Ari Sen
@ArijitDSen
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Award-winning Investigative Data Journalist @CBSNews . Bojangles Expert. Previously @dallasnews , AI @pulitzercenter @NBCNews @asheville @ucbsoj @unchussman .
Dallas, Texas
Joined March 2012
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Pinned Tweet
Some more news... I'm a finalist for the Livingston Award for my work on Bleeding Out with
@LaurenCaruba
!
Honored to be a part of this group of top-tier reporters.
Congratulations to the 2024 national reporting finalists! Check out the emerging talent. 👍
The Livingston Awards honor young and talented reporters, giving them national recognition and new opportunities.
#uofm
#livingstonawards
#journalismmatters
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THREAD: The biggest story of my life is finally out.
Since 2019, I’ve been investigating a monitoring tool called Social Sentinel. They bill it as a way to help save students’ lives.
I found it had another purpose — surveilling campus protests.
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The company says its service isn’t a surveillance tool.
But universities used it to track protests over a Confederate statue, student criticism of university officials and even a town hall with a US Senator.
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In emails to clients, company salespeople also boasted about “mitigating” and “forestalling” protests.
They even created a whitepaper about how the service could be used in demonstrations.
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At least 37 colleges have used Social Sentinel since 2015. But emails sent by the company founder suggest it may be “hundreds.”
None of them seem to have told students anything about the tool.
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In more recent messages to clients, the company has promoted a new feature — the ability to monitor student emails.
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A note about the paywall — I hope you’ll choose to support the DMN so you can read this story. Right now you can subscribe for only $1.
But if you are a student who wants to read but can’t afford it, email me from your .edu account with your Venmo and I’ll cover you.
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To complete this investigation my reporting partner
@DKproduxion
and I interviewed dozens of people and acquired and reviewed more than 56,000 pages of documents.
We are also making all of those documents public today:
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My final story for NBC News, and my first single byline.
For this piece I went through a trove of documents I obtained from the university and found that UNC Police and NC SBI are using controversial tracking technology to monitor student social media.
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I also personally want to thank all of the people who mentored and inspired me first at UNC, then at NBC and finally Berkeley and the DMN.
Without all of these folks this story would not be possible.
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We couldn’t have done all this without lots of help.
First among the group are our editors/advisers
@karisaking
and
@DavidBarstow
.
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Our illustrator
@MichaelHogueDMN
deserves a special shout out for this incredibly cool and creepy illustration.
And the folks on our audience team —
@zairalperez
@A_Slayton
and
@omgsiali
— have also been working super hard to make sure people see the story.
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A Trump-backed House candidate has been accused of excessive force nine times in his role as a cop.
Accusers say he beat them with batons while handcuffed, kicked them in the groin and called them the N-word.
My latest w/
@milesmoffeit
:
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Lots of others too —
@paldhous
,
@suryamattu
,
@jonathanstray
,
@elenaconis
,
@brettvsimpson
,
@Hancock_JohnD
, our classmates
@ucbsoj
in the investigative and narrative writing seminars,
@bboying1275
and
@MarinaWalkerG
@pulitzercenter
,
@amy_hollyfield
@KatriceRHardy
& our lawyer Tom.
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THREAD: Dallas police ignored a decade of warning signs about Officer Christopher Hess' brutality.
Then he killed someone.
My latest investigation with
@milesmoffeit
@danachewy
:
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I'm super excited to announce that I've joined
@CBSNews
as an investigative data journalist.
I'll be working alongside a seriously impressive team to produce enterprise stories for both local and national audiences.
(Yes, my mom did buy me this shirt.)
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@yumcoconutmilk
@jerryjwilson
This is plagiarism. You should name and shame. At least as a warning to others so they don’t pitch there.
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@milesmoffeit
@danachewy
Of Hess' 10 excessive force cases one stands out.
In 2014, Hess and his partner appeared to illegally stop a Black man named Terry Morris.
Then over the next 5 minutes, they relentlessly punched, kicked, kneed and contorted him.
Our experts called it "torture."
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After my investigation, it now appears that
@UNC
is dropping Social Sentinel/Navigate360 Detect, according to a statement given to Chapelboro:
“The University’s current contract with Navigate360 ends in October and the contract will not be renewed.”
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In less than a week, I am publishing the biggest story of my life. It's made me both richer and poorer, caused many sleepless nights and likely taken years off of my life because of stress.
I can't wait for you all to read it.
