Study Hall Digest 3/16/2020

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

***Quarantine Edition: Issue 1***

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Reporting During a Pandemic: How Is COVID-19 Impacting Newsrooms?

TV journalists at CBS News are struggling to acclimate in the age of social distancing. CNN has reported that two CBS employees tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday of last week. A CBS New York reporter who asked to remain anonymous told Study Hall that on Wednesday, another employee tested positive for coronavirus and that the newsroom has been working remotely ever since. Reporters are sending footage from the field to the CBS offices in Los Angeles, where the film is incorporated into a broadcast.

Because the reporter works in television, they can’t exactly work out of their apartment like the writers and producers on the show. As of Friday, they said they were editing and filing video from a truck with an extremely limited staff, an onerous process. “We don’t have access to file video, we don’t have the resources we would have if we were in the building,” they said. “We had to get things in a lot earlier because there’s no editor or producer in-house.”

Over several days last week, the New York shows have been broadcast out of California offices. According to CNN, a very small staff was allowed back into the building on Saturday. But a lot has changed since Saturday — social distancing mandates have become more urgent, Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order to close the city’s school system, and restaurants and bars will be limited to takeout and delivery beginning Tuesday morning. The full impact of the virus on televised news is yet to be seen.

In Seattle, a health reporter has been under quarantine and self-isolation for weeks. Hannah Weinberger, a reporter for nonprofit news service Crosscut, has been publishing stories on the coronavirus since early February, examining how the pandemic might impact the Seattle area. When she was unable to get a certain infectious disease doctor on the phone, she went to an area hospital to find them in person — a risky move, but one she felt was necessary to her work. “I got information that was absolutely essential to identify what people had been doing in terms of infectious disease prevention efforts, but I spent time in a hospital,” she said.

She came down with what she thinks was the coronavirus shortly after — though she was unable to get a test — and placed herself under quarantine. When I spoke to her on Saturday, she’d been isolated for three weeks out of an abundance of caution (she has fully recovered and no longer exhibits symptoms), which had made her job as a beat reporter more complicated.

“One of the benefits of being a reporter who reports on the region in which you live is you get to go out and observe things happening,” she said. “You can be with the people you’re reporting on. I think that’s so essential for reporting. But when you’re quarantined and terrified of being part of the problem of overwhelming hospital systems or infecting people who are immunocompromised, that means you have to figure out work-arounds.” For Weinberger, that has meant reaching sources online instead of in person, but it can be frustrating to no longer have the option of going out into the field. “It’s hard relying on other people to respond to me in order to give me information rather than just knowing I can with my own agency get that information,” she said.

At BuzzFeed, a close-knit newsroom is pivoting to connecting online. Julia Reinstein, a breaking news reporter for BuzzFeed, was briefly placed under quarantine while returning from a trip to Vietnam that included a layover in Japan. Shortly after she was released, at the end of last week, she learned she and her colleagues would be working remotely for the foreseeable future.

The breaking news team at BuzzFeed is used to working “symbiotically,” Reinstein said — and while they’ve had to work together to cover breaking news remotely over weekends in the past, it was always more challenging than working in the same location. Now it’s the new normal. “The thing is, the news is usually less insane than it is now,” she said. “We’ve covered serious breaking news events on weekends and it definitely makes it harder, and that’s the feeling every day now. It’s so much news. It feels like we’re overtaken by coronavirus news, which is nonstop, but there are so many other things happening in the world right now.”

Moving forward, as the team settles into working remotely long-term, they are “prioritizing ways to keep it human,” said Reinstein. “Last week, when I had to check in with my direct editor, we did a FaceTime call rather than talking on the phone,” she said. “We have a tight ship to run and we’re doing a pretty damn good job considering everything that’s going on, but we’re also trying to do things like check in with each other.”

Meanwhile, other newsrooms are prioritizing productivity! The New York Times’ Ben Smith (formerly BuzzFeed Ben) tweeted out a few draconian newsroom-wide emails that were leaked to him. Leadership at the Wall Street Journal wants to ensure its employees tell management when they’re taking breaks and always answer their phones, while Jim Spanfeller of G/O Media urged staff to “keep our production up” during this period of isolation.

How is everyone doing working from home? Freelancers are at least accustomed to it; journalists used to working in a newsroom are navigating the home/office conundrum for the first time. “I like to be outside. I’m a social person,” said Weinberger, who has found her period of working in isolation extremely challenging. She said that maintaining a boundary between her professional and personal lives was helpful. “I think you need to make really clear boundaries for yourself, which can be hard when you’re reporting on something that’s changing minute by minute and you feel this need to keep watching and documenting and reaching out about things,” she said. “But I try to make sure that I don’t take my phone to bed with me wherever possible. I don’t wake up and immediately get on the computer, but sometimes I can’t help it.”

Debate in the Time of Coronavirus

Amid the chaos of a pandemic, watching two old men shout at each other about their policy positions was as soothing as art restoration YouTube videos. Who would have expected that the first debate in the time of coronavirus and almost certainly the last of the Democratic primary would be the best of them all? No live audience meant no terrible one-liners (see: Amy Klobuchar’s brand of humor), and besides Bernie force-choking Biden and Biden lying about his history of pushing for Social Security cuts, it was a civil affair.

Still, as Politico Magazine said, this was the “Bye Bye Bernie” debate and it showed. For two hours, Bernie nudged Biden as far to the left as possible from a CDC-approved six-foot distance away. It was the most forceful progressive push in a weekend full of them. On Friday night, Biden endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s plans to allow student debt to be relieved by bankruptcy, and on Sunday, hours before the debate, he voiced support for tuition-free public colleges and universities for students from families with incomes below $125,000, a plan Bernie has long supported.

Capping all that off was the debate’s big moment: Biden’s promise to nominate a woman as VP. Was it engineered to dominate the post-debate headlines and spawn a new round of breathless “who will he choose” op-eds? Yes. Still, with Bernie’s campaign haunting the primary like Patrick Swayze in Ghost (absent the erotic pottery wheel scene), the next best bet for a unifying ticket seems to be coming down to picking a progressive woman as his VP. — Chris Erik Thomas

Other (But, Let’s Be Honest, Mostly COVID-19-Related) News

— The coronavirus podcasts have arrived! A lot of podcasts are producing episodes on the virus, but there has also been a boom of new podcasts dedicated to covering the virus exclusively. Nick Quah of Hot Pod broke down what he believes are the top five over at Vulture.

— Many publications, including the New York Times and New York Magazine, have lifted their paywalls for coronavirus coverage. Here’s a list of major publications doing the same.

— Deadspin is publishing again…at least in name. Media Twitter took a brief hiatus from coronavirus panic to roast the newly-staffed site’s awkward attempts to approximate the irreverent Gizmodo style. (Also, sports have been cancelled due to coronavirus so…??)