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Monday, June 5, 2017
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The Lenfest Institute’s new local news grant program will take lessons from venture capitalBuilt around a “venture philanthropy” model, the new programs will offer both significant funding and the test kitchen of its Philadelphia daily newspapers. By Ricardo Bilton. |
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In Italy, Il Giornale is turning to crowdfunding to help fund its reporting from conflict zones“We’re a news site so we need to cover these things, but there’s not a lot of money to do everything. So we thought, maybe we could help solve this by using one of the main resources we have — our readers.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
In the run up to the U.K. election, May and Corbyn leave local journalists without answers on the campaign trail →
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has not done a sit down interview with a local newspaper during the campaign, despite May having done six. Theresa May — who backed Local Newspaper Week last month — has done more interviews, but her interaction with local journalists has included banal responses and tightly stage-managed meetings.
BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz
Cheddar, the “post-cable network,” is coming to cable TV →
“The move is intriguing since Cheddar's mission, until this point, has been to cater to people without cable boxes…This new push into traditional television may be viewed by critics as an admission that the current slew of digital platforms aren't big enough to support Cheddar's $83 million valuation.”
Poynter / Benjamin Mullin
Here’s how The New York Times will pick the editors on its new copy desk →
“Candidates who apply for the retooled editing jobs will interview with one or more members of a newsroom hiring committee, which will make its choices based on aptitude in a series of skills related to news judgement and technical proficiency.”
BuzzFeed / Ben Smith
Why have a public editor when Twitter will do it for free? →
“The public editor has a kind of authority because you’ve been appointed by the institution to do it. So it’s hard to ignore. You’re also in the building, and that makes you hard to ignore. So I think that while you might, there could be lots of criticism of something, and you just, it would be easy to say: ‘Well, of course, there’s always criticism of us, we’re the New York Times, so we’re going to ignore that,’ it’s very hard to ignore the public editor.”
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Of course Washington is plagued by leaks. That’s a good thing. →
“It is not the publishing of these secrets that threatens national security. Publishing these secrets threatens the secret-keepers. It protects the public interest by letting us know what powerful people are doing when they think no one is looking.”
The Washington Post / Erik Wemple
“Every story feels like a fire hydrant — it gets passed from dog to dog, and no one can let it go by without changing a few words” →
A particularly piquant description of The New York Times’ editing process, currently undergoing cuts and changes.
Columbia Journalism Review / Brendan Fitzgerald
A nonprofit newsroom rescued its local newspaper; now it wants to expand →
“For the Progress, the partnership was a way to sustain its reporting as it faced a nebulous future. For Charlottesville Tomorrow, the partnership meant ‘a seal of credibility,’ says Wheeler.”
BuzzFeed / Charlie Warzel
Twitter’s pro-Trump bot crisis is really a human crisis →
“…while the numbers sound substantial, the true effect these bots have on political discourse is still incredibly hard to quantify. And focusing on Twitter's bot scourge is an enticing but partial explanation for a far more difficult problem.”
ESPN / Rich Cimini
Is this the first newsworthy bit of circular eyewitness video from a pair of Snapchat Spectacles? →
Of some sort of dispute involving a couple New York Jets players.
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
Vice UK and The Telegraph join Snapchat Discover ahead of UK election →
“The Telegraph, a right-leaning daily broadsheet, will publish at least a 10-snap story at 5 p.m. each day, with an emphasis on election coverage that will be supplemented by sport, lifestyle, entertainment and international news. Discover already has two U.K. tabloid news publishers, The Sun and Daily Mail.”
Digiday / Sahil Patel
‘It’s going to be a slow burn’: Publishers are starting to see money from Facebook’s mid-roll ads →
“Other publishing execs echoed this sentiment. While the revenue from Facebook mid-rolls isn't at blockbuster levels just yet, if you have enough scale — both in terms audience and output — then the money isn't bad.”