Paul Farhi

2 months ago | cjr.org | Paul Farhi

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. As the outrage about President Trump’s ban on the Associated Press spilled out last week, some journalists urged the press corps to vote with their feet. A press boycott of the daily White House briefing, they said, would be the strongest possible rebuke of the president’s decision to bar AP reporters and photographers from the Oval Office and Air Force One over the news service’s refusal to call the Gulf of Mexico by the name Trump prefers.

2 months ago | vanityfair.com | Paul Farhi

President Donald Trump appears on the verge of hitting a legal trifecta. In December, Disney paid $15 million toward a future presidential library to settle a lawsuit Trump filed against its subsidiary ABC News. In late January, Facebook-parent Meta settled the president’s claims with a $22 million check for the library (plus another $3 million in legal fees). Next up: Paramount Global, owner of CBS News, which is currently negotiating the potential price of its surrender with Trump’s lawyers.

Jan 15, 2025 | vanityfair.com | Paul Farhi

It was just a small news item about a seemingly mundane bureaucratic decision. But some White House reporters perceived deeper import in it last week. As CBS News reported, president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming press secretary will start work without one of the traditional trappings of the job: the spacious, high-ceilinged office in the West Wing located steps from the Oval Office.

Dec 15, 2024 | barnraisingmedia.com | Paul Farhi |John Volk |Maija Hecht

The findings are based on results from 193 of the 206 counties Medill has identified as news deserts, in states where county-level election results are currently available. The third annual State of Local News report, released by Medill’s Local News Initiative in October, documented the continuing decline of local news across the country, as measured by the number of newspapers, circulation, frequency of publication, employment and readership.

Dec 13, 2024 | seattletimes.com | Paul Farhi |John Volk

Donald Trump won the 2024 election with one of the smallest popular-vote margins in U.S. history, but in news deserts — counties lacking a professional source of local news — it was an avalanche. Trump won 91% of these counties over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, according to an analysis of voting data by Medill Journalism School’s State of Local News project. While Trump’s national popular-vote margin was just under 1.5%, his margin in news deserts was massive.