#27

Sat, 06/08 03:13PM 26:53

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, newsroom, news, learning, stanford, industry, local, interviews, project, bit, media, talking,
mandy, role, career, business, trust, collaborations, wins, unsexy

SPEAKERS

Mandy Jenkins, Damian Radcliffe

D Damian Radcliffe 00:05

Hello, and welcome to the Demystifying Media Podcast from the University of Oregon. I'm
Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers, Professor of journalism and in this series I
talked to leading media researchers and practitioners both about their work and the
trends they see shaping the future of their industry. My guest today is Mandy Jenkins, a
JSK Fellow at Stanford University, and formerly the first editor-in-chief at Storyful. In that
role, Mandy oversaw a team that worked with newsrooms to find, verify and publish
eyewitness media and social insights from around the world. Prior to this, she was the
managing editor of project Thunderdome. A newsroom, which supported digital projects
that over 200 local newspapers across the US. And earlyier roles included coordinating
the "Off the Bus" citizen journalism program with the Huffington Post, as well as digital
positions at the DC based local news startup TBD, Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel. She serves on the board of directors of the American Society of News
Editors, is president of the Online News Association's board of directors, and this week,
she's been at the University of Oregon as a journalist in residence. Mandy, thank you for
joining us.

M Mandy Jenkins 01:05

Thanks for having me.

Damian Radcliffe 01:07

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D Damian Radcliffe 01:07
So I've given a very long, detailed resume there. But I think one of the things that's really
interesting, kind of going over your career history is the way in which you have kind of
ridden these kinds of trends in digital journalism and digital news over the past sort of 10,
15 years was that has that been a deliberate strategy?

M Mandy Jenkins 01:26

At some point, that's been a deliberate strategy. And at other points, it's completely been
a accident. But it's been happy accidents along the way. I mean, when I first started my
career, I certainly did not go to school thinking that this was what I was going to do.
Because when I started college in 1998, this was not at all something that anyone was
talking about. But in going out and starting my career in digital, and getting to see
changes happen just so quickly in the newsroom. And because I didn't know what it was
supposed to be like, because I hadn't been there a long time, it was, I think, a little bit
more natural for me to just kind of keep changing and keep evolving. And now at other
points I certainly was a bit more strategic about that. Like when I switched over into social
media in 2008. That was very much like my newsroom at the time, the Cincinnati Enquirer,
my husband and I both worked there. There were lots of layoffs happening, like what can I
do to make myself indispensable, I need to fill a niche here that's not being filled. And so
getting the newspaper into social media and taking that role on was both like trying to
get a little bit of job insurance. But it was also great to add a whole new area into my, my
wheelhouse. And really, the rest of my career was shaped by what was honestly just kind
of a calculated decision to not get laid off at the time.

D Damian Radcliffe 02:49

What were some of the challenges with kind of trying those new things? I mean what was
interesting as a number of those examples that I've heard were doing things that really
hadn't really been done before.

M Mandy Jenkins 02:57

Right, right now, that's I said to students a lot this week, but I've actually never had a job
that someone did before me, which is great. And it's also scary, because it's wonderful
that you don't have to live up to what someone else did before. But it also means that you
kind of have to constantly prove why you're there and why why you're getting paid, why
your job is worth it, especially if you're in newsrooms that have been contracting. And
they've seen people walk out the door, you have to prove that you have a reason to be
there. And it's it's challenging to be in those roles, because so often I'm just learning it as I

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 go. Nobody knows what they're doing. But you've kind of supposed to pretend that you
do. And I'm not really good at pretending that I do. I will ask a lot of questions. I will seek
out advice from other people in the industry that are doing similar things. Sometimes
people don't respond well to that. But for me, that's been how I've had to learn things on
the job. I mean, when I started as a social media editor, I'd had a Twitter account for like
three months. And I was like, well, I've never made a strategy before. I don't know
anything about any of this stuff. But I'll just, we'll figure it out. Well, we'll make it happen.
And I think that's how it's been in every job, I hadn't been an editor-in-chief before, when I
got the Storyful. I was like, well, we'll figure this out. Well, we'll see what they need. And I'll
make some mistakes. And I'll learn from those mistakes. And I'm sure that the next job I
have, will also be one that probably no one has ever done before. And I will have to learn
how to do whatever it is that I'm going to be doing. Again.

