FRIDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2024

In this newsletter you'll find a job opening, a link to join our next leadership programme and a chart from our research on how audiences engage with climate change news. You'll also find an interview with a Nigerian journalist who covers the Wagner Group's activities in Africa and a summary of our researchers' talks at the APSA annual conference in Philadelphia later this week. 

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A dangerous beat. Award-winning Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji Jr. has been covering the Wagner Group's activities in Africa since 2018. Throughout these years, he’s reported on coups, security contracts and human rights abuses, and was recently abducted and tortured while reporting on this Russian private army founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of Vladimir Putin who died in a plane crash in 2023. 

The piece. Our contributor Patrick Egwu spoke with Obaji about this difficult beat. The interview includes insights on his reporting and the reason he keeps doing this work. "I know this reporting is dangerous. But I feel that I have a sense of responsibility not just to the news organisation I work for but also to the many people who have come under Wagner's aggression and abuse. So I'll continue to do my best," he says.

🎙️ This radio station amplifies the voices of Nigerian women. Its head Esther Alaribe speaks about their work. · Read | 🇳🇬 Nigerian reporter Kunle Adebajo has reported extensively on the victims of Boko Haram. Here's how he's done it. · Read | 🎧 Our contributor Maurice Oniang'o looks at some of the voices in the emerging African podcast scene. · Read

The programme. Are you a newsroom leader looking to enhance your people management skills? Now you can join our upcoming 'Essential Skills for Newsroom Managers' course, which will take place in Oxford on 3-4 October. The course focuses on practical strategies for effective team management and navigating change, while helping you expand your professional network. Learn more about the programme in the link below.

📊 Who accessed climate news in the last week? We might think of young people as being more interested in climate issues. But according to survey data that we collected in eight countries for this report led by our colleague Waqas Ejaz, those aged 55 or over are more likely to have accessed climate change news in the last week than the 18–24s. Gaps by gender are small in our eight-country average, but the gap between men and women can be as much as 10 points in Europe and the US.

• Ideology matters too. Those on the left are around ten points more likely than those on the right to access climate news, but it is important to keep in mind that those who can place themselves on a left-right ideological scale are more likely to be regular climate news users than those that say they ‘don’t know’.

🧑🏽‍🏫 The Reuters Institute's talks at APSA 2024. This weekend some of our researchers are sharing their academic work at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia, one of the most important gatherings of social scientists worldwide. Here's a quick summary of their four talks :

• 📣 On news use and climate protests: How do differences in news and information consumption (mainstream or alternative outlets; scientific, celebrity or government sources) impact attitudes towards climate protests? Lead author: Waqas Ejaz

• 🏷️ On WhatsApp labels and misinformation: How do “Forwarded” and “Forwarded many times” labels on WhatsApp messages affect recipients’ understanding of the content, including that which contains false or misleading information? Lead author: Simge Andı

• 🏛️ On trust in news and politics: Is there a link between trust in political institutions and the press? Our researchers drew on qualitative data to explore how this ‘trust nexus’ is sustained by implicit and explicit connections that people make between the two. Lead author: Amy Ross Arguedas

• 🙈 On interest in news over the past decade: There has been a significant overall decline in interest in news and politics since 2015. What explains this decline and which audiences maintain relatively higher levels of interest? Lead author: Richard Fletcher

A job opening. We are looking for a dynamic Events and Administration Officer to help us run the Reuters Institute's events. They will lead on managing the preparation, logistics, bookings and on-site support to ensure participants' experience is the best it can be. The successful candidate will also act as office manager. Applications will close on Monday 9 September 2024. | Apply now

🧘‍♀️ How to protect yourself from burnout. Mar Cabra worked as Data Editor at the ICIJ. Shortly after her team won a Pulitzer Prize for the Panama Papers, she experienced burnout, forcing her to quit journalism altogether. As she recovered, she co-founded The Self-Investigation to promote a healthier way of working in newsrooms. In this interview with our own Priscille Biehlmann she provides useful tips for newsrooms on how to protect journalists' mental health. | Read the piece

• Explore more pieces on journalism and mental health

🙉 How to fight news avoidance. Our research shows that selective news avoidance is on the rise. In this piece we published in April, Nic Newman and Ellen Heinrichs spell out seven things newsrooms can do to make their output more appealing to these elusive audiences. The article includes ideas from Ros Atkins, Agnes Stenbom, Dmitry Shishkin, Le Monde and others. | Read the piece

• Explore our pieces on news avoidance and a book on the topic

Read our research on:

Trust in news | Changing newsrooms | Journalism trends

 

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Today's email was written by Eduardo Suárez, Matthew Leake, Marina Adami and Gretel Kahn.