A truly cursed year in media More than 3,000 journalists lost their jobs this year — 3,385 to be exact, according to the Columbia Journalism Review — and Maya Kosoff shares some of their stories in a piece for Gen Magazine on The Human Toll of the 2019 Media Apocalypse. When you consider that the GateHouse Media takeover of Gannett closed just last month, “This story may very well be outdated by the time it’s published,” she acknowledges. Catherine Thompson urges, “Read @mekosoff on what’s been a truly cursed year in media: ‘If 2019 signaled a change, it was the realization that not only is the ship sinking, but that there aren’t any lifeboats.’” Adds Molly Taft, “jesus christ this kicker from @mekosoff’s piece on media layoffs.” *Notably or conspicuously unusual The House votes on Trump’s impeachment today, and Fernando Alfonso III, Veronica Rocha, Mike Hayes and Amanda Wills of CNN have your live updates. 
Meanwhile, on Impeachment Eve Day, Trump took up a little correspondence, and as CNN’s Daniel Dale puts it, “Trump's anti-impeachment letter to Pelosi is littered with lies, misleading claims and claims lacking key context -- on his dealings with Ukraine, on Biden, on impeachment, on his professed accomplishments, on the...Salem witch trials. A fact check.” He details it all in his fact check with Tara Subramaniam, which finds Trump's wild anti-impeachment letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims. The New York Times also fact-checked his “rambling and angry letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he expressed his ‘most powerful protest’ against the impeachment process.” Read the annotated letter here. As Renato Mariotti says, “If you ever wondered why Trump’s team doesn’t want him to testify under oath, just read this letter.” John Branch thinks, “This is a remarkable* historical document, and I wonder how it will someday be displayed in the U.S. National Archives. (*‘remarkable: notably or conspicuously unusual.’)” Carrie Rickey has “No words for these words.” But Jack Shafer has a simple explanation: “Trump’s letter is his way of pleading innocent to the charges of impeachment on the grounds of insanity.” Makes perfect sense In the midst of all of that, you may have missed this scoop by Rachana Pradhan of Politico: Trump personally intervened to slash Puerto Rico’s Medicaid money as part of a budget deal, cutting funding the Republican and Democrat leaders had already agreed on. Trump also directly contradicted Congress by saying his administration does not consider the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 to be a genocide, reports BBC News. That’s “President Trump walking in the sad path blazed by previous presidents, denying history by denying the Armenian Genocide,” as Jake Tapper points out. 
And John Schwartz links to some “Great digging from @LFFriedman.” In her new piece for The New York Times, Lisa Friedman reveals that A Coal Baron Funded Climate Denial as His Company Spiraled Into Bankruptcy. Court filings show coal executive and Trump ally Bob Murray “paid himself $14 million, handed his successor a $4 million bonus and earmarked nearly $1 million for casting doubt on man-made climate change” as he led his company into bankruptcy. “Paid himself and his chairman $23 million in one year alone, while workers saw their pensions go south and into jeopardy. But those very same workers support his funding to climate denial front groups as well as the current WH. Makes perfect sense,” tweets Jeff Nesbit. Must-read Next, “Everyone stop what you are doing and read @mjcontrera,” tweets Danielle Paquette. Jessica Contrera’s latest for The Washington Post is the story of a child sex trafficking murder: He was sexually abusing underage girls. Then, police said, one of them killed him. Now Chrystul Kizer, who was 16 when she met Randy Volar, is accused of murdering her alleged sex trafficker and faces life in prison. As Contrera tweets, “Police and prosecutors knew Randy Volar, a 34-year-old white man, was abusing underage black girls. They arrested him — and released him on the same day. Three months went by. Then one of the girls, Chrystul Kizer, allegedly shot him in the head.” “Where is the stand your ground law for these women?” Trey Graham wonders. Prime garbage If you feel like you’re buying too much garbage online, Khadeeja Safdar, Shane Shifflett and Denise Blostein of The Wall Street Journal have some news for you: You Might Be Buying Trash on Amazon—Literally. 