D Damian Radcliffe 04:03

And how do you bring people with you on that journey then, when you yourself are also
finding your feet, feeling your way through. I think a big part of that is is finding allies
pretty early on in any environment. Whether that's in the community, or it's in the
newsroom itself. Getting people who are interested in the same things. And even if they're
not in the same department, or even the same, have the same exact interest, you know,
they have, they care about the same mission. And talking with them, getting their
feedback, bringing in their ideas, knowing that like look, I'm not just here to tell you what
to do, or to do my thing and not involve you. Especially maybe if they've been in the
newsroom a long time.

M Mandy Jenkins 05:02

I think it's really important to get their perspectives, bring that in know that like you're
listening to what they have to say into their experience. I think that that really helps and
bringing everybody along for the ride and letting them get wins out of that too.

D Damian Radcliffe 05:16

For some of our younger listeners, perhaps some students who may find themselves very
much in this, this position where they walk into a newsroom may be leading change in an
area that they are expected to understand as digital natives. How do you bring kind of
more skeptical people with you who perhaps are often older and more experienced?
Right, I think it's a two fold thing that has to happen there. One, like I said earlier, you
really have to ask a lot of questions. People don't want to feel like they're experienced
doesn't matter. And they do have a lot that they can teach. And I think that that's an easy

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 thing to walk into a room or to kind of feel like you have to really fake it until you make it.
And on one hand, that's true. But that doesn't mean that you need to act like you don't
need any advice.

M Mandy Jenkins 05:59

You don't need to know more things like ask people what they do and really get an
understanding of their work. They probably know the community better. They know how
the newsroom works better. And it's in that exchange of information, that the real
familiarity and the trust can be built. And honestly, in in teaching new skills, pushing new
initiatives, you've got to tell people what it's going to do for them. What are they going to
get out of this? What are their audiences can they get out of this? I know when I was
starting out as a social media, the Enquirer I'm working with a lot of reporters, some of
them have been doing the job for 20, 25 years, zero interest and getting on Twitter. But
getting them trained in it and sort of showing them very early on in those days of like, look
at how people respond to this, you've never really gotten to see this before. And rewarding
like little wins, like when they get a lot of retweets on something and they would not want
to admit it. But actually, that felt really good. Like, I like getting all these people
responding to me. And they really like in my story. And I'm not used to hearing that. I think
that when they saw those little wins, but also that what I would point out those wins or
bring those up and news meetings, that kind of thing, really can win people over. And
honestly a lot of those people are now like huge personalities on Twitter, which is hilarious
to me in hindsight.

D Damian Radcliffe 07:17

And so, then this past year, you could take in sort of a step back from that kind of front
row newsroom role to take up his fellowship at Stanford. Can you tell us a little bit more
about what that has entailed and how you have used your time? Yeah, it's a being a JSK
Fellow is, it's just a huge opportunity. And it's, it's something I've known I wanted to do for
years, I just had to wait until I had been further, far enough in my career to actually be able
to apply. And it's really one of those things where getting the time away from the
newsroom from the day to day is really, you use that time how you how you want. And it's
also like, you're going to get back what you what you put into that. And everyone uses it in
really different ways. And I know for me, it was good to take a break, I was definitely a
little bit burned out when I got into the program. Not only just from work, but from news
itself, it's exhausting. It can be really depressing sometimes.

M Mandy Jenkins 08:10

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 Getting away from that was helpful, but it also a chance to, to really dig in on a topic that
really interested me with my research. But in taking classes and things that I didn't know
very well, like I've been taking classes in business and management, entrepreneurship,
product design. And those things have been really, really great for me to really learn more
about different aspects of the business, I think I'm going to go back into the industry and
be a lot more versed in sort of the business strategy side of things, which is something I
was kind of faking it till I make it in the past. So now at least know a little bit more real
things about them.

