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Monday, September 11, 2017
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Honolulu Civil Beat wants to use its bot to deepen ties with readers (and find some new stories, too)“We don’t know where this could take us. The goal is to find what potential there is as as far as reaching our readers and possibly getting some stories out of it.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
What We’re Reading
Recode / Rani Molla
Smartphones are driving all growth in web traffic →
Another big number: Google Search represents 61 percent of mobile referral traffic.
the Guardian / Lucia Graves
The Wall Street Journal’s Trump problem →
"The whole culture of the Journal for decades has been to be fair and accurate but also convey analysis and perspective and meaning,"says one former staffer "Gerry's saying 'just report the facts', but there's a difference between journalism and stenography."
Intellectual Property Watch / Elise De Geyter
Will AI and machine learning challenge the concept of fair use? →
“We're approaching what I call a ‘fair use dilemma,’ because, in the context of commercial, expressive machine learning, no outcome seems desirable. If expressive machine learning weren't fair use, an author could seek outsize remedies simply because her work ended up in a training dataset among thousands of other works…Then again, if fair use gave companies carte blanche to train AI on copyrighted works without compensating authors, human creators would miss out on income that the spirit, and arguably the letter, of copyright law entitle them to receive.”
Adage / Simon Dumenco
A new era of media modesty →
“What do The New York Times and The Guardian seeking philanthropic support have to do with Blodget’s pronouncement about Business Insider’s revised ambitions? All three developments are about media execs confronting the realities of the publishing economy circa 2017.”
Google Docs
NPR is building a guide to help print people become audio people →
It’s in beta: “Transitioning from print to audio reporting requires adapting to an entirely different paradigm. You have to rethink what you know and sometimes directly contradict it. Story structure is upside down, quotes serve different purposes, and some of the best radio writing can look crude to the eye of a print journalist.”
The Conversation / Sergey Bratus
The only safe email is text-only email →
“Companies and other organizations are even more vulnerable than individuals. One person needs only to worry about his or her own clicking, but each worker in an organization is a separate point of weakness.”
the Guardian / Kathleen McLaughlin
No one can tell stories of inequality better than local news outlets →
“Local journalism is still fighting cutbacks and tight budgets, but doing vital work all across the US – but it needs people to stop expecting news to be free.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Norm Pearlstine: ‘It’s not yet clear what people will pay for.’ →
He also had some bad news for the video pivoters: “But I think the law of supply and demand is going to impact our business and there's going to be so much video, the CPMs are going to be under the same pressure as everything else. I'm seeing some examples of it now. I don't think you have a choice. I just don't know how long it lasts.”
Medium / Basil Enan
Now on Medium: Curated stories from news publishers like The New York Times and The Economist →
“These stories are handpicked by Medium editors based on our members' interests. All of these selections are placed behind our metered membership paywall, so members get unlimited access and can read these stories without ever leaving Medium. That means personalized recommendations based on your interests, popular features like highlights and responses, and — most importantly — no ads, retargeting, or popups in sight.”