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Wednesday, August 9, 2017
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After a strenuous year of rethinking its mission, the Maynard Institute launches new diversity initiativesIt’s bringing on new funders and announced plans to develop new cultural competency trainings and a multi-year effort to support and move through the media industry pipeline at least 200 journalists of color. By Shan Wang. |
What We’re Reading
TinyLetter / Anne Helen Petersen
Does reading more local news make you think more about crime? →
“I’m keenly aware, in a way that I never was in New York or Walla Walla or Austin or Seattle, that I’m surrounded by crime, and violence, and accidents…I know all of these events not because people have told me in passing, or because I knew anyone involved. I know because, for the first time since I was in high school, I have been reading the local papers.”
The Membership Puzzle Project / Jay Rosen
"You get the feeling they really looked into it" — What members say about why they support De Correspondent →
“Dutch members want those principles to be kept alive when the site expands to the United States. They were very clear about that.” Research director Emily Golgoski also shared their user research materials.
Politico / Shawn Musgrave
How a network of little-known Twitter ‘rooms’ helps diehard fans amplify Trump's message and spread #MAGA to the world →
“The pro-Trump rooms are an outgrowth of Twitter's group direct message function, which was introduced with little fanfare in January 2015, just as the presidential campaign was getting underway. At that time, Twitter was considered a decidedly liberal bastion. But the platform — as well as its group direct message function — proved to be especially useful for the type of populist outsider movement spurred by Trump, whose denunciations of elitist figures and institutions were easily conveyed in no more than 140 characters.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Cheddar is looking to local markets to build an audience →
“While competition between incumbents is fierce, newcomers are few and far between, and the value of local news and programming to each station's audience is clearly defined. A survey of pay-TV subscribers conducted by Parks in 2016 found that 70 percent of respondents said that their local channels, including news, would be hardest to give up, harder than sports, entertainment or even cable news channels.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
With an election looming, BuzzFeed Germany looks to bolster its news coverage →
The increased focus on hard news comes as 3-year-old BuzzFeed Germany has struggled to gain viewers and advertisers in Germany with its focus on quiz-like content and irreverent humor (as of Aug. 9, BuzzFeed Deutschland has less than 500,000 Facebook fans. Its Twitter has fewer than 9,000 followers).
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Google reveals sites with ‘failing’ ads, including Forbes, LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times →
“On June 1, Google rolled out its Ad Experience Report, a tool it's using to evaluate and score websites based on their ad creative and design. So far, Google has identified about 700 sites as warranting corrective action out of around 100,000 sites it's reviewed so far. Half of the roughly 700 got a ‘failing’ status and the other half a ‘warning.'”
Poynter / Melody Kramer
Want readers to start trusting you again? Stop stalking them across the internet →
“The harm of tracking is in aggregate; being tracked for any individual page load has relatively little impact, so no user is likely to navigate away based on a tracking warning. I think the path forward here is for a few organizations to take the lead in reducing trackers as much as possible, and trumpet their progress.”
The Verge / Natt Garun
ACLU sues Maine’s governor for deleting Facebook comments and blocking users →
The lawsuit mirrors one filed against Donald Trump last month by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, which argued that @realdonaldtrump has served as a “public forum” and blocking users from viewing and engaging with it is unconstitutional.
Adweek / Chris Ariens
Bloomberg is getting into consulting →
“The new consultancy will tap rich data from the Bloomberg terminals, the built-in research arms of Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) as well as its 2,700 journalists and analysts.”
Dallas Morning News / Karen Robinson-Jacobs
The owner of Dallas Morning News is outsourcing advertising creation to Gannett →
“The deal with Gannett Co. marks the expansion of an existing relationship between the two media properties and will result in the layoff of 45 workers. The employees, who work in advertising, accounting and finance, and personnel, were notified this week.”