afford to pay out unemployment benefits for up to seven weeks.Credit: Tax FoundationUnlike the federal government, states are legally required to balance theirs budgets, which is why the likes of New York, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, West Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts and Ohio have filed for federal financial help. Additionally, the coronavirus shutdown could cost the U.S. economy half a trillion dollars, and that’s probably a conservative figure. It will likely be years before the U.S. economy recovers, if at all, and will likely take an unconventional shape economists are calling the Swoosh Recovery. States therefore face inevitable cuts on a mass scale to foot the bill.What Can We Learn From the New Deal?Amid the current financial chaos, many are calling for countries around the world to adopt a New Deal-style financial program to re-stimulate their economies and get people working again. The latest figures show that unemployment’s soaring around the world, and could rise to 25 percent in the U.S., according to Goldman Sachs. During the darkest days of the Great Depression in 1933, unemployment rocketed from 3 to 25 percent, forcing newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt to unleash a series of government-funded programs and projects not seen before. While the economy received the shot in the arm it so desperately needed and many credit FDR for shortening the duration of the Great Depression, the jury is out on what impact his actions really had, with the Dust Bowl lasting the majority of the decade.In South Korea, a ‘Tech New Deal’ will fund 5G networks and AI development. In the UK, GDP fell 2 percent in the first three months of the year, and significant government spending is needed to jump start the economy after more than a decade of meagre growth. And some members of the European Parliament have called for an ambitious plan centered around new green jobs. Unlike the aforementioned countries and regions, the U.S. has a forthcoming general election, which could mean a stimulus package that will actually benefit the people might not be implemented for another year, deepening the woes of people across the country. Migration and War are Fuelled by Climate ChangeMark’s travels exposed him to parts of the world that many of us will never experience, which is why he’s so knowledgable about the effects of climate change. More than a million people migrated from the Middle East and parts of Africa to Europe in 2015, sparking an influx of people not seen on such a scale since records began, overwhelming many countries in the process. In 2018, a so-called “Migrant Caravan” of more than 7,000 Central Americans arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border after months of travelling up from the likes of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Many migrants flee their home countries because of persecution, poverty and violence, but what’s often lost is that it is climate change that’s fuelling the majority of the problems such countries are facing.Credit: United NationsThere are currently around 71 million displaced people around the world, a figure the UN forecasts could be anywhere between 24 million and 1 billion by 2050. Imagine that, around one tenth of the world’s population could be a forced migrant because climate change has made parts of this planet completely inhabitable. Unfortunately we’re living in a vicious feedback loop, whereby the worse climate change becomes, the more wars it’ll spark, driving more migration until the cycle repeats itself. As climate change ramps up its next attack on the planet, we can only expect more deadly wars and migrants dying as a consequence.Related podcasts…#73 — Nick Rubando (U.S. House Candidate) on running for the office for the first time and why Midwestern politics is so weird#68 — Mckayla Wilkes (U.S. House) on taking on No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer and why the U.S. needs Universal Basic Income#64 — Paula Jean Swearengin (U.S. Senate) on West Virginia’s devastating opioid crisis, and what it’s like running for the U.S. SenateThis week…#77 — Francesco Marconi (Newlab) on artificial intelligence and its role in the future of journalism … Last week…#76 — Betsy Sweet (U.S. Senate Candidate) from Maine on her race with Susan Collins, and a look at the history of campaign finance laws in the U.S.#75 — Alex Schiffer (The Athletic) on the grind of making the jump from local to national journalismThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, where today’s guest is… one of the smartest people to grace this podcast’s airways, Francesco Marconi! Francesco recently left the Wall Street Journal where he was R&D Chief to form his own company, Applied XL, in partnership with Brooklyn-based frontier technology center Newlab, which builds tools for journalists around the world using artificial intelligence. His new book, Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism, was published this year and Francesco’s giving away a handful of free copies to readers of Inside The Newsroom. So if you want a free book, email me at daniellevitt32@gmail.com and I’ll pass on the names of the first few! Up top is the podcast, down below is the post-game, including an updated job board. Enjoy! 🤓Job CornerThe job board was updated last night with more than 350 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs. New companies added include Netflix, Open Democracy, Politico Europe, and Rogers. Spread the word far and wide!Who is Francesco Marconi?Francesco was a student journalist just a few years ago and is now one of the most talented and knowledgable minds on the future of journalism. After completing a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics in Portugal and Italy, respectively, Francesco moved to the U.S. to complete his master’s degree in journalism and business at the University of Missouri (MIZ!), and completed his post-graduate work at Columbia University and Harvard. He then scored a job with the Associated Press on its strategy team, before being hired by the Wall Street Journal as its Research and Development Chief. In addition to his many other positions and accolades, Francesco was recognized in 2018 among MediaShift’s top digital media innovators. Now Francesco runs his own company, Applied XL, part of New Lab, of which he is also SVP for Data and AI. Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.What is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?The never ending rise of power and influence of technology companies in our lives means we hear and read about terms such as artificial intelligence and machine learning seemingly every day. AI as we know it arguably started in the first half of the 20th century, just as computers were gaining steam. While AI and ML are closely linked and overlap in many ways, they are different. Artificial intelligence is:The overarching umbrella term for the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think like humans and mimic our actions.Whereas machine learning is:The concept that a computer program can learn and adapt to new data without human interference. Machine learning is a field of artificial intelligence that keeps a computer’s algorithms current regardless of external changes. For example, autocorrect or self-driving cars. Essentially, you need AI researchers to build the smart machines, and you need machine learning experts to make them super intelligent. You can’t have one without the other.Newsmakers: What is the Future of Journalism?Francesco answers the billion dollar question in his new book, Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism Paperback, which addresses journalism’s burning need to integrate AI and ML ten fold. Having been on both sides of the coin — R&D chief at The Wall Street Journal, manager of strategy and AI at the Associated Press, and now founder and chief data officer of Applied XL — Francesco believes journalism needs to continue to reflect and integrate the views of the audience into storytelling, whether that’s mining social media or using internal data to identify what people are talking about. While that seems innocent and doable, we know it’s far easier said than done. We’ve talked plenty about The Inversion in this newsletter before — the real scenario that the majority of clicks, likes and comments on the internet are not made by humans but by click farms, where hundreds if not thousands of devices play and click on the same videos and posts, before moving onto the next one. Identifying what’s real and what’s a bot is incredibly difficult and not accessible to every news organization, which means a big part of the next decade will be the need for more collaborations between large and small news organizations, and the larger newspapers implementing M&A strategies similar to the likes of Google and Facebook.Newspapers Are Now Technology CompaniesTech giants like Google and Facebook have for years bought smaller startups to integrate new technology into their platforms, and to ensure their existence and survival. According to this extremely trustworthy Wikipedia page, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) has acquired 234 companies, including the likes of YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, Waze in 2013 for more than a billion dollars and has a pending deal for Fitbit that’s estimated to be around $2 billion. Facebook has also been extremely active, acquiring 83 companies according to its reliable Wikipedia page, including Instagram in 2012 for a bargain $1 billion, WhatsApp in 2014 for a whopping $19 billion and CrowdTangle in 2016 for an undisclosed amount. If the Google search engine or Facebook social media platform were to ever become extinct (more likely for Facebook), the two companies would still thrive because of all the pies they have fingers in. And now the same can be said of large news organizations. The New York Times most recently bought Audm in March, an app that turns longform journalism into audio, part of a growing number of acquisitions according to its sturdy Wikipedia page. And The Boston Globe, with its partnership with New Lab, is another example of a media company investing in new tools to improve the storytelling experience. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Large organizations with large amounts of money are realistically the only outlets able to acquire assets and new technology, which is why the need for them to share their new technology with smaller news organizations has never been greater.Democratizing Knowledge and TechnologyPerhaps never in history has there been a greater gap in knowledge and innovation between large and smaller news organizations. It’s part of the reason that 33,000 journalists were laid off between 2017 and 2018, and according to a study by Pew Research, mid-market newspapers — those with between 100,000 and 249,999 daily circulation — experienced the largest cuts. The coronavirus pandemic has only poured more oxygen onto the fire, and Poynter has gathered a list of all the newsroom layoffs, furloughs and closures caused by the outbreak that’s updated daily.So how do we plug this knowledge and innovation gap that’s widened? Part of it can be filled with more collaboration between newsrooms of different sizes. Whether it’s large-scale projects such as The Panama Papers, which was one of the largest joint journalism projects in history that exposed the corruption of the world’s biggest political leaders around the world, or the free distribution of tools such as TimelineJS, an awesome tool created by the Knight Lab at Northwestern University that allows for easily embeddable interactive timelines, there can never be too much collaboration. Here are a couple of sources to find out more about funding journalism projects. Related podcasts…#74 — Major Garrett (CBS News) on the difference between asking Barack Obama and Donald Trump questions in the White House press briefing room#70 — Amy Webb (Future Today Institute) on the lack of government preparation for the coronavirus and the latest 2020 technology trendsLast week…#76 — Betsy Sweet (U.S. Senate Candidate) from Maine on her race with Susan Collins, and a look at the history of campaign finance laws in the U.S.#75 — Alex Schiffer (The Athletic) on the grind of making the jump from local to national journalism… This week … #78 — Mark Gamba (U.S. House Candidate) from Oregon on a 30-year career in photo journalism and the history of Oregon politics… Next week#Alex Crawford (Sky News) on her career as a war correspondent#Burundi general election special 🇧🇮Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom where today we welcome Betsy Sweet to the podcast! Betsy’s a veteran of Maine politics and is running for U.S. Senate, where she must defeat Sara Gideon and Bre Kidman in July’s Democratic primary, before taking on Republican incumbent Susan Collins. Our conversation centered around the ridiculous nature of U.S. elections that sees voters bombarded with political ads and door knocking for two years, before it all starts again for the next cycle. And we went deep into campaign finance laws and the history behind Citizens United, which allows corporations to fund candidates in the name of free speech. Up top is the podcast, down below is the post-game, but first my top stories of the week. Enjoy! ✊Picks of the WeekElon Musk — He’s back! The billionaire tech mogul appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast for the second time, a year after smoking a blunt live on airFossil Fuel Bailout — Oil prices have tanked to their lowest in 15 years, but instead of keeping to their capitalist principles, oil firms are seeking a bailoutBibi Netanyahu — Israel’s Prime Minister is on the verge of forming a unity government delaying the country’s fourth general election in a year ❤️❤️❤️How You Like Me Now? ❤️❤️❤️Before you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.Job CornerMore than 350 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs are currently listed, with no position posted before March 1. Companies include CNN, the BBC, the NBA and Telemundo. Spread the word far and wide!Who is Betsy Sweet?There’s a saying that in order to know what a person is about, look at what they’ve done. Betsy’s been helping others for almost 40 years, whether it was writing and helping to pass the first Family Medical Leave Act in the country, getting rid of environmental toxins from building materials and children’s toys, or expanding the Human Rights Act in Maine, Betsy’s record speaks for itself. If and when Betsy wins June’s Democratic primary, she must topple Republican incumbent Susan Collins, who’s been a U.S. Senator from Maine since 1997. One of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country, Collins is against Medicare For All and the Green New Deal, and has voted with Donald Trump 67 percent of the time since he assumed office. Betsy 👇A Brief History of Maine PoliticsAs is often the case with many states, there’s a disconnect between Maine’s presidential and U.S. Senate voting history. Apart from Maine’s 2nd congressional district giving Donald Trump a single collegiate vote in 2016, the Pine Tree State has voted blue solidly since George H. W. Bush swept the country in 1988. Meanwhile, Betsy’s vying to become the first Democratic senator to represent the state since George J. Mitchell did so in 1995 — current senator Angus King has a mixed history but was elected as an independent in 2012.Credit: 270toWinThis is a massive part of U.S. politics that’s all too often glossed over, with most outlets labelling Maine a blue state, or West Virginia, for example, a red state, when in reality neither is any color other than purple. That’s why Betsy is running on a platform of issues that shouldn’t be seen as left or right, but rather up and down, supporting the average voter against big-money interests of corporations and billionaires.Where Do Campaign Contributions Go Once a Campaign Ends?It’s a question I’ve always wondered, especially on the presidential level where campaigns can be left with millions of dollars after they’re suspended. The 2020 Democratic primary field raised an estimated $2 billion million between the two dozen or so candidates, including the $1 billion Michael Bloomberg and $315 million Tom Steyer dropped on their campaigns. There are many paths candidates take. If you’re Elizabeth Warren, you might use the $11 million in hand to pay the $5.9 million monthly payment it cost to run your campaign. If you’re Beto O’Rourke, you might make donations to organizations including Everytown For Gun Safety and March For Our Lives, which champion gun control and is something Beto holds close to his heart after the El Paso mass shooting that left 20 dead last year. If you’re Mini Mike Bloomberg, you might transfer a cool $18 million to the DNC, making it the largest transfer by a presidential campaign in recent history. If you’re one of the many senators or representatives, you might transfer funds from your presidential campaign to your congressional campaign, so long as they don’t surpass limits on what donors had already contributed. Which raises the next question: How much does all the ad spending benefit local economies?Ad Spend in the Local EconomyWe know that more than $2 billion was raised by Democratic candidates in the 2020 primary race and the majority of that will have been spent in advertising. This means that early voting states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina felt a real cash injection from not only the increased advertising, but also from campaigns and reporters spending money on hotels, in restaurants and on rental cars for example. Research conducted by Rebecca Lessum, an assistant professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, and Carly Urban, an associate professor of economics at Montana State University, found that increased spending in a state around a primary can increase total per capita earnings in that quarter by up to 25 percent.If you follow elections in other countries, you’ll know that the U.S. system is an anomaly in that there’s barely a break in political campaigning. As soon as the current presidential cycle ends in November, it’ll be a few short months before activity resumes toward the 2022 midterms, if not right away. Compare that to the UK’s campaigning rules, which states that the official campaign period is limited to 25 working days. It’s why Betsy is among a growing number of people calling for limits to the campaign period in the U.S., so not to desensitize voters from the onslaught of campaign material.Citizens United IncPerhaps the main reason why U.S. presidential campaigns are so damn long is the money involved. Betsy and I discussed the need to reduce the influence money has on politicians and their policies, which in turn fuels the endless campaigning. That’s where Citizens United enters the fray, which was a landmark case in 2010 that ruled that political spending is a form of free speech protected under the First Amendment, and opened the door for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising. While the increased spending will inevitably benefit local economies, it reduces the power of each voter and allows lobbyists to buy candidates and elections.But it wasn’t always like this and doesn’t have to be this way. Between 1907 and 1970, a series of acts were passed limiting the influence of money in politics. And in 1971, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act, which strengthened the requirement for candidates to publicly report their campaign finance and put limits on the amount they could receive in one go. But then in 2010, Citizens United paved the way for the open season system the U.S. has today. A full history can be found in the below video…Last week…#75 — Alex Schiffer (The Athletic) on the grind of making the jump from local to national journalism#74 — Major Garrett (CBS News) on the difference between asking Barack Obama and Donald Trump questions in the White House press briefing room… Next week#77 — Francesco Marconi on the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning in journalism#78 — Mark Gamaba (U.S. House Candidate OR) on his 30-year career in photo journalism and now running for national officeRelated podcasts…#73 — Nick Rubando (U.S. House Candidate OH) on winning the Democratic nomination for Ohio’s 5th district and November’s general election#68 — Mckayla Wilkes (U.S. House Candidate MD) on America’s draconian At-Will employment laws, and the need for Universal Basic Income#64 — Paula Jean Swearingen (U.S. Senate Candidate WV) on West Virginia’s toxic history with coal mining, and the impact of Alexandria Ocasio-CortezThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom where today’s guest is… friend and former colleague Alex Schiffer from The Athletic! Alex and I met in 2015 at journalism school at the University of Missouri, and he’s gone onto become one of the most tireless sports reporters in the country. Our conversation detailed his journey from Columbia, Missouri to Brooklyn, New York and all of the lessons learned in between. We also discussed what may or may not happen in the NBA in terms of resuming the season, as well as what other leagues around the world are doing. Up top is the podcast, down below is a round up of what every major sport and league is doing to resume play amid the coronavirus. Hope you enjoy. 🤓Picks of the Week$12 Billion — the amount that could be lost from the suspension of America’s major sports leaguesNick Rubando — Friend of the podcast won the Democratic primary in Ohio’s 5th district and will now take on Republican incumbent Bob Latta in NovemberJoe Biden — Some Democrats have lost their principles after giving Biden the benefit of the doubt over his alleged sexual assault of former staffer Tara ReadeJob CornerMore than 350 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs are currently listed, with no position posted before March 1. Companies include CNN, Cal Matters, NPR, The Athletic and Telemundo. Spread the word far and wide!Who is Alex Schiffer?Alex has covered the Brooklyn Nets for The Athletic since October, and couldn’t have joined at a better time with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the NBA’s biggest stars, joining the Nets in the offseason. Alex is no stranger to big names, having covered Michael Porter Jr and Drew Lock, two of college basketball and college football’s biggest stars respectively, for The Kansas City Star. Alex was instrumental in breaking the news that Porter Jr, the No. 1 high-school basketball recruit at the time, had uncommitted from the University of Washington and committed to his hometown Missouri Tigers, making national news at the time. Alex has also interned on the business desks at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.NBAAfter years of unstoppable growth, the past eight months have been torrid for the NBA and its community. First came its feud with China in October, triggered by a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in which he expressed support for the people of Hong Kong protesting for freedom from mainland China. Morey deleted his tweet within hours, but the damage was done, with China’s largest TV networks, sponsors and streaming platforms cutting ties with the Rockets and the NBA, taking hundreds of millions in annual revenue with them. Then came the death of former commissioner David Stern on New Year’s Day. The man widely cited for turning the NBA into the global game it is today over the 30 years he was in charge, passed away from a brain hemorrhage. And then came the sickening news that basketball legend and icon Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, alongside his 13-year-old daughter Gigi, and a combination of seven other players and parents from Gigi’s basketball team: Alyssa Altobelli and her parents Keri and John; Payton Chester and her month Sarah; assistant basketball coach Christina Mauser and pilot Ara Zobayan.On March 11, the NBA suspended its season indefinitely in one of the most surreal moments in sports history, involving a team doctor running onto the court just seconds before the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz were about to begin a game. As it stands today, the proposal that’s received the most buzz is completing the regular season and playoffs solely in Las Vegas. But it’s not as simple as just deciding a winner in Vegas. There’s asking all players, coaches and non-playing staff to spend 1-2 months away from their families in an extremely stressful time, the endless contracts and financial issues to resolve, deciding how long players need to regain fitness, and that’s on top of figuring out how to test everyone involved and how to quarantine them accordingly, not to mention the guilt of requiring healthcare workers on site when they could be in hospitals. Some sources have said the NBA is currently discussing delaying the start of the 2020-21 season until December. Elsewhere, the league recently pushed back its date to reopen some training facilities to May 8, which will allow teams in states where it’s permissible to workout their players. Ultimately, if anyone says they know what will happen they’re probably lying. But what we can form an educated guess on, is the fact that whenever the NBA does eventually return, there’s almost zero chance of fans being allowed into the arenas to watch until a vaccine is available. MLBThere might not be a league that will suffer more from the pandemic fallout than the MLB. Not only has the baseball season not yet started — MLB managed just three weeks of Spring Training — but the lockdowns currently implemented across the country may cover the entirety of the league’s regular season that stretches roughly from April to September. Put simply, the MLB could well be the only league that loses an entire season. Due to the sheer number of games each team plays — 162 during the regular season and up to 20 games in the playoffs — MLB stands to lose literally hundreds if not thousands of games, which will mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost ticket and TV revenue. There’s been plenty of chatter in terms of starting the baseball season, but ultimately nothing has been decided, nor is anything close to being so. Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week “While I fully anticipate that baseball will resume this season, it is very difficult to predict with any accuracy the timeline for the resumption of our season.” Meanwhile we’re less than a month away from a crucial date in all of this: May 31, when nearly every team has guaranteed baseball-operations employees payment through. After then, we could say layoffs like we’ve not seen from a sports league so far.EPLThe English Premier League has been suspended since March 13, with teams having between nine and 10 games left to play. All 20 teams have said that they’re committed to completing the remaining games, but some teams including Brighton FC have disapproved a proposal to complete the remaining fixtures at up to 10 venues. The club’s chief executive Paul Barber said that his team will lose out on playing five of his team’s nine games at home, though he acknowledged his side will gain some benefit from playing the other four fixtures in a neutral venue that would have otherwise been played in an opponents stadium.The added headache that the other leagues don’t have is the fact that the Premier League must deal with the nature of promotion and relegation. The bottom three teams are relegated from the EPL each year to make way for the top three teams from England’s second tier of football, the Championship. The process is followed all the way down English football’s many leagues, so whatever the EPL decides to do will have a ripple effect affecting in the ballpark of 10 other leagues. As it stands, no immediate return to action is likely, especially with the news that the top two leagues in France won’t return this season. My unsubstantiated advice to the EPL as a devoted Watford fan would be to award Liverpool the title and cancel everything else. 😊NFLThe NFL is the only major league that hasn’t yet been affected as it pertains to its playing season. Super Bowl 54 took place on February 2, perhaps a month before the possibility of it being cancelled. Free agency went ahead on March 17 as planned, and created an earthquake as Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski teamed up once again for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And the league was able to hold its draft virtually on April 23, meaning so far the damage has been minimal. But that’s where the good news might end. As is normal for the NFL, the league plans on ignoring science. It announced that it plans to complete its season in full in 2020, and will release the regular season schedule no later than May 9. But the league’s own chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, is not so sure those games will be played on time.Sills has said that for there to be any chance of games being played, the league will need to administer widespread testing on players, coaches and all staff involved. There’s currently no testing being carried out around the league, and the situation across the country isn’t much better, with around two percent of the U.S. having been tested as of today. And when asked about the league’s contingency plans, NFL executive Jeff Pash said that “all of our discussions and focus have been on a normal traditional season, starting on time, playing in front of fans, in our regular stadiums." Real smart!NHLLike the NBA, the NHL faces the real prospect of not being able to crown a champion in 2020. More than seven weeks have passed since the NHL paused its season, the NHL and its Players’ Association have created a ‘Return to Play Committee’ (lol), whose aim is to safely get players back onto the ice. Unfortunately for them, the majority of the league is still in self-isolation mode with most states still with stay-at-home orders in place.There is good news for hockey fans, though, as the NHL made an aggressive pitch to teams to stage the draft in June. It seems the NFL has laid the foundation for how to hold a successful draft for other leagues to follow, and it appears the NHL is pouring heavy resources into giving fans at least something to look forward to.The RestThe Olympics were postponed until next summer, though Tokyo 2020’s chief has said the games will be scrapped altogether if they cannot take place in 2021. Formula One was forced to delay the start of its season, and recently extended its mandatory factory shutdown into June. UFC owner Dana White is ignoring all official recommendations by staging three events in eight days in May. The jury is still out whether the fights will actually take place. All cricket has ground to a halt. As has all tennis events, but that hasn’t stopped talk of the ATP and WTA tours merging reach a climax. Golf events remain postponed, though they could be the likeliest of any athletes to return due to the solitary nature of the sport.Last week…#74 — Major Garrett (CBS News) on the difference between asking Barack Obama and Donald Trump questions in the White House press briefing room#73 — Nick Rubando (U.S. House Candidate) on winning the Democratic nomination for Ohio’s 5th district and November’s general election… This week …#76 — Betsy Sweet (U.S. Senate Candidate) on running for U.S. Senate from MaineRelated podcasts…#55 — Lindsay Gibbs (Power Plays) on gender inequality in sports and how to achieve equal pay#46 — Christine Brennan (USA Today, CNN, PBS) on the history of women in sports including Title IX#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic) on how The Athletic makes money and the cost of subscriptions in today’s media landscapeThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom where today’s guest is… Major Garrett, Chief White House Correspondent for CBS News and one of the hardest working journalists in the world today. Major and I discussed everything from how nerve-wracking it is to ask questions in front of the world in the WH press briefing room, to his spats with Barack Obama to being in the Oval Office with Donald Trump. It truly was a fascinating conversation and below is a post-game of everything we talked about. But first, my picks of the week followed by some personal news… Enjoy! 🤓Picks of the WeekJoe Biden — Pressure is building on the Democratic nominee, who so far has remained silent pertaining to an alleged sexual assault from 1993Louis Theroux — The greatest documentarian to have ever lived has a podcast! His first guest is Jon RonsonTiger King — I finally caught up to the hoopla and my god this show is fucked up. But also my god everyone must watch itPersonal NewsToday is my last day working on the visuals desk at The Guardian. It’s been an incredible two years at the UK’s foremost news source and a dream come true working for my “hometown” paper I grew up reading. So it was incredibly tough to leave but I’m thrilled and blessed to be joining The Wall Street Journal on Monday. Here’s to the next chapter! Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Major 👇Who is Major Garrett?Major graduated from Mizzou in 1984 with degrees in journalism and political science. He’s been CBS News’ Chief White House Correspondent since 2012, and before that made stops with multiple outlets including the Amarillo Globe-News, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Houston Post, The Washington Times, U.S. News and World Report, CNN, the National Journal and Fox News, making him truly one of the most non-partisan reporters in America. And putting him over the top giving him rockstar status, Major also appeared on the Late Show with the legendary Stephen Colbert…As you’ll discover from the podcast, there may not be a harder working political reporter today. Major is also the author of four books — Common Cents, The Enduring Revolution, The Fifteen Biggest Lies in Politics, and Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride — and host of two podcasts for CBS — The Takeout and Debriefing the Briefing. Many of you may know Major from his courage to ask presidents the toughest questions, and there’s no better place to start than with Barack Obama…Major vs ObamaMajor’s highest profile moment came in July 2015, when he asked then President Obama a tough question that rattled even the usually unshakable Obama. After signing off on a nuclear deal with Iran that reduced the amount of uranium — used to fuel nuclear weapons — stockpiled by Iran, Obama faced an hour of questions by reporters on the specifics of the deal and the decisions he made to get the deal over the line. One of those questions came from Major, who challenged the President on why he didn’t include the release of four American hostages held by the Iranians as a condition for the deal. Below is the encounter and Major’s take on the confrontation.But that wasn’t Major’s first run-in with Obama. In June 2009, Iran was once again the topic of contention, this time as it pertained to Obama placing his administration on the side of the grassroots protestors against the Iranian regime. Then working for Fox News, Major explained in the podcast that reporters from the wire services — the AP, Bloomberg, Reuters etc — are routinely the first to be called upon by the President, but on this day, Obama picked Major to ask the first question. Major had to begin the press conference by asking about the most important issue, so after reading back several of Obama’s statements, Major simply asked “What took you so long?”, referring to growing pressure over previous weeks for Obama to pick a side. Let’s just say Obama wasn’t too happy.Everything’s Different With President TrumpPresidents and the media have had feuds since politics began in America, but I’m not breaking news by asserting that reporting in the age of Trump is different to anything journalists have experienced before. Major has covered the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump, and emphatically said he’s never covered a president so combative as Trump, and that includes his two run-ins with Obama. In normal circumstances, political reporters from different networks rarely offer feedback to their peers, often keeping to themselves and concentrating on the task ahead. But the Trump administration has altered that, and we may never have seen a White House press corps proverbially stand so close together with reporters from rival outlets often supporting one another in the briefing room amid the barrage of attacks from the man at the front.What’s the Point of Political Debates?Major has moderated three major political debates in his career, most recently the Democratic South Carolina debate in February. The amount of dedication and preparation that goes into each debate is admirable, often taking weeks to research and practice every question and every scenario. If you’re like me, you’ll devour every single minute of every single one of the billion political debates the RNC and DNC hold every presidential cycle, especially if it involves Republicans screwing up walking to the stage when their names are called. God damn it gets me every time. But once the dopamine has run out, you’ll question the actual motive of having so many damn debates. Between June 2019 and March 2020, the DNC held an insane 13 debates, with at least 10 candidates on the stage at one time in the first seven. Apart from boosting ratings and the millions of dollars generated in fundraising, the debates do actually have a practical purpose. Just ask Michael Bloomberg.After weeks of sinking hundreds of millions of dollars in TV ads, Bloomberg took to the stage for the first time in Nevada. At the time, Bloomberg’s poll numbers were surging to 16 percent and he looked like a legitimate contender, but that ended exactly 14 days later thanks to Queen Elizabeth Warren, who rolled Bloomberg’s racist and sexist temperament into a ball and flicked him away like a bogey. If you look close enough, you can actually see Mini Mike’s soul leave his body.Laughs and takedowns aside, do political debates actually make a difference to voting habits? How on earth is 30 or 60 seconds, often with grown adults shouting over one another, enough time to discuss solutions to real issues? In my opinion it’s not, and the scientific evidence largely agrees that noticeable changes in polling and voting after debates are hard to identify. This Week …#73 — Nick Rubando (U.S. House Candidate) on running for the office for the first time and why Midwestern politics is so weird … Last Week …#72 — Ryan Broderick (BuzzFeed) on the 15th anniversary of YouTube#71 — Andrea Jones-Rooy (Comedian, Social Scientist) shooting the s**t on coronavirus, journalism and other funny things … Next WeekBetsy Sweet (U.S. Senate Candidate) from MaineJob CornerSign up to the Inside The Newsroom Job Board for weekly updates to more than 500 journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs in the U.S., UK and around the world.Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish. You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, where today’s guest is… U.S House of Representatives candidate from Ohio’s 5th district Nick Rubando. Nick must defeat two other Democrats in tomorrow’s primary in order to face Republican incumbent Bob Latta in November’s general election. Above is the podcast, below is a post-game of everything we talked about and more. Enjoy! 🤓Nick 👇Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Who is Nick Rubando?Nick was born just outside of Toledo, and is running for the U.S. House of Representatives out of Ohio’s 5th district. He studied journalism at Indiana University and volunteered for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, which is the only time Indiana has voted blue since 1964 when Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater (more on him later). After a few years working for a tech startup in California, Nick moved back home and is running on a platform that includes Medicare For All, the Green New Deal and creating new jobs in his district, Ohio and the entire Midwest. Nick must defeat two fellow Democrats in tomorrow’s primary in order to face Republican incumbent Bob Latta, who has held this seat since 2007 and won in 2018 by 27 points. Latta has voted with Donald Trump 96 percent of the time including voting against providing disaster aid for Puerto Rico and voting against allowing the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices. Midwestern Politics is WeirdHaving lived in both Ohio and Indiana, Nick has a good grasp of each state’s politics, specifically why each state is so different. As previously mentioned, Indiana has voted for the Democratic Party just twice in 14 elections since 1964, while Ohio has voted blue six times and red eight times. Ohio is an out-and-out swing state and like the saying, “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation”, referring to the fact that Ohio has voted for every eventual president since 1964. So why is Ohio so different to its neighbour Indiana? I asked Nick this very question and he referenced the fact that Indiana has just two cities with a population of more than 250,000 people — Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. Meanwhile Ohio has four metropolitan equivalents — Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Toledo. Granted this is a small sample size, but Nick is onto something and it’s not anything new. In their 1970 book The Real Majority, political demographers Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg identified the American “Middle Voter”, the person who is metropolitan “middle-aged, middle-income, middle-educated, Protestant, in a family whose working members work more likely with hands than abstractly with head.” To put it simply, Ohio has far more Middle Voters in its metropolitan hubs than Indiana.Where Even is the Midwest?Good question. When I first arrived at Mizzou for grad school, I was pretty sure Missouri was at the heart of the Midwest. But weekend trips to Chicago and Indianapolis left me incredibly confused. Turns out I’m not alone and the good folks up in Montana are even more confused. In fact, respondents of FiveThirtyEight’s survey of who’s in the Midwest named a whopping 19 states they classed as being in the Midwest. Side note: My time in Austin taught me that Texas isn’t part of the South despite its obvious geographic proximity, in the south. No, Texas is its own region altogether. The point here, together with how much Ohio and Indiana politics differ, is that each state is far different to the one next to it. That may seem a simpleton statement, but when politicians and traditional media outlets give labels such as the Midwest, the Rustbelt, or the South, they do an injustice to the viewers who miss out on all the nuances and intricacies within every single city, county and state. Coronavirus ProtestsWhat do you get when you have a nationwide lockdown, a battered economy and a depressingly divided nation? Yep, you guessed it, protests! Rightwing extremists and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones have grabbed the majority of the headlines due to their anti-science stances. But the most interesting development here is that many of these protests are taking place in states with Republican governors. Take Ohio, for example, whose governor is a Republican, and has seen protests to reopen the economy. But Mike DeWine has overall done a decent job in limiting the spread of the virus. He was the first governor to postpone the Democratic and Republican primaries on March 17 while Arizona, Florida and Illinois all went ahead with theirs, and Ohio was one of the first states to issue a stay-at-home order on March 22, which has since been extended until at least May 1. Protests have also taken place in Texas and Maryland, whose governors Greg Abbott and Larry Hogan are also both Republican. It’ll be fascinating to see how they manoeuvre growing unrest as the months count down to November’s election.Voting in the Age of CoronavirusThe coronavirus has exposed many elements of our institutions and systems that are hopelessly antiquated. One of those systems is the way we vote and hold elections. Why is it that with all the endless technology and innovation in our world that it’s taken the worst global pandemic in 100 years for postal and absentee voting to be an actual thing. In many states pre-coronavirus, you had to have damn good reason not to show up to the polls yourself to cast your vote. For a lot of voters, that meant taking time off work, arranging childcare and even travel more than 100 miles because of a lack of polling stations. Tomorrow’s primary in Ohio will eliminate most in-person voting, allowing those who didn’t vote in the original March 17 primary to vote by mail. According to analysis by The Guardian, only Colorado, Oregon and Washington allowed people to vote by mail without needing a special excuse before the pandemic. Yes, other problems have arisen due to the postal service being overrun at a time of emergency, but that’s simply not good enough. Hopefully permanent postal and absentee voting will be one small silver lining that’s here to stay once the pandemic is over. The Legacy of Barry GoldwaterDespite being dead for more than 20 years, Barry Goldwater’s legacy is still felt today. Goldwater served five terms as a Republican senator from Arizona, and is most infamous for being on the wrong side of one of the largest landslides in U.S. presidential history, losing to Lyndon B. Johnson by 23 percent nationally and carrying just six states for a measly 52 collegiate votes. Like I’ve said in the past, Trump didn’t create the extreme divide we have in America today, he’s merely a symptom, and looking back to Goldwater’s rise to the top can help us figure out how more than 50 years later we got Trump. The main difference between the two was that Goldwater was a lifelong Republican who rose to the top of the party from the bottom up, while Donald Trump took over the GOP from top down. But in that difference is actually a trait of similarity between the two…Goldwater and Trump will go down in history as nonconformists who spoke their mind and weren’t afraid of calling out members of their own party. Trump infamously barraged every Republican that stood in his way in 2016, and even slammed party hero John McCain for being captured as a prisoner of war. Similarly, Goldwater led the party’s rebellion against then GOP President Richard Nixon during his impeachment scandal over Watergate. On August 6, 1974, Goldwater told Nixon to his face that House and Senate Republicans would no longer defend him and stand in the way of his inevitable impeachment. A day later, Nixon resigned. It makes you think that if the media landscape had been as fragmented and decentralised as it is today, would Goldwater’s message have resonated more around the country, had communication not have been centralised by a handful of media outlets? I guess we’ll never know…Coming up …#74 — Major Garrett (CBS) on what it’s like being a White House correspondent in the age of Donald TrumpJob CornerSign up to the Inside The Newsroom Job Board for weekly updates to more than 500 journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs in the U.S., UK and around the world.Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish. You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to a very special edition of Inside The Newsroom where we’ll celebrate the 15th anniversary of YouTube, and go through the ups and downs of the world’s largest video sharing platform with today’s guest Ryan Broderick of BuzzFeed News. Ryan has covered technology for the past decade and has been with BuzzFeed since 2011, and has a charming newsletter called Garbage Day which features all the fun stuff on the internet from the past week. It’s hard to find the words to describe YouTube’s impact on society and how much it’s shaped our lives, but Ryan does so in a way far better than anyone, so please please please listen to the podcast up top. I’ve tried to cover everything in detail below, but there’s just so much I couldn’t include it all. Enjoy 🤓Picks of the WeekDeepwater Horizon — The worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history happened 10 years ago this weekEarth Day — Yesterday was Earth Day and Greta Thunberg has called for a new path once the pandemic is overBeach Erosion — A new study forecasts dramatic beach erosion along the U.S. coastlineToday’s EpisodeToday’s episode took more than 12 hours to put together, so please consider liking this post by clicking the little heart at the very top of the page, and also sharing with your friends on social media. I’ll be eternally grateful. Ryan 👇April 23, 2005: YouTube Is Born… At San Diego ZooFifteen years ago today, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the very first video to the platform that would go onto shape the world we live in. But don’t get too excited. The 19-second video taken at San Diego Zoo features Karim describing how long elephant trunks are. Yeah, not much of an improvisor, but to be fair to the bloke, he did start YouTube. If you still want to view the first video after that awesome description, have at it…Karim met fellow co-founders Chad Hurley (no not the guy behind the surfing brand) and Steve Chen at PayPal, where each had significant roles in the design and direction of one of the world’s largest payment platforms. Now more than a billion hours of video content are watched on YouTube every day, and more than 2 billion people use the platform every month. But what most people don’t know is that YouTube was originally a dating site, where users uploaded videos of themselves to try and attract other men and women. Karim, Hurley and Chen even registered the YouTube.com domain on Valentines Day two months before. Like Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook, or rather Facemash, the three YouTubers realized their new platform had the potential to be so much more.YouTube’s original homepage 👇😷 | Credit: Web ArchiveWhat are the Founders Doing Now?Chad Hurley served as YouTube’s first CEO and went onto launch a smartphone video editing company along with Chen called MixBit, similar to other video sharing apps such as Vine (RIP), Snapchat and TikTok. Hurley’s now a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Football Club. Steve Chen served as YouTube’s CTO and went onto launch MixBit with Hurley, which was eventually sold to BlueJeans in 2018. Chen is currently an entrepreneur in residence at Google Ventures.Despite uploading the first video, Jawed Karim actually had the smallest role of the three. After the launch, Karim enrolled at Stanford University to obtain a master’s in computer science while also serving as an advisor to YouTube. He went onto co-found a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures (clever) that was one of Airbnb’s first investors.What Was Video Like Before YouTube?Good question. The biggest reason YouTube is what is today is because there wasn’t a central hub to seamlessly upload videos in a range of formats in 2005. Of course, videos existed on the internet before YouTube, but it was such a hassle to watch anything. I’m not sure how proud I am to tell you that I had to download the iconic peer-to-peer sharing platforms LimeWire and BitTorrent, whereby users uploaded video files to the internet for the rest of us to download with accute anxiety over whether we were breaking the law or not. From there, I waited two to three minutes for the video to load in Windows Media Player, and voila! I could watch a whole minute of video! I’m sure there were other ways, but this is what I and many others had to do to watch a single video. And I know what you’re thinking, Pornhub came in 2007 (pun intended), so this was the ritual for porn users as well. Oh, you weren’t thinking that… 🐢November 13, 2006: YouTube Acquired By Google For $1.65 billionA year and half after Karim uploaded that video at the zoo, YouTube was the world’s fastest growing website and everyone had their eyes on Silicon Valley’s hottest startup. Even with its meteoric rise, nobody could have imagined that Google would buy YouTube for $1.65 billion — $2.1 billion (£1.75 billion) in today’s money. Google’s acquisition is a piece of history in itself and was ridiculed for paying so much. Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban called the move “crazy”, and even Google later acknowledged they probably paid a billion too much. But YouTube now generates $15 billion in annual revenue, and it would take no less than 12 figures for Google to let go of it. Put simply, it might be the greatest tech acquisition of all time.Google is the very reason why YouTube is so popular and profitable. The search engine giant was already gobbling up the majority of the advertising market, and its AdSense model opened YouTube up to content creators which accelerated its popularity and revenue even further. Google also redesigned YouTube’s clunky interface with its trademark clean and sleek design, making the platform perfect for travelling down multiple rabbit holes to consume even more content. Perhaps only Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram for $1 billion (£629 million) in 2012 can rival as the best tech buys in history.YouTubers and Their MillionsYouTube wouldn’t be what it is without its thousands of content creators, many of whom use the platform to make a living. The way it works is users must enable AdSense for their YouTube account, which allows clever algorithms to generate adverts on videos automatically. The more views, the more revenue — around $8 per 1,000 views. YouTube then takes 45 percent of that revenue, leaving most creators with the remaining 55, though there are higher rates for creators with the highest views. The highest-paid Youtuber of 2019 was eight-year-old Ryan Kaji, who started out reviewing toys on camera, and has since matured to conducting science experiments. Last year Kaji earned an estimated $26 million. But don’t be fooled. The entirety of that money didn’t come from YouTube. Kaji has launched a line of more than 100 toys and clothing items, has a show on Nickelodeon, and has deals with Roku and Walmart. He’s part of the growing number of YouTube stars who are becoming less reliant on the platform, with some leaving YouTube altogether. If Google wants to stop the growing trend of its users turning to other platforms to make money, it’ll have no option other than to change its revenue rates.The Dark Side of YouTubeWhile YouTube has been a vehicle for thousands of people to make a living and hundreds to become millionaires, there’s been several missteps that have led to the spread of extremism and fake information. Chen, Hurley and Karim could never have imagined that their innocent video sharing platform would be used to disseminate far-right hate and white supremacism, but that’s the reality of what tech entrepreneurs of today must have at the top of their priority list, above aesthetics, above share-ability, and certainly above profitability. That’s where YouTube has failed the most, to protect society from the vitriol and divisiveness that’s running through our communities’ bloodstreams. YouTube not only has not done enough, it’s among the most pervasive platforms over the past 15 years. Now, you might ask why Google executives have been so inactive in removing fake news and hate speech. You might also catch yourself feeling sympathetic toward them because of the difficulty to find and remove all hateful content. Don’t be. Don’t be fooled by the carefully constructed PR talk telling us that they’re doing everything they can to remove hateful videos that violate their rules. It’s b******t. YouTube, and several other social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter, know full well that if they were to actually adhere to the very rules they set in place that they would lose half of their users overnight. If amazing journalists like Ryan didn’t write on this issue profusely, Google would happily continue to skip along as if nothing was wrong.YouTube’s Hits and MissesSo we know that YouTube has completely revolutionized the way we watch video, and how thousands of people can earn a living. But what other industries has it spawned? And what did it miss out on? Let’s start with eSports, the multi-billion dollar industry that has absolutely exploded over the past decade. Now, YouTube didn’t create eSports, but it’s fair to say that without it, the professional gaming industry would look totally different. The story arguably starts in South Korea in the late 1990s with the game StarCraft, a science fiction strategy game that allowed multiple players to compete at the same time. As YouTube became more and more popular toward the late 2000s, millions of people began to watch other people play the likes of Minecraft, World of Warcraft and any other game ending in -craft. Online gaming on YouTube is still incredibly strong, with half of the top 10 earners making their fortune from gaming. But it hasn’t been all fun and games for YouTube, and it certainly isn’t a company that whatever it touches turns to gold. Perhaps its largest failure to date, both in time and money invested, has been its premium version, YouTube Premium, formerly known as Music Key, also known as YouTube Red. YouTube launched its premium service in 2014 and required users to pay a monthly subscription to listen to music and TV shows. The problem was that Netflix had already cornered the market, switching its own service from Blockbuster-style video rentals to online streaming in 2010. Why would users pay $12 a month on a platform they’d previously got their content for free? Simply put, YouTube was far too late and Google’s executives might never get over the billions of dollars Netflix and its streaming rivals are making today.Like with Netflix, YouTube also missed the boat on the rise and rise of video social media. While YouTube execs were investing the majority of their resources on their ad model, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and now TikTok made it seamless for users to upload videos from their mobile phones, where the majority of internet users now consume content. YouTube has also lost its dominance of the ‘influencer market’, an industry Instagram has gladly made inroads into. Which leads us to our final part of our celebration of YouTube: What’s next?The Next 15…So here we are, the end of a remarkable journey over the past 15 years. Instead of being sentimental over the fact we’ll never see such an enthusiastic video about the size of elephant trunks uploaded to the internet ever again, let’s look forward to what YouTube should do in the next 15 years. I asked Ryan this very question, and his answer centered on mobile. If YouTube is to continue growing its audience, it must make it easier for its content creators to create content. How does it do that? By creating an entire equivalent version of Adobe Premiere inside its app for free. It must also create a virtual editing platform with advanced editing tools that allow users to create quality content with the few proverbial clicks of a user’s thumbs, similar to how TikTok has taken over the short form video market. And lastly, it must pivot its strategy and have mobile at the very center of it. If it doesn’t work on mobile, it doesn’t work for the user. Cheers to that 🍻Last week …#70 — Amy Webb (Future Today Institute) on the lack of government preparation for the coronavirus and the latest 2020 technology trendsSouth Korea Election Special44 Reasons Bernie Supporters Should Be Optimistic… Next weekNick Rubando on running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 5th district and his upcoming primary on Tuesday April 28Major Garrett (CBS News) on what it’s like to be in the same room with Donald Trump, and how asking him questions compares to Obama, Bush and ClintonRelated podcasts…#52 — Katie Notopoulos (BuzzFeed) on the ‘techlash’ and why we can’t trust any of the big technology companies with our privacy#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times) on what she discovered by cutting out Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft from her life for six weeks#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information) on starting a technology journalism startup from scratch and how to breakup FacebookJob CornerA couple of weeks ago I launched a journalism jobs and internships board. It now has almost 600 active postings, mostly based in the U.S. and the UK, but also a few dozen from other parts of the world. Sign up for weekly updates. New jobs from yesterday include…Bloomberg — Graphic DesignerIndianapolis Star — Food and Dining ReporterNew York Magazine — Features WriterThe Athletic — Staff EditorThe New York Times (London) — Business ReporterThe Texas Tribune Student FellowshipsThe Toronto Star — Freelance Writers NeededThe Wall Street Journal (London) — EditorUniversity of Stirling — Professor in Digital JournalismVox Media — Audio ProducerYouTube — Media SpecialistThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Andrea Jones-Rooy is a social scientist, standup comedian and circus performer. She teaches a course on data diversity at New York University and is the host of Ask A Political Scientist for Caveat NYC.Andrea 👇Job CornerA couple of weeks ago I launched a journalism jobs and internships board. It now has almost 600 active postings, mostly based in the U.S. and the UK, but also a few dozen from other parts of the world. Sign up for weekly updates. New jobs from yesterday include…Bloomberg — Graphic DesignerIndianapolis Star — Food and Dining ReporterNew York Magazine — Features WriterThe Athletic — Staff EditorThe New York Times (London) — Business ReporterThe Texas Tribune Student FellowshipsThe Toronto Star — Freelance Writers NeededThe Wall Street Journal (London) — EditorUniversity of Stirling — Professor in Digital JournalismVox Media — Audio ProducerYouTube — Media SpecialistLast Week …#70 — Amy Webb (Future Today Institute) on the lack of government preparation for the coronavirus and the latest 2020 technology trendsSouth Korea Election Special44 Reasons Bernie Supporters Should Be Optimistic… This Week15 Years of YouTube with Ryan Broderick (BuzzFeed)Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom, where today’s guest is Amy Webb, a world-renowned quantitative futurist and the founder of the Future Today Institute. You can find out more about who Amy is and what she does below, but let me just say that she’s probably the most distinguished guest to ever appear on the podcast. Amy has so many damn achievements and knows so much about so many things that it’s completely inspiring. So I hope you enjoy today’s episode, but first my top picks from the past week. Enjoy 🤓Social Distancing 2022 — Gulp. A Harvard study suggests we may need to practice social distancing until 2022.Arsenal Players Refuse Wage Cut — The team prefers to defer their wages, as $10 billion owner Stan Kroenke doesn’t have enough money. Poor sod.Oh and don’t be shy, leave a comment on what you think of the episode or if you have any questions about the topics discussed!Amy 👇Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Who is Amy Webb and What is a ‘Futurist’?Amy is what’s known as a ‘quantitative futurist’, meaning she interprets data to help governments and businesses plan for the future. She’s written three books — The Big Nine, The Signals Are Talking and Data, a Love Story — and in 2006 she founded the Future Today Institute, her consultancy firm that models what the future might look like. Amy also teaches an MBA course on strategic foresight at NYU, is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, cofounder of Spark Camp and contributing editor and tech columnist and Inc. Magazine, among a host of other notable positions and achievements.Not to be confused with the Italian art movement, futurism and planning for the future is as old as time. The term “futurology” was coined by German professor Ossip Flechtheim in 1943, who, along with author H. G. Wells several decades earlier, proposed “futurism” as a new academic discipline. With the rapid advance of technology and spread of information, futurists like Amy have never been so needed, especially when a pandemic can halt the entire world.Amy studied Economics at Indiana University and then a master’s in journalism from Columbia, and combined all of her academic and real life experience to become the futurist she is today. But there are more formal ways of working in futurism. Today’s degree programs combine disciplines such as mathematics, engineering, art, technology, economics, design, history, geography, biology, theology, physics and philosophy. If you’re interested in dipping your toe or making futurism your career, check out The Futurist Institute, and programs at the University of Houston, and University of Hawaii. Here’s an awesome video on how Amy manipulated online dating to find the love of her life and husband of today. 2020 Tech Trends ReportEach year Amy and her team at FTI publish a report on the most significant trends in technology. The 2020 edition was released last month and includes an insane 406 separate trends from across 31 different sectors. This year’s report is by far the largest and most significant in the 13 years Amy’s been doing the report, partly because of increased investments, research breakthroughs, climate change, and the likes of Google, Microsoft and Amazon moving aggressively into unorthodox areas like medicine, healthcare and agriculture (more on that later). The other elephant in the room is the coronavirus, which has brought the global economy to its knees, and will continue to haunt the world in ways we could never have imagined for years to come. As I mentioned, big tech companies are hastily piling large amounts of cash into automating agriculture. What does that mean exactly? Here’s an excerpt from the report:Big tech has its sights set on farming.You read that right. Some of the world’s biggest tech companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart — are getting into agriculture. (We think of Walmart as a tech company as well as a retailer.) Microsoft launched a multi-year plan to modernize agriculture with data analytics, and is piloting a program already on two U.S. farms in which Microsoft has invested. Walmart is opening its own meatpacking plants and dairy processing facilities in an effort to drive down costs. Meanwhile Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has invested in vertical farming.Another of the trends that blew my mind was the idea of digital emissions. I know this has been around for a number of years already, but the very fact that a fart can be monetized is especially terrifying for me.Our homes are producing digital emissions.The average person isn’t aware of how much data they’re shedding. Collectively, our homes are starting to produce digital emissions, which includes all the data not actively used and processed by devices. Bits of information in that network include things like your body temperature as you watch TV, the ambient hums and creaks that your home makes at night, and the communication pings your devices make. Digital emissions aren’t harmful to the environment, but they’re an untapped resource to be mined and analyzed — with transparency and permissions, of course.Oh and one more to leave you with… Researchers at Stanford University are developing a toilet that measures your “analprint” (sorry, lol) when you poop and pee, and could be able to detect if someone has a disease. Handy. You can download the full report for free below…Who Leads the World’s Digital Arms Race? Depending on which index you reference, the most technologically advanced could be the U.S., it could be South Korea, or it could even be … Sweden? Apparently Sweden’s culture of gender diversity and income equality make it an awesome place to start a business, just ask the founders of Spotify. But with the ongoing explosion of artificial intelligence, it is China that’s leading the way and will continue to do so in the future, according to Amy.We hear so often about Chinese companies copying western innovation, and in some cases just outright stealing intellectual property. But what is often lost is that China has become awesome at innovating, adding “Designed in China” to its trademark “Made in China”. Their new strategy has led to Chinese tech companies like Baidu and Tencent joining American giants like Apple, Google and Amazon in controlling the world.And a quick note on an unfounded conspiracy theory floating the airwaves in the UK recently that suggests the rollout of the 5G network is spreading the coronavirus. Let me just say that there is absolutely no evidence for this. Instead, focus has been lost in Huawei’s involvement in 5G’s rollout, the world’s largest telecom supplier and second biggest phone manufacturer, with legitimate concerns over interference and surveillance from the Chinese government.China Has Better Internet Privacy than America?China’s progressive innovation is where the buck stops online. The country has some of the creepiest surveillance laws in the world, including allowing the Chinese government to seize the personal information of customers of any of Chinese company at any time and with very little pushback. There’s also the fact that the likes of Facebook, Google and Dropbox are banned and inaccessible to the country’s 800 million internet users behind China’s so-called “Great Firewall”, in what has been termed the “Tech Cold War”. God I’m a sucker for corny names. But some media critics suggest that China is actually ahead of the U.S. in terms of developing a modern day data policy. Wait, China has better privacy laws than America? Yes, and I’m glad you asked. In 2017, then Republican-majorities in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump passed a law overturning strong internet privacy laws that gave users control over what internet service providers (ISPs) could do with their data, including preventing them from sharing browsing history with advertisers. It’s important to note that the bills faced strong Democratic opposition. I like to use Ghostery, a Google Chrome extension available on laptops and mobile phones that allows you to customize which trawlers are allowed to save your data, or you can just blanket block the lot of them. P.S. I recently convinced my parents to install it!Government’s Shameful Lack of PreparednessAs someone who helps businesses and governments for the future, Amy and I are in full agreement that most of the institutions around us have been woefully unprepared for this pandemic. It’s easy for me to sit on the sidelines and lambast them from my bedroom, but it’s an absolute fact, though unmeasurable, that a lack of government and business action has led to a higher number of cases and deaths around the world. Sure, we’ve got Trump upstairs making cuts to the Centers of Disease Control and most recently reversing funding for the World Health Organization. And in the UK, Boris Johnson recently left an intensive care unit after “things could have gone either way”. I’m obviously pleased that Johnson’s on his way to a full recovery, but it’s hard to have sympathy for him when he boasted shaking hands with coronavirus patients in hospital just a few weeks ago. From the business side, it’s been rather scary relying on leaders that have been equally clueless in their timing and lack of urgency. One company, that shat shall remain nameless, asked its employees in mid-March to “trial working from home”. Trial working from home? Sure, some workers need specific hardware or software, but for the majority of us who don’t, how f*****g hard is it to work from home? This should have all been in place already, preventing a mad scramble at the 11th hour.I know it’s annoying to hear but only time will tell whether the world’s political and business leaders will learn anything from this episode. Pandemics have and always will be a part of our lives, just check out the list of pandemics that have changed the course of history below…Coming up …Tomorrow: South Korea election summary… Next week#71 — Andrea Jones-Rooy (Social scientist, comedian, circus performer) shooting the s**t about life, journalism and other things#72 — Ryan Broderick (BuzzFeed) on the 15th anniversary of YouTube#73 — Major Garrett (CBS) on what it’s like being a White House correspondent in the age of Donald TrumpJob CornerSign up to the Inside The Newsroom Job Board for weekly updates to more than 500 journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs in the U.S., UK and around the world. Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish. You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. It’s April, which means we’re officially inside the 2020 U.S. tornado season, so today we have WEATHER ROYALTY on the podcast. James Spann is chief meteorologist at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Alabama, and an absolute God within the severe weather community. I visited James in-person a couple of years ago to talk about his more than 40 years as a broadcast meteorologist, as well as his troubled upbringing growing up without his father. James recently published his autobiography which can be found on all the usual websites. This time around James and I spoke about what the 2020 tornado season may have in store for us, and what tornado preparation his and other states are doing amid the coronavirus.Below is a rundown of everything we talked about and more, but first a quick shoutout to friend of the show (and former guest) Andrea Jones-Rooy who is the funniest data scientist alive today. Right, let’s get to it! ✊Picks of the WeekDonate To Journalists — Seattle Times journalist Paige Cornwell has set up a Go Fund Me page to help laid off and furloughed journalists. I donated $20 yesterday. Not much, but it all helps.Brian Kemp — While the entire world knew we can carry symptoms of the coronavirus without showing them, Georgia’s Governor announced this week that he didn’t know such a thing, which will directly cost lives in his state. U.S. Unemployment — The second major rise in unemployment claims was announced yesterday, something we’ll be addressing next week.James 👇Will You Like Me?Before you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ up top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.2020 Tornado Season ForecastWe’re “officially” inside the U.S. tornado season, which typically runs from the start of April to the end of June. I say “officially” because tornadoes can and do strike in any month of the year and in every single U.S. state. Last year was above average with a reported 1,676 tornadoes compared with an average of 1,306 per year since 2000. And 2020 could be another above average year, according to experts from AccuWeather:“AccuWeather forecasts a normal to slightly above-normal number of tornadoes in 2020 with a range of 1,350 to 1,450. That range is close to what occurred in 2019 and 5 to 15 percent more than the U.S. annual average.”Already there have been 180 tornado reports so far this year, including unusually high reports in January and February, and a modest amount in March. But April is where things typically kick off, as warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico rises west across the U.S. until it meets the cold dry air from the Rockies, typically somewhere in Tornado Alley — Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — or Dixie Alley — Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.The deadliest tornado outbreak so far this year was on March 3 and produced two separate EF3 (winds up to 165mph) and EF4 (up to 200 mph) tornadoes, according to the Enhanced Fujita Scale, including one that ripped through downtown Nashville. Twenty-four people have been confirmed dead and three people are still missing. Good chance to point out that tornadoes CAN AND DO hit large cities. Don’t believe otherwise.Long-Term Tornado TrendsLike with any weather phenomena, we can’t definitively say whether tornadoes are becoming more frequent or powerful based on a single event. Nor can we absolutely say whether the number of tornadoes is increasing from just a handful of years of data. Instead, we can accurately say that climate change has and will continue to make the chances of tornadoes more likely, especially those super duper EF4 and EF5 twisters that can flatten entire towns and cities. But even then, there are so many moving parts — better radar technology, more tornado spotters, more populated cities — that the data is never going to be 100 percent the same comparing one year to another. That said, there are a couple of critical long-term trends that I’ve written about before.First up is the Expanding Bulls-Eye Effect affecting every city in every state. It’s effectively the urban sprawl problem: As more people flock to cities in tornado prone areas, the larger the target for tornadoes to strike. The likes of Oklahoma City (more on that later), Dallas and Atlanta are all among the most vulnerable cities of a large-scale disaster. Credit: Stephen M. Strader and Walker S. AshleyAnd the effects are already being felt. In Forney, a suburb 20 miles east of Dallas, the population has grown 390 percent to more than 20,000 people in the past 30 years. On this very day eight years ago, 17 tornadoes touched down in North Texas including one that completely destroyed Crosby Elementary School in Forney. Had it happened just a decade before, the tornado would have hit an open field. Credit: Yours TrulyLess simple is the rise in tornadoes being reported in the southeastern states. In recent decades, the percentage of total twisters in the U.S. to touch down in Dixie Alley has dramatically increased, and when it comes to number of lives lost, Dixie Alley is now the deadliest tornado region in the entire world. That’s due to a combination of more populous cities than Tornado Alley (see above), but also the detached attitudes of people in the south. I was talking to a friend who studied in Atlanta just before the 2008 tornado that ripped up downtown and he had no idea tornadoes even hit Georgia, let alone in the very city he was living. Unfortunately that’s still the case in many southeastern cities, though the more tornadoes that do hit, the more people will have no other choice than to pay attention.Credit: Yours TrulyIn terms of the annual number of tornadoes increasing, that also has many nuances. Like we spoke about above, climate change is and will have a real impact on the size and frequency of tornadoes. But radar technology has also dramatically increased since the mid-1990s, and the popularity of the movie Twister unleashed storm chasing as a cult, which means more tornadoes are being spotted and reported than ever before.States’ Tornado PreparednessStates in Tornado and Dixie Alley will need to make impossible decisions in the coming days, if they haven’t already done so. The dilemma of prioritising safety from tornadoes or coronavirus isolation will likely mean new confirmed cases, as some states have opened community tornado shelters. But a tornado rolling through town is the more immediate threat. Alternatively, some states face leaving some residents without the extremely expensive personal tornado shelter high and dry.In James’ state, the Alabama Public Health Department released a statement saying that tornadoes took first priority, but “educated decisions” should be made to avoid contracting the coronavirus. In Missouri, which too sees it’s fair share of tornadoes, Springfield-Greene County also urged people to take personal safety in community shelters if needed. But in Oklahoma, it’ll be left up to local jurisdictions to decide whether to open public shelters or uphold recommendations against gatherings of more than 10 people. Without sounding like a local TV meteorologist myself, each state will differ in its policy so please check your local listings for more information. How the OKC Weather War Advanced Warning SystemsLike journalists, meteorologists struggle to get their message through to readers and viewers because of all the noise in today’s media world. Social media has both helped and harmed James’ work, as he’s now able to connect directly with people in his market and constantly pump out warnings and other information. But the distrust in, well, everything right now means some people don’t believe warnings until it’s too late.I’ve been in tornado warnings in three states and every time I was glued to the TV screen. Heck, I even tune in sometimes from the UK for fun. Still, if you’re like me then you’ll know all about the colorful radar maps and high-tech wind velocities and strength measures used on air. And if you’re in Oklahoma City, you’ll likely get a birds-eye view of the action via helicopters that hover a mile or two away from the actual tornado. The below video is from the historic EF5 Moore Tornado from May 2013.There might not be a larger city that sees more tornadoes in the U.S. than Oklahoma City does and, because of that, there may not be a more knowledgable and eager audience yearning for wall-to-wall coverage of tornado events than Oklahomans. That thirst resulted in an all-out ratings war between KFOR and KWTV during the nineties and noughties, led by weather Gods Gary England and Mike Morgan, respectively. In the past decade, friend of the podcast Damon Lane of KOCO joined the scene after his Herculean coverage of the Moore Tornado in 2013 that saw him live on air for around 13 hours straight. Anyway, much what of what we see on TV these days when it comes to severe weather can be traced back to little old Oklahoma City. If you’re interested in this stuff, I can’t recommend Holly Bailey’s The Mercy of the Sky enough.Tornado Communication TodayResearch on how and why tornadoes exist is critical, as we still don’t really know the answers to these questions. An exciting new breakthrough from scientists at the University of Mississippi, Oklahoma State University and University of Nebraska-Lincoln involves what’s known as ‘infrasound’, which might be able to more accurately predict tornadoes and dramatically reduce the false alarm rate that could be as high as 75 percent. The idea being that the ‘fluid mechanics’ of a tornado create noise too quiet for the human ear to hear, but loud enough for tiny microphones to pick up. Below is an interview with one of the scientists from Ole Miss, Dr. Roger Waxler, on James’ own podcast, WeatherBrains, in which the research is delved into with great detail. If the technology can be proven successful, it could revolutionize the entire weather industry.Tornadoes Around the GlobeWe have to be careful when looking at the countries most prone to tornadoes, because some people misinterpret simple data, like these scum who say England is the tornado capital of the world. It’s not. Instead, I prefer to listen to the experts, like Dr. Harold Brooks, senior scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory. Because of the ripe conditions — a mix of warm moist air with cold dry air — the likes of Canada, Italy, India and Brazil are among the countries to get the most twisters. Many other South American and Southern Asian countries also see vast amounts of twisters because of the mountainous regions that allow different air types to meet. So no, England isn’t anywhere near the tornado capital.Related Podcasts#60 — Michael Mann (Penn State) on spending his sabbatical observing wildfires in Australia#53 — Emily Atkin (Heated) on starting the most popular newsletter on climate change#42 — Kait Parker (Weather.com) on the link between hurricanes and climate change#37 — Josh Morgerman and Caroline Menzies (Hurricane Man) on shooting the wildly popular documentary Hurricane Man#17 — James Spann (ABC 33/40) on 40 years forecasting weather and his fatherless upbringing #2 — Damon Lane (KOCO) on inside covering the 2013 Moore Tornado and the emotional toll it has to this dayLast Time…Pandemics That Changed History#68 — Mckayla Wilkes (U.S. House) on taking on No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer and why the U.S. needs Universal Basic Income… Next TimeNext week we’ll quantitative futurist and CEO on Future Today Institute Amy Webb to talk about why governments and businesses weren’t more prepared for a pandemic, as well what tech trends will hit the world in 2020.Job CornerThe Inside The Newsroom Job Board will be launched on Monday. Stay tuned!Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today we have a very special guest from Maryland’s 5th district, Democratic candidate for U.S. House Mckayla Wilkes, who’s taking on fellow Democrat Steny Hoyer, with the vote currently scheduled for June 2. Mckayla and I talked about the federal government’s response to the coronavirus, which now sees 143,055 cases and 2,510 deaths in the U.S. We went through Universal Basic Income, Medicare For All and the U.S.’s draconian ‘At-Will’ employment law that allows employers to fire workers for any reason, at any time. Before we get to the rundown of everything we talked about, I want to thank Nancy Krempa for reading and supporting the newsletter over the past five months. Comments like this are why I do what I do. Enjoy ✊Picks of the Week…Boris Johnson Tests Positive — The UK prime minister is self-isolating after testing positive for the coronavirus. Two weeks ago he told the world he’d been shaking hands with hospitalized virus patients.China Reopening — Wuhan has begun to reopen after more than two months in lockdown.40 Classic Sports Games — The Ringer have put together a list of the greatest sports games to revisit.Mckayla 👇Who Are Mckayla Wilkes and Steny Hoyer?Mckayla was born in Washington D.C. to a single mother, her father unexpectedly passing away just months before she was born, and now resides in Waldorf, Maryland with her two children. Mckayla’s battle with asthma means she knows all too well about the anxiety and panic millions of Americans face every single day by not being able to afford health insurance to pay for the abhorrent costs of the U.S. healthcare system. It’s part of the reason why she’s running on a platform that includes Medicare For All and Universal Basic Income, two measures that would help ease the financial and medical pain millions of Americans not only feel today, but every day.In 63 days time, the people of Maryland’s 5th district will go to the polls to decide between Mckayla and her 80-year-old opponent Steny Hoyer, majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and one of the most powerful Democrats in the country. Hoyer has represented the 5th district for 40 years and is seeking re-election for his 21st term. When it comes to the issues, he’s an advocate for strengthening Obamacare, a backer of Wall Street and has received millions in donations from corporations. The gap between the two candidates could not be wider.Coronavirus in MarylandAs we detailed in Friday’s newsletter, governor Larry Hogan has instituted a shelter-in-place order, and only essential businesses continue to have physically present personnel. Gatherings of over 50 are suspended. Hogan recently said that he sees no way how things will be able to be opened back up within the next two weeks, at least. There are now 1,239 confirmed cases in the state, including 15 deaths.The Case For UBIUniversal Basic Income has been around for as long as time. It’s essentially a guaranteed income of the same amount to everyone and has repeatedly gained popularity in times of mass economic transformation and stress. Modern day welfare systems emerged out of the Great Depression and Second World War.Financial relief packages governments around the world have signed over the past month have all been forms of UBI born out of another global emergency, though it’s unclear whether these bailouts will be frequent or one-offs. But what many people forget, or simply don’t know, is that, like healthcare, millions of people face emergencies every single day from not having enough money, sometimes working two or three jobs just to cover the bills. I didn’t know at the time, but my own mother told me recently that she was one of those people who worked three jobs just to make sure my brother and I didn’t go without anything growing up. She worked as a sales assistant for two different estate agents during the day, made sure dinner was cooked and on the table, and then cleaned a car showroom at night. God bless her.UBI isn’t that simple, though, especially for prolonged periods, and unlike universal healthcare, UBI’s track record isn’t as deep nor as proven. The largest case of UBI in the U.S. is in Alaska, where the state-owned Alaska Permanent Fund has been around since 1982, and pays every Alaskan woman, man and child an annual dividend based on the fruits of the state’s resources, mainly oil. When oil prices were sky high in 2015, every resident received a one-off payment of $2,072, and in less glamorous years like 2020, the dividend is closer to $1,000. Another large UBI project took place in Finland between January 2017 and December 2018, where 2,000 unemployed Finns received a monthly no-strings-attached payment of €560 (£490; $634). Now, this is obviously a teeny eeny weeny sample size, but the results were mixed. While researchers found participants’ desire to find employment stayed relatively the same, their happiness and stress levels all improved dramatically. Ultimately, UBI is successful depending on what you’re looking to get out of it.Now, $2,000 a year or €560 a month is clearly not enough to live on, but there are fascinating results that we can take and use for the future. It seems as though the world isn’t sold on UBI as an indefinite policy, but maybe more people will be sold once they read about America’s draconian ‘At-Will’ employment laws…Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.At-Will EmploymentI was having a conversation with a friend from California the other day about how she thought I was joking when I told her the standard notice period in the UK is one month, with some contracts mandating even longer if you’ve spent several years with a company. When I heard Mckayla describe Maryland’s At-Will employment laws, I thought she was joking. Turns out she wasn’t, and at-will employment is no joke.According to Maryland’s Department of Labor:Employees work “at the will” of their employers. This means, in the absence of an express contract, agreement or policy to the contrary, an employee may be hired or fired for almost any reason — whether fair or not — or for no reason at all.”The exceptions saving employees are few and far between, but include not being be able to be fired because of discrimination. No lawsuits can be filed against employers for lost wages or unfair dismissal, and turns out that most if not all states are covered by such laws, or rather the lack of them. It’s just one of the litany of reasons why the U.S. has been so unprepared to fight the spread of the virus that could end up infecting millions.What’s in the U.S. and UK Relief Packages?A $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) U.S. economic relief package was signed last week, and a similar £330 billion ($400 billion) deal was signed in the UK. But what’s actually in them both and how easy will it be for people to recoup lost income?Starting with the U.S., most adults will receive a one-off payment of $1,200, though there are several conditional factors: Single adults with income of $75,000 or less will get the full amountMarried couples with no children earning $150,000 or less will receive a total of $2,400Taxpayers filing as head of household will get the full payment if they earned $112,500 or lessAbove those income figures, the payment decreases until it stops altogether for single people earning $99,000 or married people who have no children and earn $198,000You can’t get a payment if someone claims you as a dependent, even if you’re an adultIn the UK, the government will provide loans of up to £5 million ($6 million) for small businesses with revenues of less than £45 million ($ 55 million). There’ll also be non-repayable grants of up to £10,000 ($12,250) for 700,000 small businesses, and £25,000 ($30,000) for pubs and restaurants available. As for employees, the government has pledged to pay up to 80 percent of wages of anyone that cannot work because of the virus.Last week…#67 — Sarah Nöckel (Femstreet) on how she grew her newsletter dedicated to women in tech and venture capital to more than 7,000 subscribers from scratch and how we can close the inequality gap yesterday.… Next upHopefully James Spann to talk about the beginning of the U.S. tornado season.Related podcasts…#65 — Andrew Flowers (Journalist > Politician) on how to make the transition from journalist to running for office, and why the uninsured rate in Massachusetts is the lowest in the country.#64 — Paula Jean Swearengin (U.S. Senate) on running for the U.S. Senate for a second time, featuring in Netflix’s Knock Down The House and how the coal industry ripped West Virginia to shreds. Job CornerThe Inside The Newsroom Job Board will be launched next week. Stay tuned.Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Well that happened quick, didn’t it? The U.S. has now overtaken China for the most confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, and there is no sign of America’s trajectory from slowing down. This is what you get when 62 million people vote for a complete clown with no leadership skills in times of need. As usual, America’s problems have been left up to the people and individual states to clean up the federal government’s mess. It took Congress almost two weeks to pass a $2 trillion relief package that’s littered with treats for large corporations, while every American will receive just $1,200. We truly live in a fucked up world. Below is what every state is doing. A quick note about the data: The data is sourced from CoronaDataScraper.com, which is relying on individual state and federal data. Naturally, some figures won’t capture the entire situation. Enjoy. ✊Today I was given a huge assist by Pia Deshpande, a senior at Columbia University, who helped out on this mammoth task with excellent research and data analysis. Thank you Pia 🙏. And also a quick thanks to friend and former colleague Ali Ingersoll for the shout out on Twitter. Greatly appreciated, it doesn’t go unnoticed!Okay, let’s get to it. As you can see from the below log scale chart, the number of cases in the U.S. will soon be off the chart, literally.Credit: Pablo Gutiérrez 👇Where are the biggest hotbeds in the U.S. right now? Look to New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, New Orleans, San Francisco and Los Angeles.Credit: Pablo Gutiérrez 👇New York’s 39,000 cases were too many to include in the next chart, so they get their own chart which can be found in the state’s section below. Expect many of the states in the chart immediately below to follow New York in the coming days and weeks.Number of confirmed cases in states with more than 1,000As for the rest, many have yet to be hit too hard. But there’s still some worrying signs in states such as Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, Nevada, Ohio and Tennessee.Number of confirmed cases in states with less than 1,000AlaskaAlaska's largest public sector union, the Alaska State Employees Association, filed a court order Wednesday that would allow most state employees to work from home, claiming that messaging from governor Mike Dunleavy had been “inconsistent” so far. Alaska now has 56 cases, with nearly half located in its largest city, Anchorage. The state announced its first death from the virus Wednesday morning.Cases: 56Deaths: 1AlabamaGovernor Kay Ivey last week authorized the Alabama National Guard to activate “up to 100 guardsmen, should the need arise” to combat the coronavirus. Ivey also ordered the shutdown of all Alabama beaches, dine-in facilities, schools, childcare centers and liquor stores until April 6th.Cases: 531Deaths: 1ArkansasGovernor Asa Hutchinson asked lawmakers to attend a special session of the General Assembly Thursday after two people died from coronavirus in the state. Hutchinson has shut down schools until April 17, ordered all traditional funerals to be delayed or changed, and mandated salons, barber shops, and massage parlors be temporarily closed. The governor stated that he wanted to avoid a shelter-in-place order in any part of the state. Cases: 349Deaths: 2American SamoaAmerican Samoa now requires non-US passport holders to spend at least 14 days in Hawaii before entering to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. Currently, the territory's health department tells residents that they’re at ‘Code Blue’, meaning schools are closed, bars and restaurants are limited to a 10 person occupancy, large gatherings are banned and people are “encouraged” to practice social distancing. The territory has yet to report an official case. Cases: 0Deaths: 0ArizonaArizona continues to mandate businesses and schools close and restaurants offer only dine-out options. The Navajo Nation, which has the highest number of cases per capita, is the only jurisdiction to institute a stay-at-home order. Cases in Arizona continue to rise, and now stand at 508.Cases: 508Deaths: 8CaliforniaCalifornia was the first state to institute a shelter-in-place order on March 19. The number of positive cases in California continues to grow, though at a slower rate than in New York. Overnight, California's cases increased by almost a third and now has more than 4,000 positive cases.Cases: 4,040Deaths: 82ColoradoGovernor Jared Polis enacted a stay-at-home order Wednesday to be put into effect the following morning. Colorado police have also been following specific advice from the governor which includes making fewer arrests but issue more summonses.Cases: 1,430Deaths: 19ConnecticutGovernor Ned Lamont requested a presidential disaster declaration for Connecticut as the state deals with its proximity to the U.S. epicenter in New York City. Wealthy New Yorkers frequently have alternate residences to get away from the noise and bustle of the city, and those are being used now to get away from the pandemic. Time will tell whether Connecticut will become the next state with an outbreak.Cases: 1,012Deaths: 21D.C.According to smart phone data collected by Unacast, D.C. has done the best of any U.S. state or territory at social distancing, with a 61 percent decrease in average distance traveled. Under the federal relief plan, which mayor Muriel Bowser has condemned, territories would receive $700 million less than states. Currently, D.C. has more cases than 19 states.Cases: 267Deaths: 3DelewareDelaware has had a stay-at-home order in effect since Tuesday morning, and its presidential primary was moved to June 2. It’s unclear at this point whether the primary will go ahead.Cases: 143Deaths: 1FloridaFlorida's stay-at-home order will come into effect this Friday morning. The majority of coronavirus cases in Florida are clustered in the southern tip, near Miami. Schools remain closed, and only essential businesses operate with a physical workforce present. Cases: 2,484Deaths: 29GeorgiaA shelter-in-place order remains in effect since it was enacted on Monday. The state has begun constructing mobile homes for individuals who need to be quarantined but cannot return or stay in their own homes.Cases: 1,642Deaths: 56GuamLatest news out of Guam is that an U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is being quarantined there after reports of crew members contracting the virus. All 5,000 crew onboard will now undergo testing.Cases: 45Deaths: 1HawaiiGovernor David Ige put in place a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone returning to Hawaii, including permanent residents returning from trips. A U.S. family who flew to Hawaii earlier this week were attacked by a local man who accused them of trying to spread the coronavirus. Governor Ige has asked Americans to postpone their trips to the island.Cases: 106Deaths: 0IowaGovernor Kim Reynolds has recommended schools close for a month. Restaurants and bars offer takeout services, and banned gatherings of 10 or more. No shelter-in-place order is in effect. In fact, Brooks Jackson, Dean of University of Iowa's medical college, said that such an order would be disruptive and could hinder the work of hospitals trying to provide care.Cases: 179Deaths: 1IdahoGovernor Brad Little signed an emergency declaration before any cases were confirmed in Idaho. The governor also ordered residents to stay home on Wednesday, and is anticipated to remain in effect until mid-April, but may be extended like many other states.Cases: 191Deaths: 3IllinoisPolice are beginning to enforce governor J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order issued last week. On Thursday, Pritzker announced the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund to support nonprofits and community foundations as the economy continues to halt. Cases in Illinois increased by more than a third overnight. Cases: 2,542Deaths: 26IndianaA shelter-in-place order went into effect on March 24 and is expected to continue until April 6. Bars and restaurants continue to only offer takeout services. Schools will be closed until May 1.Cases: 657Deaths: 17KansasGovernor Laura Kelly has closed schools for the year, making Kansas the first state to do so. Social distancing is encouraged and large gatherings are banned. However, restaurants and bars continue to have dine-in services.Cases: 172Deaths: 3KentuckyGovernor Andy Beshear announced the National Guard would begin to assist some hospitals in the state. Restaurants no longer offer dine-in services, and schools are temporarily closed.Cases: 247Deaths: 5LouisianaAll bars and restaurants to only offer takeout service and gatherings limited to 50 people or less. New Orleans accounts for around 70 percent of all cases in the state, and the surrounding Orleans Parish has the highest number of deaths per capita of any county in the country.Cases: 2,304Deaths: 83MassachusettsGovernor Charlie Baker limited gatherings to 25 people and under and closed schools. Pharmacies in the state are authorized to produce hand sanitizer and sell it over the counter.Cases: 2,417Deaths: 25MarylandGovernor Larry Hogan instituted a shelter-in-place order last week. Only essential businesses continue to have physically present personnel. Gatherings of over 50 are suspended.Cases: 583Deaths: 4MaineGatherings of more than 10 people are banned, and bars and restaurants no longer allow dine-in services. Schools are closed until further notice.Cases: 155Deaths: 0MichiganResidents have been ordered to stay at home, and all schools remain closed. Bars and restaurants offer takeout services. Detroit has been hit especially hard.Cases: 2,844Deaths: 61MinnesotaNonessential workers have been ordered to stay home as bars, restaurants, gyms and schools are all closed.Cases: 344Deaths: 2MissouriEnd to gatherings of more than 10 people ordered, but governor Mike Parsons has opted out of a stay-at-home order, citing the damage to the economy as the reason. What Mike doesn't realize is that the longer he puts off the inevitable, the deeper the recession will be in the Show Me State.Cases: 520Deaths: 9MississippiAccording to one study, Mississippi has taken the least aggressive measures of any state, despite having the 25th highest number of cases. All governor Tate Reeves has done is urge people not to gather in groups of more than 10 people, and stopped dine-in services. Great job, Tate, you the man 👍Cases: 485Deaths: 6MontanaMontana is one of those sparsely populated states that social distancing hasn't been too much of a problem. Still, a state of emergency was declared on March 12 and schools are set to be closed until April 10.Cases: 90Deaths: 1North CarolinaDemocratic governor Roy Cooper said on March 17 that all bars and restaurants would close, while takeout and delivery would remain open. But Republican lieutenant governor and Cooper’s primary opponent, Dan Forest, has said that Cooper didn't have the authority to impose such a restriction. So while the state burns down, political points are still trying to be scored. F**k my life.Cases: 755Deaths: 3North DakotaState of emergency declared on March 13 and all schools ordered to close a day later. No businesses have been ordered to close yet, meaning despite North Dakota's small population, it is playing with fire.Cases: 57Deaths: 0NebraskaPublic gatherings are limited to 10 people or less, though governor Pete Ricketts said the measure is not law enforceable. Fear not, because the mayor of Lincoln has since issued a similar order that will carry a $500 fine or three months in jail if broken. They should speak to the folks suing the government in New Hampshire…Cases: 82Deaths: 0New Hampshire… Meanwhile in New Hampshire, three residents have sued governor Chris Sununu arguing that the state's ban on gatherings of more than 50 people violates their constitutional rights. Sigh. One of the plaintiffs attends church service three times a week and claims the ban was made without due process. People, man.Cases: 154Deaths: 1New JerseyState declared a disaster yesterday as number of cases now stand second in the country behind New York, and deaths in New Jersey are 5th most. Federal funding can now be allocated to all areas impacted by the virus as its proximity to New York could mean we've yet to see the worse for The Garden State. Cases: 6,876Deaths: 81New MexicoOne of the few states that didn't wait for s**t to hit the fan before it actually acted to stop the spread. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a statewide emergency as soon as the first case were confirmed back on March 12, and then a day later closed all schools for three weeks. That's how you stop a pandemic from spreading. New Mexico's cases are still low at 9th-least in the country. Cases: 136Deaths: 1NevadaNevada saw a huge spike of new cases overnight, jumping around 67 percent, including 10 deaths in total. On March 18, Governor Steve Sisolak waived the state's seven-day wait for unemployment benefits, and declared that those applying for unemployment didn't need to demonstrate they were searching for work.Cases: 535Deaths: 10New YorkNew York has been the hardest-hit state with cases soaring to almost 40,000 and deaths to 457, the most of any state by far, and more than the likes of the UK and South Korea combined. Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state severely lacked ventilators and other crucial medical supplies, as 60 percent of the state's cases are concentrated in the New York City metro area. The good news, if you can call it that, is that the spread is slowing.Cases: 39,140Deaths: 457OhioJust like the folks in D.C. are doing, government officials in Ohio are using the coronavirus to push through political agenda. Ohio's attorney general Dave Yost ordered abortion clinics across the state to cease “nonessential and elective surgical” abortion operations. Not sure about you, but abortions are essential if you need an abortion.Cases: 870Deaths: 15OklahomaBars have closed and restaurants in OKC have been limited to take-out, drive-through and delivery. Gyms, mall food courts and movie theaters have also closed.Cases: 248Deaths: 7OregonStay-at-home order issued on Monday and all businesses where “close personal contact is difficult or impossible to avoid” have be ordered to shut. For a state so close to the outbreak in Washington, these measures feel too little too late.Cases: 317Deaths: 11PennsylvaniaThe Democratic and Republican presidential primaries due to be held on April 28 have been delayed to June 2. The AP reports that Democratic primaries cannot be held past June 16, so who the hell knows if there will even be a primary. Cases: 1,813Deaths: 18Puerto RicoNonessential workers must be home by 7pm and will have to be so until April 12. Governor Wanda Vázquez has also ordered that vehicles with license plates ending in even numbers can only be on the road Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Vehicles with tags ending in odd numbers are only permitted to move about on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. That’s how you stop a virus. ¡Olé!Cases: 70Deaths: 3Rhode IslandChild care for essential workers will be paid for, and anyone flying back to T.F. Green Airport — the state's largest airport — must self-quarantine for two weeks. All gyms, salons, theaters, bowling alleys and other entertainment venues are closed.Cases: 165Deaths: 0South CarolinaGroups of three or more will be broken up. Dine-in services in bars and restaurants have been banned, but curb-side alcohol sales are allowed. Phew. Public schools have been closed through the end of March and public universities have been urged to finish the semester through online classes.Cases: 456Deaths: 9South DakotaSchools are closed until at least May 1, and all state employees are to work from home until at least May 2.Cases: 46Deaths: 1TennesseeGovernor Bill Lee has banned in-house dining at bars and restaurants, and closed gyms. Individual cities including Memphis and Nashville have ordered their own stay-at-home orders.Cases: 1,097Deaths: 3TexasTexas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick told Fox News that he’s willing to die from the virus in order to preserve the economy, and that “lots of grandparents” would do the same. This isn't a joke, a paid official actually said that. Twenty-four people have died in Patrick’s state.Cases: 1,654Deaths: 24UtahUtah had originally banned gatherings of 10 or more people, but has since revised that policy to being a 'recommendation' to its people. Leave people to make their own decisions, yeah real smart, Utah. Cases: 396Deaths: 1VirginiaGovernor Ralph Northam closed certain nonessential businesses and banned gatherings of more than 10 people on Tuesday until April 23. Northam also shut the state’s K-12 schools for the rest of the academic year. Cases: 486Deaths: 10Virgin IslandsGovernor Albert Bryan Jr. is asking the VI legislature to use $60 million to fight the economic impact of the virus. A vote is scheduled for today.Cases: 17Deaths: 0VermontState legislators passed several bills this week to ensure those who are unemployed, will be covered by the state's $500 million in unemployment reserves. Gatherings of more than 10 people are banned.Cases: 158Deaths: 9WashingtonOne of two states to first record 100 cases, the other being California, Washington now has the 4th-most in the country. Governor Jay Inslee ordered residents to stay at home on Monday, after 1,996 cases were already confirmed. Too late to shut it down. Cases: 3,207Deaths: 150WisconsinGovernor Tony Evers ordered residents to stay at home earlier this week, reversing his vow not to do so. There are now 728 cases in Wisconsin.Cases: 728Deaths: 10West VirginiaWest Virginia's aging population — 20 percent of the state's 1.8 million residents are 65 years old or older — and underlying health issues from coal mining and opioid addiction leave the Mountaineer State in one of the most precarious situations in America. While only 76 cases have been confirmed, the mortality rate could be highest in the country.Cases: 76Deaths: 0WyomingGovernor Mark Gorden announced yesterday that he's considering relaxing the state's shut-in policies that have forced many businesses to lay-off workers. The state's case count jumped 14 percent overnight.Cases: 56Deaths: 0Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. We’re in crazy times, so I thought it’d be good to take a break with today’s podcast guest… Sarah Nöckel, founder of Femstreet, a newsletter dedicated to women in tech and venture capital. Femstreet has exploded in popularity and influence since Sarah started it about two years ago, and we dug deep into how she grew her following to more than 7,000 subscribers from nothing, and what influence she’s had in narrowing the inequality gap. On Friday we’ll have an update on the you know what, specifically looking at what each U.S. state has done and is doing to combat the spread. Until then, enjoy some normality and stay safe out there. Enjoy 🤓Picks of the WeekTulsi Gabbard Drops Out — Yes, Tulsi was still in the race until last week, and bizarrely endorsed Joe Biden despite disagreeing with him on almost everythingMarie Newman — Progressive Marie Newman beat incumbent Democrat Dan Lipinski in Illinois’ 3rd district primary, and is set to join The Squad in the House of RepsOlympics Postponed — Japan and the IOC held out as long as possible, but they finally announced the inevitable and moved the Tokyo Olympics to next summerSarah 👇How Sarah Built FemstreetSarah launched Femstreet because she couldn’t find a central place for news on women making strides in the technology and venture capital industries. So in September 2017, Sarah published her first article to just a handful of subscribers. More than 100 editions of Femstreet later, Sarah now publishes to more than 7,000 subscribers. While the content is targeted at women in tech and VC, her lessons and experience can be used and applied by anyone anywhere. Four of the biggest lessons Sarah has learned, which I share and couldn’t put better myself, include…Niche doesn’t mean small. Like-minded people find each otherFocus. Depth not breadthGenuine personal brand is importantCreate for the best readers, not all the readersWhat you can do now: start something. It doesn’t matter what, but with more downtime in these crazy times, just start with the first block, and then add to it every day.The Gap Is Closing, But Not Fast EnoughEvery year the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Gender Gap Report, which covers aspects including Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment. I dived into the 2020 edition to see what the current situation is and how large the strides we’re making are. Below is a summary of the main findings…Overall global gender parity is at 68.6 percent, up slightly from a year before. That figure is pulled up and down by different countries and subindexes, but overall, gender equality is improving.The subindex with the largest disparity is Political Empowerment — the number of women represented in parliaments around the world, followed by Economic Participation and Opportunity — the ability of women to enter the workplace. Educational Attainment and Health and Survival have 96.1 percent and 95.7 percent parity, respectively. The latter two are very positive.The number of women in parliament has improved dramatically in recent years, especially in countries such as Latvia, Spain and Thailand. But still only a quarter of the more than 35,000 global parliamentary seats are occupied by women. In some countries, women aren’t represented at all.The number of women in senior roles around the world has also increased. Globally, around 36 percent of senior private sector managers and public sector officials are women, a rise of about 2 percent from last year. This metric is also heavily weighted by a handful of countries.New problems exist lower down the ladder though. On average, only 55 percent of adult women are in the workforce, compared with 78 percent of men. Educational Attainment is another subindex weighted by developed countries in the west. Ten percent of women around the world are still illiterate. Significantly more investment is needed in developing countries.Progress is being made, but not fast enough. The overall global gender gap is slated to be closed in 100 years; Political Empowerment will take around 95 years to close; Economic Participation and Opportunity will take 257 years to close. BUT there is better news: Educational Attainment is on track to close over the next 12 years!Unsurprisingly, Western Europe has the highest gender parity of any region, followed by North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.At the current pace, overall gender gaps could be closed in 54 years in Western Europe, 59 years in Latin America and the Caribbean, 71 years in South Asia, and a whopping 151 years in North America.The five most improved countries in this year’s report are Ethiopia, Spain, Mali, Albania and Mexico.Iceland (God bless you) is once again the most gender-equal country for the 11th time in a row with a disparity of just 12 percent. In second is Norway, followed by Finland and Sweden. Notice anything?Like Me, Please?Hope you’re finding this edition useful. If you can, please click the ❤️ at the top. