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Friday, April 14, 2017
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The FCC spectrum auction is sending $10 billion to broadcasters. Where will that money go?The sale of station-owned airwaves to shore up cellular networks offers a rare opportunity to invest in local news and public information needs. By Shan Wang. |
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Fake News Ale is the beer all the cool journalists are gonna be drinking this summerPlus: Facebook buys some print ads in Germany, research on the polarizing effects of social media, and sometimes it’s not fake news — it’s just good old fabrication. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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The Times of London says focus on editions has driven digital growthThe British paper says subscriptions and traffic are up, even though it shuttered an app aimed at an international audience. By Joseph Lichterman. |
What We’re Reading
BostonGlobe.com
The Boston Fox affiliate is dropping “Fox” from the name of its newscasts →
“The change comes amid lagging ratings and after station research dating back more than two years found that 41 percent of Boston-area news consumers believed the local Fox 25 newscast leaned conservative…’It's not that it's a bad brand; it's just that it's not ours.'”
The Wall Street Journal / Nick Kostov
How a scrappy French newspaper is roiling the election campaign →
“Founded more than 100 years ago, the scrappy publication, which carries no advertisements and is owned by its staff, is an odd bird in a French media landscape dominated by billionaire industrialists. It goes where establishment papers of the right and left have been more reluctant to tread, mixing muckraking with humor.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Emmy Favilla and Megan Paolone
Why BuzzFeed says it’s okay to use the word ‘millennial’ →
“And today we are today flying the white flag, announcing our surrender to the term's unironic usage and acknowledging its journey from cheesy marketing buzzword we tried desperately to combat to just another everyday descriptive word in our vernacular. (But please make sure you use two n's and lowercase it, per BuzzFeed style.)”
Journalism.co.uk / Catalina Albeanu
In China, the art of media censorship is becoming more sophisticated →
“Now, if a reader clicks on a story considered sensitive, their IP address could be banned from accessing other stories on that particular website for around seven or eight minutes.”
Digiday
Western YouTube stars look to crack the Chinese social networks →
Since YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are all blocked in China, videos produced by international content creators on those platforms cannot be seen there. So multichannel network Yoola localizes popular videos and distributes them on 10 Chinese social networks, including Weibo, Youku-Tudou (Chinese YouTube equivalent), and video messaging app Meipai.
The New York Times / Rory Smith
If you don’t want to know what this article is about, please look away now →
“[E]very Saturday for eight months of the year, ‘Match of the Day,’ the BBC highlights program and a British institution, follows the 10 'clock news. And somehow, even in an age of wall-to-wall soccer coverage on television, internet streams of varying legality and the constant buzz of social media, there are still British soccer fans who settle in blissfully for ‘Match of the Day,’ willfully ignorant of all that transpired on the nation's soccer fields that day.”
Poynter / Benjamin Mullin
Meet the woman who brings CNN’s political coverage to the web →
Q: Does the digital side have trouble getting the attention of the broadcast side? A: Honestly, getting attention is not the problem here. We get a tremendous amount of attention throughout CNN. Our coverage is very prominently featured on the main CNN.com site. Our reporters are on television constantly.
Washington Post / Erik Wemple
Family-owned Iowa Puiltzer winner will spend its prize money on open records, refugees, a party →
"We intend to put a jag on, then donate the rest of the money half to IFOIC and other local charities, probably all the other half to Catholic Charities to help resettle refugees in Storm Lake. After the bash, that means IFOIC gets $5 and the refugees get a Big Mac and fries," wrote Storm Lake Times editor Art Cullen in an email.
Digiday
Surprise, small publishers would be most harmed by rolling back of net neutrality →
“Rolling back net neutrality would relegate independent publishers to the slow lane of the internet because they'd be unable to afford access to high speeds.”
Adweek / Lauren Johnson
Condé Nast his hiring a dedicated Snapchat team to crank out material for Discover channels →
GQ, Wired and Self will begin publishing weekly editions to Discover. Condé Nast is filling roles for designers, visual editors and motion-graphics specialists to work with each publisher's editorial team.
Reuters / Eric Auchard and Joseph Menn
Facebook cracks down on 30,000 fake accounts in France ahead of the presidential election →
The move is among the most aggressive yet by Facebook to act against accounts that violate its terms of service, rather than simply respond to complaints.
Rjionline
What the Coloradoan staff is learning while experimenting with bots →
“A planning editor with the Fort Collins Coloradoan is experimenting with bot technology and it's taught her that it doesn't require a team of technologists. Jennifer Hefty says it doesn't even require HTML coding experience.”