In the news: A city newspaper under the microscope for racial imparity in its newsroom and content that fails to serve the community's readers.

This week, Marion Renault of the Columbia Journalism Review examined long-standing racial problems at the Gannett-owned Columbia Dispatch. He opens: “The giant, light-up sign visible from The Columbus Dispatch’s newsroom proclaims it to be ‘Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper.’ A more honest description might be ‘Ohio’s Whitest Home Newspaper.’ In its almost 150 years of existence, the paper has consistently failed to reflect, and therefore serve, Columbus’s residents of color.”

The newspaper has long faced criticism about its lack of staff diversity and often stereotyped depictions of Black and other minority residents. It’s a systemic problem in the paper’s newsroom: Renault reports that “44 percent of [Columbus] residents are nonwhite, while the staff of the Dispatch is 95 percent white.... The census shows about 5 percent of the Dispatch’s full-time newsroom employees are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or two or more races.”

The paper is finally taking preliminary steps to rectify the problem, but there’s no quick fix. Summing up the paper’s efforts, Renault reports, “The Dispatch’s previously all-white editorial board [has] brought on two Black members . . . the paper [has] hired a full-time general assignment reporter who is Black . . . employees completed diversity and inclusion training, and [editor Alan] Miller says he plans to keep diversifying candidate pools for staff openings.... Gannett, has pledged newsroom gender, racial, and ethnic parity by 2025.”

Read the full story here.

Also Notable:

Hearst Invests in Editorial Content

Last week, Hearst announced that it would invest several million into improved print magazine quality. Sara Guaglione of MediaPost.com reports that the program, dubbed Premium Print by Hearst, will allow “the magazines [to] have larger formats, higher-quality paper and improved editorial ratios.”

Hearst has some specific print-related projects in mind, reports Guaglione. The company’s popular YouTube channel Delish will start producing a quarterly print edition. Elsewhere, Good Housekeeping will start running 10 percent more editorial pages. Read more about the company’s expanded print initiative here.

Journalists Turning to Subscription Newsletters

Some journalists are rethinking their relationships with major media brands and trying their luck with subscription newsletters instead. Last week, Marc Tracy of the New York Times wrote about Substack, a subscription newsletter platform that is particularly popular for journalists going this route: “Most Substack writers offer a mix of paid and free email newsletters. They make money through subscriptions, not ads. Writers own their newsletters, and the platform takes a 10 percent cut. Substack also offers a legal defense service to writers of paid newsletters in the United States.” It’s a compelling option for journalists whose media employers may be in decline (particularly in the Covid-19 era) or who have garnered large enough followings on social media to try independent content. Read more here.

Fact-Checkers Teaming Up to Combat Misinformation

The September 24 edition of Factually, Poynter.org’s newsletter about fact-checking, examines the uphill climb fact-checkers face during this misinformation-plagued election cycle. According to Harrison Mantas and Susan Benkelman of Poyter.org, on September 18, Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network (aka IFCN) “launched FactChat, a bilingual WhatsApp chatbot that brings together fact-checks from 10 American fact-checking organizations with two Spanish-language broadcasters to offer users 2020 election fact-checks in English and Spanish.” The movement is taking root elsewhere, too: Mantas and Benkelman report that Ghana Fact in Africa is looking to pool fact-checking resources before Ghana’s election in December. Read more here.

NYT Cooking’s Android Design

In a September 24 piece of NYT.com, product designer Jayne Lee discusses NYT Cooking’s recent design system development project. The piece lays out the guiding principles that led the process and the system’s design and typography elements. Read the full article here.

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