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Thank you.What Scandanavia Is Doing That Other Countries Are NotBefore we lavish the Nordics too much, we must recognize that many senior positions within corporations and government are still held by old white men. Let me say that all old white men are not evil, but when you have too many of any one group or demographic controlling a system, said system becomes slow-moving and reactive, instead of being progressive and proactive. That said, the likes of Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland are the best countries in the world for gender equality.In Iceland, women have had the best working conditions of any other country for 11 years in a row now. Part of why comes from the fact that for centuries, women have stayed at home while the men traversed the oceans. As a result, women had to play the role of farmer, hunter, architect, builder and so on. Now that overseas exploration isn’t really a thing, women and their contribution are sewn into the country’s fabric. Similar histories can be told of many countries around the world, but Scandanavia has taken advantage the most and is part of why they are also among the happiest countries in the world. Serena Williams Gave Birth, Then Lost Her RankingJust one recent example of the hardships women have to break through that men don’t involves the greatest tennis to have ever stepped onto the court. In January 2017, Serena Williams left on maternity leave ranked No. 1 in the world, having won the 2017 Australian Open while 20 weeks pregnant. Insane. When she returned to the game at the 2018 French Open, she was suddenly ranked No. 415. The WTA’s maternity leave rules back then meant that Serena lost out on ranking points for the entire time she was out. Serena being Serena used her platform to speak out on the issue and the WTA has since revised its policy to allow new mothers to use their previous ranking at 12 select tournaments within a three-year period.Now this is obviously the highest-of-profile cases, and most other women don’t have the same power and influence to speak out. While Serena put her career on hold to give birth, the same can’t be said for millions of other women across the globe. As a result, fertility rates today are among the lowest ever recorded.Fertility Rates Have Plummeted, EverywhereMore and more women are choosing to go in the opposite direction to Serena, saying no to giving birth full stop. In 1960, the average women had five children (holy mackerel!), but that figure has been halved as of 2017, according to data from the World Bank. Why? Because women are finally being allowed to make decisions for themselves, and the increasing financial requirements of raising a child has become too much for many women and couples. However, there is still wild variation between different regions. What are Governments Doing to Reduce Gap?Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company identified six ways governments can intervene and speed up the closing of the gap: Laws, policies, and regulation; financial incentives and support; technology and infrastructure; creation of economic opportunity; capability building; and advocacy and shaping attitudes. Governments have the power, the money and the stakeholders to put all of these into action, but put simply, not enough are doing enough about it. Related Podcasts#55 — Lindsay Gibbs (Power Plays newsletter) on why U.S. Soccer is denying the USWNT equal pay#46 — Christine Brennan (USA Today, CNN, PBS) on the history of women in sportsThis week…Look out for a newsletter on Friday looking at what each U.S. state is doing to combat the spread of the virus, including confirmed cases and deaths.… next weekWe’ll have Mckayla Wilkes, progressive Democrat from Maryland, to talk about her race with house majority leader and one of the most powerful Democrats in the country Steny Hoyer, and the need for Medicare For All and Universal Basic Income.Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I publish (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello. Welcome to Inside The Newsroom. We’re in unprecedented times. The coronavirus pandemic has swept through most of the planet, with total cases at more than 167,000 and deaths at 6,449, as of Monday morning. It’s quickly becoming one of the worst pandemics in history. But even with weeks of warning signs, governments around the world continue to be too lax and do too little. Here in the UK, the government have opted for a “herd immunity” strategy, happy for up to 80 percent of the 66 million population to contract the disease to build immunity while thousands of vulnerable people die in the process. Elsewhere in Europe, Spain has joined Italy in a full lockdown. But what about the rest of the world? For the record, the official numbers of cases and deaths are likely to be far higher due to the lack of tests available and carried out. With that said, let’s take a look at what each country with a confirmed case is doing to stop COVID-19. Due to Substack’s email length limits, I’ve had to divide into two emails. Look out for another email with countries between A and I. And share this post by hitting the below button 👇Jamaica: 10 cases, 0 deaths 🇯🇲Prime minister Andrew Holness declared the island a disaster area, meaning the government can do whatever it takes to stem the spread, and has deployed soldiers and police in the streets to restrict movement.Japan: 839 cases, 22 deaths 🇯🇵One of the first countries outside of China to have a confirmed case, it’s amazing Japan has even been able to keep its cases to four figures. Still, prime minister Abe says the Olympics will go ahead in July still. I don’t believe him. Jordan: 8 cases, 0 deaths 🇯🇴Country will ban all incoming and outgoing flights from tomorrow, and has already banned public gatherings and events. Schools and universities are closed for two weeks, as well as tourist sites and sports facilities.Kazakhstan: 9 cases, 0 deaths 🇰🇿State of emergency has been declared which means a nationwide quarantine will restrict entry to and from the country.Kenya: 3 cases, 0 deaths 🇰🇪Travelers from any country with a confirmed case have been banned, and schools have been suspended.Kuwait: 112 cases, 0 deaths 🇰🇼Commercial facilities, shopping malls and public markets have been closed. No more than five people are allowed in grocery stories at the same time, and everyone is required to keep at least one meter away from each other.Latvia: 30 cases, 0 deaths 🇱🇻All travel has been banned as of midnight last night, as well as public gatherings of more than 50 people. Latvians and people with residents will still be allowed back in.Lebanon: 110 cases, 3 deaths 🇱🇧Medical state of emergency declared as the country’s financial crisis threatens to risk essential medical supplies. Restaurants and many public venues are already closed, and flights from many corona-infected countries have been halted.Liechtenstein: 4 cases, 0 deaths 🇱🇮Little reported out of Liechtenstein.Lithuania: 12 cases, 0 deaths 🇱🇹Whole country under quarantine for two weeks. Borders closed to travelers and non-essential stores have been closed.Luxembourg: 59 cases, 1 death 🇱🇺Country is in lockdown as number of cases are slowly starting to rise. Malaysia: 428 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇾An 80 percent spike in the number of cases, with most being linked to a religious gathering attended by 16,000 people. Smart stuff. The region is a hotbed for mass outbreaks as attendees return home to neighbouring countries. Cheers Malaysia. Maldives: 13 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇻While most countries are shutting down, the Maldives have been busy building a luxury quarantine resort. The hotel was built in just 10 days by around 50 workers. That sounds sturdy. Don’t go to the Maldives.Malta: 21 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇹Country is on lockdown.Martinique: 9 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇶Little reported on government measures, as the Costa Favolosa cruise ship has been anchored ashore over the weekend. Mauritania: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇲🇷First case reported on Saturday. Few reports on government action so far.Mexico: 41 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇽Schools will be closed for a month starting this week, and some public gatherings have been cancelled. Sounds like too little has been done here to stop a mass outbreak. Moldova: 23 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇩One of the few countries to act so early on, Moldova banned all foreigners flying in from affected countries on Tuesday, and closed all kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities for two weeks on Wednesday.Monaco: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇨All non-essential public spaces have been closed, which includes everything except supermarkets and food markets, pharmacies, tobacconists (of course), newsagents, petrol stations, banks and places of worship. So quite a lot then…Mongolia: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇲🇳Country has been in lockdown since Tuesday, barring anyone from entering or leaving its cities.Morocco: 28 cases, 1 death 🇲🇦All international flights have been suspended, while many tourists have been unable to leave.Namibia: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇳🇦Capital city of Windhoek in lockdown as the country's Independence Celebrations scheduled for March 21 have been suspended.Nepal: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇳🇵Mount Everest has been closed until April 30. Not much else.Netherlands: 1,135 cases, 20 deaths 🇳🇱Dutch government will close all schools, bars and restaurants as number of cases passes one thousand over the weekend.New Zealand: 8 cases, 0 deaths 🇳🇿Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has ordered everyone entering the country must self-isolate, and no cruise ships will be allowed to dock until June 30.Nigeria: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇳🇬First case was detected on February 25, as cases remain surprisingly low.North Macedonia: 14 cases, 0 deaths 🇲🇰Travelers from high-risk countries have been banned, as have public gatherings. Elections on April 12 are still due to go ahead. Norway: 1,211 cases, 3 deaths 🇳🇴All schools, kindergartens and universities have closed. Bars and restaurants will be closed except for those that are able to keep customers at least one meter apart. Good luck with that. Supermarkets and pharmacies will remain openOman: 22 cases, 0 deaths 🇴🇲Will ban all non-GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries tomorrow and will place anyone entering into quarantine. Public parks and all public gatherings will be closed.Pakistan: 53 cases, 0 deaths 🇵🇰Closed all educational institutions across the country for three weeks, and will shut borders with neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan today.Panama: 43 cases, 1 death 🇵🇦Short-term suspension of public and private schools in force on Wednesday, but not much else.Paraguay: 6 cases, 0 deaths 🇵🇾Has suspended public schools for 15 days. Not much else.Peru: 71 cases, 0 deaths 🇵🇪Borders will be closed and all citizens to self-quarantine for 15 days. Start of school year has been pushed back two weeks to March 30, and will spend 165 million soles ($47 million) to supply schools with hygiene kits. Travelers arriving from France, Italy, Spain and China will be quarantined for two weeks.Philippines: 140 cases, 11 deaths 🇵🇭President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a lockdown of the entire metro Manila region yesterday until April 14, leaving more than 12 million residents with almost no time to find enough food, water, and medical care. Poland: 119 cases, 3 deaths 🇵🇱Borders have been sealed and returnees will be quarantined for 14 days. Portugal: 245 cases, 0 deaths 🇵🇹State of alert has been declared which will allow civil protection, police and the army to be mobilized. All schools, nurseries and universities will be closed as of today.Qatar: 401 cases, 0 deaths 🇶🇦Non-citizens have been banned from entering the country, as a $23 billion stimulus package has been announced.Republic of Congo: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇨🇬Not much reported, first case confirmed over weekend. Romania: 131 cases, 0 deaths 🇷🇴Romania’s giant population of workers in other countries are set to return. Indoor gatherings of more than 100 people have been banned, as have cultural, artistic institutions and museums. Malls and supermarkets are exempted, and so are parliamentary gatherings.Russia: 63 cases, 0 deaths 🇷🇺Land borders with Poland and Norway have been closed, and travel has been limited.Rwanda: 1 case 0 deaths 🇷🇼Churches and schools have been closed as country records first case over the weekend.Saint Lucia: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇱🇨Advice on how to cough and sneeze, but not much else.Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇻🇨Not much reported in way of government action.San Marino: 101 cases, 5 deaths 🇸🇲Not much reported, but due to proximity with Italy and other highly-infected European countries, expect to hear more out of San Marino imminently. Saudi Arabia: 103 cases, 0 deaths 🇸🇦Malls, restaurants, coffee shops and public parks and gardens were ordered to close yesterday. Supermarkets, pharmacies and food delivery still allowed.Senegal: 24 cases, 0 deaths 🇸🇳All schools and universities closed for the next three weeks. Religious festivals also cancelled. Serbia: 48 cases, 0 deaths 🇷🇸State of emergency declared as kindergartens, schools and universities will be closed until the end of the semester.Seychelles: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇸🇨Contact tracing in place, as cruise chips have been blocked.Singapore: 226 cases, 0 deaths 🇸🇬Country can be hailed as a model to follow as cases remain low relative to closeness to China and earliness of first case. Recoveries are starting to catch up with active cases. Slovakia: 54 cases, 0 deaths 🇸🇰State of emergency declared yesterday, as all shops except food stores, pharmacies, banks, petrol stations and post offices will be closed from 6 am today.Slovenia: 219 cases, 1 death 🇸🇮Public transport has been suspended, and taxi drivers will still be allowed to operate so long as they sanitize after every ride. Bars and restaurant will be closed as well.South Africa: 51 cases, 0 deaths 🇿🇦State of disaster declared as schools have been closed, and public gatherings of more than 100 people have been banned. Financial package to be announced shortly. South Korea: 8,162 cases, 75 deaths 🇰🇷Another one of the first countries to be hit, South Korea has tested about 10,000 people a day for the virus, and has subsequently been able to keep the mortality rate below one percent. As a result, cases and deaths are slowing down.Spain: 7,798 cases, 289 deaths 🇪🇸Spain is Europe’s worst-hit country after Italy and has banned its people from leaving their homes for 15 days except for buying essential supplies and medicines, or for work. Sri Lanka: 18 cases, 0 deaths 🇱🇰Borders have been shut to UK visitors after the country postponed the two-Test cricket series.Sudan: 1 case, 1 death 🇸🇩Schools and universities have been closed for one month, and public gatherings have been banned. Suriname: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇸🇷Borders and airports were closed over the weekend as the country’s first case was reported. That’s the way to do it. Sweden: 1,022 cases, 3 deaths 🇸🇪Not much reported on government measures.Switzerland: 2,200 cases, 14 deaths 🇨🇭Schools throughout the country are closed and public gatherings of more than 100 people banned. Parliament is also cutting short the ongoing work in its two chambers.Taiwan: 59 cases, 1 death 🇹🇼Another of the countries first hit by the virus, it’s amazing to see just 53 cases confirmed and one death. The island is just 81 miles and a short flight away from mainland China, and on December 31, the same day China notified the WHO that it had several cases of an unknown pneumonia, Taiwan’s CDC immediately ordered inspections of passengers arriving on flights from Wuhan. Great job, Taiwan.Thailand: 114 cases, 1 death 🇹🇭Another of the countries first hit by the pandemic, cases were still in double figures until 32 new cases were confirmed Sunday, the largest single day jump since the outbreak started. Visas have been suspended from 19 countries included China. Togo: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇹🇬Only case is in stable condition. Not much reported on government measures.Trinidad and Tobago: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇹🇹Contact tracing initiated, not much else. Tunisia: 18 cases, 0 deaths 🇹🇳First confirmed case on March 2, the country has done well to limit total cases to 18.Turkey: 6 cases, 0 deaths 🇹🇷Schools and universities have closed, public events have been banned, foreign visits postponed and spectators at sports events banned. Public has been urged to self-quarantine.Ukraine: 3 cases, 1 death 🇺🇦All air traffic to be closed tomorrow, and borders will soon follow.United Arab Emirates: 98 cases, 0 deaths 🇦🇪Major tourism and cultural venues closed and a $27-billion fiscal plan has been announced.United Kingdom: 1,144 cases, 21 deaths 🇬🇧Oh boy, where to start. While almost every other country around the world closes schools and shuts borders, thousands of people were allowed to run a half marathon in Bath. Boris Johnson has opted for “herd immunity”. Yes, the prime minister of the UK has decided to let the entire population contract the disease in order to build up immunity. Meanwhile, thousands, if not tens of thousands of Britons could die as a result. I need to sign off soon before my blood boils so much it evaporates. Uruguay: 4 cases, 0 deaths 🇺🇾Health emergency declared, but schools will only be closed once they have confirmed cases.United States: 3,499 cases, 63 deaths 🇺🇸The CDC advised Sunday evening that all public gatherings of more than 50 people should be banned, and Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf announced a ban of all dine-in facilities at bars and restaurants in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Allegheny Counties for the next 14 days. Too little too late as cases in the U.S. will likely be in the tens, if not, hundreds of thousands within the ext few weeks.Uzbekistan: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇺🇿First case confirmed yesterday. Around 8,000 people are under quarantine. Venezuela: 10 cases, 0 deaths 🇻🇪President Nicolas Maduro ordered businesses to close and citizens to remain in their homes in a “social quarantine starting today. The deterioration of its public health system after years of economic crisis has raised alarm about whether Maduro’s government is in a position to control its spread.Vietnam: 56 cases, 0 deaths 🇻🇳All passengers coming from or through China, South Korea, the UK and Schengen countries will be compulsorily quarantined starting today. All people including are required to wear face masks in public places. Schools remained shut nationwide. Cinemas, clubs and bars, massage parlours, karaoke shops and online game centres in urban cities are required to close until the end of March.Like Me. PleaseThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title, and clicking the button below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello. Welcome to Inside The Newsroom. We’re in unprecedented times. The coronavirus pandemic has swept through most of the planet, with total cases at more than 167,000 and deaths at 6,449, as of Monday morning. It’s quickly becoming one of the worst pandemics in history. But even with weeks of warning signs, governments around the world continue to be too lax and do too little. Here in the UK, the government have opted for a “herd immunity” strategy, happy for up to 80 percent of the 66 million population to contract the disease to build immunity while thousands of vulnerable people die in the process. Elsewhere in Europe, Spain has joined Italy in a full lockdown. But what about the rest of the world? For the record, the official numbers of cases and deaths are likely to be far higher due to the lack of tests available and carried out. With that said, let’s take a look at what each country with a confirmed case is doing to stop COVID-19. Due to Substack’s email length limits, I’ve had to divide into two emails. Look out for another email with countries between J and Z. And apologies for the opening seconds of the podcast, lol, I’m tired. And share this post by hitting the below button 👇Afghanistan: 16 cases, 0 deaths 🇦🇫Afghanistan announced the closure of all educational institutions Saturday and the extension of the country’s winter holidays for another month until April 21. The country has already cancelled all sports events after it reported its first case in late February. If the numbers are anywhere near correct, Afghanistan has done an excellent job in stemming the outbreak.Albania: 42 cases, 1 death 🇦🇱Albania is rightly treating the coronavirus as an enemy of war. It banned the use of private cars this past weekend, and has already closed all garment factories, call centers, bars and restaurants. The country’s central bank also announced that holiday loan repayments can be postponed for three months.Algeria: 48 cases, 4 deaths 🇩🇿The Algerian government shut down schools and universities and has limited travel to and from Europe. But that hasn’t stopped the mass protests that have been ongoing for the past year. Remarkably, I’m on the government’s side: please postpone the protests.Andorra: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇦🇩All ski resorts have closed as Andorra tries to keep its figures rock bottom. Antigua and Barbuda: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇦🇬Prime minister Gaston Browne announced a 30-day ban on all fetes, parties and similar social events. However, the red carpet premier of Wendy, parts of which were shot in Antigua, will still go ahead.Argentina: 45 cases, 2 deaths 🇦🇷Argentina has banned entry of non-residents who have traveled to a country highly affected by coronavirus in the last 14 days.Armenia: 26 cases 0 deaths 🇦🇲All schools, universities and kindergartens have been closed until at least March 23. All campaign rallies ahead of next month’s constitutional referendum have also been suspended.Aruba: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇦🇼Aruba has been largely unaffected but has now confirmed its first two cases. Travelers from Europe will be banned from entering the Caribbean island until at least March 31, with the exception of Aruban nationals.Australia: 297 cases, 3 deaths 🇦🇺Due to its proximity to Wuhan, Australia was one of the first countries to deal with the outbreak. *If* the numbers are near correct, its government has done a good job of limiting the spread, so far. People arriving to the country must self-isolate for 14 days or face hefty fines. If only prime minister Scott Morrison was as tough on climate change…Austria: 860 cases, 1 death 🇦🇹Sebastian Kurz introduced border checks with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, and banned flight connections with France, Spain and Switzerland. Kurz has also shut his country’s border with Italy, China, Iran and South Korea, the hardest hit countries so far.Azerbaijan: 23 cases, 1 death 🇦🇿Little has been announced from a government riddled with corruption and fraud. What we do know is that Azerbaijan and Turkey have suspended all road and air transportation between the two countries. Bahrain: 214 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇭Bahrain could be a country in dire trouble because of its closeness to Iran and continues to accept evacuees from its neighbour. So far there have been no deaths reported in Bahrain, and the country cancelled Friday prayers and has pardoned hundreds of prisoners to contain the spread. Bangladesh: 5 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇩Flights to all European countries except the UK (laughable) have been suspended. Outbreak remains low as of Sunday.Belarus: 27 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇾Belarus recorded its first case two weeks ago, so has done well to limit the number of cases to just 27. Belgium: 886 cases, 4 deaths 🇧🇪Another of the European countries at the centre of the outbreak, Belgium has declared a national emergency and closed all schools, bars and restaurants, and cancelled all sporting and recreational events. Shops can stay open during the week, but must close on weekends, except for pharmacies and grocery stores.Bhutan: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇧🇹More than a week after the country’s first case was detected, the government announced a travel ban to all tourists, which has helped the spread remain next to zero. Bolivia: 10 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇴Scarce hospital resources resulted in a patient with the virus to be turned away from hospital. Meanwhile, all campaigning for upcoming presidential elections have been suspended.Bosnia and Herzegovina: 24 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇦Little to report in terms of government measures as number of cases remains low relative to geographic location.Brazil: 162 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇷Brazil is a country destined for disaster as president Jair Bolsonaro has predictably waged a war on the media as overreacting to the pandemic. One doctor warned that the number of cases is set to skyrocket to as many as 45,000 in a matter of months, while Bolsonaro says he tested negative amid reports he tested positive. He also met with Donald Trump on Saturday. Good luck, Brazil. Brunei: 50 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇳Little is being done in Brunei as news cases continue to be confirmed linked to religious gatherings. Around 640 people have been ordered to undergo quarantine. Bulgaria: 51 cases, 2 deaths 🇧🇬Schools, universities and kindergartens will remain closed until March 29, as well as visits to gyms, cinemas, bars, restaurants and shops except for supermarkets and pharmacies. Travel has been restricted to 14 countries as the number of cases is expected to rise sharply in the coming days and weeks.Burkina Faso: 3 cases, 0 deaths 🇧🇫Number of cases remain low in many African countries, but next few days will determine whether cases will skyrocket.Cambodia: 7 cases, 0 deaths 🇰🇭Cambodia has banned entry of visitors from Italy, Germany, Spain, France and the U.S., while also banning all entry by water transport.Cameroon: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇲Like many African countries, the cases in Cameroon remains low. However messages to the people to keep washing their hands don’t go far enough, and my guess is that the cases will soon explode. Canada: 252 cases, 1 death 🇨🇦Canada is one of a handful of countries whose leaders have been affected. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, wife of prime minister Justin, tested positive on Thursday. While Justin remains symptom free, he has shut down parliament and advised against all foreign travel.Cayman Islands: 1 case, 1 death 🇰🇾Cayman reported its first death over the weekend, a patient who had been traveling on a cruise ship that’s been responsible for cases in other countries including Puerto Rico.Chile: 74 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇱Large public events with more than 500 people have been banned as 1,300 people aboard two cruise ships have been quarantined. Protests over high cost of living and inequality will unfortunately have to wait.China: 81,003 cases, 3,203 deaths 🇨🇳The centre of what’s heading to be the world’s worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu in 1918 has fortunately begun to report a plateau of cases and deaths. The latest count saw China confirm just 26 new cases and 10 new deaths, a welcome sign from the thousands of cases and deaths reported at the country’s peak in February. Much of the country, including Wuhan, remain under lockdown, but it’s unknown whether cases will jump again once the lockdown ends. Colombia: 34 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇴The border with Venezuela has been closed as fear begins to take hold of South America, one of the last continents to see confirmed cases. Non-nationals will be barred from entering the country if they’ve been in Europe or Asia over the past two weeks.Costa Rica: 27 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇷While the number of cases remain low, president Carlos Alvarado announced several measures to try and limit the economic damage that’s inevitably about to hit almost every corner of the economy, especially the country’s reliant tourism industry. The measures include:Insurance and Social Security: Alvarado will meet Monday with the Social Security System (Caja) to establish guidelines alleviating payments into insurance and social security.Loans and credit: The government has prepared a proposal that would allow people and businesses with loans to defer payments without additional interest or penalties.Taxes: The president’s economic team will present a law project that would allow businesses to temporarily defer taxes without paying additional interest or penalties.INS products: The National Insurance Institute will announce next week at least three new products, including one tailored to the tourism sector.Price regulations: Costa Rica will regulate the price of certain sanitary products to prevent price gouging.Cote d'Ivoire: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇨🇮The sole person believe to have contracted the disease is in a stable condition in hospital.Croatia: 49 cases, 0 deaths 🇭🇷Schools and universities were closed over the weekend for an initial two-week period. But they’ll still be open for parents to leave their kids while they work. Counterintuitive much? Cuba: 4 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇺Cuba is keeping its borders open to visitors from all countries, including those who have declared a state of emergency. Very smart geniuses. Curacao: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇨🇼Travel restrictions are in place for visitors from Europe. All other passengers will need to pass through immigration counters.Cyprus: 26 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇾As of Sunday, Cyprus closed its borders to everyone except Cypriot citizens, legal residents, European nationals working in Cyprus, diplomats and students. Czech Republic: 253 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇿Nationwide quarantine was expected to be announced at the time of writing (Sunday afternoon). Borders have been closed.Democratic Republic of Congo: 2 cases, 0 deaths 🇨🇩 Few cases have been reported, but the DRC is another African country that’s widely reported to be severely unprepared for an outbreak. To be fair, you can say the same about most countries and continents.Denmark: 875 cases, 2 deaths 🇩🇰All borders have been closed after the first death was reported over the weekend.Dominican Republic: 11 cases, 0 deaths 🇩🇴The government claims to have the virus under control. Hard to believe when only 37 tests have been carried out for a population of more than 10 million. I expect the cases to significantly increase.Ecuador: 28 cases, 2 deaths 🇪🇨All borders closed after first deaths reported. Ecuadorean citizens and foreigners with Ecuadorean residency will have until the end of Monday to return.Egypt: 110 cases, 2 deaths 🇪🇬Schools and universities will be closed for two weeks from today, while the country struggles to grapple with the outcomes from contaminated cruises along the Nile.Equatorial Guinea: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇬🇶Not much reported, but first case reported over the weekend.Estonia: 171 cases, 0 deaths 🇪🇪Number of cases likely to be more than official total as people can only be tested once they begin to suffer from symptoms. Good plan. eSwatini: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇸🇿Not much reported, first case reported over the weekend.Ethiopia: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇪🇹Same as above as first case was reported this weekend.Finland: 244 cases, 0 deaths 🇫🇮Schools and universities have been shut in some areas as the country is in the delay stage as opposed to containing the spread.France: 4,513 cases, 91 deaths 🇫🇷One of the hardest hit countries to date, as all non-essential public spaces have been closed. However, that doesn’t cover grocery stores, banks, public transport and… tobacconists? If you’re looking for a government that’s completely failed its people, it is France, who still held local elections on Sunday. French Guyana: 5 cases, 1 deaths 🇬🇫A woman who had traveled back from New York has died in the country’s first death.Gabon: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇬🇦Schools are closed for two weeks and tourist visas have been suspended for hardest hit countries, namely the European Union, China, South Korea and the United States.Georgia: 33 cases, 0 deaths 🇬🇪Little reported on government measures.Germany: 5,795, 11 deaths 🇩🇪Borders with France, Switzerland and Austria to be largely shut today, but goods will continue to flow between the countries. Commuters will also be allowed to cross. Ghana: 6 cases, 0 deaths 🇬🇭Government announced that $100 million will be allocated to stopping the spread, and international travel by public officials will be suspended.Greece: 331 cases, 4 deaths 🇬🇷Fortunately I got out of Greece just in time, as the country is now a hot bed for cases. Because of its huge tourism industry, cases are expected to balloon into the thousands in the coming days. All schools, bars, cafes and shopping malls have been closed, and all flights to and from Italy have been banned.Guadeloupe: 5 cases, 0 deaths 🇬🇵Not much has been reported on suspensions or closures, but we know that a hunt for people connected to the five confirmed cases is underway. Good luck.Guatemala: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇬🇹Flights from the U.S. and Canada will be banned today, and anyone who’s arrived in the past few days will be quarantined. No cruise ships will be allowed to dock, but public events and school classes would go ahead for the time being.Guinea: 1 case, 0 deaths 🇬🇳Couldn’t find anything on government measures other than the announcement that the country’s elections will go ahead on Sunday. Unbelievable. Guyana: 4 case, 0 deaths 🇬🇾Lax measures include and contact tracing of possible patients, and meetings between public health officials and staff members of the country’s health facilities infection-control measures are in place. Too little, too late.Honduras: 3 cases, 0 deaths 🇭🇳Schools closed for two weeks. Not much else reported.Hungary: 32 cases, 1 death 🇭🇺Never one to a miss a beat, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban blamed foreigners and migration for the spread of coronavirus in Hungary. Orban didn’t hesitate to pounce on the nine Iranians who have the disease in Hungary, banning them from entering the country again for three years upon their recovery. Iceland: 171 cases, 5 deaths 🇮🇸The 171 confirmed cases is expected to skyrocket, thanks to a voluntary test that suggested one percent of the population have the virus. Schools have been closed and public gatherings have been restricted to less than 100 people.India: 113 cases, 2 deaths 🇮🇳If there’s a country to watch, it’s India. A country of more than 1.4 billion people, expect the number of cases and deaths to soar. To try and limit that number, the following measures have been taken:All visas, barring a select few categories, have been suspended for a monthVisa-free travel afforded to overseas citizens of the country has been suspended until April 15 and even those allowed in could be subject to 14 days of quarantineSchools, colleges and movie theatres in the capital, Delhi, have been shut until March 31stThe IPL, featuring nearly 60 foreign players and scheduled to begin on March 29th, has been postponed to April 15Two one-day cricket matches between India and South Africa will be played behind closed doorsIndonesia: 117 cases, 5 deaths 🇮🇩Contact tracing has started. Too little too late. Iran: 13,938 cases, 724 deaths 🇮🇷Trenches are being dug for mass graves. The 724 figure above is likely to be way, way out, and deaths are likely to already be well into the thousands. I’m scared to find out what the eventual figure turns out to be.Iraq: 116 cases, 10 deaths 🇮🇶Iraq has done its utmost to stop the spread from bordering Iran. Karbala, a southern city in southern Iraq has declared a three-day curfew in order to disinfect the entire province. Authorities in Saladin province imposed a lockdown. And last week, Baghdad shut down schools and universities for 10 days and banned travel to virus-hit states.Ireland: 129 cases, 2 deaths 🇮🇪Authorities in Ireland have assured people that the country has enough stock of prescriptions and medicines so not to panic buy. And Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon said planning restrictions would be relaxed to allow supplies to be delivered to shops outside of authorised hours.Israel: 251 cases, 0 deaths 🇮🇱Israel is using anti-terrorism tracking technology to identify new cases of the virus. I don’t have enough space to explain how this works, so click here to read more on that.Italy: 24,747, 1,809 deaths 🇮🇹The worst-hit country outside of China, Italy has been on lockdown since Tuesday. The 60 million people now has to follow the following":Stay at home and don’t socializeAll shops except grocery stores and pharmacies must stay closedItalians who want to travel must get police permissionPeople accompanying others to the hospital emergency room can no longer wait with themHealthcare workers have to cancel their vacationsReduced jail visitsMortgage repayments have been suspendedLike Me. PleaseThanks for making it all the way to the bottom. Please like and share this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title, and clicking the button below. