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Dozens of news organizations are urging the White House to reconsider its ban on The Associated Press over a dispute about what to call the body of water between Florida and Texas. The AP is calling it the Gulf of Mexico. President Donald Trump wants it called the Gulf of America.
And Trump, as recently as early this week, said he will continue to ban the AP from certain media events, including inside the Oval Office and on Air Force One, until the wire service gives in and calls it the Gulf of America.
However, 40 outlets wrote a letter to the White House this week asking Trump to lift the ban. The outlets include many of the news organizations that you would expect to fight for press freedoms: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
But it also included two outlets that you might not have expected: Fox News and Newsmax — conservative outlets that usually support Trump.
The New York Times’ Katie Robertson reports that Newsmax, which is a staunch supporter of Trump, said in a statement, “We can understand President Trump’s frustration because the media has often been unfair to him, but Newsmax still supports the AP’s right, as a private organization, to use the language it wants to use in its reporting. We fear a future administration may not like something that Newsmax writes and seeks to ban us. This is why news organizations like Newsmax and Fox News are supporting the AP’s First Amendment rights though we may disagree with its editorial point of view from time to time.”
So not exactly full-throated support, but support nonetheless.
The AP continues (and correctly) insists that it’s a news organization that serves an international audience. The Gulf of Mexico does not fall within U.S. borders and its name, which has existed for some 400 years, is most recognized around the world.
The AP has put out several statements defending its stance and Lauren Easton, a spokeswoman for The AP, has said, “This is about the government telling the public and press what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders.”
The letter from the 40 news organizations to the White House, which according to Status’ Oliver Darcy was delivered on Monday, said the decision to ban the AP was “an escalation of a dispute that does not serve the presidency or the public. … The First Amendment prohibits the government from asserting control over how news organizations make editorial decisions. Any attempt to punish journalists for those decisions is a serious breach of this constitutional protection.”
So this is all well and good — dozens of news outlets showing their support of the AP and letting the White House know about it.
But, will it have any kind of meaningful impact?
It seems unlikely that Trump and his White House will reverse the ban just because other news outlets sent a letter and showed solidarity. It feels more likely that Trump and his White House will simply shrug their shoulders.
It also seems unlikely that Trump, short of the AP calling it the Gulf of America, is ever going to cave on this. And the AP likely will, and should, continue to stand firm.
The outcome? Probably to be determined inside a courtroom.
I talked with longtime media reporter Paul Farhi, formerly of The Washington Post, about the AP/Trump situation at length for “The Poynter Report Podcast.” That episode comes out on Monday. I’ll have more about it in that day’s newsletter.
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague Angela Fu.
Gannett expects to execute $60 to $70 million in asset sales this year, “the vast majority” of which is tied to its upcoming sale of the Austin American-Statesman, company executives revealed during an earnings call Thursday.
The company announced Tuesday that it would sell the American-Statesman, one of its largest papers, to Hearst, which already owns several Texas newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. The deal, terms of which were not shared, is expected to close by the end of March, and proceeds will be used to pay down Gannett’s debt.
Asset sales are one tool Gannett has used in recent years to pay down its more than $1 billion debt, which it acquired from its 2019 merger with GateHouse. Last year, Gannett executed $21 million in asset sales and repaid $73.5 million in debt. This year, the company expects to pay down “well north” of $100 million of debt and has several real estate sales in the pipeline, CEO Mike Reed said.
News of the American-Statesman sale comes just a few months after Gannett sold its product reviews site Reviewed to StackCommerce on Dec. 1. Gannett had closed the site a month prior, laying off more than 70 employees. The terms of the deal, which was first reported by The Verge, were not disclosed, but Gannett’s earnings call Thursday provided a hint. CFO Doug Horne said on the call that Gannett had completed “three real estate and nonstrategic asset sales” last quarter, generating $1.7 million in proceeds.
The decision to sell or shut down certain assets impacted revenue last quarter, which fell 7.2% year-over-year to $621.3 million. During that quarter, Gannett generated a profit of $64.3 million, improving upon its $22.9 million loss during the same period the prior year.
Gannett ended 2024 with a net loss of $26.4 million, an improvement from the previous year, when it lost $27.9 million. The company expects better results this year, which is also when it plans to hit the milestone of total digital revenue making up 50% of total revenue.
For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague Kristen Hare.