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@MarxistRealism
Wow. Would love to get more details on this if you are willing to send them to me via dm or email (arijit.sen
@dallasnews
.com)
Also, thanks for reading.
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Several men said that Hess' injured them while falsely arresting them for public intoxication.
In Texas, officers can make these arrests without conducting a sobriety test. A study this year found that Black people make up 36% of these arrests but only 24% of the population.
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🧵 — For those wondering, here is a list of all 37 colleges that have used Social Sentinel:
- Arizona State University
- California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
- Shasta College
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of Connecticut
- Gulf Coast State College
THREAD: The biggest story of my life is finally out.
Since 2019, I’ve been investigating a monitoring tool called Social Sentinel. They bill it as a way to help save students’ lives.
I found it had another purpose — surveilling campus protests.
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5K
14K
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For over six years, the City of Dallas has been defending Hess' actions in a civil rights lawsuit brought by the family of the woman he killed.
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🧵with LOTS of personal news:
First things first — After many months of contract work
@dallasnews
, I'm excited to announce that I'm joining The News as a full-time computational journalist.
Send me tips on tech, police and criminal justice at arijit.sen
@dallasnews
.com
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Some news... I won an IRE Award!
Big thanks to
@LaurenCaruba
for spearheading such an impressive feat of reporting and for letting me tag along.
The Print/Online Division II Award goes to
@dallasnews
&
@ExpressNews
for "Bleeding Out.” The investigation exposed a national health crisis: the tens of thousands of Americans who bleed to death from potentially survivable injuries each year.
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Hess brutality showed similar patterns in the case files we reviewed. He often said the complaints tried to "push past" or "pull away" from him. Experts called his answers vague and formulaic.
In at least 4 cases he appeared to have hit men in the face and given them black eyes.
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In 2017, after arriving at a suspicious person call, Hess fired 12 bullets into a car moving at roughly walking speed, killing a 21-year-old mother of two named Genevive Dawes.
Hess said he "feared for his safety."
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Are you a journalist wondering what the hell is going on with AI?
I put together a guide for
@CJR
with
@HilkeSchellmann
and
@sayashk
on how to cover AI responsibly:
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And finally a big shout out to our lawyer Tom Williams and especially to our sources, who trusted us with their painful stories and gave us new insight into the problems we saw in the case files and data.
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Other people who filed complaints documented Hess' temper and tactics.
One said Hess threatened to "throw [him] out the fucking window" punched him in the face so hard that he blacked out. Others saw Hess contort his handcuffed wrists behind his head into a stress position.
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This project was a massive team effort. Some people to thank: my reporting partners
@milesmoffeit
@danachewy
; our editors
@karisaking
@jkteoh
@davidguzman1985
@amy_hollyfield
@KatriceRHardy
; our fantastic illustrator
@MichaelHogueDMN
;
@liesbethpowers
for her powerful documentary
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THREAD: Dozens of colleges have spent thousands each year on AI surveillance tech to prevent suicides and shootings.
It almost never works.
But in the rare instances when it does, the consequences can be devastating.
My latest for
@dallasnews
:
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You can read the whole story here:
Right now, you can get a 3-month subscription to the DMN for just $1.
But if that cost is an issue for you please reach out and I'll fund it for you. My DMs are open.
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My team
@CBSNews
is hiring a (fully remote) investigative data journalist!
Come work with me:
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Those who help with reporting and fact-checking:
@cassandrajar
@MadiLAlexander
@bysambrose
@yberard
@kellixsmith
;
@TomFoxPhoto
for his beautiful portraits; the audience team especially
@zairalperez
@A_Slayton
; copy editor Michael Apuan and our page designer
@Hancock_JohnD
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@milesmoffeit
@danachewy
To see the stop for yourself you can watch the video here:
I'll warn you — it's hard to watch.
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I'm excited to announce that my story for
@dallasnews
over the summer about school surveillance has won the
@SPJ_NorCal
James Madison Freedom of Information Award in the data viz category:
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I legitimately feel like 30% of my job is turning crappy government PDFs into usable data.
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@jamesfactora
@colevillena
I’ve had many types of editors. The best ones are those that sit next to you and go line by line through the piece in collaboration with you. The worst will just rewrite your stuff (often adding inaccuracies) and tell you it’s better.
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This isn’t the first time Guskiewicz has gaslit reporters like this. At the Campus Safety Summit earlier this year, he and the police chief claimed they didn’t surveil student social media. I stood up and read from the email proving they did. They continued to deny it.
