Ep #3 | Jake Spring : Journalism, Cities, Podcasting | Part I

On the core values that Journalists try to abide by…

“…I wouldn’t say that I have something memorized, Reuters has what’s called the trust principle which we are all supposed to adhere to and we all do. But I like those because they are just common sense, basically – Don’t do anything where somebody feels like their trust has been violated, you know. Don’t represent things in a way that’s gonna make the reader think you’re misleading them. Always be completely upfront with your sources, if you’re gonna quote them and they wanted to be anonymous, talk to them about – Can I say you work for this ministry…just be completely upfront about everything. At the end of the day the trust principle is – Don’t violate the reader’s and the source’s trust…”

 

Jake Spring is an American journalist for the Reuters News Agency currently covering Environment and Commodities in Brasilia, Brazil. He has written vivid stories as the first reporter from a major news outlet on the ground during the 2019 Amazon fire crisis and while covering historic fires in the world’s largest wetlands in 2020. Jake has covered Brazil’s environment and government regulation of agriculture, mining and energy, including votes in Congress and field reporting on the impacts of major policies. Before moving to Brazil he covered the automobile industry from Beijing, China writing on a number of important aspects like the electric car boom and self-driving cars.

Jake is also the host, producer and editor of the Foreign Correspondence Podcast. On the podcast he speaks to journalists from all over the world about their journeys as professionals and collects stories that shed light on the diversity of interests embedded within journalism. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies from Northwestern University in Illinois.

During the course of this conversation we cover quite a wide range of topics like the specifics of working in capital cities as a journalist to discussing why brutalism in architecture has seen a resurgence as a style over social media.