This week, I was at ONA, the Online News Association’s conference for digital journalists, so we’ve got a shorter newsletter today. (And if we ran into each other, it was good to meet!)

One of the most memorable and impactful parts of the conference for me was the launch panel for the Pillars Bylines fellowship, where panelists touched on the necessity of specificity in journalism, the importance of Muslim stories in the public record, and widening the pipeline for culture reporters. More on that in our media round-up section.

You can see an abbreviated version of our media links is on Instagram each week, focusing on what a handful of those stories say about how power and identity impact journalism. (Previous week’s here!)

—James Salanga

💰 A new opportunity for early-career Muslim journalists: Pillars Bylines is seeking to support ten journalists who “treat culture as essential coverage” and through a yearlong fellowship whose applications launched this week. An info session is scheduled for April 22, 2026. 

🏛️ Despite a judge’s temporary restraining order, Nexstar says it can’t stop the $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, at risk of “immediate operational harm” and asset loss. The merger would join the largest and fourth largest broadcast companies in the U.S., reach an estimated 80% of US households through their TVs, and give the company that removed Kimmel from air temporarily an unprecedented amount of power.  

🔊 “We don’t believe we should take an advocacy position,” said Mike Abrams on the Columbia Journalism Review podcast The Kicker in response to community concerns around New York Times coverage of anti-trans legislation and attacks on trans rights. 

📙 How can you practice solidarity in journalism under duress? Solidarity Journalism Initiative lead, professor, and author Anita Varma will outline her research on solidarity in her launch event for Solidarity Reporting in a virtual conversation with journalist and author Lewis Raven Wallace on April 14. (The Objective interviewed Varma about her forthcoming book and how solidarity interacts with the standard of objectivity last month.)  

🤬 “A bullshit move.” More comically opaque restrictions on Pentagon press reporters ignore or work around new legal requirements for government transparency, as the Columbia Journalism Review reports. 

🧑‍⚖️ A federal judge has ruled that Trump violated the First Amendment when executive order "Ending Taxpayer Subsidies for Bias Media" clawed back funding for NPR and PBS, gutting American public media. NPR reaches an estimated 99% of Americans.

Have a story you think we should include in this section of next week’s newsletter? Let us know here or by responding to this email.

This issue is by James Salanga and Marlee Baldridge. Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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