Last year, I was interviewed by one scholar with Columbia Journalism Review (yes, that Columbia!) and their Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. On March 31st, they publicly announced their findings from the report exploring conservative journalism and reporting methods.
The report, titled “Conservative Newswork: A Report on the Values and Practices of Online Journalists on the Right,” interviewed 22 conservative journalists (myself included) and 14 editors at online news organizations. I represented The Resurgent where I’ve served as a DC Correspondent since March 2016.
Here’s the gist of the report:
We interviewed 22 journalists and editors at 14 online conservative news organizations about what guides their news judgments, how they engage audiences, and how they think conservative news outlets should operate. Our findings, since they are largely based on this interview data, offer insights into the aspirational ideals of our participants and their newsrooms.
Vividly understanding how conservative news workers articulate their journalistic aspirations is a crucial point of entry to an understudied field. For some critics, the whole enterprise of conservative journalism can be written off as propaganda or a network of bad-faith actors striving for partisan gain. Questions over the legitimacy of conservative news are leading to consequential debates among civic leaders, tech intermediaries, and mainstream journalists. For instance, Facebook has faced questions over whether to include conservative news organizations as partners in fact-checking operations, and mainstream journalists grapple with questions such as whether to link to certain conservative outlets and how to treat their claims. For some conservatives, these very debates reinforce the perception of a media sphere dominated by liberals who are all too quick to dismiss conservatives as illegitimate participants.
You can read the full report here.
Here is a video from the report launch event.