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom! I’m vacationing in Greece this week, but that ain’t no damn reason for no podcast. Bad English aside, today’s guest is… Francesca Fiorentini, journalist, author, comedian and officially the funniest person to grace Inside The Newsroom’s airwaves. Francesca is the host and head writer of Newsbroke on AJ+, contributor to The Young Turks, and host of Red, White and Who? on MSNBC. Below’s a post-game of everything we talked about and more. But first, my top articles of the week… Enjoy 🤓$70,000 minimum salary — The boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for his staff, and the gamble has paid offClimate crisis — Where does each Democratic candidate stand on the climate crisis?Super Tuesday — The 14 states’ economies can be split into four typesFrancesca 👇The ‘Trump Effect’ on ComedyFrancesca began as a journalist and editor for multiple outlets before taking up stand up comedy in 2011, thus beginning her hilarious intertwined brand of comedy and journalism. She’s the latest up-and-comer of a trend made most famous by the legendary Jon Stewart, whose The Daily Show blurred the line between comedy and journalism so much that, at some points over the past decade, was the source of honest news in America. Stewart’s meteoric rise to fame shadowed the changing media landscape that allowed his epic rants and satirical takedowns of Fox News to go viral across the interwebs. Nowadays we have the likes of Michelle Wolf, Jon Oliver and Trevor Noah carrying the torch and blurring the line even further. And that’s where Francesca comes in, who managed to convince Al Jazeera to give her a shot with Newsbroke, and boy did it work out. MSNBC soon came calling with Red, White and Who?, which landed her across the table in a diner with Bernie Sanders.State of Cable NewsFor all our complaints about cable news, and don’t worry, there’s plenty in the next section, the Big Three cable news outlets are doing just fine. In fact, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News are doing more than fine: In 2018, they recorded a combined $5.3 billion in revenue, by far the most they’ve ever generated and a 36 percent increase since 2015. Much of that spike was due to the ‘Donald Trump Effect’, which has sparked a renewed ratings war between the networks. But while millions of people are still glued to their TV screens, the rise of alternative media on both sides of the political spectrum has fragmented the market even further. The term “24/7 news cycle” feels weirdly archaic.It’s because of the billions of dollars in the coffers that the cable networks must do better. Yes, they’ve 24 hours of programming to fill per day, and yes there’s nothing more in this world better than watching Wolf Blitzer stare dead-eyed into a camera on election night surrounded by 200 lobbyists and political operatives, but they have the resources to actually give us quality programs and not just excess garbage squeezed out from the sausage factory. Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown was an incredible look at the world through food and people. And Lisa Ling’s This Is Life brilliantly shines a light on life and culture around the globe. But the rest of cable news has turned into an opinion-fuelled orgy (yes I coined that all by myself 😊) which only fractures the political spectrum even more. Give us more Lisa Ling. Give us more Anthony Bourdain (RIP). Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd Show Their True Colors. It’s Brown.Cable news is doing great financially, there’s no denying that. But the thing about elections and controversial presidents like Trump is that they come in cycles, literally. As we discussed above, ratings and revenues have soared because of Trump’s provocative rhetoric and general idiocy, but the ratings and profits will inevitably recede to the flat numbers from before Trump when he leaves the White House, whether that’s in 2021 or 2025. But what’s less prone to election cycles is people’s memory and anger toward corruption and conspiring against a frontrunner, which is where former journalists Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd enter the fray.Mr. Todd will need to face reality at some point to figure out his confusion of how Bernie is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race. But what will be even more damaging to MSNBC’s long-term reputation is the constant smears of progressive candidates and their supporters. If anyone from the progressive camp even thought about comparing a politician to the Nazis, the establishment would pile on with endless criticism. But when not one but TWO MSNBC anchors compared Bernie’s rise — who himself is Jewish and whose family were murdered by the Nazis — to the Nazis invading France, the shocking reality of how low some centrists will stoop to stop Bernie is disgusting. After Matthews’ hollow apology and an accusation of sexual harassment by GQ columnist Laura Bassett, MSNBC pulled Matthews from its coverage of the South Carolina primary on Saturday. But the damage has been done. Thank the lord for Anand Giridharadas, because until MSNBC overhauls its roster of lobbyists, its reputation will remain stained. Can We Stop Climate Change and Keep Capitalism?Francesca has traveled to all parts of America over the past few years for various reporting and joke making. I asked her what issue has been underreported in the media, and her response was climate change, still. Lots of reasons can explain why, despite institutions including the UN declaring a climate emergency, the climate crisis is still not taken seriously enough. Perhaps the most telling reason is that most people don’t feel they’re affected by climate change (they are) and hence the likes of healthcare and the economy (still important) continue to dominate headlines. But that’s what many outlets are missing: Climate change is making healthcare more expensive and costing the economy billions of dollars each year. Which brings us onto our next topic: Is capitalism responsible for the climate emergency? The answer is yes, or no, depending on who you ask, but neither answer is as simple as a single syllable. It’s certainly no coincidence that the rise in the world’s emissions coincides with the explosion of globalisation that’s sent our obsession with economic growth through the roof. We’ve all played a part in fuelling capitalism, with or without knowing the implications on the environment. That’s undeniable. But where the argument becomes more nuanced, is how to escape the mess… I don’t have the answer to that, sorry.Thanks for reading this week. To sign us off, enjoy a funny 10 minutes from today’s amazing guest…Related Podcasts#62 — Krystal Ball (The Hill) on the mainstream media’s denial of Bernie Sanders and progressivism#50 — Hadas Gold (CNN) on the war against journalism in the age of Trump#47 — Ryan Grim (The Intercept) on the history of progressivism and the Democratic establishment Last Week…#65 — Andrew Flowers (Journalist —> Politician) on the transition from data journalist to running for office … Next Week🤷‍♂️ Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom, where we’ll be interviewing a political candidate for the second straight week! Last week Paula Jean Swearengin, star of the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House came on to talk about her race for U.S. Senate and the issues facing West Virginia. This week’s guest is… Andrew Flowers, former data journalist for FiveThirtyEight and Indeed, current Democratic candidate for the Massachusetts state legislature. Below is a post-game of everything we talked about and more. But first, my most interesting articles of the week. Enjoy! 🤓South Carolina — How black Americans’ reverse migration is reshaping next state to voteHouston Astros — As Spring Training begins, the sign stealing scandal ain’t going away anytime soonKobe Bryant — How a city mourned the superstar’s deathAndrew 👇Who Is Andrew Flowers and How the Hell Do Start a Political Campaign?Andrew is running for state representative of the 8th Norfolk District in Massachusetts, just southwest of the Boston metro area. Andrew’s a former economist for the Federal Reserve and Indeed, and former data journalist for FiveThirtyEight. where our paths just missed. Without sounding like a political ad, it’s because of this background that Andrew believes he’s the right man to tackle Massachusetts’ soaring living and housing costs, which we’ll get into shortly. I couldn’t find much data on how many journalists transition into politics, but I can’t imagine there’s too many. If you know anyone, or any databases out there, please email me. Okay, #politicalad over, let’s get to some issues…U.S. Uninsured Rate Is Climbing, But Not In MAWe’ve heard it time and time again: Obamacare aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was a great step for healthcare in America, but it didn’t go far enough. No matter where you sit on the healthcare debate, whether it’s Medicare For All, or “Medicare For All for those who want it”, whether it’s on a powerpoint presentation or post-it note, it’s alarming to see that the uninsured rate in America is beginning to rise for the first time since Obamacare was signed into law in 2010. And this is in spite of Obamacare reaching record popularity, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. According to Census data, 8.5 percent of Americans were uninsured in 2018, an increase of half a percent from a year before. That means around 30 million people are still without health insurance, which for someone from a country where 100% of people have access to free healthcare, is an unimaginable thought. Credit: Me 👇Source: Kaiser Family FoundationUninsured Rate Per State, 2010-2018Andrew’s state of Massachusetts is an anomaly, where the uninsured rate is tied for lowest in the country with Washington D.C. at three percent. But unlike D.C. and any other state, Massachusetts had an uninsured rate of less than 5 percent before the ACA was even enacted, thanks to massive healthcare expansions signed into law in 2006, by our old friend Mitt Romney, then the Republican governor. Romney’s healthcare model eventually became the blueprint for Obamacare, and was successful partly because the state had a Republican governor, Democratic speaker of the House and a Democratic president in the Senate, meaning that both parties’ reputation was on the line. The same can’t be said about many other states.Traffic’s a B***hThe number one issue for Andrew in his district is transportation, more specifically traffic and congestion. I’ve only ever taken the Amtrak into Boston, which is a story for another newsletter, but thankfully I didn’t have to experience the worst traffic of any major metropolitan area in the country. Though I did have to sell a kidney to be able to afford the ticket. Yes, Boston is worse than Los Angeles, which will make Bostonians even angrier, according to transportation data firm Inrix. In fact, Boston is eighth worst in the ENTIRE WORLD, where people lose about 164 hours a year on average from sitting in traffic. Probably not the best time to say that my walk to work takes me six minutes and 53 seconds (personal best). Credit: InrixAnyway, the population in the Boston metro area grew by 15 percent between 2012 and 2017, partly due to its booming biotech industry, which increased six percent between 2017 and 2018 alone. This has lead to soaring living and housing costs, similar to that of in Austin and San Jose, directly affecting Andrew’s and other districts that surround Boston.Effects of Financial Instability on the BrainFor all of Massachusetts’ positives, and there are many, growing living costs have led to growing inequality within the state. Again, not to sound like a #politicalad, but that’s why Andrew is running: to give everyone a fair start in life. And like with everything Andrew does, there’s plenty of data and studies to back it up. The majority of us know how tough it is to have no money and live from paycheck to paycheck, and we’re far more susceptible to adverse effects on the brain. “Well duh”, you might be thinking, but it’s far more complicated than just being diagnosed with depression or severe anxiety. One study found that people who’d lived in poverty had worse verbal memory, processing speed, and executive functioning than those who’d never been exposed to poverty. Another found that 91 percent of children, whose brains are by far the most vulnerable, said they saw and felt the effects of their parents' yelling and arguing, commonly because of money troubles. Andrew Yang #MathIt must be in the name, because both Andrew Flowers and Andrew Yang hold numbers and data central to their ideas. The latter of the two dropped out of the Democratic presidential race a couple of weeks ago after finishing sixth in Iowa and eighth in New Hampshire, but despite a lack of actual votes, Mr Yang will come out of the race as one of the most popular candidates. It’s also why I joined the Andrew Yang book club. #YangGangYang began his campaign in January, 2019, on the platform of reinvesting in working class towns where automation had swallowed millions of manufacturing jobs. A 2017 report projected that automation could cost up to 73 million jobs in the U.S. by 2030, roughly 45 percent of the current workforce. And right up to his final debate performance, Yang was still the only candidate even talking about the issue. But whoever the eventual nominee is, they’ll do well if they take automation head on and visit the likes of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where 4 million manufacturing jobs have been lost because of machines. Related podcasts…#51 — Jason Kander (Democratic Party) on almost running for president and the neglect of U.S. veterans #49 — David Armstrong (Pro Publica) on the opioid crisis and how the Sackler has made billions from killing Americans Last week…#64 — Paula Jean Swearengin (U.S. Senate) on West Virginia’s devastating opioid crisis, and what it’s like running for the U.S. Senate… Next week…Comedian and journalist Francesca Fiorentini on how to be funny while covering the news… Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… the formidable Paula Jean Swearengin, star of the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House and current candidate for U.S. Senate from the great state of West Virginia. Paula Jean is the daughter of a long line of coal miners and has lived in the Mountain State all her life. And she’s also recently become a grandmother! She’s thus seen the destruction the coal industry has done to her people for generations, as well as how the opioid crisis ravaged her friends first hand. So, let’s tuck into an important episode, but first, some interesting articles. Enjoy 🤓What’s New?Dallas Morning News — The DMN broke with tradition this week by announcing that it won’t be endorsing anyone for president. F**k yeah!Jeff Bezos — The Amazon CEO pledged $10bn to climate change initiatives, though it was met with criticism that it wasn’t enough. Here’s a list of the largest climate change pledges so far — Bezos will be the thirdTaylor Swift — How the Queen of Music became the Queen of the Breakup SongCovering Bloomberg — How does a news organization cover a presidential candidate when said candidate is their boss?Paula Jean 👇Who Is Paula Jean Swearengin?Paula Jean was born in Mullens, West Virginia, a town of about 1,350 people whose population has decreased by a third since 1990. Declining populations are all too common across the state, and will result in the state losing one electoral vote in the presidential election. Paula Jean burst onto the political scene in 2018 when she grabbed 30 percent of the vote from incumbent U.S. senator and moderate Democrat Joe Manchin in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. This came two years after Bernie Sanders won 51 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton’s 36 percent, so clearly there’s a yearning for the progressive brand of politics Paula Jean represents. This time around Paula Jean faces another tough Democratic primary on May 12 against Richard Ojeda, a former state senator and apparently a brief candidate for president 🤷‍♂ and Richie Robb, former mayor of South Charleston and not a former presidential candidate. The winner of the primary will face incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito in November. Who is Shelley Moore Capito?Incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito has been junior U.S. Senator from West Virginia since 2015, when she defeated then Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant. She secured 62 percent of the vote, the largest victory margin for a Republican running in a statewide race in state history (more on the weirdness of West Virginia’s voting history later). Back then, Capito was seen as too liberal for the Tea Party, but overcame stiff opposition from anti-establishment conservatives. Since then, Capito has very much fulfilled the expectation of being a rank and file Republican, voting with Donald Trump 95.7 percent of the time. Though, to be fair, which is incredibly hard to do when talking about the GOP, Capito did come to the defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray back in December when Trump went on one of his delightful Twitter tirades. But that’s where the fairness ends. Capito has received $3.5 million in donations from the likes of Delta Air Lines, private prison operator GEO Group and billion-dollar hedge fund Elliot Management, according to Open Secrets. Because of the issues effecting West Virginia and its voting past, if Paula Jean can win the Democratic primary, she could give Capito a legitimate challenge, if not cause a shock upset.Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.West Virginia’s Weird Voting RecordOkay, to the weirdness! At the presidential level, West Virginia is unequivocally a red state — the GOP has won West Virginia every election since 2000 when George W. Bush won 51.9 percent of the vote, a victory margin of 6.3 percent over Al Gore. The Republican vote share has steadily increased since then, and in 2016 Trump claimed 68.6 percent of votes, 42.1 points better than Clinton. But move on down the ticket to U.S. senators, and it’s a completely different picture.Remarkably, Capito is the only Republican U.S. Senator to serve the state since 1958. No for real, she is. Ever since Robert Byrd and Jennings Randolph were both elected, five Democrats have been elected compared to a single Republican. Even further down the ticket and Jim Justice is the first conservative governor since 2001, but only because he switched from the Democrats in 2017. Then there’s the West Virginia Senate, which Democrats have historically controlled, but is where Republicans currently hold 20 of the 34 seats, many of which were won as part of the Trump-fuelled red wave from 2016. Looking ahead to November and it’s bloody hard to know which way the state will go. Capito is a solid bet, according to The Cook Political Report, but with a growing progressive wave on the left, and a scandal-ridden president on the right, West Virginia isn’t a foregone conclusion. Coal Country: West Virginia’s Coal and Addiction ProblemThe coal mining industry employed more than 150,000 people in West Virginia during its peak in the mid 20th century — almost 10 percent of the state — and, through its unions, were closely aligned with Democrats, many of whom came from similar working class backgrounds. These days between 10,000 and 20,000 miners remain, as the threat of climate change and automation have massacred the industry. But coal is still mined — West Virginians remarkably produced more coal in 2010 than in the early 1950s, leaving behind a trail of deadly problems. The daughter of a coal miner herself, Paula Jean knows all too well the consequences of being a miner, as well as the massive employment hole the lack of reinvestment in the state has caused. Her younger sister was born with a cyst on the base of her brain, and her grandfather died in 2001 from black lung after decades of working in an underground mine. West Virginia now has an unemployment rate of 5 percent, the fourth highest in the U.S., which goes against everything most blue collar West Virginians have known. The state is ready to work. What they need is a new generation of investment in green and renewable energy jobs that spark the state’s GDP, which is again one of the worst in the nation. More importantly, though, green energy will significantly decrease the astronomical cancer mortality rate in the state — 180 in every 100,000 West Virginians die from cancer every year, third most in the U.S. That leads us to the state’s addiction problem, where the opioid crisis has hit the hardest. Once again, large corporations are literally killing West Virginians, like this town of 3,000 where millions of opioid pills were prescribed. Of all 50 states, West Virginia has been ravaged more than any other state. Paula Jean is for Medicare For All, which is expensive, but should it really be refused at the expense of thousands of lives?Credit: CDCI’ll leave you with this short doc giving a devastating outlook of the fight between coal and green energy in the state…Brand New Congress and Justice DemocratsBrand New Congress and Justice Democrats are political action committees founded by former volunteer staffers of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Their shared aim is to get progressive Democrats elected to Congress, and are the organizations behind the rise of the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. Paula Jean was first asked by BNC to run, who could be responsible for another wave of progressive candidates elected in 2020. I’ll leave you with the trailer to Knock Down The House, which follows AOC and Paula Jean in their respective 2018 primary races, as well as 2020 candidate lists for Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats.Last Week…#63 — Brian Klaas (Power Corrupts) on the history of dark propaganda … Next WeekI’ll have Francesca Fiorentini on the pod. Francesca is a comedian and correspondent for the likes of MSNBC, AJ+ and NatGeo simultaneously making people laugh and more informed.Job CornerStaying on brand this week, I’ve listed below a handful of current openings from Politico…Health Care ReporterGraphics EditorLegislative Compass ReporterNational CorrespondentNews EditorWhite House Editor Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. Second newsletter of the week, after the elections in Cameroon, Ireland and Azerbaijan, which saw violence, confusion and division. Great. Today’s guest is… Brian Klaas, author, political scientist at University College London, columnist for The Washington Post and host of the Power Corrupts podcast. Brian is an expert on democracy and world politics, and he delved deep into the history of dark propaganda in his latest podcast episode. So below is a post-game analysis of everything we talked about and more. But first, my most interesting articles of the week… Enjoy! 🤓Malcolm X — Manhattan district attorney considers reopening case after Netflix documentaryCoronavirus — Shameful plug for my visual guide on how the virus has spread to 29 countries and killed 1,300 people and countingClearview — Friend of the pod Kashmir Hill examined the end of privacy as we know it in a truly disturbing pieceBrian 👇What Is Propaganda?Not to be confused with marketing or public relations, our friends at Merriam Webster define propaganda as “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when propaganda was first used because, well, propaganda is as old as time. But the earliest records point to The Behistun Inscription in 515BC when Darius The Great engraved his military prowess into a large cliff in the ancient Persian Empire, aka Iran, followed by how he was the chosen one by God. Sound familiar? Around 200 years later, Alexander The Great, king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon put his face on coins, monuments and statues as a form of propaganda. Yep, definitely sounds familiar. The Behistun Inscription 👇That all seems pretty harmless right? But as millennia, centuries and decades passed, propagandist techniques became far more nefarious. It’s generally agreed that the Catholic Church formalized propaganda and actually coined the term itself. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV set up the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, and then in 1627, Pope Urban VIII followed that up and created the College of Propaganda, both of which provided a library for research and a school to train priests and missionaries to spread the church’s message overseas. We can tell just by the names of those two institutions that the concept of propaganda was still relatively benign and unknown to the general public. But as even more centuries and decades have passed, propaganda has become a term associated with some of the greatest atrocities and darkest evils the world has ever seen.When Did Propaganda Turn Evil?One can’t talk about the dark side of propaganda without mentioning the Nazis, so let’s do just that. Perhaps the most common question people have is why the German public couldn’t see through the Nazi propaganda machine, similar to how most sane people see right through Donald Trump’s b******t (more on that later). Many Germans did, and many voiced their opposition to Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric well before the country went to war with the world in 1939. Many Germans were punished in unthinkable ways. But as Brian pointed out on the podcast, propagandists like Hitler and his sidekick Joseph Goebbels didn’t just spread their lies and falsehoods right away. A smart propagandist first builds trust and credibility. For Hitler, that meant using events in the aftermath of World War One to his advantage. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 to formally end WW1, Germany was brought to its knees economically by the Allied Powers, who forced Germany into surrendering land and ordered them to pay reparations in the realm of $269 billion in today’s money. Naturally, Germany endured a devastating depression, which paved the way for Hitler’s rise. In hindsight, it was only a matter of time before the Nazis gained power, but the seeds were sewn well before they finally did gain power in 1933. Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and detailed Hitler’s personal struggle in post-war Germany, as well as his nationalist and anti-Semitic views. As a sign of how people felt at the time, Mein Kampf had sold six million copies by 1940. This isn’t a newsletter rehashing World War Two, so let’s move onto propaganda in 2020 and visit our favourite Mango Mussolini…Please Just Like MeBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ♥️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Propaganda 2020 🇺🇸The Propagandist-in-chief is by far the most overtly lying president we’ve ever seen. Barry Goldwater came close, but he lost convincingly to Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 presidential race. Trump has lied to us ever since he entered our lives decades ago, and has lied so much since he became president, CNN journalist Daniel Dale has carved out a niche role for himself literally fact checking every single statement the president makes. I couldn’t find how many lies he’s uttered since he became president, but I know that the number is well into the thousands. Since July 8, 2019, he’s made 1,729 false claims, an average of eight per day. I actually had Daniel on the podcast last year while he was still at the Toronto Star, which you can listen to below…Trump didn’t create right-wing angst, he’s merely a symptom of years and years of lies and misleading framing by Fox News, aka the propagandist machine of today. It’s actually quite surprising how Fox continues to have such a large influence in corrupting public discourse in a media environment that’s so fragmented. But when you scan the right wing media landscape and see how many conservative outlets also living in alternate reality that were started by former Fox employees — Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV and Matt Drudge’s Drudge Report to name just a couple — you start to really see Fox’s impact.Looking ahead to the rest of 2020 is depressing enough (sigh), and we can expect much more of the same from 2016. That’s because Facebook, which is the largest propaganda machine of them all, will allow political candidates to place false ads, a policy they claim supports free speech. Its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become completely deluded and is living in an alternate reality himself, becoming the most powerful propagandist in the world.North Korea: An Unimaginable Alternate RealityIt’s hard to imagine what life in North Korea is like. No elections, no freedom, no truth. North Korea is in its own league when it comes to propaganda. Shortly after Korea was divided into two zones at the end of WW2 — the north occupied by the Soviet Union and the south by the U.S. — the Kim dynasty took over the north. Heavily influenced by the Soviet communist dictatorship, North Korea has smothered its citizens with lies and barbaric living conditions, so much so that there isn’t a place like it in the world. Like with any dictatorship, cracks have begun to show in the country’s 70-year propagandist history, and the Kim dynasty’s days could be numbered. The country is so dependent on its agriculture industry that a poor harvest season has and will send the country into deep economic depression. The UN estimated that more than 10 million people — around 40 percent of the population — face severe food shortages. Because the country can’t provide for itself, North Korea relies so heavily on aid from other countries, mostly from China, but also recently from South Korea whose citizens have many relatives living in the atrocious conditions up north. Other countries include Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, Norway, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland and Ireland. I’ll leave you with Vice founder Shane Smith’s documentary of life inside the country, which is simultaneously gripping and heartbreaking.Last Week…#62 — Krystal Ball (The Hill) on the rise of left- and right-wing populism… Next WeekI finally had Paula Jean Swearengin on the podcast, who was one of the stars of the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is currently for the U.S. Senate from West Virginia.Job CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. Staying on brand this week, below are a selection of investigative openings… Boston Globe Spotlight Team — Investigative Journalism FellowshipDolcefino Consulting — Investigative Media ReporterEnvironmental Investigation Agency — China Media and Policy AnalystOklahoma Watch — Executive Director, Executive EditorProject On Government Oversight — Director of ResearchThe New Humanitarian — Editorial InternVoice of America — Internship program Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom! Lots of exclamation marks today as we passed 2,500 subscribers over the weekend! Thank you for being part of this — I’m very humbled! Right, today’s guest is… Krystal Ball, former Democrat congressional candidate and co-host of Rising, The Hill’s daily political show. Krystal’s book, The Populist’s Guide To 2020!, co-authored with Saagar Enjeti, will be out on February 8, so we got into all the contents of the book, as well as The New York Times’ somewhat bizarre dual endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. Below is a post-game analysis, but first, my favorite articles over the past week. Enjoy 🤓Remembering Kobe and Gianna Bryant — The world stopped on Sunday when we learned of the passing of Kobe and Gianna BryantFacebook is turning into a Republican platform — Who are the Republican political operatives calling the shots at Facebook?Greece elects first female president — High court judge and human rights advocate secures backing of left- and right-wing partiesKrystal 👇What Is a Populist Anyway?Great question. Merriam Webster describes a populist as “a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people.” But as we’ve experienced just in the past two election cycles, populists and populism can come in all shapes and sizes. Take populist-in-chief Donald Trump, for example, whose 2017 inauguration speech was littered with populist sentiment, perhaps none more so than when he remarked“For too long, [those in politics] have reaped the rewards of government while people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth.”Perhaps the most common misconception of populism is that it only comes from the right. Cross the aisle into the Democratic Party and you’ll find a whole host of populists, and politicians pinching nuggets of populism to forward their agenda. Bernie Sanders is the most well-known populist on the left right now, but let’s not forget how Barack Obama too railed against the greed of Wall Street among other populist themes to help his 2012 reelection bid. Mark Rice-Oxley and Ammar Kalia, The GuardianQuick plug for my conversation with Ryan Grim, D.C. bureau chief for The Intercept and author of the book We’ve Got People, a history of progressivism in the Democratic Party.How Old Is Populism?Populism is as old as democracy itself and it’s almost impossible to pinpoint the exact period when populism was first used for political gain. Throughout the 20th century, populism was mostly associated with the rightwing — a German politician in the 1930s and 40s had a lot to do with that. But as we know, populism comes from the left and the right. According to Cas Mudde, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, it was the 2008 financial crash that freed populism from the stigma of being attached to the radical right. The rise of Syriza and Podemos in Spain are prime examples. Like with most things, though, Trump’s presence on the political scene amplified the term to meteoric heights, as outlined by Google searches of the term ‘populism’, of which will only increase as we get deeper into 2020.Cas Mudde for The GuardianThe Meaning Behind the New York Times’ Dual EndorsementUnless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the New York Times broke tradition and endorsed two Democrats for the party’s presidential nominee. The paper’s editorial board put their weight behind Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. In their own words, the Times feels that the duo are “the most effective advocates for each approach,” the two approaches being a radical overhaul of essential programs and institutions, and a steadier let’s-not-ruffle-too-many-feathers strategy. But what makes the endorsements utterly confusing, and painfully ironic, is the fact that the Times picked two candidates who have little chance of winning the nomination. Not that newspaper endorsements even matter, Warren is currently third in the race, according to FiveThirtyEight, and has tanked since her debacle with Bernie. As for Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota is outside the top four, and has a three percent chance of winning the Iowa caucuses. Turns out the Times’ “most effective advocates” won’t be very effective at all.The Editorial Board, The New York TimesAre Bernie and Liz Really That Different Then?For many progressives, choosing between Bernie and Liz was like choosing between a tangerine and a clementine: Both pretty juicy, with one being sweeter than the other. Both candidates are vocal about reining in society’s richest and eliminating corporate greed, both want Medicare for all, and both have extensive plans to deal with the climate crisis. But if the NYT is honest about choosing Warren because she’s the candidate who’ll most likely get things done in government, then there must be key differences between the Bernie and Liz campaigns. Sure, there are inevitable nuances between the two candidates’ policies — Bernie has stated that he wants to eliminate all undergraduate college tuition at four-year public colleges and universities, while Warren wants to cancel up to $50,000 of student loan debt. But overall, they really aren’t that different. Despite their “beef” from the other week, I maintain that I’d be happy with either candidate winning the nomination. With that said, I guess the main difference between the two is that Bernie is leading the polls and Warren isn’t. Tara Golshan, VoxWhy Won’t the MSM Embrace Bernie?The most frustrating thing to see over the past half a decade is the mainstream media’s treatment of Sanders. Like many of us, I have good friends that work for the largest newspapers and cable outlets, so this is of course not a dig at every single journalist whose LinkedIn profile includes the likes of CNN or The Washington Post. It’s also obvious that just because you work for an organization, it doesn’t mean that you subscribe to agreeing on everything your outlet publishes. I for one don’t agree with 100 percent of the content The Guardian puts out. That said, it’s hard to ignore how differently Sanders has been covered compared with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and now the likes of Warren and Joe Biden in the 2020 cycle. This goes further and deeper than merely preferring one candidate over another, which I don’t think journalists should be get into. As Krystal elegantly pointed out in the podcast, the Democratic Party has become more and more fractured, and as it has done so, the NYT have had no qualms about representing the portion of voters who are socially liberal, yet are moderate or even drift into Republican territory when it comes to economics. I have few problems with that. But when the Times states publicly that its aim is to grow digital revenue beyond $800 million, alienating the sizeable portion of progressives in the process is counterintuitive and hard to believe that they’re still the paper of the left. Kate Aronoff for The GuardianPlease Like Me, ThanksThanks for making it to the end. Please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.Related Episodes…#56 — Jamil Smith (Rolling Stone) on voter suppression and the life of Elijah Cummings#51 — Jason Kander (Democratic Party) on PTSD and the forgotten veterans#47 — Ryan Grim (The Intercept) on the history of progressivism in the Democratic Party#34 — Dave Weigel (Washington Post) on the differences between the left in the U.S. and the UKLast Week…#61 — Rachel Botsman (Trust Issues) on the why people believe fake news… Next WeekWe’ll have Paula Jean Swearengin, who was one of the main characters alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House, and currently a candidate for the U.S. Senate from West Virginia.Job CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. The 19th launched this week, which is a nonprofit newsroom focusing on women’s issues at the intersection of gender politics and policy. They have a ton of openings, including… Women & Congress ReporterWomen’s Health ReporterWomen & The Economy ReporterStatehouses ReporterGeneral Assignment Reporter (x2)Breaking News ReporterNewsletter EditorData Visuals ReporterDirector of Product & EngineeringExperience DesignerProduct EngineerCreative DirectorAudience EditorCommunity Manager Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Rachel Botsman, an author, podcast host, Trust Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and an overall trust expert. Whether we like it or not, we live in an age where growing numbers of people believe the opinions of strangers over facts. Rachel has studied trust in the media for several years, so we dug deep into why believing facts isn’t popular anymore, and why correcting vulnerabilities within our brain could be the solution. Below is a post-game of everything we discussed and more. But first, here are some quick links to stories I enjoyed this past week. Enjoy 🧠Saudi Arabia Hacked Jeff Bezos — Scoop of the year so far as the prince of Saudi Arabia is alleged to have hacked the phone of Amazon’s Jeff BezosInstagram Face — How social media and plastic surgery have created a single, cyborgian lookNew York Times’ Dual Endorsement — The NYT broke tradition by endorsing two candidates, one of which is polling at three percent and the other currently the number one enemy of the progressive leftOh, and if you like what you read, how about clicking the ❤️ up top. I’ll be very grateful. 