May 13, 2022

■ Jen Psaki signs off as White House press secretary: 'Thank you for making me better' (CNN) / 'End of an era in the Brady briefing room! Good luck, Jen Psaki' (Peter Doocy) / Biden's press secretary Jen Psaki will begin new global role with MSNBC as early as September after exiting the White House this week (Insider) 

■ Watch 12-year-old Rory Hu ask a question and follow-up at White House Press Briefing (C-SPAN) / Read the transcript of her question and Psaki’s response on kids, social media, and misinformation (White House) / The sixth-grader reports for Nick News and Time for Kids (Rory Hu) / ‘Time for Kids’ reporter Rory Hu is not throwing away her shot (Silicon Valley Voice)  

■ Judy Woodruff plans to step down as anchor of 'PBS NewsHour' (Deadline) / ‘If plans follow through as anticipated, she will be succeeded by Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett’ (Variety)

■ C-SPAN has been walloped by cord-cutting. Inside the network’s unlikely fight for eyeballs. (POLITICO) 

■ Inside the collapse of CNN+, the news channel's 'Apollo Mission' (WSJ) / CNN gave staffers CNN+ ‘gift boxes’ after firing them: report (New York Post) 

■ ‘There are no journalists of color on this list? One thing I would like to see more of is allies asking about the diversity of everything they are asked to participate in and then saying no when it’s not inclusive: awards, panels, newsrooms, etc.’ (Cristina Silva) / 'Kudos to the editors named, but the lack of diversity here is disappointing and inexcusable.' (Michael Bolden) / E&P names 2022 Editors Extraordinaire (E&P) 

■ Jelani Cobb appointed dean of Columbia Journalism School (Columbia Journalism School) / Columbia’s Jelani Cobb: ‘Everything is on the table’ (Columbia Journalism Review) / 'I started my career at a small local DC paper called ONE in the early 90s then became an intern and eventually a contributor to the Washington City Paper. I’m so very grateful to those who gave me a shot. And now I get to do even more of that for others.' (Jelani Cobb) / ‘I'll always remember what David Carr told me soon after moving to Washington, DC, in 1996, about another then-new hire at @wcp, Jelani Cobb: "We're all gonna work for him one day.” ‘ (Brett Anderson)

Press freedom

■ Israeli police attack mourners at Palestinian journalist’s funeral (New York Times) / White House says images of funeral of Al Jazeera reporter disturbing (Reuters) / For Palestinian journalists, Shireen Abu Akleh's death hits close to home (Washington Post) / National Press Club, Al Jazeera seek investigation of death of reporter covering fighting in West Bank (NPC) 

■ Ukrainian press steadfast despite wartime challenges (Columbia Journalism Review) 

■ US secretly issued subpoena to access Guardian reporter's phone records (The Guardian) / 'Re this Guardian story that DOJ "issued subpoena to access Guardian reporter’s phone records." Looks to me like agents got the phone records of a *govt employee* suspected of leaking, then used a subpoena to identify the account holder of a # being called a lot (the reporter).' (Charlie Savage) / ‘An internal leak investigation ordered by the DOJs internal watchdog led to the issuance of a subpoena to try to confirm whether a phone belonged to me. There is supposed to be a high bar before such aggressive tactics are taken, since my work is protected by the 1st amendment’ (Stephanie Kirchgaessner) / Justice watchdog staffer resigned amid leak probe over Trump family separation report (POLITICO)

Journalists have long been charged with sorting fact from fiction through their reporting. But what happens when readers redefine what they see as truth and what they’ll accept as fact? 

New York Times writer and author Elizabeth Williamson is among journalists confronting the rampant rise and spread of conspiracy theories through her reporting and research. Her current work has focused around unraveling the targeted misinformation and lies spread after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the surviving families’ lawsuits against Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and the election disinformation fueling the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack. 

In this instructional program with the National Press Club Journalism Institute, Williamson will share her reporting and research process, along with insights she gained as she connected the dots on how conspiracy theories grow. Williamson, whose critically-acclaimed book “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth” published this spring, will describe how she threaded together more than 400 interviews, 10,000 pages of court testimony and other records, and on-the-ground reporting to trace a line from conspiracy theories around Sandy Hook to Jan. 6, 2021. 

Participants will learn to: 

• Identify how misinformation and political conspiracy theories have spread;
• Work with sensitivity and clarity while reporting on conspiracy theories; 
• Pre-bunk conspiracy theories through early reporting;
• Use trauma-informed reporting methods while working with people suffering tragedy; and
• Organize reporting and deep research to craft a long-form narrative. 

Registration is open for this program, which will take place on Friday, June 10 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET.