on point 4 - you can find reporters contact info a few ways
a) click their byline (name) at the top of the article and it should go to some sort of author page. it should list their email or have an email button.
b) look for a masthead page. this could be in the “about” “meet the team” sort of sections of the website, those will also have links to author pages or contact info
c) look for the journalists on twitter. some are not very active on twitter but do list their emails in their bio.
on point 2 - this also means that if there’s something going on in your community that you want the news to cover, don’t just @ a news outlet on social media, send a direct tip to a LOCAL reporter. national news outlets monitor local feeds, and local reporters aren’t the ones monitoring the social media accounts anyway. even if you can’t find their email, direct @ ing the reporter on twitter or instagram will go very far (check which platform the reporter uses most, it’s usually twitter).
on correcting a mistake - if you see a headline or part of an article that is wrong, misleading or, yes even bigoted in some way, you can do something about it. again, direct contact with the person who wrote it helps, but you can also look on twitter and the masthead that i mentioned before if you find it on the website to find who the editor might have been. this depends on how big the paper/magazine/digital pub is, and what section it was in, so it might take some guessing. if you find who it probably was on the masthead, you can include their email when you email the reporter, especially if it involves a headline, which reporters often don’t write themselves. if you have to look on twitter, you can search twitter for the @ handle of the publication and then go to the “people” tab of the search and check people’s bios to see who MIGHT be the editor who worked on this, and either email or @ them too.
also, if you’re emailing about something like, let’s say misgendering a trans person, or misleading language about a police shooting, it’s helpful to have backup. include links to things like the AP Style Guide (like how they recently updated to make it clear you should never say “officer involved shooting”, and you should capitalize Black), or the Trans Journalists’ Association style guide. If you’re trying to get them to cover a story you’ve seen on social media, include links to those posts. include links to other news outlets who have covered something to show this is important or to prove that other news outlets already made the correction you are asking for, or got it correctly the first time.
*** oh and one last thing i forgot to mention! stop sharing screenshots of articles! if the article reported on something valuable share the link! you can share a screenshot with the link, but these days, clicks mean everything and reporters are screwed over when a post of a screenshot of their article goes viral but not the article itself. especially if its about a less visible issue, lots of clicks will tell the editors this is something they should allow their reporters to pursue more often. the only time you should share a screenshot rather than the article is when they are like a terrible outlet like f*x news that does not deserve your clicks but you’re holding them accountable, or its some awful opinion column you’re commenting on that you dont want to give any clicks. if you’re sharing an article on instagram, share a screenshot and pop that link in your bio/link tree at least! people worked hard to report on that!
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