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Wednesday, November 23, 2016
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Here’s another startup trying to make it easier for publishers to engage with readersAntenna allows readers to react to stories with pre-set emotions, and the company is expanding into e-commerce. By Joseph Lichterman. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / Alexios Mantzarlis
Le Monde wants to build a B.S.-detector →
“Developed in-house, the widget facilitates a reader’s search through previously fact-checked assertions.”
Bloomberg.com / Gerry Smith
Facebook’s fake news crackdown: It’s complicated →
“"It's easy to see how an algorithm-only solution to fake news could result in blocking stuff that's not false or is misleading for reasons that are partisan but not inaccurate.”
Politico / Jack Shafer
Opinion: The cure for fake news is worse than the disease →
“We need to learn to live with a certain level of background fake news without overreacting.”
VentureBeat / Ken Yeung
Messaging company Telegram launches Telegraph, a long-form publishing platform →
“The company on Tuesday launched Telegraph, a publishing platform with striking similarities to Medium and Quip. What's interesting about the service is that no account is needed — simply visit the website and begin typing away. When you're done, hit publish and it's immediately on the web.”
Digiday / Ross Benes
“It was a fad”: Many once-hot viral publishers have cooled off →
“Interest in viral publishers — such as ViralNova and Distractify, who built large audiences by sharing uplifting content on Facebook — has cooled as reliance upon platforms left the sites exposed to Facebook's algorithm changes and inconsistent traffic.”
The Information / Tom Dotan
Facebook ad revenue (finally) tops media giants’ →
“Despite all the hype around digital ad growth, Facebook still lagged Comcast and Disney in overall advertising revenue. But for the first time, this year the company's U.S. ad revenue will be larger than the biggest traditional media companies'. And this is likely to create more unease at the TV networks, which can no longer rely on the larger pool of TV ad dollars as a bulwark against digital upstarts.”
Medium / Chris Moran
What I learned from seven years as The Guardian’s audience editor →
“The fact that most people had no idea that Google sent us 10 times more referral than our favorite social network meant that we were making really bad decisions on a daily basis.”
ProPublica
USC students partnered with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune to create a VR documentary →
The documentary follows up on a ProPublica and Texas Tribune story from earlier this year about Houston’s vulnerability to hurricanes. The students traveled to Houston this spring to shoot the video, and it’s now available for viewing in the JOVRNALISM app on iOS.
New York Times / Mike Isaac
Facebook said to create censorship tool to get back into China →
“The social network has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people's news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees.” Facebook is blocked in China.
Bloomberg / Mark Bergen
Major ad tech company bars Breitbart News for hate speech →
“AppNexus scrutinized Breitbart’s website after U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump tapped Steve Bannon, former executive chairman of Breitbart, to be White House chief strategist last week. The digital ad firm decided the publication had breached a policy against content that incites violence, said AppNexus spokesman Joshua Zeitz.”