Poynter Power Rankings: Who Influenced the Media This Week?

From a post from The Poynter Report with Tom Jones headlined “Poynter Power Rankings: Who influenced the media this week?”:

Fox News
Think what you want about the conservative cable news network — and you can find those who don’t think much of it — there’s no denying its popularity, especially among the Republican base. Fox News had a terrific October, leading all cable news networks in viewers. Its afternoon panel show “The Five” overtook Tucker Carlson’s show as the most-watched cable news network program. And on election night, more people watched Fox News than any other cable news network, with some 5 million viewers tuning in during Laura Ingraham’s 10 p.m. Eastern hour. I’ve said often that when comparing cable news outlets, it’s unfair to compare Fox News to CNN or MSNBC because CNN and MSNBC often share the same viewers. It’s more telling to compare Fox News to the combined viewership of both those networks. But even by those metrics, Fox News was the big winner on election night.

The Washington Post
The most impressive journalism of the week was the Post investigation that used 75 journalists to produce a deeply-reported project about the Jan. 6 insurrection. “The Attack” looks at all that happened before, during and after the horrific events of that. It was elite journalism by an elite journalism outlet. Simply sensational. Something tells me we will be hearing much more about this project when various journalism awards are handed out next year. If you haven’t read it, I cannot recommend it enough.

Newsletters
How many newsletters do you get? At last count, I get about a half million, give or take a few thousand. Feels like that, anyway. As I wrote earlier this week, it seems like I spend half my day reading newsletters and the other half writing one. Now I need to figure out a way to create more time in the day because The Atlantic announced it is getting in the newsletter game and will launch nine subscriber newsletters. The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson said, “The evolution of newsletters is one of the most important things happening in journalism today.” Are newsletters just another way to package the same old journalism? Yeah, maybe in some cases. But when done right — like David Leonhardt for The New York Times and Amber Phillips of The Washington Post and Sara Fischer of Axios or Politico’s Playbook, which has been around since before newsletters were cool — it’s good stuff. Then again, read this interesting Twitter thread from Ryan Broderick.

The 2022 duPont Columbia Awards
The duPont-Columbia Awards announced their finalists for the best in audio and video reporting, in broadcast, documentary and online. This year’s finalists include outlets such as PBS’s “Frontline,” WNYC, Netflix, The New York Times, HBO, CBS and many more. Topics include coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, policing in America and racial inequities. Lisa R. Cohen, director of the duPont-Columbia Awards, said, “This fearless coverage — embedding in Covid wards; slipping behind borders in war-torn Yemen; taking on local police departments for their civil rights violations — exemplifies the dedication of these finalists, many of whom took great risks to inform the public.” Winners will be announced in a virtual ceremony next February. Here’s the complete list.