D Damian Radcliffe 08:47

So how do you see some of those kind of interdisciplinary skills, but shaping the future of
your career, but also perhaps looking back on perhaps some of the kind of culture change
programs and initiatives that you have led and enable you to perhaps view them
differently?

M Mandy Jenkins 09:01

Yeah, you know, the classes I've taken, and especially in the business school, I think have
been, for one thing, they've made me feel good that some of the decisions I've made in
the past, and I didn't, I was kind of going with my gut, because I didn't go to business
school, like finding that those were validated that. Like actually, yeah, that was a good
strategy. This is what they're teaching in business school, and I don't have the worst
business instincts. That's good to know. Also, I've been able to look back and see things
that either that I've done or that the companies I was a part of did, that you can sort of
pinpoint what went wrong. I you know, I've been a part of startups that have failed. And
taking these business classes, it's actually really been helpful to sort of see like, I can now
get a better idea of why that happened. Not all of them are fair, but like, there were
certainly problems that I didn't see, because of my position at the time that now I can see
better, because I know more about the strategy and why it didn't work. And I think that
that's really going to be helpful for me going forward. So, I intend to still be in kind of
management positions, where I'm probably gonna have to manage budgets, and I'm
going to have to evaluate success. And you know, I've learned a lot more about that in my
year at Stanford.

D Damian Radcliffe 10:13

That's great. Alongside this, you've also undertaken a challenge where you kind of come
in with a with a big idea or big project that you get to develop, it was interesting, you said
that many of your cohorts change their minds about kind of what they want to do. But

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 you've had an idea, pretty much from the get go about what you wanted to explore.

M Mandy Jenkins 10:29

Right. Yeah, I pitched, I pitched my idea, it's almost two years ago that I pitched it, and I
have stuck with it all the way through. And I'm really glad that I did. So what I went to
went to the program with was saying, and I really wanted to study consumers of
disinformation. Because it's Storyful, I've been sort of on the other side of that. Studying of
people who are making it, studying the systems that spread it, which is very helpful. But I
think there's a lot of attention on that. And there's not as much attention on sort of why
someone might believe a fake story in the first place. So, I've devoted my time at Stanford
to finding people who fit into that. Getting out and actually having very in depth, good
relationships with them, where I can really get a sense of who they are and why they
believe what they believe, why they make the choices that they've made, and what they
trust, what they don't trust. And it's been really enriching for me, even aside from the
information I'm getting from them. It's really changed the way that I see the world having
had these interviews, and I'm really hoping that what I've gotten out of it a that I can
actually finish a report in time for my fellowship to end and get it out in front of the news
industry. But I'm hoping that they're going to see to that we don't, as an industry, we don't
know very much about this part of our audience. And I hope that this will help them figure
out a little bit more about how to talk about the problem of disinformation, and how to
potentially reach different people.

D Damian Radcliffe 11:59

So how did you reach the people that you were researching?

M Mandy Jenkins 12:03

I did it in three different ways. And it really kind of depended on on the person. So some
people I found on social media just through doing some keyword searches, hashtags,
seeing them coming up and stories. And that was, I would you reach out to them. And I
got a lot of dead ends on that. Because obviously, people are creeped out when you send
them messages, and they don't know you and some of them, we were able to start a
dialogue and actually go off and eventually get to the interview phase. But that can take
a long time to build that up. Others found out about my project or other people and really
liked the concept of talking about maybe why they don't have a great relationship with
mainstream media. And they all they all have their reasons. And they really want to tell
me about those. So I had a couple people who volunteered to do that. And those were
really positive interactions, because they were all in on that part of it. But the most

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 successful ones and most of the interviews I had were referrals of people who knew what I
was working on. And they said, I have this and this friend, this neighbor who believes this
or does this and I think you should really talk to them about that. And that was an easy
end too. Because this person's like, Okay, well this person vouches for you. So we can have
a conversation a little bit faster and easier because of that.