Yes, “Dumpster divers say it’s easy to list discarded toys, electronics and books on the retailer’s platform. So we decided to try,” they explain. Go ahead and “Follow the journey of our jar of salvaged lemon curd,” tweets Glenn Hall. “Some quality first-person reporting from the WSJ on how easy it is to sell literal trash on Amazon,” as Kashmir Hill says. Meanwhile, Shira Ovide is “Just trying to decide if I would be willing to go Dumpster diving for my job.” And if you always feel like somebody’s watching you, let’s move on to a story about Amazon-owned home security company Ring. We shouldn’t be surprised, but still: “New: we bought a Ring to test its account security. It’s awful, making it much easier for hackers to reach cameras in peoples’ homes - no checks from unknown IP - no captcha for bruteforcing - doesn’t show who is logged in, so hacker can sit silently.” Joseph Cox links to his latest for Motherboard, We Tested Ring’s Security. It’s Awful. Read how Motherboard cracked Ring to test its security, and how, “rather than implementing its own safeguards, Ring is putting this onus on users to deploy security best practices.” Delicious details of SoftBank hubris Steven Arons links to an “Awesome story on life inside SoftBank’s Vision Fund. Absolute must read if you want to understand how recent decisions came about.” That’s the new Bloomberg Businessweek cover by Sarah McBride, Gillian Tan, Giles Turner and Pavel Alpeyev, SoftBank Vision Fund Employees Depict a Culture of Recklessness. Tweets Joel Weber, “Season's Greetings from SoftBank: The visionary venture capital firm has bigger problems than WeWork.” Indeed. This piece includes “Delicious details of SoftBank hubris! Also: vaping at meetings; a guy who doesn’t drink boasting about his 20,000-bottle wine cellar and ousting female CEOs, and bewitchment by entrepreneurs,” notes Pui-Wing Tam. “Hello, this is a bananas story about the culture and strategy at the SoftBank Vision Fund. These people are stewards of $100 billion in capital. Also ‘unicorn porn’ is a hell of a line,” adds Ovide. Global news As Paul Mozur tweets, “China’s police are hard at work building the largest domestic surveillance network the world has seen. The key is not so much tech as a lack of checks on police power. Hugely invasive networks of scanners and cameras now blanket most Chinese cities.” His new piece for The New York Times, with Aaron Krolik, reveals how A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers. Tweets Sid Acker, “The United States and other countries use some of the same techniques to track terrorists or drug lords. China wants to use them to track everybody.” Ken Wheaton calls it a “Sneak peek at our future.” At The Guardian, Amelia Gentleman tells the story of three generations of one Windrush-descended family struggling to prove they are British. “Imagine the shock. Your world falling apart. The stress & the worry. ‘Home Office said you’re not British. It upset me. I was born here, I haven’t left the country, I’ve done good jobs here and this has never arisen,’” tweets Clare Sambrook. About this next one, what else is there to say, except maybe RIP to Cameron Wilson, who shares, “this exclusive from @HannahD15 has killed me.” The scoop from Hannah Ryan of BuzzFeed News, The Australian Government Created A Bizarre And Very Bleak Horoscope Chart To Scare Asylum Seekers. Yes, as she tweets, “Australia used ASTROLOGY to scare Sri Lankan asylum seekers from coming here by boat.” “This is next level crazy and also the horoscopes don’t align to actual star sign characteristics so it is also lazy,” notes Miriam Elder. Relatable 
According to the scoop from Maxwell Tani, Lloyd Grove and Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast, Adam Driver walked out of an NPR ‘Fresh Air’ interview with Terry Gross after expressing displeasure at the idea of listening to a clip of his own acting — a fear he’s repeatedly voiced in the past. Ryan Mac thinks “you gotta be a monster to walk out on terry gross,” but “having recently read approximately one billion profiles and interviews of Adam Driver, there is no way that Terry Gross’s research team didn’t know he’d react this way,” says Anne Helen Petersen Also, “Being horrified by his own voice may be the most relatable thing Adam Driver has ever done,” says Nick Turner. As Kevin Fallon shares, “I have spent the entire day transcribing interviews and enduring the trauma of listening to my own voice so you better believe I’m about to Adam Driver my way out of this office!” Anyway, says Scott Bixby, “Forcing someone to listen to a recording of themselves singing Sondheim is the kind of torture that should be punished in the Hague but this whole thing is very funny.” Cheer up! 
As Marc Champion says, “It’s good to dream. This is both fun and weirdly reassuring,” so check out the Optimist’s Guide to 2020, by John Fraher, Drew Armstrong, Jeremy Diamond and Sam Dodge of Bloomberg. Rosalind Mathieson explains, “Each year Bloomberg puts together a ‘pessimist’s guide’ to the coming year (to be absorbed with a stiff whisky by the fire at Christmas). This year it’s been turned on its head. Happy reading!” Tweets Helen Robertson, “If you’re feeling a bit hopeless about the state of the world I’d recommend this (I read it on the way to work and it cheered me up).” Adds Alaa Shahine, “Chill, it might not be that bad! It’s time for a more positive view of the future.” | 
One of Victoria Chow’s favorite features of Muck Rack is the ability to search based on what journalists are tweeting about. As the Communications Director for Pop-Up Magazine Productions, she’s also using Muck Rack to curate geographic and topic-specific media lists, monitor the reach and impact of stories, and save time tracking coverage using automatic Coverage Reports. Head over to the Muck Rack Blog to find out more about 
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