On Thursday, The Associated Press joined other national organizations working to strengthen local journalism. In a press release, the AP announced its Local Investigative Reporting Program led by Ron Nixon. A note from Julie Pace, the AP’s executive editor, included this:
“Ron and his team will work with state and local outlets to cultivate stories and support their investigative reporting needs. This includes providing training for local newsrooms in areas such as open source investigative techniques; using AI for local investigations; producing localized investigative guides; connecting local newsrooms with AP editors and other subject matter experts; and working with AP’s data team to provide data analysis services, consultations and data distributions.”
The AP joins other national newsrooms that are partnering with local newsrooms and local journalists. ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network launched in 2018, “bringing together local talented journalists and all the resources our newsroom has to offer. The journalism we create has changed laws, held bad actors to account and helped communities,” ProPublica says on its site.
In 2023, The New York Times launched its own Local Investigations Fellowship, which works with journalists to cover their states and offers co-publishing to local newsrooms.
Meanwhile, local journalists based in local newsrooms are still doing powerful work. In 2017, three local journalists started collecting examples of local investigative reporting, which you can find each week in Local Matters.
“CBS News Sunday Morning” and correspondent Seth Doane will have a feature this Sunday (9 a.m. Eastern) with Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, who was severely injured in 2022 while covering the war in Ukraine. His injuries included losing his right leg below the knee, much of his left foot, sight in his left eye, use of his left hand, a fractured skull and burns on his body.
In the piece, Doane asks, “How have you experienced or dealt with the limitations that you now have? Are there examples of times where you felt limited that really hit you?”
Hall said, “Yeah, I know at first I was remembering that I wouldn’t be able to teach my daughters how to ride a bike. Can’t run alongside them. Small things like that. Playing with them. You know, I used to go running with them all the time in the park. Can’t do that with them. That’s hard. You know, a big one happened … when someone broke into our house. Two people, middle of the night, 1 a.m. (My wife) Alicia’s pregnant. And Bosco, our dog, started barking away, and Alicia jumped up and heard something downstairs and she came down the stairs. She was the one who had to confront the burglars, scream at them … calling the cops. Get out.”
Doane asked, “In this house?”
Hall said, “In this house. And I’m upstairs trying to get my legs on. I mean, what a reversal of roles. That was hard. That was tricky. Suddenly, that one thing I’ve taken for granted that I did, you know, I couldn’t do it. My pregnant wife was the one downstairs screaming, you know, trying to protect the household. And boy, did she do it well, they were out of that window — no time at all. So she’s probably better than I am. … But that was tough.”
- A sports stunner on Thursday as Major League Baseball and ESPN have mutually agreed to end their national TV deal after the upcoming season. The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand report that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred wrote a memo to owners that said the league has “not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage.” Both sides haven’t ruled out teaming up again in the future. Check out The Athletic story for more. And here’s The Washington Post’s Chelsea Janes and Ben Strauss with a story that the breakup might not have been so mutual after all.
- CNN’s Daniel Dale with “Trump’s 13 biggest lies of his first month back in office.”
- Gizmodo’s AJ Dellinger with “Joe Rogan Is No Longer the King of Podcasts.”
- ProPublica’s Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou and Lizzie Presser with “Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did.”
- Maureen Dowd’s latest in The New York Times: “Being George Clooney Is Harder Than It Looks.”
- The Los Angeles Times’ Stacy Perman with “Beyond ‘Emilia Perez’: Inside 7 of the nastiest Oscar campaigns in history.”
- The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Bachman with “This Olympian Blamed a Burrito for a Failed Drug Test. Four Years Later, She’s Making Her Return.”
- Finally today, I want to remember someone who held a special place during my time growing up in Pittsburgh. Mike Lange, the longtime and legendary hockey announcer of the Pittsburgh Penguins, has died. He was 76. Lange called Penguins games on TV and radio for nearly five decades starting in the mid-1970s until his retirement in 2021. He was wildly popular in Pittsburgh and had a collection of odd but charming catchphrases, such as “Scratch my back with a hacksaw”; “Lookout Loretta”; “Buy Sam a drink and get his dog one, too.”; “Get in the fast lane, grandma, the bingo game is ready to roll”; “He’s smiling like a butcher’s dog”; and, whenever it became clear the Penguins were going to win, he’d say, “Elvis has just left the building.” After listening to him and becoming a hockey fan as a kid, I got the chance to meet him when I became a hockey writer covering the National Hockey League. And like everyone who ever met him, I can say he was a big deal, but never acted like a big deal. He was down to earth and as nice as could be. Lange was elected to the broadcaster’s wing of the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2001. Years ago, Canada’s TSN put together Lange’s 10 best calls.
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