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Tuesday, April 25, 2017
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Gabfest, explainer, local, The Daily: A taxonomy of news podcastsPlus: Edison offers up more podcast listener data, DeRay Mckesson teams up with Crooked Media, and Bill O’Reilly clings to his podcast. By Nicholas Quah. |
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This is a news publication all about the working life — but it’s housed within a job search company14-year-old online job search company Ladders has hired journalists to bolster and burnish its editorial operation, which will try to cover everything from policy to pop culture (as it relates to work, of course). By Shan Wang. |
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Newsonomics: Lydia Polgreen’s ambitious HuffPost remake aims for “solidarity” among readers“Mobility is a crucial factor in our identity. I believe that sort of fundamental optimism of American identity is running out of gas…That fundamentally shifts our national character.” By Ken Doctor. |
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In a redesign, The Huffington Post (now just HuffPost) doubles down on its “equalizing tabloid” roots"The splash is really the best of our editorial voice…In thinking about who we are, this is the best reflection of it from a product perspective." By Shan Wang. |
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Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launches Wikitribune, a large-scale attempt to combat fake newsThe crowd-funded news platform aims to combat fake news by combining professional journalism with volunteer fact checking: “news by the people and for the people.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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What’s holding back virtual reality news? Slow tech adoption, monetization, and yes, dull content“I'm afraid that more and more people in news organizations use 360 for stories that are not interesting. Bad content will keep people away from watching it.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
The Information / Cory Weinberg
Quora’s CEO says regulators could clamp down on Facebook and Twitter →
"You need to make readers of the platforms more aware of the true source of their news. They click a link and last time they went to that source, there's not enough information about what source you're going to. Government regulation at some point is a real option." (Also, Quora’s CEO pops up in the comments.)
Poynter / Alexios Mantzarlis
Google has strengthened the feedback tool that lets users alert the company to featured errors →
“Google also announced an update to the guidelines for quality raters — people asked to evaluate search results on an ongoing basis — that includes language on flagging hoaxes, misinformation and conspiracy theories as low-quality results. The most visible change for everyday users, however, is the expanded feedback option on autocomplete suggestions and the featured snippets.”
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
Facebook begins testing a related articles widget before you open a link, which includes articles by fact-checkers →
“If you saw a link saying ‘Chocolate cures cancer!’ from a little-known blog, the Related Article box might appear before you click to show links from the New York Times or a medical journal noting that while chocolate has antioxidants that can lower your risk for cancer, it's not a cure.”
Webby Awards
These are the winners of this year’s Webby Awards →
News-related winners include NPR, The Ringer, FiveThirtyEight, BuzzFeed, Gimlet Media, The New York Times, and Clickhole. (There are roughly ∞ Webby Award categories.)
Digiday / Ross Benes
Publishers say Facebook can save Instant Articles with better data and subscription tools →
“If IA monetization doesn't dramatically improve, high quality publishers will continue to pull out. There's just no reason for publishers to continue to lose money on IA this far after launch."
Adweek / Lauren Johnson
The Washington Post is guaranteeing that all of its online ads will load in under 2 seconds →
“The Post's technology identifies ads that are too heavy to load and instead serves a promo that doesn't gobble up data from a consumer's phone plan. Zeus can also detect how fast someone is scrolling so that ads only load when they're about to come into view. If someone is scrolling too fast, Zeus pulls back from serving an ad.”
Poynter / Kate Steiker-Ginzberg
Fact-checking booms in Brazil →
More than 40 journalists are now working full-time or part-time on dedicated fact-checking projects in Brazil, a dramatic expansion of resources compared to previous efforts.
The New York Times / Farhad Manjoo
Can Facebook fix its own worst bug? →
“Across the globe, Facebook now seems to benefit actors who want to undermine the global vision at its foundation. Supporters of Trump and the European right-wing nationalists who aim to turn their nations inward and dissolve alliances, trolls sowing cross-border paranoia, even ISIS with its skillful social-media recruiting and propagandizing — all of them have sought in their own ways to split the Zuckerbergian world apart. And they are using his own machine to do it.”
Politico / Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty
The media bubble is worse than you think →
“Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you're a working journalist, odds aren't just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation's most pro-Clinton counties.” See also Josh Benton’s column on this from last year.
Ars Technica UK / Mark Walton
Google pushes fake news, hate-speech workshops (and YouTube) on UK teens →
“Google has announced a series of workshops designed to apparently tackle the spread of online hate speech and fake news. The ‘Internet Citizens’ workshops aimed at teenagers are intended to promote ‘tolerance’ and ’empathy’ and to raise ‘awareness’ of the plethora of social issues that plague online communities. The workshops come in response to a storm of criticism over YouTube’s restricted mode, which censored some LGBTQ+ content.”
BuzzFeed / Mariah Oxley
The Daily’s Michael Barbaro gets a BuzzFeed listicle treatment →
“In the show’s brief three months, Michael has transformed before our very ears. His journey from standard reserved radio-journalist to radio personality is well underway!”