D Damian Radcliffe 13:18

I think it might surprise some people, though, just how long and detailed these
conversations are being, you know, particularly for journalists, who in many cases, you
know, we're in a rush, we're on deadline, we kind of go in with what we need to get from a
source, and then we leave and you've had very long details in some instances.

M Mandy Jenkins 13:35

Right, right. Yeah. I mean, the interviews themselves are anywhere from two hours to like,
four, six hours, really, I'm letting them talk as long as they want and as much time as they
have. And they're all in person. So I think it's really important to sort of see how someone
lives and going to their homes. But it takes a long time. Just to get to that point. You
know, that was a lot of phone conversations before that. Lots of texting, lots of just going
back and forth so that they can get a sense of whether or not they could trust me,
because yeah, I'm coming to their house, I'm seeing their pets, their kids where they live,
want to make sure I'm not a serial killer, understandable.

D Damian Radcliffe 14:10

And what would have been some of the key lessons that you have have learned from
those those interviews,

M Mandy Jenkins 14:17

I think the thing has been most startling is just how, how much people have really good
reasons for making these choices. And in ways that we probably would not assume in the
industry, you know that there, they have real concerns about the power of the media, and
especially how the media wants to shape what they believe. They're very aware of that
kind of manipulation, and in ways that I don't think people have been in the past. So that's
been really interesting to see. The role of technology and sort of social media really can't
be downplayed, either. People are overwhelmed by technology too overwhelmed by
choice of news, there's just so much ground them. And they don't necessarily have the
time or the skills to sort through, and see what what's real, what's not. Is this source

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 legitimate? Or isn't it? Is this story, opinion or not? And, and really, that weird blend of
opinion. And news is something that every single interview, as mentioned of that they
don't like, it really clouds it.

D Damian Radcliffe 15:18

Can we differentiate between the two?

M Mandy Jenkins 15:19

You know, they really have a hard time differentiating, and often, I mean, I can
understand why a lot of these people are especially talking about cable news. Where like,
I don't know which things were just facts and which things are this person's opinion. And
it's not always crystal clear, it's not even clear to me as a journalist reading these things
sometimes. And it comes off to them as just bias, it comes off as skewed, it comes off as
maybe they don't even know what they're talking about. Maybe they don't even know the
facts. And that's really off putting to people. And I don't think that people necessarily think
that in the industry, that might be something that pushes people away when some people
over but it pushes some people away.

D Damian Radcliffe 15:59

So at the end of this process, you're looking to make some recommendations for
newsrooms of things that perhaps they might want to do differently?

M Mandy Jenkins 16:07

I don't know if I'm really going to make recommendations, because what I'm hoping is
they'll just read these and see where it might fit into what they're doing. I mean, I think
some that recommendations might naturally come out of that. But I really don't want to
be prescriptive because I can't generalize these interviews are not enough of them to
really generalize it. But I want these stories, to resonate with people to understand that,
you know, these individuals live in their communities, they are very smart people, they're
very engaged. There are people that we haven't entirely lost and a lot of cases, they're
there, we can bring them back into the fold of interacting in their community and
interacting with media. And I think there's going to be different lessons for different kinds
of newsrooms out of that. So I want to try to avoid being as prescriptive as I can, just so
that they might see themselves in that a little bit more than me just telling them what
they're supposed to see.

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D Damian Radcliffe 17:00
It sounds as if you're quite positive, though, particularly the way you just described some
of the interviewees, as we've not lost them to us yet, but we're going to have to work hard
to kind of bring them back into the fold.

M Mandy Jenkins 17:12

Definitely, because I mean, these are all well educated people. They're interested in what's
going on in the world. But they they don't trust the way that we've been doing it. So I
mean, some are a little more lost to us than others. But I think that it's it's doable, it's just
that it's going to take a ways to get that trust back. And that's really what a lot of this
boils down to is that, that lack of connection, we can rebuild that connection, but it's
going to it's going to be difficult. And I think in a lot of cases, it needs to happen more at a
local level than anything that cable news or that national newspapers are really going to
be able to do.

