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Tuesday, April 11, 2017
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How the techniques of 19th-century fake news tell us why we fall for it today“By the 1850s, the phenomenon was so widespread in Germany that it had become its own genre — the ‘unechte Korrespondenz,’ or ‘fake foreign correspondent's letter,’ as people in the German news trade called it.” By Petra McGillen. |
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This “Wikipedia for fact-checking” by students makes more room for context and origins of claims online“Our simple definition, for the purposes of the wiki, is that ‘truth’ is something generally believed by people in a position to know, that are likely to tell the truth.” By Shan Wang. |
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The New York Times launches a Facebook group to discuss podcasts (and learn to make better ones)Plus: Maximum Fun finds big success with its fundraising campaign, The Bernie Sanders Show finds a big audience with low production values, and a look at the live podcast events business. By Nicholas Quah. |
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David Fahrenthold goes from tweeting pictures of his notepad to winning a Pulitzer PrizePlus other interesting digitally and innovation oriented winners in the 2017 prizes. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Current / April Simpson
Boston’s WBUR to launch investigative unit →
With a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Barr Foundation, WBUR plans to hire three journalists to tackle stories such as opioid addiction, climate change and immigration.
Esquire / Luke O'Neil
How to know if you’ve sent a horrible tweet →
“While opinions on the exact numerical specifications of The Ratio vary, in short, it goes something like this: If the number of replies to a tweet vastly outpaces its engagement in terms of likes and retweets, then something has gone horribly wrong.”
The Information / Cory Weinberg and Tom Dotan
Inside the war between Facebook and Snap →
“For some at Snap, looking at Instagram Stories is like looking in a mirror and seeing a younger, fitter version of itself, a former employee observed.”
The Atlantic / Sarah Zhang
How a Mormon Church–owned site defeated Craigslist in Utah →
KSL Classifieds gets over 100 million page views a month, and it employs 100 full-time staff.
The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
Via Skype, the White House opens press briefings to Trump-friendly non-reporters →
“Dale Jackson describes himself as several things — a radio personality, a TV talk-show host, ‘an entertainer’ — but ‘reporter’ isn't on his list. In fact, it may be the last thing he wants to be known as. Jackson calls the journalists who cover the president ‘a bunch of partisan Democrats.'”
Journalism.co.uk / Caroline Scott
With a 90 minute Facebook Live, CBC Calgary wants to ‘flip the traditional broadcast-to-social workflow’ →
“The regional station placed four reporters equipped with iPhone 6 smartphones and Sennheiser wireless microphones in different locations around Calgary — including one on a moving train. Using the Dejero Live+ mobile app, the journalists were able to individually connect to the TV station’s control room, where staff were able to direct the coverage and switch between live footage and 12 pre-recorded iPhone packages.”
Talking Biz News / Chris Roush
Alexis Madrigal returns to The Atlantic to cover tech and business →
Madrigal, a major hire for Fusion when it launched, has been with the site (through its many iterations) as the technology editor, editor-in-chief, and most recently editor at large since 2014.
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
How newsrooms big and small can start identifying and exposing fake claims, misinformation, and hoaxes →
For fake websites: looking for a ‘contact us’ or ‘about’ page, using WhoIs to check their domains, and doing a Page Rank check on Google — “if Google doesn’t rank the site, be careful.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
How Bild uses Facebook Instant Articles to drive subscriptions →
The Axel Springer-owned German tabloid put its own developers on the case with Facebook. By February, it had reduced the signup process via Instant Articles to three steps. Now, connecting with Facebook's API, the reader's email address is directly pushed to Bild's database, pre-activating the reader's account, and sending out an email from the publisher.
The Guardian / Amanda Meade
News Corp Australia is laying off the majority of its photographers and subeditors →
The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and the Courier-Mail are set to lose dozens of staff each, although the company is not revealing the total number of job losses. The director of editorial management, Campbell Reid, said the restructure of the traditional newsroom was needed to "preserve in print and excel in digital.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
The most-engaged partisan Facebook pages are left-leaning or affiliated with Trump resistance movements, according to NewsWhip →
And for news sites, which don’t always post political news, the uptick in engagement from political posts is significant, according to a NewsWhip spokesperson. CNN, for example, saw an increase of over 68 percent in Facebook engagement year over year due to a higher volume of politically-related posts.
Axios / Dan Primack
Business media has its own fake news problem →
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that 27 individuals and entities ‘posted bullish articles about [publicly-traded] companies on the Internet under the guise of impartiality when in reality they were nothing more than paid advertisements.’
Reuters / David Ingram
More than 5 million businesses are advertising each month on Facebook →
“The company said in September that it had 4 million advertisers, and in March 2016 that it had 3 million. Much of the spending is by big brand advertisers, but to attract small firms, Facebook pitches a set of tools such as audience targeting, a mobile design studio and online courses available so far in 10 languages.”