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SCOOP: School districts educating millions of Texas' students are surveilling their email, social media and/or web history.
My latest, for
@dallasnews
:
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- Texas State University
- Collin College
- University of Texas at Dallas
- University of Virginia
- Virginia Commonwealth University
- Virginia State University
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Yesterday was my last day
@dallasnews
.
I’ll have more to share about my (very cool) new gig soon, but for now I’m off to a beach in the Caribbean.
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I made the front page of the DTH two years after graduating from UNC:
The
#FrontPage
of this week's Daily Tar Heel: "An unseen sentinel"
Pick up your print edition in the blue boxes across UNC's campus and Orange County today.
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Im standing in solidarity with my
@DallasNewsGuild
colleagues as we fight for a fair contract. We're raising our voices in support of the pay increases we deserve. With inflation at a 40-year high, we can’t wait any longer. It’s time to get professional pay for professional work
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My latest story shows that UNC police allowed a twice-convicted child rapist to roam the campus and ignored student concerns about guns on campus all the back in February:
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Y'all...
@jkteoh
and I just wrote a scraper, set it up on GitHub Actions, pointed the data to a DataWrapper map and then published it on the
@dallasnews
site.... all in four hours. Election night is wild.
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I'm excited to announce that I've rejoined NBC as a freelance contributor!!
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"One Al Día reporter with 15 years of experience makes $49,000 a year, while a reporter at the Dallas Morning News with comparable experience makes over $70,000 a year."
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It was hard, it was painful but I'm so glad to have served on the
@DallasNewsGuild
bargaining committee to get our historic first contract done.
1/ After 32 months of bargaining, we have reached a tentative agreement with
@dallasnews
.
Our historic first contract sets new wage floors, provides job security, establishes new severance rates and creates an avenue to address grievances for our unit of about 140 journalists.
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Yesterday DMN management shamefully and surreptitiously announced they were dismantling the team producing Spanish-language sister newspaper Al Día. Though the name may live on lets be clear — this is NOT the same product. I stand with
@DallasNewsGuild
and Al Dia.
#EstoyConAlD
ía
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"For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in."
My boy Raj Chetty strikes again!
This is incredibly damning. Elite colleges in America aren’t a meritocracy, they’re… a plutocracy.
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THREAD: Across the country, tens off thousands of people bleed to death because they are too far from high-level trauma care.
In my latest w/
@dallasnews
and
@LaurenCaruba
, we show which areas are the worst.
More here:
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My entire life has lead to this moment.
I helped
@sblaskovich
explore the food at Texas' first Bojangles for
@dallasnews
:
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THREAD: Happy new year everyone!
As a member and keen observer of the news industry, every year I like to publish a round-up of the best journalism I’ve consumed in the past 365 days.
I'll start with the 10 best print stories:
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In addition to my responsibilities
@dallasnews
, I'm also thrilled to reveal that I've been selected for the inaugural class of
@pulitzercenter
's AI Accountability Fellowship.
More info here:
We are pleased to introduce you to the Pulitzer Center’s inaugural cohort of AI Accountability Fellows! 10 journalists across 10 countries and four continents will explore AI’s impact on communities around the world.
Meet our AI Fellows. 🧵
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I would argue (I think convincingly) that is a direct result of the fantastic reporting done by
@bycharliemcgee
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Did you know that most incarcerated people are counted in districts where they are imprisoned, not where they are from? I didn't until recently.
My latest for
@dallasnews
w/
@lmcgaughy
explores what happens if Texas counts these people differently:
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I think the people at work think I've gone insane.... and honestly, they may not be wrong:
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My colleague
@milesmoffeit
went on
@NBCDFW
this morning to talk about our latest investigation on one brutal cop's history of violence.
You can find the segment here:
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@UNC
Confirmed. UNC just sent me this statement: "We re-evaluated our relationship with the product and decided not to renew the contract."
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Following our investigation, multiple Dallas civil rights leaders and activists are calling on DPD to adopt basic DOJ standards for investigating police accused of misconduct.
From my colleague
@milesmoffeit
:
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@ainsleyplatt
The way I navigated this is by first approaching a local (but professional) publication that was super understaffed but didn't have an internship program at the time. They will likely be desperate for people and you'll get a lot of clips. It gets easier after that.
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Final piece of big news — I graduated!
In mid-May, I completed a Master's degree in Journalism at
@ucbsoj
. I feel so honored to have worked with so many talented people in my two years at Berkeley, both the incredible professors and my very gifted classmates.