😘Rachel 👇What Is a Trust Expert?For more than a decade, Rachel’s explored what trust is, how it works and what its future looks like. In this TED Talk, she explains her work in more detail and how today we prefer to trust strangers online instead of facts and experts. The History of Fake NewsMisinformation, spin and lies have been around forever. The power and reach of the internet has allowed false information to be spread at speeds never seen before. A small Macedonian town called Veles is arguably the home of fake news, when in 2016 a band of fake websites began to spread false headlines on Facebook, such as “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President” and “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide”. The group of scammers saw the potential to make large amounts of money using clever algorithms to exploit Facebook’s shallow system of not checking the validity of information that gets posted on its platform. The Macedonian group exposed a sleeping giant, and of course when another giant began his bid for the White House, we were powerless to stop the vast networks already in place. Once mainstream politics entered the fray, fake news predictably exploded into a tidal wave of falsehoods, and not just because we have a Liar-In-Chief occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How do we stop the poisonous cycle? Rachel has some ideas…Mike Wendling, BBCHow Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake NewsNo matter how conscious we are of false information, it’s almost guaranteed that we’ve fallen foul of believing something that’s blatantly untrue. What’s even more remarkable is that in the Twitter age of retweets and likes, almost 60 percent of people will retweet a link without actually clicking on it. One of the best examples is from 2016, when satirical news website The Science Post posted a block of lorem ipsum text under the provocative headline “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting”. The post was shared 125,000 times, buttressing studies that suggest 60 percent of people don’t read an article before retweeting it.Aside from laziness, our inability to verify articles before sharing them is to do with something called ‘confirmation bias’, the idea that we want something to be true so badly, that we only accept information that supports our theory. In her work, Rachel now sets out to disprove her theories instead of just telling herself they’re true. If she can’t disprove something, then she’s onto something. I’ve started to operate in a similar manner, especially when working on projects to do with climate change, where there is often too much material to read. Still, even a handful of checks per story has mitigated several errors and saved bundles of time. Katy Steinmetz, TimeMost of the Internet Isn’t Even RealThe Macedonian scammers were but a tiny chunk of the internet’s problem that has become far worse since 2016. According to a report by security firm Imperva in 2017, robot activity has been consistently more than that of humans, with bot activity eclipsing 60 percent in 2013. Fake YouTube views and anonymous egg avatars on Twitter are obviously incredibly concerning, if not just plain annoying. But you can easily live your online life without having to worry about petty trolls if you want to. Let’s call them ‘good bots’. What’s darker and more outright dangerous are the ‘bad bots’ — the malware that will try to hack your personal data if it’s the last thing it does. Case in point, Jeff Bezos (see above). What can we do about it? I haven’t a freaking clue. According to market-research firm CB Insights, more than a dozen bot startups raised first rounds of funding, so we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg. 😳 Adrienne Lafrance, The AtlanticDeep Fakes: People Don’t Care What’s RealJust as we try to contain the epidemic of good and bad bots, we now have another headache. Deep fakes are videos which use technology to make a person appear to say or do something they didn’t say or do. Put more simply: anyone can make another person say anything they like. Take this deep fake of Mark Zuckerberg, originally posted to Instagram no less. Imagine how many people believed this was actually Zuckerberg before sharing to their networks…In terms of legal protection, consequences will inevitably depend on who and how the law is interpreted. On one hand, deep fakes can be taken as parody, which is incredibly hard to prosecute. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation sees things differently. Per civil liberties director David Greene: Fortunately, existing laws should be able to provide acceptable remedies for anyone harmed by deepfake videos. In fact, this area isn’t entirely new when it comes to how our legal framework addresses it. The US legal system has been dealing with the harm caused by photo-manipulation and false information in general for a long time, and the principles so developed should apply equally to deepfakes. If a deepfake is used for criminal purposes, then criminal laws will apply. For example, if a deepfake is used to pressure someone to pay money to have it suppressed or destroyed, extortion laws would apply. And for any situations in which deepfakes were used to harass, harassment laws apply. There is no need to make new, specific laws about deepfakes in either of these situations. On the tort side, the best fit is probably the tort of False Light invasion of privacy. False light claims commonly address photo manipulation, embellishment, and distortion, as well as deceptive uses of non-manipulated photos for illustrative purposes. Deepfakes fit into those areas quite easily. Rachel Botsman for WiredTech Companies Are Not On Our SideI’ve been trying to find this Katie Couric podcast for absolutely ages, and finally writing this newsletter triggered my memory. Tristan Harris used to work for Google as a design specialist, but became horrified at what he saw as special teams with the sole purpose of making us, the users, addicted to Google’s products and technology. This isn’t limited to just Google, and takes place throughout Silicon Valley. I can’t recommend the podcast enough, and below is a sneak peak…Related Episodes…#58 — Art Markman (University of Texas)#52 — Katie Notopoulos (BuzzFeed News)#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times)#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information)#30 — Art Markman (University of Texas)Next Week…We’ll have Krystal Ball on to talk about the upcoming launch of her new book on populism, as well as the New York Times’ dual endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.Last Week…#60 — Michael Mann (Penn State University) on witnessing the Australian wildfires in person and the country’s climate policy recordJob CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. This week, I’ve listed a range of openings at Insider Inc/Business Insider covering technology.INTERNSHIPS (scroll down)Associate Editor, TechEmerging Technology ReporterInternet and Digital Culture ReporterNews Reporter (London)Tech Billionaires ReporterTech Deals ReporterTech EditorTech Editor, EnterpriseTech Ideas and Innovation ReporterTech Reporter (London)Teen Digital Culture ReporterSenior Tech ReporterSports ReporterVisual Features Reporter, Tech Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to the first podcast of 2020! There’s no better guest to start the year with than the indefatigable Michael Mann, world renowned climate scientist from Penn State University. Michael’s spent the past month on a sabbatical in Australia, which has unfortunately meant that he’s seen the devastation of the wildfires in person. Climate change has had such an adverse effect on wildfires around the world, that there’s essentially no wildfire season anymore. In parts of Australia, they’re literally creating their own weather systems. Below is a post-game analysis of everything we discussed. Enjoy. 🧐Dangerous Climate Change Is Here, NowMichael couldn’t have picked a better, or worse, time to take a sabbatical in Sydney. On one hand, spending a month in a country that’s literally on fire isn’t ideal, but on the other, having Michael to testify and contextualize the damage first hand is a silver lining. As part of his research into the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events, Michael visited the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system, which will completely disappear within decades unless a dramatic reduction in global carbon emissions occurs. Michael also travelled to another of Australia’s natural wonders, the Blue Mountains, which is currently on fire and faces irreparable damage. The fires first started more than four months ago in September, and don’t show any sign of slowing. Michael Mann for The GuardianVisualizing the Destruction Down UnderUnless you’ve seen a wildfire up close, it’s hard to imagine their severity. Thank the lord for the immense talent of the visual teams at The Guardian and the New York Times for contextualizing how bad the wildfires are.The temperature in Sydney has regularly topped 100° Fahrenheit, including a handful of days of more than 110°…Based on current data, this is likely to be Australia’s worst bout with wildfires on record.And now we know just how dangerous it is to live in parts of Australia right now…But not dangerous enough for the Australian Open tennis tournament to be postponed…Australia’s Atrocious Climate Change RecordI’m sorry to do this, but the misery gets worse. Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, is as terrible as they come when it involves climate change policy. Don’t be confused: Morrison’s Liberal Party are anything but liberal, and are weirdly the major right-wing party in Australia, whose climate change policies are utterly insufficient. According to the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index (page 9), Australia is 53rd of the 58 countries ranked, and rubs shoulders with the likes of Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Spoiler alert: the U.S. is last, but we knew that, right?It’s okay though, because Morrison insists his policies are adequate with no need for anyone to panic. No really, he actually said that. And that comes after he decided it would be fine to take a family vacation to Hawaii in the midst of his country burning to the ground. To be fair to the bloke, he did apologize for leaving his country when it needed him most, and compared his dilemma to a plumber deciding whether to accept a contract on a Friday afternoon. 🤷‍♂️Jack Goodman, BBCPlease Like Me, ThanksBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.Celebrities Are Donating More Than Oil CompaniesPrime minister Morrison announced a $2 billion Australian dollar ($1.4 USD) relief fund for victims, but this reactive measure isn’t anywhere near enough. Australia’s Climate Council said recently that the total damage from lost productivity may reach A$19 billion by 2030, A$211 billion by 2050 and an insane A$4 trillion by 2100, according to Bloomberg. So who’s left to make up the paltry help from the government? Celebrities. Thanks to analysis from Emily Atkin — SUBSCRIBE TO HER NEWSLETTER — we know Nicole Kidman’s $250,000 donation equates to roughly $738 for the average American who makes $59,000. Compare that to Chevron’s $1 million donation, which equates to about $3.96 for the average American, based on the $15 billion Chevron made in 2018. And of course don’t forget Exxon Mobil…Emily Atkin, HeatedWant more of Emily? We had an hourish chat on all things climate change. 👇Dutch Supreme Court’s Landmark RulingAlas, you’ve made it to the end. For that, you shall be rewarded with some hope. On December 20, the supreme court in the Netherlands upheld a ruling ordering the country’s government had explicit duties to protect its citizens’ human rights because of climate change. The government must now reduce emissions by at least 25 percent compared with 1990 levels by the end of 2020. The landmark judgement had been in the courts for six years after the Dutch government fought the litigation at every stage. David Boyd, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said it was “the most important climate change court decision in the world so far,” which has already inspired similar lawsuits in Pakistan and New Zealand. According to this database created by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, there are currently 325 climate litigation cases in the courts around the world as we speak. Isabella Kaminski, The GuardianClimate Change Episodes…#53 — Emily Atkin (Heated Newsletter)#42 — Kait Parker (Weather.com)#37 — Josh Morgerman (Hurricane Man)#30 — Art Markman (University of Texas)#23 — Michael Mann (Penn State University)Next Week…We’ll have Rachel Botsman on to talk about how people prefer to believe opinions over facts, and how the media begins to gain the trust of the public again.Job CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. This week, I’ve listed a range of openings covering climate change.Climate Nexus: Media Relations InternInside Climate News: Climate Change ReporterNPR: Supervising Editor, ClimateOCCRP: International Environment EditorQuartz: Energy and Climate Change ReporterReuters: Climate Change EditorWYSO: Climate Change and Environmental Issues Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Art Markman, cognitive scientist and psychology professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Art is the first guest to appear on the podcast for a second time, having got into why the majority of people who believe in climate change aren’t willing to sacrifice anything from their own lives back in March. This time around we went deep into risk profiles and how they make us make the decisions we make. Before we get into it, you can add Inside The Newsroom directly to your preferred podcast app using this link. Below is a post-game of everything we talked about and more. Enjoy 🤓Art Markman 👇Knowing Our Own Risk ProfileKnowing our own risk profile is important. It requires looking inward to identify why we make certain choices: What we like or dislike doing, what makes us scared or confident, and how we can overcome our fears. Quick question: do you consider yourself a risk-taker or risk-averse?Risks can be broken down into five types, according to Art, also known as “risk domains”. First up is financial risk, which is pretty self-explanatory… How willing are you to spend money without knowing exactly what you’ll get in return? For example, are you willing to spend thousands of dollars for a graduate degree without knowing whether future earnings will be worth the initial outlay? Next up is social risk, i.e. are you willing to make a fool of yourself in a group of new people in order to make friends? Third, is ethics. Then comes recreational risk… Are you more of a softball player or bungee jumper? And lastly is health risk, which is probably something none of us consciously think of when we have a pint or glass of wine, or smoke a cigarette or a blunt. Next task: I went through each domain and wrote down a couple of examples for each of what kind of risk raker I am, and it made my outlook a little clearer. So how about you? What kind of risk taker are you?Art Markman for Fast CompanyAnalysis ParalysisOne risk domain Art didn’t mention in his article was that of time. More than any other domain, how to spend free time is my most agonizing. Whether its freelancing on the side of my regular job which has an obvious financial incentive, writing this newsletter which has no financial incentive, or simply debating how best to spend a free hour I have. Ironically, my brain works its hardest when trying to figure out how to relax.Fortunately there’s a term for extreme indecisiveness: free-time paralysis, or 'analysis paralysis’. Essentially, it’s the idea that having too much choice, or too much time, leaves our brain overwhelmed with all the possibilities that we end up doing nothing. But the first-world problems don’t stop there. Shame and guilt then creep into our psyche over the complete failure to achieve anything. One technique you can try tomorrow is what Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, calls ‘going for good enough’. Instead of agonizing over perfection or completing every single task on your list, settle for good enough and it will unlock more happiness and satisfaction. Daniella Scott, CosmopolitanIf you like what you read, how about clicking the ❤️ up top. I’ll be very grateful. 😘The Power of IntrovertsIf you’re like me, going to a work event or conference is more of a burden than a pleasure. Standing around making aimless smalltalk with people wIouldn’t socialize outside of work isn’t my idea of fun. It’s excruciating. I thought I was part of the minority feeling like this, but thanks to Susan Cain’s amazing book Quiet, it turns out that I’m not alone. In fact, there was a time when introverts were among the majority. A time when extroverts weren’t so excessively and misguidedly respected by society. A time when we didn’t make only extroverts the CEOs of our companies or the political leaders of our countries. Cain cites the increase of mass media and communication since the start of the industrial revolution as the primary reason behind why the loudest and boldest people are rewarded over the contemplative and well-informed.Sarah Cain, Author of QuietSocial Media and Introverts Don’t MixIf you’re like me, you know you should probably get off social media completely, but enjoy keeping in touch with what’s going on in the world without having to talk to anyone. Unfortunately, that comes with a price. According to a study by the Royal Society for Public Health, the majority of Britons aged 14-24 believed that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter had negative effects on their mental health and wellbeing. Personally, Instagram is the most poisonous of them all. Unlike the other major platforms — Facebook has fake news, Twitter has trolls that troll — Instagram goes one worse. Instagram exacerbates our worst traits of social comparison. Posting pictures with the sole aim of getting as many people (often strangers) to click that little red heart button has unnatural and extremely damaging effects to our mental state. When I posted pictures, I checked my phone literally every two minutes to see how many likes I’d received. My target was usually to get to three figures. Let’s think for a minute: How insane is that? Waiting by your phone until you got to 100. Regardless of how many likes I got, it was a lose-lose situation.That’s because it’s completely unnatural for our brains to generate such an intense rush of dopamine, only to crash hard once we don't get to 100 likes. Even if it did, masking your unhappiness isn't worth it.The EconomistLast week…#57 — Stephen M. Walt (Harvard) on whether the U.S. could have a successful foreign policy againRelated podcasts#44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe) on the history of tribal societies#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times) on what it’s like cutting Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft from our livesJob CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. This week, The Seattle Times has a number of cool positions…Business ReporterEditorial WriterGraphic ArtistInvestigative ReporterPolitical EditorProject Homeless ReporterSports ProducerTech Editor/Assistant Business Editor Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Stephen M. Walt, professor of international affairs Harvard University’s Kennedy School, columnist at Foreign Policy magazine and author of several books on foreign affairs. I saw Stephen speak in person at LSE a few weeks ago and, after hearing Stephen talk on whether the U.S. could have a successful foreign policy again, I had to get him on the pod. The timing couldn’t have been better as it came days after Donald Trump sporadically decided to withdraw troops from northern Syria, leaving his Kurdish allies to be butchered by Turkish forces. Stephen and I took it all the way back to the early 2000s to figure out where the U.S. went wrong, and what events led to the U.S. still being at war with the Taliban in Afghanistan 18 years later. Below is a post-game of everything we covered. Enjoy 🤓Like Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Can the U.S. Still Have a Successful Foreign Policy?The simple answer to this complicated question is yes. Measuring how successful foreign policies are can be put down to a) whether the U.S. (or any country for that matter) has made another country a safer and more stable place b) whether the U.S. has made more friends than enemies after its operation and c) whether its enemies are stronger or weaker. Some say the last time the U.S. had a successful foreign policy was when the Cold War ended back in 1991, but since then things have largely been a failure. Starting with Bill Clinton when he took over the reins in 1993, carried on by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and now hopelessly continued as we speak by Donald Trump, both Republicans and Democrats have got it wrong. And that’s exactly where a common misconception lies. The Republicans are often perceived as the party that supports war and the military, and rhetoric in speeches and debates often supports that theory. But when it comes down to real action, the past two presidents from each party have increased the number of troops in war zones, and have all been lousy in looking after its veterans. That said, surveys have shown that in more recent times, younger veterans tend to lean Republican.That brings us to the worst U.S. conflict of the modern era, a war that is still going on after 18 years: the war in Afghanistan.The Unwinnable WarIt came as a shock to me that the war in Afghanistan was still going on. I thought it was done and dusted and that U.S. troops were there to maintain stability. But that’s not the case and the war in Afghanistan has slowly become a deadly quagmire. Since Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and seemingly wiped out the Taliban within months, he went for another bite of the cake and invaded Iraq in 2003. By doing so, Bush transferred the majority of his military’s power and resources more than a 1,000 miles west to eliminate Saddam Hussein, and left open the possibility for the Taliban to return to Afghanistan after hiding out in safe havens across the border in Pakistan. After 18 years of war, thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, the U.S. is still trying to ‘win’ the war in Afghanistan. But the fact is the Taliban haven’t been vanquished and remain a threat to the U.S. and its allies, even more so after Trump cancelled secret peace talks with the group in September. The Taliban have warned that more U.S. lives would be lost as a result.Stephen M. Walt for Foreign PolicyRealism vs IdealismSo how did the U.S. get into this Middle Eastern mess via Bush, make no apparent progress under Obama and, well, have all of its credibility shattered under Trump? It remains in this quandary because it has consistently sided with idealism, instead of realism.As we discussed earlier, when Bush thought he’d steamrolled through the Taliban in Afghanistan, he went for the jackpot in Iraq to remove Hussein, but as his military jumped from one country thousands of miles away to another, the inevitable game of Whac-A-Mole began. Then Obama announced he’d withdraw troops from the region, reversed his decision, then went ahead with his plan until there were just less than 10,000 troops in the country at the end of his presidency. And then we have Mr. Trump, who has never experienced realism in his life, and opened the door to a bloody Turkish invasion of northern Syria and killing thousands of Kurdish allies in the process.Idealism trumped (pardon the pun) realism in all of these cases, and explains why the U.S. is still in a conflict with the Taliban, the rise and fall of ISIS, and potential rise again of the Islamist group. Stephen M. Walt for Foreign PolicyWhy Do Countries Go To War?As I wrote back in July after I interviewed author Sebastian Junger, there’s something in the brain that keeps humans engaging in war. I was always taught that wars were fought over for money or religion, which is true, but what I wasn’t told was that going to war has positive psychological effects. Wars bring people together, create a sense of unity, and can provoke human qualities that often lie dormant in ordinary life, such as courage and self-sacrifice. It seems that the emotion of war has gotten the better of U.S. foreign policy for the best part of the past two decades, preventing economically and politically stable nations to be built. Instead, a series of power vacuums were created that see no end in sight. Peace depends on creating societies rich with opportunities and democracy. The fact that so many nations fail to do this makes our future prospects of peace look very bleak.Steve Taylor for the GuardianLast week…#56 — Jamil Smith (Rolling Stone) on voter suppression and the life of congressman Elijah CummingsRelated podcasts…#51 — Jason Kander (Democratic Party) on PTSD and how the U.S. has neglected its veterans #44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe, The Perfect Storm) on why countries go to warJob CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. This week, Cal Matters has a number of cool positions including… California Divide ReporterCollege Journalism Network EditorData JournalistDeputy News EditorEngagement EditorEvents DirectorHealth ReporterNewsletter Editor Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Jamil Smith, senior writer at Rolling Stone where he covers national affairs and culture. Jamil is one of the most prominent voices in America on race and politics, so I picked his brain on voter suppression and remembering the life of congressman Elijah Cummings, who sadly passed away last month. Both issues have shaped politics as we know it, so we got into the weeds of how to fix voting discrimination, as well as what legacy Cummings will leave behind. Below is a post-game of everything we discussed. Enjoy 💪Please Like Me, ThanksBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read.Elijah Cummings Wasn’t DoneThe news of Elijah Cummings’ passing last month sent shockwaves through the political world. On both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans attended Cummings’ funeral, which lasted for four and half hours due to the volume of people lining up to give eulogies. My favorite was from Barack Obama…No matter how much Cummings achieved in his 23 years in congress — Cummings was sworn in in 1996 after winning a special election of Maryland’s 7th District — it still feels that his death, at 68 years of age, was premature. Whether it was standing up for police brutality in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death in his native Baltimore, or his role in the impeachment of Donald Trump, Cummings was as good as they come.And he wasn’t done. As his widow Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, and Maryland Democratic Party chairwoman, said in her statement above, Elijah was working “until his last breath”, signing two subpoenas on his deathbed, both relating to the Trump administration’s policy change to temporarily end the ability for severely ill immigrants to seek care in the United States. Congressman Elijah Cummings left behind a gargantuan legacy that will take multiple people to replicate.Jamil Smith, Rolling StoneRacism Kills, LiterallyIt’s currently unknown what led to Cummings’ death, except “complications concerning longstanding health challenges," according to his office. What we do know is that Cummings faced the brutality of racism all his life, having first being attacked by a white mob for integrating a swimming pool in Baltimore when he was just 11 years old. We also know that racism causes real health problems. According to a recent study, racism promotes genes that trigger inflammation, one of the major drivers of disease. This is just one reason why black Americans have a life expectancy at birth of 75.6 years, while white Americans are expected to live to 79.April Thomas, University of Southern CaliforniaA Real-Life PurgeOne of congressman Cummings’ biggest fights was against voter suppression, spearheading the House Oversight Committee and becoming a leading voice within the Democratic Party on several civil rights issues. Continuing that fight is Stacey Abrams, a relatively new face to the wider public who’s tipped to be a powerful voice within the Democratic Party for years to come. Abrams shot to fame after she lost by just 0.4 per cent, or less than 60,000 votes, to Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia’s race for governor in the 2018 midterms. The race was riddled with so many allegations that the House Oversight Committee, led by Cummings, launched an investigation into what really happened. While the investigation is still ongoing, it was revealed recently that top Republicans in Georgia are continuing to use their power to suppress minority voters. In what is being ripped out of Kemp’s playbook, top officials in the state are investigating and issuing subpoenas to political opponents, without publicly showing evidence there was wrongdoing by those parties.That’s where Abrams comes in. Instead of following top Democrats’ calls to run for president, Abrams launched a new national voting rights campaign, Fair Fight 2020, which aims to educate and protect voters of their rights. In some ways, Republicans understand black voters better than Democrats. While voter suppression laws aren’t as overt as they once were, individual red states now use more insidious methods carefully planned to make it harder to register and to cast a vote. In Georgia, some counties were left with just a single polling station, and it’s thought that almost 16 million Americans overall were removed from electoral register between 2014 and 2016.Oliver Laughland, The GuardianWhich States Are Most Restrictive To Vote?I was surprised to see that Virginia, a state Hillary Clinton won by more than five points, was among the most restrictive states in the country, but that can be explained by the majorities held by the Republicans in both the state House and Senate. Thanks to the fine folks at the Guardian US, you can find out how restrictive each state is.Shelby County vs HolderIn 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 5-4 decision to strip away key protections of the Voting Rights Act, a staple in the country’s democracy since 1965. In the judgement, the SCOTUS ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act — the section that determines which states can change their voting laws without approval — was unconstitutional. Chief Justice John G. Roberts delivered the court’s opinion stating that “the Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem,” suggesting that there’s now less need for voter protection. The neutering of the Voting Rights Act has paved the way for more than half of the nation’s states to tighten their voter-ID laws, including most recently Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas. John Schwartz, New York TimesTrump Visits Atlanta To Woo Black VotersDonald Trump visited Atlanta last week to launch his campaign Black Voices For Trump, and unsurprisingly, it quickly turned into a circus. Sadly I’ve run out of words to describe the hypocrisy of the president when it comes to trying to attract minority voters, so I’ll let you watch for yourself…Related Podcasts#55 — Lindsay Gibb(Power Plays newsletter) on the overt sexism in college and professional sports#51 — Jason Kander (Democratic Party) on why veterans have been left behind#47 — Ryan Grim (The Intercept, The Young Turks) on the history of progressivism within the Democratic PartyJob CornerEach week I’ll feature a selection of new journalism jobs. This week, the Texas Tribune announced several postings for their investigative unit project with ProPublica. They also have a bunch of student fellowships…Student FellowshipsData ReporterEngagement ReporterReporterResearch ReporterSenior EditorStory Producer Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter. Bill has covered China for several decades and has become an expert on everything China, so we got into why tensions between the U.S. and China are so bad right now, how bad they are in a historical context, and we also discussed what might or might not happen in the latest debacle between the two countries involving the NBA. Below is a post-game of everything we talked about, enjoy! 🤓🇺🇸🇨🇳The NBA’s Poisoned China ChaliceTwo weeks before the new NBA season was due to start, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sent a tweet affirming his support for Hong Kong’s freedom. No big deal, right? Well, as soon as you introduce billions of dollars into the mix, it quickly becomes a major problem. It’s estimated that 800 million people watch the NBA in China, almost three times the entire population of the U.S., resulting in around $4 billion in annual revenue for the NBA.Morey deleted the tweet in a hurry, but he should have known that the internet is an unforgiving place, and the backlash started almost immediately in China. Whether he was instructed to by the NBA and the Rockets or not, Morey quickly issued an apology: While much of the fiasco centred around the NBA’s lack of crisis management, it became clear that on American soil, China vs the U.S. is a bipartisan issue. My God did I never thought I’d agree with Mr. Trusted himself, but we’re in weird times.As it stands, Chinese broadcasters have quietly begun to stream games again after threatening to cancel multibillion dollar contracts, while the NBA has made things 10 times worse by attempting to control the narrative back at home by confiscating signs at games in support of Hong Kong. Bill Bishop, SinocismThe Birth of Chinese NationalismNationalism in China as we know it began on May 4, 1919, when 100,000 Chinese students took to the symbolic Tiananmen Square to protest their country’s paltry reparations for helping the allied forces defeat Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. Although they joined the war late, several hundred thousand Chinese workers significantly boosted the allied powers in France, the Middle East and Russia.In return, China wanted to reclaim Qingdao and the surrounding Shandong Peninsula, after Germany occupied the Chinese port city in 1897. When the victorious allies met in Paris to reshape the world after the war, also known as the Treaty of Versailles, the disputed territory was awarded to Japan, and China was given the cold shoulder.On that fiery day in Tiananmen Square 100 years ago, the huge protests led to the dismissal of three pro-Japanese officials and the resignation of the entire cabinet. Thirty-one countries eventually signed the Treaty, but China wasn’t one of them, and nationalism in China was born.Salvatore Babones, Foreign PolicyI Need DopaminePlease like this post by clicking the ❤️ up top to help feed my unsustainable need for dopamine. Thanks 😘This Is the Worst It’s Been Since the Korean WarThe NBA debacle is symbolic for just how tense relations between the world’s two superpowers are. Things may have never been this bad since the breakout of the Korean War in 1950, when China defended communist North Korea and the U.S. backed South Korea. Through the years, the differences have mainly been over core values — like that thing called freedom of speech — and economic superiority. But in the past couple of years, the pressure has been ratcheted up. Back in March, 2018, Donald Trump issued a sweeping round of tariffs on Chinese goods totalling around $50 billion, and then followed that up with a further $34 billion in tariffs four months later. Naturally, China retaliated with tariffs of its own on U.S. products totalling around $34 billion as well. Then came the Huawei lawsuit against the U.S. for banning federal agencies from buying its products. Huawei is of course the Chinese telecommunications company that is reported to have close links with the Chinese government and thus pose a significant security risk. Naturally, this resulted in another Chinese retaliation and a slew of American companies were blacklisted from operating in China. But that’s nothing new, as the “Great Firewall of China” has been in operation for decades. Exhausted yet?The latest round of economic tit-for-tat is being played out as we speak, and the two countries are finalizing the first part of a massive trade deal that should soothe tensions for the time being. Council on Foreign RelationsWhat’s In the Trade Deal?Talks between the U.S. and China are secretive, but here’s what’s been reported to be included…Want to add Inside The Newsroom to your favorite podcasting app? Well now you can do so by clicking on the button below…Next up… is Lindsay Gibbs, author of the Power Plays newsletter, host of the Burn It All Down podcast and writer for the The Athletic.Related Podcasts#40 — Ben Casselman (New York Times) on how the U.S. economy is performing#34 — Dave Weigel (Washington Post) on the rise of the far left and right in America#24 — Ben Hammersley (Technologist) on the future of technology and the internet Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is Emily Atkin, author of the Heated newsletter for people pissed off with climate change, and also a contributing editor at the New Republic. Emily and I got really, wait for it… HEATED discussing CNN’s actions, or lack of actions, in the fight against the climate crisis, and we also named the world’s worst polluters. Below is a post-game analysis on everything we discussed. Enjoy 🔥What Is CNN For?CNN is somewhat of an enigma when it comes to the climate crisis. One week they’ll absolutely smash the debate out of the park with seven whole hours of climate town halls, but the next week they failed to raise a single question on the issue at the fourth Democratic presidential debate. People were mad, including Republican governor of Washington Jay Inslee.Now, to be fair to CNN, a seven-hour marathon dedicated to the climate crisis is more than any other cable outlet has done. So thank you CNN for that. But there’s simply no excuse not to keep the conversation going. The very purpose of journalism is to inform the public of the most important issues, and the climate IS among the most important issues we face today.Emily Atkin, HeatedWho Are the Worst Polluters?The Guardian published a bombshell of a series on the world’s biggest polluters. It’s no surprise that the top 20 polluters are all energy or oil companies, including BP whose social media team somehow kept a straight face when it tweeted this pile of s**t. It’s one of the only times I’ve seen a mass list of culprits published like this, which I hope signifies a more aggressive approach from across the media to outing the worst offenders.Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts, the GuardianIf you like what you read, how about clicking the ❤️ up top. I’ll be very grateful. 😘Oh Hey Google!One company that didn’t make the top 20 list, but is still far from out of the woods, is our darling search engine Google. Google has made substantial donations to some of the biggest climate deniers, despite creating a mirage that it cares about anything other than money. Most prominent on the list is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is the Conservative think tank behind convincing Donald Trump to pull out of the Paris agreement. To be fair, it’s not hard to make Trump do something. Google said that donating to the CEI doesn’t mean it supports climate change denial. But that’s the same old excuse you’ll hear from large companies trying to evade any ounce of responsibility. Mr. Zuckerberg espoused the same strategy last week on Capitol Hill. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioned why The Daily Caller was part of Facebook’s new factchecking service, Zuckerberg quickly palmed responsibility off to an outsourcer, saying that Facebook didn’t actually appoint who fact-checked the content on its own platform. It’s as if he’s missing the point, but I digress. Google should know that donating to certain Conservative organizations will bring with it a justified backlash, and its b******t excuses aren’t going to slide.Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the GuardianBig Oil, Meet Big TobaccoIt was only 20-odd years ago that the U.S. government finally sued Philip Morris and a group of other large tobacco companies for defrauding the public and hiding the truth about nicotine addiction. Not that I was conscious of what was going on back then, but I can’t believe Big Tobacco got away with it for so long. Even more maddening is that climate journalists have to write strikingly similar words today, as ‘Big Tobacco’ has morphed into ‘Big Oil’. So similar are the two that the same lawyers and PR companies that lied to the public all those decades ago about nicotine, are the same people defending and deflecting for the oil companies today. Sharon Eubanks for the Union of Concerned ScientistsExxon Goes To TrialBUT, as wise as the oil companies think they are, the public are following an old playbook of their own. Just as is the case in the opioid crisis and the ‘techlash’, it’s been the people and individual states that have taken action. Last week, New York’s Attorney General began a trial against ExxonMobil for misleading investors by downplaying how much future environmental regulations could affect its bottom line. It might not be perfect, but it could be a major crack in the armor for the oil industry.Justine Calma, The VergeHave Journalists Made Any Progress Covering the Climate?The answer is yes and no, depending on who you ask. But largely we haven’t been able to grapple with the idea that the climate crisis is among the most important issues we face today, if not the most important. Take a read of this article written back in 2008 by the Columbia Journalism Review, and you’ll see that we’re still discussing similar issues of how to tackle covering climate change more than a decade later.Next up… Bill Bishop, author of the Sinocism newsletter, to talk everything China.Related Podcasts'#42 — Kait Parker (Weather.com) on how the climate crisis has already destroyed lives#37 — Josh Morgerman (aka Hurricane Man) on what he’s seen covering hundreds of hurricanes#30 — Art Markman (University of Texas) on the psychology behind climate apathy#23 — Michael E. Mann (Penn State University) on what we can do tomorrow to reduce our impact on the climate Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! Welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… Katie Notopoulos! Katie covers internet culture and the tech industry for BuzzFeed News, and has a knack for finding kooky stories. We got into some serious stuff including Facebook’s new advertising tool which allows you to see who has your data, as well as why Apple are masquerading as a privacy champion. Below is everything we talked about, enjoy! 🤓Oh, and if you like what you read, how about clicking the ❤️ up top. I’ll be very grateful. 😘Is Apple Really Our Privacy Savior?Compared with Facebook, Apple is a saint. Its main business model is to sell phones and computers, so it doesn’t have a natural incentive to sell your data to ad companies. Regardless of what it sells, it’s not hard to be seen as the good guy when stood next to Facebook, whose founder and CEO would probably sell his own sisters to advertisers. Apple has hit the PR trail hard recently to tell us that, unlike its competitors, the iPhone maker will not track your data and sell it to marketers. But by the very nature of its products — Apple News+ and Apple Pay to name just two — that’s hard to believe. It’s remarkable, and quite laughable, how much Apple’s classic soft sell adverts have morphed into direct and blunt messages about how terrible its competitors are. Gone are the days of Bono making you want to dance around like a prat in your bedroom. Today, Apple’s USP is fundamental privacy features that should be expected of any company.Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed NewsFacebook Is Rubbing Your Data In Your FaceFacebook recently rolled out a new tool that shows you all the previously-hidden advertisers that have your data. On the face of it, this is a positive step toward transparency. But it’s also a semi-admission that there are God-knows-how-many companies out there that have your personal data. According to Facebook, "These advertisers are running ads using a contact list they or their partner uploaded that includes info about you. This info was collected by the advertiser or their partner. Typically this information is your email address or phone number." So it’s telling us that random ass companies have our data, but not how they got it and whether they were complicit in this.Now, seeing the likes of Airbnb or Spotify on the list won’t shock or surprise anyone. But I was weirded out as to why The Fillmore Charlotte, a music venue in Charlotte, North Carolina, had my details considering I’d never stepped foot in the state of North Carolina. This is an attempt by Facebook to showcase itself as transparent, but in reality it’s just a submission of the pressure stemming from a New York Times report that revealed Facebook’s emails to reveal their true mission. Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed NewsThe ‘Techlash’ Is Coming…Like with most things, it’s easy to become caught in a bubble and lose sight of whether the ‘average’ person even cares about privacy. Thanks to our friends at the Pew Research Center, we know that consumers are starting to turn against social media and tech companies in what has been dubbed the ‘techlash’. It seems like a million years since The Social Network lit up the box office with almost a quarter of a billion dollars, with Zuckerberg and Facebook riding the feel-good factor that came with the success of the movie. But all good things come to an end. Facebook is now largely seen as the devil of the tech industry, which is pretty well justified after they helped screw up the 2016 election, and then failed to learn anything since. Credit: Pew Research CenterLee Rainie, Pew Research CenterU.S. Government to the Rescue? Social media and tech firms have spent millions in lobbying Congress to let them continue to self-regulate, but it appears the tide is changing. The tech industry has suddenly become more open to the idea of the federal government enacting consumer privacy legislation, but don’t be fooled by their new-found receptiveness. Until now, it’s been individual states that have been the most aggressive in the fight against the tech companies — California was the first in the U.S. to mandate companies notify customers in the event of a data breach — and the likes of Google, Microsoft and Uber know that handing the keys to lawmakers in D.C. will override state laws. Neema Singh Guliani, ACLUPoll Finds Facebook RepugnantA joint poll by Axios and Harris Poll ranked the most beloved, and the most hated, companies among the nation’s most recognizable brands. Apple’s marketing seems to be working and has staved off the techlash for now, but the same can’t be said of Facebook. Among the top 100 brands, Facebook is 94th overall, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Trump Org. and the U.S. Government. Among just tech companies, Zuckerberg ranks dead last. Chris Canipe, AxiosA World Where Public Is the NormThe behaviour by the giants at the top has made way for publicly sharing data to be the norm across the industry. Even the likes of Venmo, whose privacy settings are automatically set to public when you first sign up, have taken advantage of the non-existent laws surrounding protecting user data. Each time you send or receive money from someone, Venmo needlessly posts the details of that transaction to all of your connections. And the consequences of such settings, unbeknown to most of its users, are very damaging. Earlier this year a researcher was able to scrape the Venmo API and download personal details of 115,000 transactions per day. In total, he gathered seven million public transactions which, if in the wrong hands, could then be sold onto marketing companies to start advertising to you. Samantha Cole, ViceNext Week… We’ll have the red hot Emily Atkin on the pod, formerly a climate reporter for the New Republic who recently launched her own newsletter on fighting climate change, aptly named Heated. We’ll also have Bill Bishop on, who also has his own newsletter, Sinocism, which is the No. 1 newsletter on Substack!Related Podcasts#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times) on cutting out Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information) on what it will take to break up Facebook#36 — Sam Biddle (The Intercept) on whether Facebook’s algorithms are sexist and racist Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. A very special guest today as we welcome in Jason Kander, army veteran and former secretary of state of Missouri. Jason quickly became the darling of the Democrat Party after he lost to Roy Blunt in the race for U.S. Senate by just 2.8 points, in one of the closest senate races in the traditionally red state. After almost pulling the trigger on a presidential bid, Jason instead ran for mayorship of his hometown Kansas City, before pulling out to treat his chronic PTSD and depression. Since then, he’s joined the Veterans Community Project, an organization dedicated to making sure that no veteran falls through the cracks of the deeply broken system currently in the U.S. I had a very moving conversation with Jason about his past year and how he’s treated his health. Listen above and read below.Presidential bids, mayoral races and PTSDWhen Jason lost to Roy Blunt back in 2016, the attention on him soared. Overnight, he went from a relatively unknown army veteran and statewide politician in Missouri, to a rising star within the Democrat Party, with rumours swirling of a potential presidential bid. And he came close. Jason had a hit podcast with the folks at Crooked Media, did daily and nightly hits on cable TV, and had a growing supporter base urging him to throw his hat in the ring. But as he travelled the country, symptoms of PTSD — Jason tried to shrug them off as tiredness and just part of serving in Afghanistan — began to affect him so much that suicidal thoughts started to creep in. He decided to return home to Kansas City and run for mayor, in part because he thought being closer to friends and family would make his chronic depression drift away. It didn’t. Three months after announcing his mayoral run and well ahead in the polls, Jason announced in a heartfelt post that he was dropping out to get himself right. It was the first time he’d gone public about his problems.David Philips, the New York TimesThe Facebook PostIn October 2018, Jason finally admitted to himself he needed help. After 11 years of telling himself he didn’t have PTSD, the symptoms grew too great. Jason was never seriously injured during his deployment, nor did he have to take another person’s life. How could he possible have PTSD when his friends had gone through much worse? But that’s a common way of thinking when it comes to depression: The person next to me has it worse so just get on with it. But a simple analogy helped change Jason’s mind. Take the hypothetical scenario that you broke one of your toes and your friend broke their leg. Your friend’s injury is worse, but both injuries inhibit the ability to walk, and a broken toe still needs to be fixed. The same principle applies to mental health and it’s important to treat it in the same way as your physical health.Jason KanderNow Do You Love Me?If you like what you read every week, throw us a wee like by clicking the ❤️ up top. I’m eternally grateful. 😘How Many Vets Are Taking Their Own Lives?The Trump administration has sadly been unable to make a dent in the abhorrent rate of 20 veterans killing themselves every day. That’s about one and a half times more than those who haven’t served in the military. Trump isn’t alone though. Homelessness, traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress and a military culture that shies away from seeking help are all factors that haven’t been dealt with for decades. Between 2017 and 2018, though, the suicide rate among veterans jumped 2.9 points to 24.8 percent. Jennifer Steinhauer, the New York TimesThe U.S. Has Screwed It’s VeteransIs it me or do veterans get put on a pedestal seemingly every election cycle? That should be a good thing, but the fact that the same issues are talked about in debates and town halls over and over again — untreated PTSD, homelessness, lack of employment opportunities, loneliness — means nothing is actually being done about them. That’s part of the reason Jason and millions of other vets feel lost, hopeless and considering suicide. When a veteran completes her/his service, they should be immediately setup with basic things like housing, employment and integrated back into their community. But that’s not what’s happening. The system is broken, and it can take weeks if not months to see a therapist, even after the Veterans Health Association scandal of 2014. Mark Hay, ViceTiny Houses, Big Plans: The Veterans Community ProjectJason seems happier than he’s been in a long time. That’s party due to his involvement in the Veterans Community Project, which aims to build housing and medical services for army veterans. He’s welcomed several high-profile politicians to the project’s HQ in Kansas City, including Democratic presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg, and even Republican U.S. senator from Missouri Roy Blunt, who beat him in the 2016 election. The VCP aims to expand nationally and their next ports of call are Denver and St. Louis. You can donate and find out more below. Trump is Strategically BrilliantIn case you’ve been living under a rock this week, Trump branded himself “strategically brilliant” after announcing that the U.S. had brokered a ceasefire between Turkey and the Kurds. He claimed victory by temporarily ending a war and humanitarian crisis he allowed to happen in the first place. But the last two weeks of chaos in the Middle East haven’t gone unnoticed by House Republicans: On Wednesday the House passed a bipartisan bill condemning Trump’s actions by a 354-60 vote.It’s one of the biggest signs so far that Republicans are beginning to publicly turn against Trump, as they know their boss’ actions will have deadly long-term effects. Reports of ISIS fighters and their families escaping prisons have already surfaced, but that’s just the start. Future foreign policy has been severely damaged for the future, and the keys to Syria are now in the hands of Russia. Robin Wright, The New YorkerNext Week… I’ll be talking to the amazing Katie Notopoulos from BuzzFeed news about Facebook’s new advertising tracking tool, and how Apple is masquerading as our privacy saviour. Also on the pod will be the red hot Emily Atkin, formerly a climate reporter for the New Republic who recently launched her own newsletter on fighting climate change, aptly named Heated.Related Podcasts#49 — David Armstrong (ProPublica) on the opioid crisis#44 — Sebastian Junger (Perfect Storm, Tribe) on tribes, surviving and PTSD#20 — Daniel Dale (CNN) on fact checking Trump Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to the 50th(!!!) episode of Inside The Newsroom. Crazy past few days with shitshows happening on both sides of the Atlantic, and today’s guest Hadas Gold broke everything down from a U.S.-Europe standpoint. Hadas has covered politics, media and tech for CNN since 2017, and has been named one of the most influential media reporters in the game. And Hadas has a pretty cool journey — born in Tel Aviv, grew up in Arizona and now lives in London — so she’s pretty qualified to give her opinion on everything happening right now. Below are analyses of our conversation. Enjoy 🤓Trump vs The MediaTrump’s tenure as president has been filled with inflammatory rhetoric toward the media, from calling us “fake news” to “the enemy of the people.” Trump spouts phrases like these openly and willingly without a care in the world for their consequences. But the consequences for journalists are real. Five journalists at the Capital Gazette in Maryland were killed in 2018, and Hadas’ own organization had mail bombs sent to it the same year. One thing Trump does realize is that other autocratic leaders around the world look up to the U.S., and the likes of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who recently said the “deceitful” media was hyping the wildfires in the his country’s Amazon rainforest, have made this a dangerous time to be a reporter. Pete Vernon, CJRThanks to the Committee to Protect Journalists for creating a database that tracks all attacks on journalists around the world.Have We Become Desensitised To Trump’s B******t?With Trump saying something dumb seemingly every day, it’s easy to become desensitized to how outrageous one scandal or another really is. We’re only humans and I know it’s effected me in terms of what I take in or just gloss over. I asked Hadas how she deals with this problem and she said it’s a constant battle of deciding what’s most important to her audience, but it’s crucial that the same standards are met with every piece of breaking news. Sigh.Katie Rogers, the New York TimesTell a Friend About Me?If you like what you’re reading right now, consider sending a friend or a loved one this link. If that’s too much, how about giving me a cheeky like instead by clicking the ❤️ up top. I’m very grateful.Will You Help Me, Boris?A classic case in point of being densensitized is the Times (of London) report from Wednesday that Boris Johnson is the latest foreign leader that Trump has solicited to help him at home. If true, that would take his tally to three that we know of — the Ukraine and Australia being the other two. But Trump laid another nuclear bomb on Thursday when he said, in front a group of reporters with actual cameras, that the Ukraine should indeed investigate the Bidens. Trump is literally in the midst of an impeachment inquiry over whether he asked a foreign government (he did) to investigate a political opponent, and admitted to doing so (again) in front of reporters with actual cameras. Oh, and he added China to his list for good measure. Catherine Philp, The TimesIs Boris Johnson Really the UK’s Donald Trump?Related to their phone call, Boris and Donald have been likened to one another, and not just because of their terrible hair up top. Both have led a dangerous agenda of inciting fear and hate, have both led successful campaigns to divide a nation and now find themselves leaders of two of the world’s most powerful countries. BUT, and it’s a big but, the duo do have their political differences. Perhaps most distinctly is Trump’s economic protectionism to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world, whereas Johnson is more laissez-faire, and government economic intervention is a bad thing.Natasha Frost, QZTrump to Reset Relationship With EUIf there was one word to describe Trump’s relationship with the European Union, it would be ‘strained’. Since he entered office, Trump has disagreed with the EU on several issues including on Iran, trade and climate change, and is a vocal supporter of Brexit (Brex-s**t, am I right?). Mike Pompeo, Trump’s chief diplomat, met with the EU’s incoming leadership team last month in an attempt to reset their relationship. But Pompeo’s credibility went down the toilet this week after it was revealed that he was on the phone call with the president of Ukraine, the same phone call that Volodymyr Zelensky trashed several European leaders. Not a good look, Mike. David M. Herszenhorn, Politico⭐️ Thanks so much for reading. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic once a week. You can find me on Twitter or on email if you want to suggest a guest you want me to interview. ⭐️The Strange Case of Naga MunchettyBBC breakfast show host Naga Munchetty was reprimanded by her bosses last week for expressing a personal response to the president’s racist July statement that four American congresswomen of color should “go home”. Munchetty, a black journalist, was incredibly open and insightful into the insults she’s received in the past, and some viewers had a problem with that. Turns out one particular viewer’s complaint made it all the way to the top, and the BBC sided with said viewer. After a major backlash inside and outside of the organization, BBC chief Tony Hall finally reversed the decision. Jim Waterson, The GuardianIrish BackstopShameful plug time as my colleagues and I at the Guardian showed what will happen to the Ireland-Northern Ireland border in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Johnson is currently trying to find a solution to the backstop, but is finding it increasingly difficult, because, well, Brexit was a bad idea to start with.Sean Clarke, Me, Pablo Gutiérrez, The GuardianRelated Podcasts#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic)#21 — Anna Soubry (MP for Broxtowe)#20 — Daniel Dale (CNN)Last Time#49 — David Armstrong (ProPublica) Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is David Armstrong, senior healthcare reporter at ProPublica. David has covered the pharma industry for more than a decade, and is an expert on the current opioid crisis in the U.S. We discussed a ton, and below is my post-game analysis on everything we covered. Enjoy!How Did the Opioid Crisis Even Start?The U.S. opioid crisis is one of its worst-ever drug epidemics. Almost 1,000 people die each week from opioid-related overdoses, and some experts say the death toll could be another 500,000 in the next decade. The problem started when doctors overprescribed legal painkillers for years and years, such as oxycodone, and was made worse by the influx of cheap substitutes supplied by foreign drug cartels, such as fentanyl. In 2017, it was estimated that 1.7 million Americans suffered from an opioid overdose. Claire Felter, Council on Foreign RelationsPain, Meet OxyContinThe most well-known painkiller on the market, and thus the drug attracting the most attention is OxyContin, produced and sold by Purdue Pharma. Purdue’s original best-seller was a drug called MS Contin, which is a slow-release morphine pill that dissolves over several hours into the bloodstream allowing many patients to sleep through the night. Just before the patent for MS Contin expired, Purdue developed a new, more potent painkiller derived from pure oxycodone and about 50 per cent stronger than morphine. This began the opioid crisis.Xan Rice, New StatesmanThanks to Dan Keating and Samuel Granados from the Washington Post for visualizing just how strong the drugs are that people are taking legally and illegally.Is the Crisis Nearing an End?Latest data from the CDC shows that the number of drug overdose deaths fell five percent, the first decline since 1990. Some experts point to the fall being directly linked to the reduction in opioid overprescription, but we’re not of the woods yet. Other experts say that the overdose deaths from illegal painkillers sold by drug dealers are still on the rise.Chelsea Whyte, New ScientistDo You Like Me?Before you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Who Are the Sackler family?Brothers Mortimer and Raymond Sackler bought Purdue Pharma in 1952, which has been controlled by the wider Sackler family since their deaths in 2010 and 2017, respectively. The Sackler family were once known around the world for their generous philanthropic donations to some of the world’s leading institutions, from Yale University to the Guggenheim Museum in the US and the Serpentine Gallery to the Royal Academy in Britain. That’s all changed in the past few years.Joanna Walters, the GuardianThe Danger (but Effectiveness) of Purdue’s MarketingPurdue Pharma first released OxyContin in 1996 and has made billions of dollars from the drug. It did so by concealing the truth about the risk of addiction in its marketing. Purdue knew it would receive criticism, and in 2001, Richard Sackler, the company’s former president and co-chairman and son of the late Raymond Sackler, wrote this in an email with the aim of pinning the blame on the users of his company’s drug: “We have to hammer on the abusers in every way possible. They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals.”Andrew Joseph, STAT NewsWhy Did Purdue Just Declare Bankruptcy?Earlier this month, Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as part of a deal to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against the company (my guest David Armstrong said this number is now nearer 3,000). Don’t be fooled though. Purdue and the Sackler family have certainly not run out of money. Such a process is meant to ensure that Purdue can preserve its value while it gets more time to negotiate with every entity it’s being sued by. Andrew Joseph, STAT NewsWho Are the Other Opioid Companies Involved?It’s not just Purdue under fire. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against other drug companies including Teva and Johnson & Johnson, who were recently ordered to pay a whopping $572million for its part in fuelling the crisis in Oklahoma alone. But it’s not just drug producers that are in hot water. Pharmacies such as CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens, who distribute the opioids to patients are being sued as well.German Lopez, VoxPartisan split?While the opioid crisis should unite Democrats and Republicans against Purdue and the other companies involved, diverging strategies may have started to emerge. Most of the 24 suing states that rejected Purdue’s settlement bill are Democratic, who “are aiming to send a broader message about corporate accountability, not just to Purdue, but to the large collection of even more powerful companies still tied up in opioid litigation,” according to Politico. Meanwhile the GOP are “going for a more pragmatic approach that may also reflect the party’s traditionally closer relationship with industry.”Sara Karlin-Smith, Dan Goldberg and Brianna Ehley, PoliticoAndddddd Trump?As per usual, Trump has claimed credit for the decline in opioid overdose deaths. Like with most things in life, it’s not that simple, and work from previous administrations to tackle the opioid crisis may be part-responsible. More nuanced, the decline in fatalities doesn’t necessarily mean that fewer people are overdosing; it may mean that the campaign to make antidotes widely available is saving their lives, though not necessarily getting people treatment to end their addiction.Brianna Ehley, PoliticoRelated Podcasts#46 — Christine Brennan (USA Today, CNN, PBS)#44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe, The Perfect Storm)Last Time#48 — Scott Brodbeck (Local News Now)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… my former boss and editor, Scott Brodbeck. In 2015, I stayed in Washington D.C. for the summer before I took myself to Missouri to begin my master’s, and I reached out to Scott via LinkedIn looking for absolutely any work experience I could get my hands on. A quick chat or two later and I was running the streets of D.C. (D.C. is extremely hot in the summer and I lost many pounds in body weight) covering hyperlocal news in two neighbourhoods. Scott’s a pretty remarkable person. He started his network of local news blogs in 2010 while studying for an MBA at Georgetown. He previously worked for the local NBC and Fox affiliates in town, and has thus been on both sides of the local journalism spectrum, both as a reporter and now an owner. Scott’s take on the current state of local journalism is completely unique, and listening to how he’s survived this period is nothing short of inspiring. Anyway, listen to the podcast and let me know what you think. Meanwhile, below are the highlights of everything we talked about including some extra reading 🤓Local News Is Dying, and Americans Have No IdeaA recent study by Pew Research found that 71 percent of U.S. adults think their local news outlet is doing “very or somewhat well financially”, despite just 14 percent of respondents saying they had paid for local news in the last year. That gap between perception and reality has meant that an estimated 13,000 communities have completely lost their local news coverage, according to a study by the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism. Alexis C. Madrigal, The AtlanticThanks to the amazing folks at Pew Research for building a tool that allows you to find out about local journalism in your home city.God Bless CharityIf Facebook and Google continue to shrink the advertising market for everyone else in the game, the only way for local journalism to survive might be to rely on billionaire philanthropists and reader donations. The U.S. now has 200 nonprofit newsrooms, according to the Institute For Nonprofit News, and that number is growing. Having seen it work from the inside at The Texas Tribune, I’m extremely high on this type of business model. That said, most startups can’t rely solely on rich people’s cash. So keep giving to your local news organisation, if you can afford to.Gerry Smith, BloombergHow Did The Texas Tribune Do It?I had the fortune of working for one of America’s greatest journalism success stories last year, which was launched in 2009 and has thrived ever since. The Tribune focuses on everything politics in the state of Texas, and is read by 1.9 million monthly users. Led by its CEO, Evan Smith and EIC, Emily Ramshaw (amazing people), the Tribune hopes to double its number of paying members to 10,000 by the year 2025. Oh, it also wants to build on the astonishing $56 million it‘s raised since its inception. The Tribune is an excellent example of how local news can not only stay alive, but change the landscape in the process. Expect to see a lot more Tribunes in the next decade. Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman LabPlease Just Like MeBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Yes Google! Finally 🙏I’ll try not to rip on Google tooooo much, but they’ve finally got serious about fixing local news. Now, whether or not you believe Google is responsible for creating the thousands of holes in local journalism, we can all agree they have too much money to know what to do with and have the ability to fill said holes. Together with McClatchy, the first city to receive the benefits of this joint initiative is Youngstown, Ohio. And just as well, as the city’s long standing publication, The Vindicator, closed its doors on August 31st. Christine Fisher, EngadgetWhy Do Newspapers Still Endorse Politicians? The ritual of newspapers endorsing political candidates has always baffled me. Knowing how newsrooms work and why journalism even exists makes this age-old practice of taking sides all the more dangerous. Especially in today’s angry climate. There is evidence that newspaper endorsements do make a difference. But that’s not the point. Newspapers shouldn’t be in the business of taking sides and telling people who to vote for. Or in the Orlando Sentintel’s case, who not to vote for. I think that’s why The Texas Tribune is so well-respected from both Democrats and Republicans. Their business model would be ruined if they didn’t stick to just reporting. In any case, data viz whiz Noah Veltman neatly visualized every newspaper’s endorsement since 1980. Thank you Noah.How Much Do You Pay For News?What I admire about Scott’s network is that it’s completely free for readers. I mean, he kind of has to keep it free, because his audience is so small and niche, and unlikely to pay for news about a single neighbourhood. An excuse often used in favor of the paywall is that people used to spend money on newspapers, but I don’t sign up to that theory. Newspapers earned billions of dollars from advertising, let alone whatever they made from selling the physical papers on top. They probably could have got away without charging for the actual newspaper. Today’s digital paywall once again excludes certain audiences from consuming news. Doesn’t that go against a principal of journalism to spread factual information as far and wide as possible? It’s why I love working for the Guardian so much who I’ll unashamedly plug. The Guardian made its first profit this year in more than two decades, primarily through reader donations. I get that the Guardian is an international brand, but the fact here is that good, factual reporting will always earn the trust, and money, from readers.Joshua Benton, Niemen LabRelated Podcasts#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times)#39 — Henry Abbott (TrueHoop)#36 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic)Last Time#47 — Ryan Grim (The Intercept)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. It’s been a while, and for that I apologize. First up was a two-week trip to Israel, which was immediately followed by a fever that limited me to my bed for a week. But I’m better now (hooray!) and it’s time for another juicy podcast newsletter. Today’s guest is Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept and contributor to The Young Turks. Ryan has covered the Democratic Party and left-wing politics for the past decade and is one of the foremost journalists on the topic. Make sure you check out his new book, We’ve Got People, which details the history of the progressive movement against the establishment. Enjoy!Pour One Out For Jesse JacksonIn his book, Ryan uses Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign as the start of the progressive movement as we know it. It’s remembered as ‘controversial’ because it caused major divisions within the party, similar to those that Bernie Sanders opened in 2016. Jackson ended up losing the nomination to Michael Dukakis, as the party’s establishment sided with the racist view that Jackson, a black man, could not become president. Ironically, we're still having the same debate more than 30 years later, only Barack Obama broke the racial barrier and now it’s whether a ‘socialist’ candidate can win. The 2020 race is in full swing and it's amazing to see how many candidates have paid tribute to Jackson. Sanders, Warren, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Bill de Blasio have all associated themselves with Jackson. Meanwhile Jackson recently criticised Joe Biden for his position on voluntary busing — transporting students to different school districts to rectify racial segregation.Alex Thompson, PoliticoObama’s Progressive LegacyWhen Barack Obama first rose to prominence during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was seen by some as the darling of the progressive movement, with his calls for change flirting with populism. He'll go down as the most popular two-term Democratic president since FDR, but a lot has changed since then.Fast forward to the 2020 race and Obama is a target for many Democrat candidates. While we haven't seen the vitriol we saw from the Republicans in 2016, criticism of Obama's deportation policy and Obamacare have become more and more frequent, and are being turned against his vice president Joe Biden.T.A. Frank, Vanity FairLike Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and get more attention, because I need attention. Thanks.AOC Pulls Off The UnthinkableAt the beginning of June 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was barely known outside of New York City. Today she has millions of followers on social media and is one of the faces of modern progressivism. Below are a couple of videos of the moment she defeated the incumbent Democratic representative from District 14 for New York, with Ryan reporting somewhere in the background. Oh, if you haven’t seen the full documentary behind AOC’s win, you should have. Watch it. Schumer and Pelosi. BFFE 💕 The Democratic leadership has been in the works for more than three decades. