AP Stylebook Updates
Posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 4:52 PM
In the news: The AP Stylebook recently unveiled updates to better
serve Asian American and disabled communities.
AP has updated
its Stylebook to reflect changes in coverage of Asian American and
disability issues. Kristen Hare of Poynter.org reports that AP Stylebook
editor Paula Froke announced the changes at the recent ACES conference.
Notably,
Hare reports that the Stylebook now asks that publications spell out
Asian and Pacific Islanders and, for clarity, to use the abbreviation
(AAPI) only in quoted text. Further, writers should avoid the
euphemistic phrase “anti-Asian bias.” Per the AP’s press release:
“‘Alternatives may include anti-Asian bias, anti-Asian harassment,
anti-Asian comments, anti-Asian racism or anti-Asian violence, depending
on the situation. Be specific and give details about what happened or
what someone says happened.”
Disability-related language
has also been updated to better serve the disabled community. Hare
shares the AP’s comments on this: “‘[Writers should] use care and
precision when writing about disabilities and people with disabilities;
ask people how they want to be described; be specific about types of the
type of disability, or symptoms; and avoid using disability-related
words lightly or in unrelated situations and writing that implies
ableism.”
Read Hare’s full roundup of AP Stylebook updates here.
Also
Notable
US Daily Print Titles Hit Hard by Covid-19
The
Covid-19 pandemic has dealt some resounding blows to daily print
publications in the US. Earlier this month, William Turvill of the Press
Gazette reported on some of the more notable losses last year. USA
Today print circulation fell by 60 percent after the country went
into lockdown last spring, says Turvill. (In other news, the newspaper just
launched a paywall on its news content this week.) Other major
newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal
also saw falling circulation in summer 2020. “On average, the largest
ten weekday newspapers in the US experienced a circulation fall of 20%
in the six months to September 2020, Alliance for Audited Media (AAM)
figures show,” reports Torvill. Read more specifics about how each of
the major newspapers fared here.
Reuters
Launches Paywall
This month, Reuters started putting news
content behind an online paywall, reports Kim Lyons of The Verge.
“[Reuters] will let users read five stories a month for free and plans
to charge $34.99 a month for a subscription,” she reports. The paywall
comes as part of a larger revenue strategy by the news outlet. “Reuters
said it generates half of its revenue from its largest client, the
financial data firm Refinitiv, and also makes money from online
advertising,” Lyons says. “The company says it has redesigned its
website with a ‘professional audience’ in mind and plans investment in
segments like legal news and live streams of its event.” Read more here.
Pay
Inequities at Gannett
A new study has unearthed major pay
discrepancies in Gannett newsrooms. Gabby Miller of the Columbia
Journalism Review writes: “On Tuesday [April 27], the
NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America published a pay equity study
on Gannett-owned newsrooms that found significant pay inequity for women
and journalists of color, as well as further evidence of an
overwhelmingly white, male workforce ‘less racially diverse than the
U.S. as a whole.’” The report covers only union-represented newsrooms,
says Miller, so it likely illuminates only a portion of the problem
company-wide. Overall, she reports, the Newsguild looked at “441
full-time and 25 part-time, non-managerial workers’ median pay from fall
2020 across gender and race demographics in 14 Gannett-owned newsrooms
belonging to the union.” See the discrepancies by the numbers across
multiple demographics here.
Diversity
at Meredith, Hearst, and Condé Nast
In recent months,
Meredith, Hearst, and Condé Nast have published staff diversity numbers.
According to Kathryn Hopkins of WWD.com, “These numbers don’t tell the
whole story as the big three magazine publishers did not break down
figures for divisions and brands.... The overall findings show that
while the big three differ on certain measures, much work still needs to
be done, especially when it comes to getting more people of color
through the door.” She summarizes the findings from all three companies’
reports here.
Editorial
Restructuring at Condé Nast
Some Vogue, Vanity
Fair, and GQ editors in the UK may be laid off in the coming
months as parent company Condé Nast streamlines its editorial structure
worldwide, reports Chantal Fernandez of BusinessofFashion.com. Read more here.
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