A round-up to wrap the year

Ebbs & flows + a last helping of opportunities 🌐

Dec 19, 2023

WorldWise readers—

Behind the regular flow of these emails has been a frustrating quarter of delays in other projects. Patience has been tested.

But several years into this freelance life, ebbs and bouts of the unexpected are no longer unnerving. Time and again, I’ve been reminded that deviations create space for something else that’s more valuable, or rather differently valuable, than the original plan.

For me, being self-employed is about personal growth just as much as it is about independence and the freedom to create work I believe in. There’s a lot to negotiate to make that happen, and those of you who’ve been reading these posts for some time will have seen me reflect on the process along the way, including learnings from the lows. I wanted this space to be honest about the trials of it, but with an eye to strengthening our adaptation and resilience muscles. If we can stay on the rollercoaster, it can even be a fun ride.

The wheels of new projects will start turning soon. But for now let me take this moment to say thank you for reading, and extend a warm welcome to our new subscribers. In January WorldWise enters its fifth year—we’ll be back then after the usual short break.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll consider sharing the newsletter with someone in your network who could benefit from it. And do let me know if there’s anything I can do more of or differently to support your work, whether that’s offering 1:1 time or highlighting particular topics or something else—just hit reply to share your thoughts.

Anita

MEDIA EDITION | opportunities and support to grow in communication

INSIDER | views & experience

A few media highlights.

Curating these emails involves sifting through dozens of articles that come through my desk. Naturally not everything makes the cut, but this is a good time to take a look at a selected few pieces from the past quarter which reflect conversations in the media space—both timely and evergreen—from how to do good journalism to freelancing tips and industry trends.

Surviving Thriving in freelancing

In a reported feature for The Open Notebook, Giuliana Viglione rounds up advice from six journalists who made the leap from a staff to freelance job. Yessenia Funes kicks things off with the reason that drove her decision:

My stories always felt like they had more potential than they were given. So, I left to invest in my writing and growth. I wanted to follow my own creative drive.

For those of you who love taming the chaos with a plan, or attempting to at least—check out this strategic approach to building your business, by Matthew Fenton of Winning Solo:

When you create your freelance strategic plan, you take the first step in building the business that you’d love to have. It helps you to focus, prioritize, avoid shiny objects and solve your biggest challenges.

So many people I talk to dread ‘networking’. Especially introverts. I’ll share my two cents worth on this in a future post, but for now here’s the Wall Street Journal’s five-week ‘challenge’ designed to help you out, and here’s The Economist’s how-to-guide on making it less painful. What I liked the most is this part from Economist editor Bo Franklin’s email introduction to the piece:

A colleague recently spotted Bartleby across a crowded tube [underground train] carriage. Instead of making pleasantries they chose to ignore each other, saving the small talk for where it belongs: the office.

Good journalism

Based on conversations with more than 400 journalists and editors plus 50 climate experts over a period of two years, Diego Arguedas Ortiz and Katherine Dunn of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism round up 14 reflections and pointers on how to report on climate change—here’s the gist of #1:

The scope of climate journalism is truly growing beyond its usual silos.

The Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network asked its 2022 Fellows about the innovative methodologies they used for their stories—Fernanda Wenzel writes in ‘How we uncovered the largest land grab in the Brazilian Amazon’:

What was unique in our approach is that we didn't want just to tell the story of the land grabbers, but of the land as well. The deforestation itself was one of our main characters.

Eva Constantaras, an investigative data journalist who served on the jury for the European Journalism Centre’s Climate Journalism, gave a few tips and insights on telling award-winning climate stories at the EJC’s News Impact Summit in September—here’s one:

We need more in-depth and explanatory stories on effective regulations and policies.

And in the BBC Sounds broadcast ‘Gaza hospital blast: searching for the facts’, journalist Ros Atkins talks to senior executives from Reuters, BBC and AFP about “how news organisations should report claims being made by both sides”. Here’s a snippet from Richard Burgess, Director of News Content at BBC News:

What this has brought home to me is the importance of experience and expertise, and people with knowledge on the ground—listening to them, and giving them the time to provide context…when there are key decisions to be made.

Media & society

Staying with the fact-establishing fog of the Gaza hospital bombing—Mathew Ingram writes in Columbia Journalism Review:

[Charlie] Warzel’s article was headlined “This War Shows Just How Broken Social Media Has Become.” Indeed, to this broader point, the entire social media landscape—the global town square, as Warzel calls it—is now a virtual minefield. If conflicts like the current one in the Middle East are lenses through which we understand our information environment, he wrote, “then one must surmise that, at present, our information environment is broken.” One need only have followed the hospital bombing in real time to know this. At the heart of it all, lives continue to be lost.

Drew Harwell reports for The Washington Post on how the Ukraine and Gaza wars have led to a boom in violent video outside the dark web:

Such graphic footage once was shared mainly in dark and morbid corners of the internet, hidden away from casual viewers.

The New Humanitarian’s podcast hosts Palestinian-American writer and journalist Mariam Barghouti from the West Bank, who says about the media’s silencing of Palestinians:

What we have seen … I do consider journalistic malpractice, because there is an active refusal to showcase Palestinian voices.

Caroline Crystal, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, draws on case-studies from Myanmar and Ethiopia for a piece about how online hate speech can exacerbate conflict and genocide—plus what social media companies can and should do in response:

Different forms of online violence—such as radicalization, incitement, coordination, and repression—in the Tigray conflict and post-coup Myanmar demonstrate both the progress and the limitations of tech platforms’ atrocity-prevention efforts since the turning point resulting from the Rohingya genocide.

