The year of the user: The latest from Nieman Lab

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The year of the user “It is building exceptional editorial design sensibilities — and the character of our communities or content — into our products that will separate us from easy-to-install WordPress themes.” By Andy Rossback.

Hot Pod: Smart speakers, TV adaptations, newsier podcasts, and other things to watch for in 2017 Plus: The beginning of a podcast is incredibly important; the “gee whiz” podcast trend; is The New York Times swinging for a daily news show? By Nicholas Quah.

At The Atlantic, campaign coverage innovations are finding new life and applications after the election “The presidential campaign always propels us to try formats that attempt to put the torrent of news into context.” By Ricardo Bilton.

A rebirth of populist journalism “If there’s one thing that 2017 could hope to emulate, it’s the muckrakers’ ability to produce journalism that is genuinely concerned with the interest of the people, fiercely adversarial but never personalized.” By Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel.

Not just covering communities, reaching them “Journalists will finally dig in to understand how their stories travel in our information ecosystem.” By Amy O'Leary.

Journalism is community-as-a-service “Sure, Facebook's standardized display and positioning of content doesn't help users make informed choices, but journalism can't shirk responsibility for cheapening the product offering.” By Rebekah Monson.

Making it easy “It's not about dumbing down or giving up on context — it's about learning a new grammar that works on a small screen in a distributed world.” By Nathalie Malinarich.

Getting comfortable asking for money “News organizations spend so much time telling everyone else's stories that we forget to tell their own.” By Mary Walter-Brown.

Verification takes center stage “The misinformation ecosystem is much more nuanced than simply fake news.” By Claire Wardle.

Your predictions are our present “The time when everything in journalism and media happened in the States and was then exported to the rest of the world is over.” By Juan Luis Sánchez.

The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism “Openness and transparency can help journalism reaffirm its value with the audience, creating the conditions to leverage new business models.” By Moreno Cruz Osório.

What We’re Reading

Digiday / Lucia Moses

The Boston Globe uses Facebook groups to create direct connections with readers →

“The Globe started a private Facebook group December 2 for subscribers to discuss the news with each other and Globe staffers.”

Engadget / Chris Velazco

Fake news could cost Facebook dearly in Germany →

“Oppermann’s plan would require Facebook to actively combat fake news all day, every day. Here’s the fascinating bit: if a fake news item pops up and Facebook can’t address it within 24 hours, it would be subject to a €500,000 (or $522,575) for each post left untouched.”

Digiday / Jessica Davies

“Storm of lies”: The state of fake news in Europe →

“The chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party…called for a new law that would require companies like Facebook to set up an office in the country that would deal with fake news and hate speech at all hours of the day and night.”

BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz

Twitter tests breaking news push notifications →

“After a truck crashed into the Berlin Christmas market…Twitter pushed a breaking news alert to some of its users that linked to Twitter's Moments tab…the company did a similar thing when Fidel Castro died last month.”

Recode / Jonah Peretti

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti’s year-end memo to employees →

“We know we need to be patient for the ‘digital advantages’ to fully prevail, and it's why we've raised so much capital, so we have the luxury to be patient through ups and downs along the way.”

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

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Newsonomics: The 2016 media year by the numbers, and a look toward 2017: The latest from Nieman Lab

Monday, December 19, 2016

Newsonomics: The 2016 media year by the numbers, and a look toward 2017 Fake news percentages, numbers of working journalists, declining print ad revenue: 2016 in numbers. By Ken Doctor.

Virtual reality on the open web “This is good news for journalists working with VR: Billions can access their content, not millions.” By Sarah Wolozin.

2017 is for the attention innovators “New strategies of attention have shaped many of the (often divisive) outcomes of recent referenda and elections across multiple continents, and they will continue to be a driving force in 2017 and beyond.” By An Xiao Mina.

Failing diversity is failing journalism “Management’s interest in diversity can ebb and flow — more pressing matters appear, and minority hiring takes a backseat. But next year is a good time to start.” By Swati Sharma.