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer first met in the late 1980’s, at one of their so-called “dinner gang” gatherings in D.C., and have been pretty inseparable ever since. That’s not to say the two haven’t had their differences over the years, but to understand the divisions within the party in 2019, it’s important to know how we got to where we are in the first place. Alex Brown, The AtlanticTom PerezTom Perez walked into a complete s**t show as DNC chairman in 2017, months after Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to shamefully resign the post for conspiring against Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. Things have gone either tits up or just fine since then, depending on who you ask. A lot of the work Perez has done has been to heal the trust lost by Wasserman-Schulz, though that hasn’t stopped critics from piling on over the DNC’s dismal fundraising efforts compared to their Republican counterparts. Michael Scherer, Washington PostThe Democratic Party Is Actually Three Parties. What?Perhaps the Democrats’ biggest challenge heading into the 2020 election will be uniting its different factions. Hillary Clinton and the DNC weren’t able to do so in 2016, in large part due to Donna Brazile’s revelations that the DNC rigged the Democratic primary in favor of Clinton. Once nominated, Clinton failed to reel in enough Bernie Sanders supporters and, well, we all know what happened from there.This time around, whoever wins the Democratic nomination will have to heal the damage carried over from 2016. And they’ll have their work cut out: Whoever wins will have the task of uniting not two, but three separate divisions within the Democratic Party, otherwise it could spell four more years for the Donald Trump. Thomas B. Edsall, the New York TimesMSNBC vs CNN vs FoxWe all know there are distinct differences between the three largest cable news outlets, but this amazing visualization by Charlie Smart of The Pudding analyzes thousands of data points. Unfortunately, whoever wins the Democratic nomination might just end up being who the cable outlets want to win. Charlie Smart, The PuddingRelated Podcasts#34 — Dave Weigel (Washington Post)#33 — Lauren Gambino (Guardian US)#29 — Adam Kelsey (ABC Politics)Next Up…… is (hopefully) Eylon Levy, an English-born journalist who now works for i24NEWS in Israel. During my recent trip to the holy land, Eylon was gracious enough to give it to us (my tour group) straight, explaining the difficulties Israel faces right now. It wasn’t all one sided, and I hope to have part of the conversation again for you guys. Last Time#46 — Christine Brennan (USA Today, CNN, PBS, ABC, NPR)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter @DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter. Today’s guest is Christine Brennan, author, columnist and commentator for USA Today, CNN, ABC, NPR and PBS. Christine’s approaching 40 years covering sports, and has thus seen the rise of women’s sports from the front row, and had some strong comments on the recent World Cup win for the U.S. soccer team. We also got into the “clash” between Megan Rapinoe and Mr. Trump. An hour wasn’t enough to discuss the entire history of women’s sports, so below is essential reading for further context and understanding of the history of women’s sports in America. Enjoy!He Dunnit AgainThe U.S. women’s national soccer team won its second straight World Cup earlier this month, making them one of the most dominant sports teams ever. Since 1991, the team has won four World Cups and four Olympics gold medals. As usual, Trump made it about himself by telling Rapinoe to “WIN” before she “TALKS”. It’s as if he never learns…Unfortunately for Donald, Megan and the U.S. did win — Rapinoe led the way as co-captain and won the Golden Boot with six goals — which gave her the permission to talk that she was looking for. She took her talents to CNN instead of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver her new bestie a stark, yet optimistic message…Nike Nets New RecordThe USWNT weren’t the only winners of the World Cup as Nike announced that “the USA Women’s Home jersey is now the No. 1 soccer jersey, men’s or women’s, ever sold on Nike.com in one season”. Nike’s president and CEO, Mark Parker, made the statement during an earnings call before the semi-final win against England (booo!), so at $90 a piece, God only knows how much Nike will end up making.Amy Tennery, ReutersEqual Pay. Now.Speaking of money, the success at the World Cup once again brought the national discussion back to paying men and women equally. As if we’re still having to have the debate. Here’s Christine on what’s next in the fight for equal pay.So How Did We Get Here?Rarely do I speak anecdotally, but in my experience, far more women play and follow sports in the U.S. than in the UK. Why is that? Because of Title IX, a federal law signed in 1972 that states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."Simply put, without Title IX, today’s newsletter wouldn’t be a thing.NCAAAnd Who Shaped Title IX?Patsy T. Mink. Edith Louise Starrett Green. Birch Bayh. Bernice R. Sandler. Donna Lopiano. David and Myra Sadker. Benita Miller. Billie Jean King.ACLUBattle of the SexesThe most well-known of those names is Billie Jean King, 12-time tennis Grand Slam winner. In 1973, a year after Title IX was signed into law and just getting off the ground, King silenced the growing number of critics by defeating Bobby Riggs in front of a sold-out Astrodome in Houston. King beat Riggs in straight sets in front of a TV audience estimated at 90 million, in what was another mammoth milestone for women.Jerry Barca for ForbesLike MeBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Title IX Isn’t About Just SportsWhile sports gets the most attention, Title IX essentially bans discrimination of any kind based on gender. Another important area where the law has helped has been sexual abuse and harassment on college campuses, a pervasive problem that has ravaged many schools. Sadly, not all states feel the same. Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in Missouri stripped certain aspects of Title IX to give more power to those accused of sexual abuse case. There’s still a long way to go. Sigh.Haley Samsel, USA TodayThe Sports Bra Seen Around the WorldLet’s finish on a positive. It’s been 20 years since the U.S. soccer team won its first World Cup, meaning it’s been two decades since one of the most iconic images in the history of sports. After a heart-wrenching penalty shoot out, Brandi Chastain scored the winning kick and did what any of us would do in that situation and took her top off. The significance of that moment is very much still being felt today. Jeré Longman, New York TimesRelated Podcasts#39 — Henry Abbott (TrueHoop)#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic)Next Up…… is Ryan Grim, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept, and a contributor to the Young Turks Network. I’m also off to Israel for two weeks, so expect a juicy newsletter detailing my trip. Last Time#45 – James Ball (Wikileaks, TBIJ)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast! Today’s guest is James Ball, journalist at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and author of the book WikiLeaks. James shot to fame in 2010 when he was hired by Julian Assange to work for WikiLeaks, where he helped publish thousands of classified documents on the U.S. military’s activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. He then joined the Guardian to work on the Edward Snowden leaks and has since written five books about varying aspects of truth-telling and b******t-spotting. Below is a post-game analysis of everything we talked about, so make sure you listen to the podcast for more!Please Like Me, ThanksBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Julian Assange: A TimelineBefore we get started, it’s worth taking a look at how Assange became a top target for the U.S. government. Since Wikileaks released the Afghan war logs in 2010, Assange has become the most prominent free-speech activist/shoddy journalist in the world, depending on how you view him. Regardless of your opinion, his impact on world privacy is undeniable.Liam Stack, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Madeleine Kruhly, New York TimesWhat Kind of Man is Julian Assange?In our podcast, James described the times he private messaged Assange about his progress on the Afghan war logs into the early hours of the morning, and how he could never really trust the man at the centre of everything. They eventually fell out and James went onto write an entire book about his time at Wikileaks, and is thus one of only a few journalists that knows the inner workings of Assange’s mind. James Ball for The AtlanticA Spanish Security Firm Spied on Assange It’s sad that I’m not shocked one bit to learn that Assange was himself spied on 24 hours a day during his seven-year stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Per Spanish newspaper El País “a Spanish private defense and security firm named Undercover Global S. L., which was tasked with protecting the diplomatic building between 2012 and 2018, instructed its men to collect all possible information about the cyberactivist, particularly regarding his lawyers and collaborators.”The surveillance recorded plans by Assange’s team to whisk him out of the embassy in disguise and flee to Russia or Cuba, but the escape was never carried out due to Assange’s refusal to admit “defeat”. José María Irujo, EL PAÍSDid Assange Meddle in the U.S. Election?Rafael Correa, the former President of Ecuador, said yesterday that Assange did in fact interfere with the 2016 election that saw Donald Trump win in minority fashion. Per CNN, “We did notice that he was interfering in the elections and we do not allow that because we have principles, very clear values, as we would not like anyone to interfere in our elections," he said. "We are not going to allow that to happen with a foreign country and friend like the US.”Marshall Cohen and Kay Guerrero, CNNDelay, Delay, DelayWhile all eyes will be on the U.S. extradition case next year, Assange and his team will be working to delay any sentence or extradition as long as possible. That’s because the opposition in the U.S. and the UK have publicly been a lot more forgiving of Assange’s past actions and freedom of the press in general. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who demanded a general election once Theresa May steps down as British Prime Minister in the coming days, said Assange should not be extradited “for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan”. Democratic 2020 frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren also came out against any indictment against the Wikileaks founder. If Assange can somehow find a way to outlast Trump, he might well walk away with a helluva reduced punishment.So What’s Next For Julian Assange?Mr. Assange will face a five-day U.S. extradition hearing in the UK next February. The Wikileaks founder faces an 18-count indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, that includes charges under the Espionage Act for “soliciting and publishing classified information and conspiring to hack into a government computer.” He’s not done there. Swedish prosecutors have also reopened an investigation into rape allegations dating back to 2010.Haroon Siddique, The GuardianRelated Podcasts#44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe, The Perfect Storm)#43 — Kashmir Hill (New York Times)#11 — Ewan MacAskill (The Guardian)Next Up…… is Christine Brennan, award-winning national sports columnist for USA Today, a commentator for CNN, ABC News, PBS NewsHour and NPR's Morning Edition and a best-selling author.Last Time#44 — Sebastian Junger (Tribe, The Perfect Storm)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter! This week’s guest is Sebastian Junger, author of five books including The Perfect Storm (remember that movie?). Sebastian and I talked about his latest book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, which is a detailed history of how and why tribes are formed, and why today’s society isn’t set up for humans to function properly. It’s one of those books that you know is going to change your life and way of thinking within the first 20 pages. Below is a post-game analysis of everything we talked about. The Premise For a BookTribe is only 138 pages long, but that’s what I like about Sebastian’s work the most. Authors often try to fill out a 300-page book and, as readers, we’ll suffer with a ton of waffle. With Tribe, I was in and out within a couple of days. The book is actually an extension of the below longform piece Sebastian wrote on how PTSD became a problem for soldiers beyond the battlefield. Even if you skip the book and just read the original article, I promise you your mind will be blown. Sebastian Junger for Vanity FairWhy Do They Keeping Taking Us To War?At school I was always told that wars were fought over for economic and religious reasons. Take the U.S. and UK’s war against various terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s very much a war of different ideas with big economic interests. But what I haven’t ever been told, until now, is the positive psychological effects that war brings — unity, cohesion and meaning. Now, this doesn’t mean I condone war. I do not. But to unpick things you disagree with, you have to dig deeper under the shell to understand the human traits that lead people to do certain things. Steve Taylor, The GuardianLike Me, PleaseBefore you read on, please like this edition of Inside The Newsroom by clicking the ❤️ below the title. That way I’ll appear in clever algorithms and more people will be able to read. Cheers.Why Do Disasters Bring Us Together?Turns out it’s not just war that unites us. The first thing we’ll hear whenever a hurricane or other natural disaster hits is about how tough the people affected are, and how they’re already rebuilding the community. Disasters, as well as wars, trigger our need for social-connection, and more specifically an increased willingness to help others in times of stress. Wars are one of the greatest stresses anyone could bear, so maybe we just need to get the world’s leaders to legalize weed and everything will be alright.Emma Seppala, Scientific AmericanThe Cult of Extreme SportsBack in May I completed my first ever walking marathon. Six hours and 51 minutes of complete hell. Seriously, don’t knock until you’ve tried it. As I crossed the finishing line with my new 70-year-old walking buddy, Gill, I felt a sense of direct connection with her. We’d just walked for seven freaking hours together, and I knew many far-too-personal things about her. I’ve already signed up for my next one in September with hopes that Gill will be there too (I forgot to take her number). Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that I now understand the obsession of extreme sports. It’s about social connection and having an identity, especially in this modern world of comfort and routine. Take Badwater, for instance. Covering 135 miles through Death Valley is no joke. But the ability to be one of only a few to complete it each year is enough to drive people to do crazy things.Heather Hatfield, WebMDThe Value of SufferingWithout becoming a depression newsletter, it is fascinating to learn about why we feel the way we do. For me, a big turning point was realizing I could turn rejection and unfavorable events into positives. Below, David Goggins neatly sums up why suffering is actually a good thing that we need in order to succeed. The Need To Be NeededThis will be a test for my dad to see if he actually reads these things. Stephen Levitt recently retired after a 40-year career in the finance industry. He had a tight-knit group of about five or six colleagues he’d see or talk to every day, all conversing for the good of one shared goal. Now that he’s out of the business he, like millions of other retirees, has found it hard to know how to spend all of his free time. This is one of the most common misconceptions about retirement, the notion that no more work will be heaven. But no. Work and feeling needed is essential for the soul.Michael Mamas for Huff PostRelated Podcasts#39 — Henry Abbott (TrueHoop)#30 — Art Markman (Psychology Professor University of Texas)#24 — Ben Hammersley (Technologist)Next Up…… is James BallLast Time#43 — Kashimir Hill (New York Times)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Heyo, and welcome to the second Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter of the week! On Monday the amazing Kait Parker of weather.com came on to talk about how hurricane recoveries can last up to a decade, and how climate change attitudes among Republicans might actually be swinging the right way. Today’s guest is Kashmir Hill, an awesome tech journalist most recently at Gizmodo Media. Kash is about to announce her new gig, but one of her final projects at Gizmodo was to cut out the Big Five technology giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — from her life for one week at a time, before cutting them all. Kash described it as “hell.” 🔥Below are links and analyses of one of my favorite podcasts so far… Enjoy!Amazon Basically Owns the InternetYou, I and the majority of the people reading this will think Amazon makes most of its money from its retail business, aka delivering whatever we want, whenever we want it. We’re wrong. I knew Amazon Web Services — Amazon’s cloud computing platform — was a big thing, but I didn’t know it raked in $25.7 billion in 2018. As Kash detailed, millions of websites use AWS in some way, so it pretty much owns the internet.Someone at DiggThis is Why Facebook is the Most DangerousThe most glaring difference between Facebook and the “others” is its intention to control our emotions and guilt trip us into using its platform. And it’s not just Kash or me saying this. Five years ago, Facebook actually admitted to manipulating our newsfeeds to make us feel more positive or negative, a process called "emotional contagion". They’re still doing this today.Robert Booth, the GuardianThe Microsoft Antitrust Case Changed EverythingMore than 20 years ago, Microsoft was sued by the Department of Justice and 20 state attorneys for violating antitrust law. The case allowed new competitors to flourish. Two of those companies, Amazon and Google, are now in the firing line of the DOJ’s antitrust chief, and the Microsoft case will set the precedent for any punishment. Richard Blumenthal and Tim Wu for the New York TimesWhen Did Congress Become So Dumb?In my episode with Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information, we talked about how the people supposedly keeping these companies in check aren’t even smart enough, let alone know what they’re talking about. Along with the snail’s pace with which Congress moves, it will be long, long time before anything significant changes in the tech industry.Grace Gedye, Washington MonthlyTechnology is Changing What it Means to be Human… DayumWell that’s not good, but it’s probably true. Vox’s Sean Illing spoke to Michael Bess, a historian of science at Vanderbilt University and the author of Our Grandchildren Redesigned: Life in a Bioengineered Society, and basically we’re all doomed, but how we’re all doomed is the spooky part.Sean Illing, Vox.comWant to Really Block the Tech Giants? Here’s How…Kash worked with technologist Dhruv Mehrotra to make the series happen, and Dhruv kindly outlined exactly how he was able to keep the likes of Amazon and Google out of Kash’s life. Whether or not you decide to go cold turkey and cut everything out after reading this, there are subtle changes you can make to reduce your reliance on the Big Five that will improve your privacy, and sanity.Dhruv Mehrotra for Gizmodo MediaRelated Podcasts#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information)#36 — Sam Biddle (The Intercept)Next Up…… is Domonique Foxworth or Taylor LorenzLast Time#42 — Kait Parker (weather.com)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter. Today’s guest is Kait Parker, meteorologist at weather.com and host of the Warming Signs podcast. We talked about hurricane recoveries and what the past couple of years mean for climate change attitudes. Below are links and post-game analyses of everything we talked about. Hope you enjoy and pick up something!Warming SignsClever title aside, Kait has her own podcast where she speaks to people from different areas of the meteorology and climatology worlds. Last week’s episode was topical to our own conversation, when Kait spoke to Lisa LaDue, Hurricane Harvey Mental Health and Psychosocial Program Manager for Americares. Definitely worth listening to about how when a hurricane comes ashore, it’s just the beginning of a recovery that can last decades. Destruction Is Just the StartHurricane Michael’s 160mph winds left parts of Florida and Georgia unrecognizable. For many, the news was quickly shoved aside by politics or some dumb s**t Rick Scott said. But for the thousands of farmers in south west Georgia, the rebuilding has only just begun and may take up to a decade to return to normalcy. Max Blau, Atlanta MagazineBob Inglis At Your ServiceThere are portions of the GOP that have their heads screwed on as it pertains to climate change, and one of those is former six-term South Carolina Republican congressman Bob Inglis, who lost his seat way back in 2010 in large part due to his support for climate change. Inglis didn’t even make it out of the GOP primary, but has since set up his own nonprofit, RepublicEn, devoted to getting conservatives to come to grips with climate change.James Rainey, NBC NewsWhy Even Have a Hurricane Season?Tropical storms have occurred before the “official” start of the Atlantic hurricane season (June 1st) for the past five years, which begs the question why we put a label on when a season starts and ends (November 30th). There is logic behind it: 97 percent of tropical activity in the Atlantic happens between these dates, according to the National Hurricane Center. And fun fact: The season initially stretched from June 15 through November 15, until officials decided in 1965 to expand it.Nicole Chavez, CNNHurricane Imelda Sounds Terrifying 😨A look at the names for the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season. Here’s to hoping we don’t have to use all of them…Saeed Ahmed and Judson Jones, CNNRecord May For TornadoesFor folks like Kait, severe weather is a year-round commitment. In May, a record 13 consecutive days of tornadic activity in the US led to an unprecedented 555 tornado reports. While data is preliminary and needs to be confirmed, we know that two EF-4 tornadoes rocked Dayton, Ohio and Linwood, Kansas, and an EF-3 destroyed parts of Jefferson City, Missouri.Amanda Schmidt, AccuweatherIs Climate Change Responsible?The short answer is welllllll... As Dr. Victor Gensini from Northern Illinois University points out, no single weather event is caused by climate change. But that doesn’t mean climate change didn’t have an effect. More simply put, climate change increases the odds of severe weather events happening. More detail in the thread below. Victor Gensini, Northern Illinois UniversityThe “Twister” EffectSomething I’ve always found fascinating is the power of Hollywood, and the 1996 classic “Twister” is a classic example. The movie starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton was a huge hit on and off the screen, and is widely cited as the birth of amateur storm chasing in the US. In the decades before the movie, meteorology in America was obscure, maybe a small department at only a few dozen universities. But in the decade between 1994 and 2004, Americans receiving bachelor’s degrees in meteorology increased by 47 percent.Ben Guarino, Washington PostRelated Podcasts#37 — Josh Morgerman (Hurricane Man)#23 — Michael E. Mann (Penn State University)#17 — James Spann (ABC 33/40)Next Up…… is Kashmir Hill. Kash has been a tech journalist for ages and decided to go all out by cutting out one of the big five technology companies. For one week at a time, she erased Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple and told me everything she learned.Last Time#41 — Jessica Lessin (The Information)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter. Today’s guest is Jessica Lessin, founder and editor-in-chief of The Information. Jessica was a technology reporter at the Wall Street Journal for almost a decade before she launched her new platform in 2013, which focuses on covering solely technology companies. Below are links and post-game analyses of everything we talked about. Enjoy!The News Is About to Get Real ExpensiveHow much are you spending per month for your news? Add Spotify and Netflix on top of that and times it by 12. That takes me to around $400 a year, and I’m probably on the low end. If you’re the New York Times and Washington Post you’ll be fine, but the fact that only 16 percent of Americans are willing to pay for any online news spells disaster for local outlets.Joshua Benton, Nieman LabThe UK Isn’t Safe EitherIt’s not just stateside where local journalism has been ravaged. An independent report on the future of British media concluded that local news coverage could “disappear entirely” unless the government didn’t provide direct financial support. Jim Waterson, the GuardianLike Inside The Newsroom? Do us a solid and tell a friend or colleague who might enjoy it and subscribe.U.S. vs The WorldAs some British dude who studied in America, I’ve wondered why it’s so hard to curtail hate speech on social media platforms. It essentially comes down to the First Amendment, but that’s where the simplicity stops and the U.S. becomes isolated. American law and judges are united in protecting freedom of speech, but all the cultural and social pressures around the world are in the opposite direction.Cecilia Kang, New York TimesBreaking Facebook Up Won’t Be EasyThe prospect of breaking up Facebook has never felt so real. Elizabeth Warren’s groundbreaking proposal to break up any tech company with annual global revenue of $25 billion or more has been adopted at least in part by Bernie Sanders, as well as Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. BUT, and it’s a big but, several hurdles stand in the way that might limit or even prevent any breakup of a tech giant.Margaret Hardin McGill and Steven Overly, PoliticoYeah, But There is A Way Right?Like I said, breaking up any large tech company won’t be easy, but it’s possible and imo, even likely. The Ringer do a nice job of breaking down why each company — Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google — has a target on their backs in the first place, and suggests possible solutions to their monopolistic dominance. Victor Luckerson, The RingerFor Your Viewing Pleasure…How Did Netflix Change Everything?I’m just about old enough to have experienced a Friday night carefully perusing every aisle in Blockbusters looking for the exact movie to match my mood. Now I painfully scroll through dozens (sometimes hundreds) of titles on Netflix to pick something out. So much damn choice! Anyway, Netflix is 21 years old, and has changed the movie and TV industry forever. Ashley Rodriguez, QuartzDisney Could Spend Billions To Fight NetflixDisney was often behind many of the titles I used to scan back on my lonely Friday nights, and it’s now come full circle to start a war with its nemesis Netflix. Disney + will launch in November, adding another $7 a month to our growing subscription bills. But that’s not all. Netflix’s competition is also growing and includes Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and YouTube Red. This could get interesting… (and even more expensive).Peter Kafka, Vox.comTech Organizational ChartsI’m enamoured with a cool feature on The Information’s website that visualizes the organizational structures of the biggest tech companies in the world. Headlines often only mention the likes of Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, but it’s below them where a ton of decision making is made. It’s cool to see who else is responsible for the negatives (and positives) of these powerful companies. Only problem is you may have to subscribe and pay to see them all.Various staff, The InformationRelated Podcasts#39 — Henry Abbott (TrueHoop)#36 — Sam Biddle (The Intercept)#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic)#31 — Max Read (New York Magazine)Next up…Later this week we’ll have Kait Parker from weather.com. Kait is a meteorologist who focuses on the links between weather and climate change, and has her own podcast ‘Warming Signs’. Last time…#40 — Ben Casselman (New York Times)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast and newsletter. Today’s guest is… Ben Casselman of the New York Times. Ben covers the U.S. economy and, because of his previous role as chief economics writer at FiveThirtyEight, he’s a fantastic resource for what it all for Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020. Below are links and post-game analyses of everything we talked about. Enjoy and please subscribe at the top!The economy has finally recovered from 2008 right?The latest jobs report showed that total U.S. unemployment is 3.6 per cent, a 50-year low. That’s fantastic news, but economic recoveries are subjective and where one region might be booming, another could still be struggling. As the chart below shows, the unemployment rate is part of the business cycle and is only part of the picture with regards to the true health of an economy. Nelson D. Schwartz, the New York TimesBy Nelson D. SchwartzThe Truth Behind the Jobs ReportFortunately for us, my former FiveThirtyEight colleague and the incredibly smart Julia Wolfe shows us that the number of jobs added or lost may not be as accurate as we think. For example, it was estimated that 263,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in April, but the exact figure could in fact be 120,000 more or less than reported. That’s a bloody big range of uncertainty, meaning we should view unemployment figures with extreme caution. Julia Wolfe, FiveThirtyEightLike Inside The Newsroom? Do us a solid and tell a friend or colleague who might enjoy it and subscribe.Repeat After Me: The Stock Market Is Not the EconomyAnother FiveThirtyEight article, god they’re smart… I’ve always been curious as to why people only point to one metric when assessing the health of the economy. I tried hard not to mention him in the podcast, but Mr. Trump tweets all too often about how the stock market is the sole indicator of why the economy is booming under his leadership. Well, Mr. Casselman is far smarter and does a good job of ripping that theory to shreds. Thank god for smart people. Ben Casselman, (formerly of) FiveThirtyEightAnd here’s a nice video explainer just in case…Longest expansion ever?The U.S. economy has grown for 106 consecutive months (8 years and 10 months), which according to CNN, is tied for the second-longest US expansion since records began. We’re still more than a year away from breaking the record, and there are signs suggesting we may or may not get there. Still, credit where credit’s due, the economy hasn’t completely tanked under Trump like some predicted.Zachary B. Wolf and Will Houp, CNNSo Is This Trump’s Economy Now?Ben and I discussed the importance of the economy in elections, going as far as saying the number one reason Trump won in 2016 was because of the economy, which never really recovered in certain areas under Obama. As we sit here in May 2019, the economy is now firmly Trump’s for better or worse, and he could win or lose re-election in 2020 depending on how the economy performs from now until then. Jim Tankersley, the New York TimesFastest growing US citiesPart of the reason for the continued economic growth is down to immigration. In rural counties where much of the population migrate to larger cities, international migration has helped local businesses and services from failing. As Bloomberg also reports, immigrants aren’t just flocking to the glitz and glamour of New York, Los Angeles or Miami. The likes of San Antonio, Columbus and Phoenix are among the fastest growing cities in the US. Jed Kolko, the New York TimesRelated Podcasts#34 — Dave Weigel (Washington Post)#20 — Daniel Dale (Toronto Star)Next up…Next week we’ll have Domonique Foxworth of ESPN on the podcast. Domonique covers the intersection between sports, race and culture for ESPN’s The Undefeated, and I think he’ll make for a gripping podcast so keep an eye out for the newsletter in your inbox next week. Subscribe here.Last time…#39 — Henry Abbot (TrueHoop)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com

Hello! And welcome to another edition of the Inside The Newsroom podcast newsletter! Today’s guest is... Henry Abbott, founder of the TrueHoop basketball blog and newsletter! I’ve followed Henry’s work for a few years now, so I’m honoured to have him on. Henry and his team changed the way I and many others look at basketball, and TrueHoop is one of the few investigative outlets out there daring to tell the truth about sports.TrueHoop is BackAfter a two-year layoff, Henry and TrueHoop are back. In our discussion, Henry talked about what he learned and how he kept sane during his time away. The lesson: watch a buzzard circle outside the window and take stock of life. TrueHoop is one of the few sports investigative outlets out there and ESPN made a huge mistake by letting it go as part of its 2017 purge. But that’s the past. Henry and co. are back with more motivation to tell the truth about sports than ever before. The Truth About Mikhail ProkhorovIn the first investigative series of the relaunch, Henry dug deep into the affairs of Brooklyn Nets owner and Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. There is so so so much money involved in the major leagues right now and too few people investigating where this money came from. Henry went as far as to attend Putin Con (an actual thing), and also found himself in the office of Prokhorov’s lawyer, who just so happens to be Donald Trump’s lawyer as well. Henry Abbott, TrueHoopWhat the F is Putin Con?A conference where thousands of people attend to hear about the dangers of the Vladimir Putin administration. Who wants to go next year?What’s Lurking in Your Stadium Food?One of those few news outlets investigating sports is ESPN’s Outside The Lines, who have done countless power-altering pieces in the past. In their stadium food series, they investigated 111 professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey facilities across North America and found that at 28 percent of the venues, at least half had food outlets that incurred a high-level violation, including bugs and pests. They also include a neat tool that allows you to find out the violations at your nearest stadiums. Paula Lavigne, ESPNMoneylandTalking of rich and powerful people, Henry referenced one of the books he read in his time off. Moneyland by Oliver Bullough details the pervasive use of tax havens and shell companies to hide money and ultimately evade paying tax. Again, completely anecdotal, but there seems to be an invisible shield around the owners of our teams and leagues that goes unchecked. Anyway, Moneyland has been added to the reading list.Andy Beckett, The GuardianThe NFL is Bipartisan?The NBA has ascended in recent years as the most progressive and open league in North America, and is part of the reason why I’m such a huge fan. But wearing my journalist hat makes me skeptical. A big reason why the NBA has grown in popularity is because of the NFL’s self-destruction when it comes to domestic violence, CTE and comparing black players to inmates. Like most things, it largely comes down to money, and as my former colleagues at FiveThirtyEight point out, the NFL is unique in that its fans transverse the political spectrum.Neil Paine, Harry Enten and Andrea Jones-Rooy, FiveThirtyEightWhat is ‘Amygdala Hijack’?In the podcast, Henry and I talk about why sports fans make dumb decisions that they wouldn’t otherwise make in real life. According to Henry, it comes down to ‘amygdala hijack’, which I’ll save myself from explaining and include the below video instead.The ‘Donald Trump Effect’ on JournalismThe vicious attacks on journalism’s legitimacy and importance by Donald Trump and his administration have not gone unnoticed. The Washington Post reported that journalism school admissions have spiked since 2016, particularly for investigative and data tracks. This is good and I hope the folks entering the field keep their eyes open to injustices and corruption in sport as well.Nick Anderson, Washington PostRelated Podcasts#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic)#28 — Jonah Keri (The Athletic)#26 — Jacob Bogage (Washington Post Sports)#4 — Chris Herring (FiveThirtyEight)Next up…To be confirmed…Last time…#38 — Shane Morris (Lil Nas X)Thanks so much for making it all the way to the bottom. If you haven’t already, please consider subscribing to get a newsletter about a cool news topic in your inbox every time I release a new podcast (1-2 times a week). You can find me on Twitter at DanielLevitt32 and email me corrections/feedback or even a guest you’d like me to get on the podcast at daniellevitt32@gmail.com. Or just give us a like immediately below, whatever works. Get on the email list at insidethenewsroom.substack.com