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Thursday, June 22, 2017
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Vox’s healthcare newsletter (with ads sold out) is filling a role beyond “articles on the Internet”“I’m keeping in mind that there are actually people reading these stories who are relying on us for information.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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News apps are making a comeback. More young Americans are paying for news. 2017 is weird.The Reuters Institute’s annual report on digital news contains some surprises. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Using social media appears to diversify your news diet, not narrow it“The central fear, as Eli Pariser has put it, is that ‘news-filtering algorithms narrow what we know.’ This, at least, is the theory.” By Richard Fletcher and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. |
What We’re Reading
The Next Web / Abhimanyu Ghoshal
Verizon-owned Yahoo is killing off the best app it’s ever made →
Yahoo News Digest, a well-designed news app that puts out two finishable digests each day, is shutting down on June 30.
Hunter Walk / hunterwalk
A Hunter Walk Q&A with Tommy Vietor, host of Crooked Media’s Pod Save the World →
“We've tried to do a better job of not just talking about what awful thing happened that week, but also helping listeners understand what they can do about it. That last step is what I think distinguishes us from even progressive news outlets.”
Medium / Jeff Jarvis
A proposal to start a responsible, reliable, reasonable conservative news organization →
“America needs a new, fact-based, journalistic, and intelligent conservative news outlet to report (and not merely comment upon) the nation and the world from the worldview of the right. This is a solid business opportunity. And the timing is right.”
London Evening Standard / Jonathan Prynn
Bloomberg’s new London office won’t have a cafeteria to encourage employees to go outside →
“Mr Bloomberg, 75, told the Standard that the communal ‘pantry’ area on the sixth floor of the £1 billion building will supply coffee and snacks such as porridge pots but not lunch ‘because I want people to get out and enjoy the local economy.'”
Digiday / Max Willens
Limited in their ability to monetize video on Facebook, publishers eye video-licensing opportunities →
“While licensing isn't a big source of revenue for most publishers yet, those with a head start see a lot of runway. Electus Digital, the parent company of CollegeHumor and Dorkly, has licensed its digital video series to over 10 different platforms since 2015. Shane Rahmani, its evp and gm, said he expects video licensing to contribute a third of Electus Digital's video revenue in the next five years.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
A BuzzFeed IPO could threaten the innovation that helped it grow →
“Going public means being beholden to quarter-to-quarter earnings, which is less hospitable to taking risks that may not pay off.”
BU Today / Sara Rimer
A new computational-modeling study evaluates the impact of fake news on real news →
“The three biggest findings were: a) fake news stories do influence what online news organizations report, b) in particular, online partisan media have a reciprocal relationship with fake news — that is, they influence what fake news purveyors write about, and in turn, are then influenced by these fake news stories, and c) fact-checkers are not influential in the reporting of online news media.”
Gizmodo / Matt Novak
The L.A. Times’ Quakebot accidentally reported a 92-year-old earthquake as breaking news →
“Please note: We just deleted an automated tweet saying there was a 6.8 earthquake in Isla Vista. That earthquake happened in 1925.”
Democracy Fund / Tom Glaisyer
The Democracy Fund and Knight Foundation are pledging $2 million to support nonprofit journalism →
“The objective of this fund is to support nonprofit newsrooms delivering local, beat and investigative reporting. To be eligible to participate, nonprofit newsrooms must be full members of the Institute for Nonprofit News in September 2017. The program will begin in the fall so that the matching gifts program can be used as a way to reach new donors and appeal to recent donors during the critical end-of-year fundraising season.”