D Damian Radcliffe 17:47

I mean, presumably, through this kind of time to Stanford, because you've been able to
sort of take a step back from the day to day, that's also giving you a fresh perspective on
kind of other things are happening across the industry, both kind of local level and
elsewhere. So what are some of the things that have caught your eye, during this past
year, perhaps, you know, excite you about where we might be moving forward?

M Mandy Jenkins 18:09

I'm really excited about kind of this renewed focus on local news from from the larger
industry. Having started in local news myself and caring quite a bit about it. That's been
something that's really been underlined in my research as being something that's missing
from a lot of people's lives. And I'm really encouraged by how much funders, the tech
platforms, kind of other like big thinkers in journalism right now looking at local. They've
been thinking about these other big picture things for a while and the fundings gone to
other places. But now it's coming back to local.

D Damian Radcliffe 18:42

And it feels like a couple of years ago, no one was having that conversation. I mean, that
was, I've done some research in that space. And also, you started in, in local media. And I
felt the sort of 2015-2016 no one was really talking about this. And now like almost every

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 week, there's a flurry of new, really interesting, detailed reports or funding propositions
that have come forward. And that's great to see.

M Mandy Jenkins 19:06

Yeah, it's really been great to see that locals not being ignored anymore. For a long time.
It's just was considered deeply unsexy, like no one wants to fund that. Because, you know,
how, how big of an impact can you make. And it requires a lot of people to rethink, you
know what impact even means to them. Maybe you can't scale this to be a huge project
across the country, maybe you can. But I'm very much of the opinion that something that
really works locally doesn't have to scale, that you've already done what you need to do.
It doesn't have to become a national or international phenomenon. It's fine and actually
may be preferable for it to be a local success. And I'm excited to see more people talking
about that, especially because we've spent the last two years as an industry so focused on
trust and focused on disinformation. That now, I'm hoping that people will see how much
those things are interconnected. If they get nothing else out of my report, I hope that they
get that out of there. That these are not different problems. That the loss of local news
and loss of trust, and the rise of disinformation are very related and intertwined issues.

D Damian Radcliffe 20:13

Do you think that's why this kind of the unsexy sector of local has started to have a bit of a
Renaissance?

M Mandy Jenkins 20:21

I think that that's one element. And especially when people are focused on trust, the
studies on news deserts, I think I've also really kind of freak some people out when they
really get a look at places that used to have news and that really don't anymore. That
they just have these zombie newspapers that barely exist. I think that that's really shaken
some people up. And especially in this context of like political coverage, because that's
important to a lot of people that they know that there's huge swathes of the country that
they actually know nothing about. And a lot of it's because there's not any media there.
And

D Damian Radcliffe 20:54

So, and aside from local, what are the other things that have caught your eye?

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M Mandy Jenkins 20:58
I'm also really interested in, in just seeing the embrace of new technology and places
where you don't necessarily expect it. I've been kind of a naysayer about things like like
VR and AR for years. I mean, I think they're cool, I think it's very cool. I just don't know how
accessible that is. And I still don't necessarily know how accessible that is. But I've seen
some really interesting moves in that world to, to use it like for an actual purpose of
storytelling of using the technology in a way that is intrinsic to the story and not just as a
cool thing to do. And I think there's a lot more research going into that and more
experimentation that's bringing it into the core of creating empathy for subjects. And
that's something I've really learned a lot about at Stanford. Because actually, right across
from where JSK's offices are, is the virtual human interaction lab where they have a lot of
these projects, you can go in and check them out. And it's, it's pretty cool. It's made me a
little bit more of a believer in that, which has been a, you know, kind of a reckoning for me.
I think I'm also really excited to just about the focus on collaborative journalism, and
people coming together, working together around different projects. You know, one of the
other fellows in my program is the director of ICIJ, who did the paradise papers. And like
learning from her sort of how all of these newsrooms across the world, were able to work
collaboratively on a project for years,

D Damian Radcliffe 22:25

And in secret.

M Mandy Jenkins 22:25

And in secret! Like, how did they keep a secret with that many journalists knowing about
it, it's just mind blowing to me. And, and just hearing kind of how that happened. And and
seeing how even on smaller scales, like a my friends that pop up newsroom, build lots of
small collaborations around election coverage, and fighting disinformation and countries
all over the world. And that's bringing media outlets together as bringing the platforms
and do it. And I think there's so much we can do that's not duplicating, and it's combining
our resources, combining our strengths. I think that the more that we look at
collaborations, the more we can build something bigger out of lots of small parts,
especially as newsrooms are not able to do everything themselves anymore because of
cuts or whatever that that that collaboration can be really strong and really important
path forward.

D Damian Radcliffe 23:13

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 And have these been some of the key messages that you wanted to impart whilst you've
been visiting us in Oregon this week?

M Mandy Jenkins 23:19

Let me see, those, and also, I think, and talking to students, especially. A thing that I
always stress, and I've done this for years, is, I really want journalism students to know that
there's a lot of options out there for them. And it's a very scary industry to go into. And
they have to really, A. they have to really want it. But also that there's a lot of options for
them, if they're looking carefully. There's not going to be a lot of the same traditional jobs
there used to be or maybe in some of the traditional places, and they're not going to get
a walk out and get their dream job on day one. But that there's lots of opportunities out
there, whether it's in local news, it's in other aspects of the newsroom that may not be in
reporting or editing in the traditional sense, as they know about where their skills will
really be applicable and where they might have career growth faster, like in community
engagement. Audience like that kind of work is not something they think about when they
think about journalism. But I really hope that they will think about that now. Especially if
that's something that's interesting to them.

D Damian Radcliffe 24:18

And how do students best equip themselves then, for that future?

M Mandy Jenkins 24:22

I think a lot of it is, is for one thing, learning a really wide range of skills now. Whether
that's learning how to use a CMS and web production, starting their own blog, starting
their own website, even if it's just as a means to get their work out there. But also learning
how to set up a site. I did that myself, when I was an early in my career, I set up a website
just for the purposes of learning how to do that, and learning kind of how what goes into
that. I think, also, it's important for them to be learning how to wisely use social media,
they're all you know, know how to use social media as people, but learning how to do it to
tell a story to get feedback from people. To project the image of a professional that they
would like for a newsroom to see of them. And those all are skills they can definitely hone
while they're in college. And they can do it on their own to it doesn't necessarily something
that they have to be doing in a classroom that iterating and trying things out. And being
able to talk about how they've done that to a future employer and a cover letter is going
to be huge.

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D Damian Radcliffe 25:25
Your time at Stanford is shortly going to be coming to an end,

M Mandy Jenkins 25:28

Oh don't remind me.

D Damian Radcliffe 25:30

We saw this week, the next cohort has been announced. And so that was a kind of
watershed moment for you and many of your, many of your friends. Can you give us a
sense of what the future might hold for you?

M Mandy Jenkins 25:42

My time at Stanford has taught me a few things about what I want to do next. And I know
for one, I found that I honestly don't miss day to day news as much as I thought I might.
And I don't I don't think that's necessarily what I'm going to go back and do right away. I
definitely know too that I want to do something that's going to benefit local news in some
way. I felt very removed from that. But being at Stanford, I've really had a renewed
interest in that and seeing to that there's so much more effort being put toward I'm like,
Yes, I want to join this battle. I want to go do what I can. So I think that that's going to be
really dictating what I do next.

D Damian Radcliffe 26:21

So we'll, we will, follow you on Twitter and elsewhere to kind of find out what you're up to
next. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion today. Do keep an eye on our website for
Mandy's guest lecture where she talks more about her career path and her research work
at Stanford. You'll be able to find that wherever you found this podcast, and of course will
also link to it on our website which is demystifying.uoregon.edu In the meantime, it just
remains for me to thank my guest today, Mandy Jenkins. Until next time, thanks for
listening

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