Industry highlights

You may have heard that The Guardian has agreed to grant Sony exclusive first rights to adapt its journalism into film and television documentaries and dramas. Bron Maher and Charlotte Tobitt explain the copyright implications for writers in a piece for the Press Gazette:

These contracts are typically private, but a terms and conditions page on the Guardian’s website lays out the rights its contributors have when their work is dramatised or used in documentary making.

Somalia’s first all-women media organisation was launched just a year ago, publishing a mix of breaking news and in-depth features focusing on the lives of women, and is already set to expand. So what? As Jessie Tu reports for Women's Agenda:

It’s an important feat for the country which was ranked by the UN as the fourth-lowest for gender equality globally.

In September, 26 organisations that represent thousands of creatives in publishing, released the first set of agreed global principles for AI systems—according to WAN-IFRA:

The Global Principles for AI aim to ensure publishers’ continued ability to create and disseminate quality content while facilitating innovation and the responsible development of trustworthy AI systems.

Katherine Jacobsen writes for the Committee to Protect Journalists about the troubling trend of journalists’ lawyers facing retaliation for their work around the globe:

When lawyers for reporters fear retaliation as much as the journalists do, it creates an environment of censorship that harms citizens’ ability to stay informed about what is happening in their countries.

Staying with attacks on media freedom—the Thomson Reuters Foundation & and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University highlight the parallel trend of ‘weaponising the law’:

As threats to independent journalism continue to accelerate, the law is being weaponised around the world to compromise journalists’ safety and silence public interest reporting. Left unchecked, the future of the profession, democracies and free societies are at stake.

…and let’s indulge something seasonal: yes, predictions for journalism in 2024. The Nieman Journalism Lab asked selected media industry leaders to look into their crystal ball. I liked this one by Sisi Wei, editor-in-chief of The Markup, though it’s more of a vision than a prediction:

We have to focus on the journalistic ‘last mile’ — not only producing reliable, independent information, but making sure that people actually receive it and can act on it.

OPPORTUNITIES | working with the media

fellowships+scholarships

The Pulitzer Center is accepting applications for its Rainforest Investigations Network which provides financial support and training to dig into the drivers of deforestation—closing 20 December. [GLOBAL]
Free Press Unlimited is offering two Climate Change Fellowship Programmes to train journalists from the Middle East and North Africa to tell a better climate stories focused on solutions—closing 24 December. [MENA]
The British Medical Journal is offering paid scholarships to four students who are studying medicine within the UK or European Union and who are interested in gaining experience in the running of a medical journal, including writing and editing articles—closing 8 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The Pulitzer Center is accepting applications for Reporting Fellowships focused on issues related to global health—closing 10 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University is accepting applications for its Global Journalist Fellowship, offering funding support for two semesters of study to journalists worldwide who are fluent in English and at least one other language—closing 15 January 2024. [GLOBAL]

training+events

Internews’ Earth Journalism Network is hosting a two-day media workshop on air pollution in Nairobi, for journalists based in Nairobi county—closing 31 December. [AFRICA]
The Center for Digital Journalism at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico is inviting journalists and editors to register for two online courses that run in early 2024, one on multimedia journalism and one on data visualisation—closing 10 January and 19 January 2024. [LAC]

awards+competitions

The Gender Climate Award is inviting applications for its Young Climate Journalism, which will recognise innovative reporting on climate-related issues in any format, published by a Pakistan-based media outlet in the past 12 months—closing 30 December. [ASIA]
Journalists anywhere in the world can submit long-form investigative or enterprise journalism published in English and in the United States to the George Polk awards—closing 9 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The International Center for Journalists, in collaboration with the US Embassy in Guinea, is inviting Guinea-based independent journalists to enter its Excellence in Journalism Award with articles on public accountability published in English or French—closing 12 January 2024. [AFRICA]
The Solutions Journalism Network is inviting submissions of solutions stories to its inaugural awards programme—closing 16 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The Sigma Awards are inviting data journalism entries from around the world—closing 17 January 2024. [GLOBAL]

audio+visual

The Arab Documentary Photography Program is offering grants and mentorship for photographers working on documentary projects in the region—closing 20 December. [MENA]
The Sony World Photography Awards are open for submissions—closing 5 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom is inviting entries for its international photography competition on the theme “Men and Love in Times of War and Polarization”, inviting entries that show the complex ways that men relate to notions of love in their lives and relationships—closing 1 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The World Press Photo Digital Storytelling Contest is open for entries from professional visual journalists working with photography in combination with other visual elements, audio or text—closing 11 January 2024. [GLOBAL]
The Social Documentary Network and the Foundation for Systemic Change are inviting photographers anywhere in the world to enter the ZEKE Award for Systemic Change with visual stories documenting systemic changes leading to sustainable solutions to global issues—closing 15 January 2024. [GLOBAL]

resources+tools

How Old-School Field Reporting Powers High-Tech Visual Investigations – Global Investigative Journalism Network + #GIJC23 Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2023 Tipsheets and Videos
How to Deal with a Difficult Edit - The Open Notebook
An illustrated guide to the basics of interviewing - Poynter
4 things to know about using OSINT for Environmental Investigations - DataJournalism.com
The Ultimate OSINT Collection - start.me
Investigative science reporting can be daunting. Here are some tips from journalists who have thrived and survived the beat. - NASW