Public trust for private realities “How can journalism act as a public service when there is no "public" to serve, only a set of increasingly private spaces that are largely invisible to one another?” By Alexis Lloyd.

Truthiness in private spaces “Mobile chat applications allow private and segmented conversations, different interpretations, and different sets of facts.” By Valérie Bélair-Gagnon.

The year we talk about our awful metrics “The industry is running on metrics that serve no one well, but we continue chugging along because we all equally accept the lie.” By Sam Ford.

The year journalism teaches again “In telling stories, in exposing lies, we should be teaching the public how to evaluate what they read.” By P. Kim Bui.

Platforms grow up or grow more toxic “2017 may be the year Facebook gets permanently branded as part of the problem.” By Ryan McCarthy.

Baking transparency into our routines “In 2017, let’s tell readers every day: Here’s what we learned, here’s how we confirmed it, and here’s how you can do the same.” By S.P. Sullivan.

A new test for French media “Journalists from all over the world (France included) stand accused of being disconnected with reality and unable to forecast the news.” By Alice Antheaume.

Rise of the rebel journalist “News is not journalism if what’s being reported is only meant to extract value from communities as opposed to creating value within them.” By Andrew Ramsammy.

Women are going to get loud “Does this mean every single new tweet or podcast or TinyLetter or YouTube video will explode into viral acclaim? Of course not. But some of them will. Because there is an audience for it, and a market for it.” By Rachel Sklar.

Better data about your users “The path to personalization, especially personalization steeped in journalistic ethos, requires access to holistic data about users that extends beyond the borders of the news organization's platform.” By Ariane Bernard.

The year of the drone, really “Now comes the fun part: for journalists to let their imaginations roam free, to invent new ways to bring stories to life.” By Joanne Lipman.

Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis “Many new listeners will arrive seeking refuge from Facebook’s fake news buffet and Twitter’s ideologue clutter, while expecting the speed of news they’ve became accustomed to from over-the-air radio and television.” By Andrea Silenzi.

Fake news and the future of journalism “We can feel nostalgic about a media world slowly but steadily waning, or instead imagine that perhaps a more decentralized and effective everyday culture of critique and argumentation might emerge over time.” By Pablo Boczkowski.

The battle for high-quality VR “It’s time to acknowledge that your audience does not need to see your every stumble on the way to virtual reality greatness.” By Ståle Grut.

Fix the demand side of news too “We can’t just upgrade journalists. We, the people who use media mostly as consumers and sharers, have to upgrade ourselves, too.” By Dan Gillmor.

Moving deeper than the machine of clicks “Sites will explore further what it means to allow readers to be more active, giving their audience more expression and ability to take part in a two-way conversation.” By Kawandeep Virdee.

The bottom falls out of Canadian media “A federal innovation fund will spark the blooming of a thousand digital media startups. Well, okay, maybe 20 or so.” By Erin Millar.

We won’t do enough “We’ll debate and have panels, and talk past each other.” By Carrie Brown-Smith.

UGC as a path out of the bubble “When we make listening the job of one or two people in a newsroom instead of remembering that this is the cornerstone of journalism, we lose track of what readers are actually taking from our work.” By Annemarie Dooling.

A year of reflection in tech “Where our culture of broadcast media once catered to the center and traded on trust, the age of social media thrives on contagious, memetic ideas replicating via network effects.” By Erin Pettigrew.

Let’s make live video we can love “While audiences crave an authentic and fresh video experience, it seems like they're still getting a lot of pundits and reporters simply talking at them.” By Dan Colarusso.

Focusing on the why of the click “We have only a surface-level appreciation of what motivates people and why they behave in a particular way.” By Sarah Marshall.

Messaging apps go mainstream “Journalists, newsrooms and editors will tell stories using the language of messaging apps — stickers, emojis, gifs, vertical video.” By Samantha Barry.

The year we stop taking sides “Like many concepts that have outlived their usefulness, the wall between business and news was taken to absurd limits, creating a culture of divisiveness that lingers on today.” By Tim Griggs.