📸:
@BuddyTerry
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UConn is dropping Social Sentinel/Navigate360 Detect following our investigation last year into its lack of efficacy and use for surveilling protests:
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I'll be speaking on this panel too! Swing by if you want to learn more about Social Sentinel, or if you are confused as to what AI even is.
All your questions will be answered!
Algorithms and AI are everywhere.
@tenuous
and
@hilkeschellmann
will show you techniques to audit these technologies and hold them accountable.
🗓️ Saturday, March 4 at 9:00 a.m. CT.
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- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Jackson College
- Oakland University
- Grand Rapids Community College
- Michigan State University
- Wake Forest University
- North Carolina State University
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Duke University
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A member of the campus safety commission
@unccollege
just called me a liar re. My geofence story. Here is the document proving they monitored students:
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From February to August, I read dozens of case files related to police use of force. A whole lot of them involved dogs.
Check out this story that I contributed to as a researcher for the California Reporting Project from
@mercnews
:
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Regardless of your thoughts on
@nhannahjones
' work, not giving her tenure is a travesty. She is probably the most qualified professor
@UNCHussman
ever hired. In addition to increasing the representation of POC in faculty, she brings investigative muscle to a school that lacks it.
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Also five years after I got fired from the DTH but we don't have to talk about that.
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@natsfert
As someone who has helped hire interns, these are not the things I care about. I care about 1. past internships/work 2. technical skills (for our data interns) 3. how good your cover letter is (to get an interview) and 4. thoughtful answers and smart questions in the interview.
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My latest: Uvalde CISD, the district where 19 children were murdered yesterday, purchased a social media monitoring technology called Social Sentinel in August 2019:
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My former classmates
@margiecullen2
and
@marshall_anne
have a fantastic piece out in Runner's World on the questionable training practices inside elite high school women's running programs.
You should give it some time today:
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@TTOJAF
Would love to see more documents if you have them and are willing. DM me or email arisenjournalism
@protonmail
.com
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- North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- University of North Carolina at Asheville
- East Carolina University
- Oregon State University
- University of Oregon
- University of North Texas
- North Central Texas College
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- Florida State University
- Florida Atlantic University
- Palm Beach State College
- Indian River State College
- Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
- Miami Dade College
- Broward College
- Kennesaw State University
- Anne Arundel Community College
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After a lot of logistical wrangling and a year of delay, I'm excited to announce that tomorrow I'll start as
@dallasnews
' first-ever data and investigative intern. A huge shout out to
@karisaking
@jamiedhancock
@BetsyRate
@nstockdale
and
@Hancock_JohnD
for making this happen.
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I'm doing a Twitter Spaces! If you have questions about college surveillance, tune in!
Join us and
@ArijitDSen
@bboying1275
@pulitzercenter
for a conversation on how colleges use AI to monitor student protests.
Set a reminder for my upcoming Space!
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New documents I obtained show DPD's AI early warning system has been plagued with delays, administrative problems and opposition from the police union.
The cost to taxpayers? Over $900k.
My latest with
@milesmoffeit
for
@dallasnews
:
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Based on the reporting from myself,
@HannerMcClellan
and others I would be incredibly skeptical downloading this app until its been checked out by a independent third party.
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Very proud to have been part of the
@DallasNewsGuild
team that got this across the finish line.
Great news 🤩 Our voting members ratified our first contract!
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My latest for
@dallasnews
with
@KevinRKrause
: I pulled a bunch of data and made some maps to explain how Texas is different when it comes to guns. Check it out here:
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THREAD: 2020 was a dumpster fire. But the work of great journalists around the world made things just a little bit better. I want to highlight some of their great work, so here are my favorite stories (across all mediums) from the past year:
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THREAD: Re. the Emily Wilder firing, I wanted to share my own story of unwritten social media policies being weaponized against me for political reasons.
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@mikiebarb
He is using the Rogerian method (whether knowingly or not). Basically anytime someone says something you summarize what they've said in order to build trust, understanding. Also helps with memory and keeps you from using straw man arguments.
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Huge thanks to my editor
@karisaking
for dealing with my anxious/incoherent ramblings,
@DavidBarstow
@brettvsimpson
for helping me develop this story,
@paldhous
for data help &
@hollyhacker
@lmcgaughy
@MadiLAlexander
@milesmoffeit
@cassandrajar
for the constant encouragement.
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I finally have a boss:
Y'all - I'm joining the
@dallasnews
as their Data & Interactive News editor, starting next week.
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