Savannah Jacobson
Columbia Journalism Review
Kingston, ON, Canada
Contact Savannah
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Past articles by Savannah:
WNYC, seeking to end a crisis, may have sparked another
In early March, CJR published a story about turmoil at WNYC, which mentioned allegations of unattributed language in stories by Jami Floyd, one of the station’s star names. Since then, the story has developed in ways that have further frustrated the newsroom and drawn the attention of other news outlets. Interviews with current and former […] → Read More
WNYC removes dozens of articles over attribution issues
WNYC removed forty-five stories from its websites, wnyc.org and Gothamist.com, according to an announcement on the site today, because they contained “unattributed passages from other sources,” in forty-two of the cases, and had been “published on other websites by the author” in three of the cases. It is the latest development in a long-running series […] → Read More
WNYC sought change. It got turmoil.
On June 11, 2020, Audrey Cooper, the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, was made editor in chief of WNYC, New York’s public radio station. Among the sparse decorations she installed in her office, on the eighth floor of WNYC’s SoHo headquarters, was a signed photograph of Colin Powell. She moved in to a […] → Read More
WNYC sought change. It got turmoil.
On June 11, 2020, Audrey Cooper, the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, was made editor in chief of WNYC, New York’s public radio station. Among the sparse decorations she installed in her office, on the eighth floor of WNYC’s SoHo headquarters, was a signed photograph of Colin Powell. She moved in to a […] → Read More
Lee Enterprises holds off an Alden takeover—for now
At the end of last month, Alden Global Capital, a notorious newspaper-owning hedge fund, sought to stake its claim on one of the last newspaper chains it hasn’t yet touched: Lee Enterprises, which owns 90 publications across the country. Alden, which currently owns six percent of Lee’s stock, sent an unsolicited offer to purchase the […] → Read More
An expansion, a departure, and the same dire questions
Yesterday, the Washington Post announced plans to hire forty-one new editors, in what management called a “major expansion to accelerate our transformation into a fully 24/7 news organization and strengthen the leadership of the newsroom.” The positions include multiple assignment editors, breaking news editors, and two new standards editors, and are intended, in part, to […] → Read More
Press freedom, protest, and the Nicaragua election
In 2018, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans flooded the streets to protest against the nation’s increasingly repressive president, Daniel Ortega, and his wife Rosario Murillo, who holds an amalgam of positions, including vice president and communications coordinator. The protests posed a serious threat to Ortega’s fourteen-year hold on power; with news outlets doggedly covering the […] → Read More
Slow news, and the delocalization of New York’s election
Pundits and journalists tend to pontificate through slow news periods. When there is no news, guess work fills the vacuum––on cable television, news sites’ listicles, and Twitter. That inclination becomes especially apparent during elections, from the moment polls open to the moment a winner is declared (if not certified). Last week, on election day in […] → Read More
Inside the Lines
What is ‘the mainstream media,’ anyway? → Read More
Reading Up on the Race
Seven New Yorkers on how they’re following the mayoral election → Read More
Andrew Cuomo’s Bad Press
Since December, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, has not taken an in-person question from a reporter. Amid compounding crises, Cuomo––who was hailed by much of the national press at the height of New York’s COVID outbreak––has hidden from journalists, under the guise of health and safety protocols. (No matter that he held briefings […] → Read More
The Chauvin verdict, and a narrow lens on justice
Last May, following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, the police department released a press statement headlined, “Man dies after medical incident during police interaction.” The statement said that officers responded to “a forgery” and that the suspect seemed under the influence; he resisted arrest, fell suddenly under medical distress, and died in […] → Read More
Democracy under siege—and the press, too
On Wednesday afternoon, a mob of right-wing extremists and indignant livestreamers stormed the Capitol. Along their path, they left a note to the journalists who were covering the scene, a message that seemed a harrowing extension of a presidency marked by anti-press virulence: etched into a door was the phrase “Murder the Media.” It’s hard […] → Read More
Do It Yourself
The persistence of indie mags as pure expressions of taste. → Read More
Q&A: Matthew Desmond on Evicted, moratoriums, and humanizing housing coverage
In early August, a coalition of housing researchers found that as many as forty million Americans could be at risk of eviction in the coming months, as a result of a number of policy responses––and lacks thereof––to the covid-19 pandemic. The Center for Disease Control issued an eviction moratorium in September set to last through […] → Read More
The most feared owner in American journalism looks set to take some of its greatest assets
On December 3, 2016, the morning after the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland caught fire, killing thirty-six people, the East Bay Times’s new executive editor, Neil Chase, instructed his staff to throw their resources behind the story. “They had been through a long series of years where there was all kinds of nickel-and-diming in news––‘don’t […] → Read More
The Animal Fact Checker
These days, people are desperate for good news. Cheerful stories about animals reclaiming their territory––elephants roaming free in China, dolphins swimming through the canals in Venice––have gone viral. And then comes Natasha Daly, a reporter and editor for National Geographic, who diligently points out that many of the freewheeling fauna reports are false. She doesn’t […] → Read More
Exxon’s Snake Oil
The story of oil company propaganda begins in 1914, with the Ludlow Massacre. In Ludlow, Colorado, a tent city of coal miners went on strike, and officers of the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company responded violently, killing at least sixty-six people. The event turned popular opinion against John D. Rockefeller […] → Read More
Crying journalists is now a clickbait genre
The Trump presidency works in symbiosis with the media. Television journalists dramatize the news, then mine that emotion for clicks. Perhaps the best example is a new genre of clickbait: the crying reporter. CNN’s YouTube page is filled with videos of their anchors growing emotional –– often in response to racism from President Trump that […] → Read More
Translating New York’s hidden stories
When scammers in New York’s Chinese community began to prey on elderly women, stories of immigrant families losing their life savings filled the local Chinese press. Soon, articles documenting the scam appeared in larger outlets, until the story ultimately made it to the New Yorker in 2017. El Diario, a Spanish-language daily, reported on the […] → Read More