Forests need to burn to regrow “The drive for scale has made so many places way, way too big. And there just aren’t enough good jobs to keep everyone working, satisfied, succeeding.” By Hillary Frey.

Show your work “Be authentic by being more honest about what you know and what you don’t. It’s a small part of all things we can do, but it’s something we can do now — and frankly should have been doing all along.” By Laura E. Davis.

Facing journalism’s history “Journalism must shift from claiming to have all the answers to being the ones with the skills to survey the different perspectives, match them to the facts, and connect the two with the worlds that people actually live in.” By Sydette Harry.

Quality advertising to pair with quality content “When you consider how publishers might compete with the platforms going forward, it seems likely it will take the same thoughtful and high-minded approach around advertising that we take now with our content.” By M. Scott Havens.

Disaggregation and collection “I think when people used to say ‘we have unlimited space online,’ they thought about longer stories with more sidebars. What if we use it to ‘show our work’ instead?” By Ken Schwencke.

Print as a premium offering “While print may be less and less the product, it’s certainly a product — and an exciting one.” By Kathleen Kingsbury.

A banner year for venture philanthropy “I say venture philanthropy because smart money is approaching investment in public-interest journalism with the mindset of venture investors.” By Jim Friedlich.

Building our own communities “If we want people to stand up for our journalism, and to trust us again, we need to bring them closer to our work, to learn more about them, and to offer a range of ways to have a meaningful impact on what we do.” By Andrew Losowsky.

Journalism as a service “The central challenge within news organizations is that there are immediate, acute problems — but reasonable solutions will require long-term investment in energy and capital.” By Amy Webb.

A smarter information diet “We’ve gotten to where we don’t deliver the news people need — we deliver the news people want. And I think that’s dangerous.” By Mike Ragsdale.

Communicating uncertainty to our readers “After what happened in the presidential election, I think there is going to be a growing interest in how to communicate data better to the public — and in particular how to communicate uncertainty.” By Alberto Cairo.

Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid “In a dynamically changing environment, in which digital is a given, we can no longer support this lecturer-professor divide. Every hire a journalism program makes must be able to teach courses in the digital realm.” By Cindy Royal.

Distracted journalism looks in the mirror “What is news, and what is noise? Do both deserve the same amount of attention?” By Zizi Papacharissi.

The Knight Foundation is matching up to $1.5 million in donations to nonprofit news outlets

What We’re Reading

Washington Post / Philip Bump

This Washington Post Chrome extension gives you factchecks to Trump’s tweets — in the tweets themselves →

“We made a tool that slips a bit more context into Trump’s tweets. It’s still in the early stages, but our goal is to provide additional context where needed for Trump’s tweets moving forward (and a few golden oldies).”

The New York Times / Anna North

Teen Vogue’s guide to the Trump presidency →

The magazine, whose top editor, Elaine Welteroth, and digital editorial director, Phillip Picardi, took over earlier this year, has been ramping up its political coverage since the primary debates.

New York

New York Magazine launches a premium membership program →

The program, launched Monday, allows members to unlock the city and discover unique events curated by the magazine's editors for $99/year or $9.99/month (plus the requisite limited-edition tote bag).

EdSurge / Jeffrey R. Young

Teaching ‘truthiness’: Professors offer course on how to write fake news →

“The course is the latest offering from a long-running satirical project called UnderAcademy College, whose previous courses included ‘Grammar Porn’ and ‘Underwater Procrastination and Advanced Desublimation Techniques.'”

Politico / Alex Weprin

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro is moving to Times’ audio team →

“We are thrilled to announce that Michael is now moving to audio fulltime. He is working closely with the Audio team to develop an exciting new project that will launch in early 2017.” (Could it be a daily news show?)

Financial Times / Andrew Byrne

Macedonia's fake news industry sets sights on Europe →

"It wouldn't be hard," said one website owner in Veles. "I could take a well-known name like [German public broadcaster] ZDF, and register a new website domain name, like 'ZDFpolitik.com'. That's how you start."

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

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Harvard University

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Cambridge, MA 02138

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