For the Record

Journalism and Philanthropy:

Since early 2018, GroundTruth Project Executive Director Charles Sennott and journalist/social entrepreneur Steven Waldman's Report for America initiative has created positions at news organizations that are partially funded by philanthropic organizations and cover underserved areas. "We want to do everything to make it the best possible experience for the journalists," said Waldman. "But helping them is a means to an end. The end is that local communities can hold authorities accountable, improve their schools, have clean drinking water."

Video Everywhere:

The Washington Post's popular Arc Publishing platform has launched Broadcast, an app that will allow journalists to stream high-quality live video to multiple sites and social media platforms simultaneously. "Creating high-quality live video in the field requires a tremendous amount of resources and costs for broadcasters, publishers and even brands," said Scot Gillespie, chief technology officer of The Post. "We built Broadcast with that in mind."

More Local News:

The Associated Press announced its Local News Sharing Network pilot project in conjunction with the Google News Initiative Thursday. Nearly two dozen news organizations throughout New York state will "share their coverage plans to more efficiently cover local news." "Empowering our members to share coverage plans allows them to be more efficient in covering local news stories at a critical time when newsrooms have to make smart decisions about where to put their resources," said Noreen Gillespie, the wire service's deputy managing editor for U.S. news.

Capital Gazette Anniversary:

Gov. Larry Hogan has proclaimed June 28 as Freedom of the Press Day in Maryland to commemorate the first anniversary of the Capital Gazette mass shooting in Annapolis, Md. Planned events include a summit on gun violence in Annapolis, the dedication of a memorial garden by the Capital Gazette, Baltimore Sun Media and Tribune Publishing and a moment of silence at 2:33 p.m.  

Independent Fact Checking:

Although multiplatform, collaborative fact-checking projects have become prevalent internationally, leading fact-checking sources in the United States continue to operate independently. "When U.S. fact checkers work separately," said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, "they show there is no such thing as an articulation against a candidate or an administration."

SmartNews Emerges as a Referrer:

Five years after its introduction to the United States, Japanese-based aggregation app SmartNews has emerged as a major traffic referrer, yielding an average increase of 8.8% per month on 3,000 sites tracked by Parse.ly's audience engagement platform. "We are deliberately optimized for news discovery, as opposed to excessive personalization," said Rich Jaroslovsky, SmartNews' vice president of content and chief journalist.

Google's LGBTQ+ Policies:

Dozens of Google employees have signed a petition to the board of San Francisco Pride urging the organization to ban the technology platform from its parade Sunday. "We have spent countless hours advocating for our company to improve policies and practices regarding the treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, the depiction of LGBTQ+ persons, and harassment and hate speech directed at LGBTQ+ persons, on YouTube and other Google products," the group said. "But we are never given a commitment to improve."

Tension on Tax Team:

'W' Sold:

Condé Nast has sold W magazine to Surface magazine's Future Media Group, the publication announced Tuesday. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Style Director Sara Moonves (daughter of the former CBS chief executive) will replace Stefano Tonchi as editor-in-chief. According to WWD, Tonchi "wasn’t keen on the deal with Surface" after WWD "reported on some of the operational and business history of Surface" and CEO Marc Lotenberg.

"Patient Investment and Experimentation":

Oil and gas heiress Randa Duncan Williams has acquired Texas Monthly from private equity firm Genesis Park (managed by Paul Hobby, son of politician William P. Hobby Jr.) effective June 30, The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday. Williams "plans to step up investment in its journalism, marketing of subscriptions and expansion into other kinds of storytelling, such as podcasts and live events."