Diving into NPR reporting priorities

5 journalists describe their beat focuses for 2022

View this email online If there’s one thing that differentiates quality news organizations from their competitors, it’s top-notch beat reporting. Well-sourced journalists with a clear focus and solid editing routinely break news and advance public understanding of critical issues. These are key ingredients to public-service journalism. There’s a lot of other factors that go into it, but news products with amazing beat reporters are often more helpful to democracy than those without beat systems because they are proactive rather than reactive. Some of NPR’s desks (or reporting teams) are structured around today’s most important topics — like health, science and politics. Others are more generically named, like the Business Desk and the National Desk. All of them are structured to support beat reporters specializing in critical issues that affect our quality of life. Because we consider solid beat reporting the foundation of journalism, for our first newsletter of the New Year, we asked five accomplished NPR journalists two questions:  What’s the top priority on your beat for 2022? What story or topic area are you most excited to report in 2022? Their responses below were gathered by Public Editor researcher and reporter Emily Barske. They were lightly edited and condensed for clarity.   Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina Carrie Johnson, National Justice Correspondent [My top priority is] the fate of the most important and effective piece of civil rights legislation in history, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In a pair of decisions over the last eight years, the Supreme Court has severely restricted the tools the Justice Department uses to safeguard voting rights across the country. [The Department of Justice] no longer has the ability to review new voting restrictions before they take effect in places with a history of discrimination, and it must meet a higher bar to prove changes at the ballot box disadvantage minority voters, the disabled or people who don’t speak English proficiently. These profound challenges for civil rights enforcers at the Justice Department are happening as Republican-led states pass a wave of new limits on voting and voters. I will be watching the fate of DOJ lawsuits against Georgia and Texas for signals about what remains of the Voting Rights Act. [I’m excited about covering] Biden and criminal justice. As a U.S. Senator, Joe Biden once considered crime legislation a significant part of his legacy. But on the campaign trail, candidate Biden tried to separate himself from many of those tough-on-crime policies and promised that if he won the White House, he would reduce the footprint of federal prisons, get rid of tough mandatory minimum sentences and put an end to federal capital punishment. Instead, the prison population has risen since Biden took the oath of office and many of his other promises to eliminate racial disparities in punishment remain unmet. I’ll be watching to see whether the White House and the Justice Department live up to their rhetoric or abandon the goals of many voters of color who helped elect Biden and Vice President Harris. Domenico Montanaro, Washington Desk Senior Political Editor/Correspondent This year is a critical year in politics. Control of the levers of power in Washington are at stake and we’re going to be aggressive in trying to make sense of the campaigns and elections as they happen. We’ll have our hands full with the multiple congressional races up for grabs and trying to organize them to tell a story that makes sense to our audience. House control appears in jeopardy for Democrats, and if Republicans take over, that will certainly have consequences for the Biden agenda. It’ll be important for me and our team to try and best explain what Republicans will do with that power and what it will mean for the American people, if they do, in fact, wrest back control.   The Senate will have lots of storylines as well to pay attention to, and with it split 50-50 currently, the stakes couldn’t be higher. It will be important to follow which issues are driving the elections, why people are intending to vote the way they will, and then after the elections, to examine and explain why it all happened the way it did to make some sense of what it all means going forward, ahead of another presidential election cycle that will kick off shortly afterward. Will President Biden run for reelection? Will Donald Trump remain the critical component of the Republican Party? Will he attempt a political comeback? All of those will be questions we’ll face after the midterms. Neela Banerjee, Supervising Climate Editor There’s so much to do in terms of climate coverage. I think one area the climate team is really committed to covering is the drought out West, which looks likely to continue, and what that means for the millions of people living in the affected area. Leah Donnella, Code Switch Editor On the race beat, we’ve spent a lot of time in the past years trying to break down how racism works — how it’s embedded into laws and institutions, how it shows up in ways that are extreme and ways that are mundane, how people and groups can enact racism even when they don’t intend to. One of my goals in the coming year is to spend more time focusing on what liberation looks like. What are the big, ambitious, imaginative dreams people have for a world that’s not debilitated by racism? And in the meantime, what are some of the unique, interesting places (both real and metaphorical) that people are carving out where they can exist in a fuller way? I’m fascinated right now by the intersection of race and technology. It’s interesting, though frequently disheartening, to see how scientists are baking our understandings of race into the machines and apps they create. And it’s equally interesting how different communities manage to mold technology and use it in totally different ways from how it was imagined. Basically, I’m obsessed with the ways that humans are becoming more like robots, robots are becoming more human, and how race shapes all of that. Andrea Hsu, Labor and Workplace Correspondent  There’s so much uncertainty in the labor market right now, with employers still having a hard time finding workers to fill positions and workers increasingly asserting their demands, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on how the employer-versus-worker dynamic evolves in the coming months. I’m looking forward to getting out a bit more and talking with workers about whether they think they’re better off or worse off as compared with before the pandemic. Companies, including NPR, that went remote in the pandemic have yet to bring workers back in large numbers, and “return to the office” dates keep getting pushed back. Will 2022 finally see a return of office life, or will the continuing threat from coronavirus force a permanent change to how we work? The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Researchers Amaris Castillo, Kayla Randall and Emily Barske make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Twitter and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming. Kelly McBride NPR Public Editor Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute Kelly McBride Public Editor Kayla Randall NPR Amaris Castillo Poynter Institute Emily Barske Poynter Institute The Public Editor stands as a source of independent accountability. Created by NPR's board of directors, the Public Editor serves as a bridge between the newsroom and the audience, striving to both listen to the audience's concerns and explain the newsroom's work and ambitions. The office ensures NPR remains steadfast in its mission to present fair, accurate and comprehensive information in service of democracy. Read more from the NPR Public Editor, contact us, or follow us on Twitter. You received this message because you're subscribed to Public Editor emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy