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Tuesday, May 23, 2017
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Now you can take a 24-hour Trump news “snooze” on the Quartz app(Want the break to be longer? Sorry.) By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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What an academic hoax can teach us about journalism in the age of TrumpFrom the “hermeneutics of quantum gravity” to the “conceptual penis,” attempted hoaxes tell us that our contemporary problems around truth are both cultural and structural. By C.W. Anderson. |
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Scribd says it has over 500,000 subscribers paying $8.99/month for ebooks, audiobooks, and now newsThe content subscription site is adding content from newspapers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The Wall Street Journal / Jack Marshall
Facebook tool handles media companies’ video ad sales →
“The new ad offering, called Audience Direct, will invite publishers to list video ad inventory for sale from across their properties, and to specify pricing.”
Washingtonian / Andrew Beaujon
Have Politico’s snacks gone downhill? →
“Now that news about the Trump administration breaks at an unhealthy pace and staffers rely on impromptu sustenance, Washingtonian hears grumbles that Politico's snack program has lately declined in quality. Gone are many of the democratically selected, healthy-ish snacks that greeted employees in the new digs, replaced by more garbage-y and delicious stuff like cookies and M&M's.”
Washingtonian / Luke Mullins
Meet Matt Boyle, Breitbart’s (other) man in the White House →
“You get the shit knocked out of you so much that it doesn't hurt anymore.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Stat says it’s “on its way” to hitting 10,000 subscribers paying $299 in 3 years →
“In addition to individual subs, it's begun selling group subs to places like universities, pharmaceutical companies and health care providers, which can come with a discount of up to 45 percent.”
Adweek / Emma Bazilian
Nick Thompson, Wired’s new EIC, on (among other things) why he got rid of the Editor’s Note →
“I have read a lot of magazines in my life and I don't think I can remember one where I said, ‘Wow, that's wonderful.’ There's something about the form that doesn't work, and I didn't feel the need to promote myself in that way.”
allAfrica.com / Adeyemi Adepetun
The state of digital media in Nigeria →
“As we speak, there’s no wholly investigative reporting online newspaper in Nigeria.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
French publishers face delays and transparency issues in Facebook’s fake-news crackdown →
“The news flagged as fake is often like ‘This dog is a hero, which saved the life of 39 people by biting them’ or ‘Aliens built the Giza pyramids’ rather than ‘real’ — in the sense of having an impact — fake news.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Lewis Wallace
Lewis Wallace: There are times journalists should become the story →
“When your survival is a ‘public issue,’ a clear line between professional life and advocacy is exposed as a privilege.”
Poynter / Alexios Mantzarlis
Can fact checkers agree on what is true? A new study doesn’t point to the answer →
“A One Pinocchio rating could be equivalent to a Mostly True or Half True. A Two Pinocchio rating could be equivalent to a Half True or Mostly False.”
Kya
Here are some charts that suggest the best times to publish stories →
A new report from the analytics firm Kya says readers are most engaged on Mondays and Tuesday is the best day to publish if you want the most pageviews. Saturday meanwhile is the worst day to publish with the lowest levels of engagement and time spent on page.
The Guardian / Jordan Michael Smith
Ten years of Jezebel: the website that changed women’s media forever →
“This was a site that was eventually meant to make money, and Holmes was virtually alone in thinking that there was a sizable audience for feminist issues if they were discussed in a certain way.”
New York Times / David Streitfeld
“The internet is broken” and @ev is trying to salvage it →
“I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place. I was wrong about that.”
Boston Magazine / Simon van Zuylen-Wood
Can Linda Henry save the Boston Globe? →
“When the Henrys purchased the Globe, John, who declined to comment for this story, named himself publisher and Linda managing director. Nobody knew what that title meant, or what role, if any, she would really play at the paper. John, meanwhile, was portrayed as a civic savior: a deep-pocketed local newspaper owner determined not to strip the place for parts. More than three years in, the Henry record has been mixed. Many of the paper's high-profile bets—including its infamously botched home-delivery reboot—haven't paid off. The Globe hasn't resorted to sweeping layoffs, but it's also stuck in a hiring freeze. Perhaps most important, it remains unprofitable.”