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In today’s email:
- Top story: President of The Economist named CEO of The Baltimore Banner
- In other news: Dallas Morning News union criticizes “culture of fear” following a colleague’s sudden departure
- Looking ahead: Parler to relaunch ahead of the 2024 election
- Chart of the week: Many nonprofit outlets that cover U.S. statehouses were launched in the last five years
🔥 Top story
Bob Cohn, president of The Economist magazine, has been named CEO of The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit digital news outlet that launched last year. According to Stewart Bainum Jr., the former hotel and health care executive who launched the Banner, Cohn will be charged with creating a sustainable business model for the outlet, which now has about 75 journalists in its newsroom and plans to expand.
Nonprofit digital news outlets appear to be on the rise nationally. This was evident in our 2022 analysis of statehouse reporters in the United States, which found that the number of nonprofit news reporters who cover state capitols has nearly quadrupled since 2014. These reporters now make up 20% of the nation’s total statehouse press corps, up from 6% eight years before.
📌 In other news
- Journalists at The Dallas Morning News allege a “culture of fear” in the months following a reporter’s sudden departure from the outlet
- Internal messages show TikTok uses different moderation standards for “top creators,” including figures like Russell Brand
- Egyptian press syndicate comes “back to life” to defend journalists’ rights
- How incarcerated journalists and editors are using podcasts to report on prisons
- Polish government dismisses management of public news agencies, takes 24-hour news channel off air
- Mother Jones plans to merge with the Center for Investigative Reporting
📅 Looking ahead
Parler, which was removed from Apple’s and Google’s app stores after being used to help organize the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been sold again and is planning to relaunch ahead of the 2024 election.
At the time of a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 38% of U.S. adults had heard of Parler, but only 1% of Americans reported regularly getting news from the platform. Among regular news consumers on Parler, 66% said news on Parler helped them better understand current events, and 69% said they expected the news there to be mostly accurate.
📊 Chart of the week
Today’s chart comes from a 2022 analysis of statehouse reporters at nonprofit news outlets.
This analysis identified 80 nonprofit news outlets that covered U.S. statehouses in 2022. Of these, nearly half (39) were founded within the last five years. About a quarter (21) were founded between 2011 and 2016; 15 were founded between 2005 and 2010; and five were founded prior to 2005.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, and copy edited by Anna Jackson.
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