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Thursday, December 14, 2017
 | Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters“After this year’s fake news and Russian micro-targeting fiascos, Facebook and others will be forced to loosen their grip over our algorithmically determined timelines to other alternatives if they want to keep our attention.” By Sara M. Watson. |
 | