This is how you do it

The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.

Overseas Press Club Webinar: Learn How to Create and Make the Most of a Muck Rack Profile

Join OPC members during your lunch break on July 23 for a hands-on session on how journalists can use Muck Rack to showcase their work. Andrew Mercier, senior director of editorial at Muck Rack, will explain how to create a Muck Rack profile, share your pitching preferences and use its tools to analyze news on any topic. Register here.

Media statistic of the week

What’s happening on Whatsapp Channels, one year after its launch? According to Press Gazette, “publishers account for 74 of the top 150 Whatsapp Channels by follower count, with The New York Times leading the way with more than 12 million subscribers.” 

All of the seven most-followed news publisher Whatsapp Channels — The New York Times, CNN, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, National Geographic and The Washington Post — are American. The top non-American channel? The Daily Mail’s Kardashian Channel, “Kardashian News.”

This past week in the media industry 

Unpacking this media moment

Stephanie Convery of The Guardian put together a round-up of what the papers said about the Trump rally shooting.

And yet…“Sunday print newspaper readers, looking for a roundup of stories and photo coverage of the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, were as likely as not to come up empty,” Poynter’s Rick Edmonds notes. Tampa Bay Times editor Mark Katches answered the question, How come my Sunday newspaper didn’t have major breaking news about Trump shooting?

Plenty of people switched on TV news to get the latest updates. Rick Porter of The Hollywood Reporter reports 19 million viewers tuned in to TV news outlets after the shooting. “A similar number — 18.78 million — watched President Joe Biden‘s Oval Office address Sunday evening.”

Sophia Cai of Axios shared her chilling firsthand account from the rally, Fear, anger, cheers: What I saw at the Trump rally shooting. She describes “fac[ing] the anger of Trump supporters, who were turning on the media. ‘Fake news! This is your fault!’ they yelled. ‘You're next! Your time is coming.’”

Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review says he “tried to unpack this media moment a bit,” writing about the cynicism of blaming the media for the Trump assassination attempt “while also mass-sharing photos that members of the media risked their lives to take.” 

The virality of the digital age

The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr spoke with some of those photographers who covered the rally: ‘I have to do my job.’ Photojournalists capture images of Trump shooting. And in an interview with CNN, Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci described capturing that viral photo of Trump and how his past experiences helped him capture the moment. 

The Daily Beast’s Corbin Bolies, who also spoke with Vucci about how he managed to capture that compelling image, writes, “His photos, along with those of peers such as New York Times veteran photographer Doug Mills and Getty Images’ Anna Moneymaker, lit up all forms of news broadcasts and social media, a dark convergence of the virality of the digital age with the grim occasion of an assassination attempt on a U.S. leader.”

Speaking of lighting up social media, as The Atlantic’s Ali Breland pointed out, The Trump Shooting Conspiracies Outpaced Reality, and to no one’s surprise. “This is almost always how it goes now when something notable happens in the news: It becomes instant conspiracy fodder.”

In his USA Today column, Rex W. Huppke also observed, “News of a shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania broke Saturday, then descended immediately into the chaotic churn of social media, birthing the kind of lies, conspiracies and speculation that have become our new normal.”

Semi-optimistic

Amid all the doom-and-gloom media stories, Andrew Van Dam of The Washington Post has been “Searching for bright spots in the twilight of the newspaper industry.” In an analysis for the Post’s “Department of Data,” he finds a tiny bit of hope: Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters? 

“As recently as the early 2000s, reporters made up just 9 percent of the workforce at the average newspaper,” Van Dam writes. “Now, we’re 19 percent. Editors have increased almost as rapidly, with both jobs comprising bigger and bigger slices of a smaller and smaller pie.” 

It’s worth digging into the full data and analysis here for a complete picture. On the whole Lucia Moses describes it as “A semi optimistic look at where journalists are finding work. 1 in 10 working for nonprofits. And there’s work in other non traditional places, tho its independence is a question.”

Deleted

Here’s a royal mystery, or as Zoe Haylock puts it, “if you’ve ever wished british aristocracy had a reality tv show ➡️➡️➡️” The burning question: Who’s Erasing the Rose Hanbury Rumors? 

It’s a story of vanishing stories. For New York Magazine’s “Vulture,” Ellie Hall has assembled an exhaustive timeline of edited articles and pieces that have gone missing entirely. “In total, this investigation found 21 deleted stories and six stories that were edited post-publication to remove information, published from 2019 to 2024,” Hall writes. 

And while the “assumption has always been that the Palace is pulling strings behind the scenes…there have been no reports of the Palace asking media organizations to remove stories or parts of stories, and certainly no statements from the U.K. media outlets in question — or notices to readers — explaining why they’ve chosen to delete paragraphs and even entire posts.”

More notable media stories

• After veteran journalists Nicholas Gage and Nicholas Basbanes discovered ChatGPT might be stealing and repurposing their work, they decided to fight back. From Matt O’Brien of The Associated Press, Two 80-something journalists tried ChatGPT. Then, they sued to protect the 'written word.' As Tom LoBianco says, “This is how you do it.”
• For an episode of the “Decoder” podcast, Nilay Patel of The Verge talked with former Wired editor-in-chief and current CEO of The Atlantic Nicholas Thompson on surviving the AI era. 
• For Nieman Storyboard, Carly Stern spoke with ProPublica deputy managing editor Alexandra Zayas about Effective editing: Alexandra Zayas on trust and Ted Lasso-style cheerleading.
• Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times reports More Than 23 Million Watched Biden's News Conference, Beating the Oscars. 
• Press Gazette has updated its ranking of top news brands for converting readers to subscribers, and once again, The Athletic and Barron’s are on top. “Both had conversion rates of above or close to 20% – well above most industry benchmarks,” Aisha Majid notes.
• Former Daily Beast senior media reporter Justin Baragona is now writing Zeteo’s new media newsletter 'Ragebait.' 
• The judge dismissed Alec Baldwin's 'Rust' trial, and The Hollywood Reporter’s Rebecca Keegan has more on the “day-long, dramatic and often bizarre hearing” that sounds like something out of a Hollywood procedural.
• Per Todd Spangler of Variety, Dax Shepard Inks $80 Million Exclusive Podcast Pact With Amazon’s Wondery. The deal encompasses new shows, merchandise and more.
• Who had this on their bingo card? Angela Merkel detective series premieres in Italy. Richard Connor of Deutsche Welle (DW) has details on the new “unlikely crime series” that depicts the former German chancellor as a small-town sleuth. 
• Charlotte Tobitt of the Press Gazette announced the Future of Media Awards shortlist 2024, highlighting the best digital journalism products and innovations of the last year.

From the Muck Rack Team

As we celebrate Muck Rack’s 15th birthday this year, we’re taking a look back. The year is 2009. Twitter is just gaining steam, Instagram hasn’t been released yet and the media landscape is a vastly different place than it is today in 2024. Head over to the blog to read about five of the major trends that impacted the PR and journalism industries over the last 15 years.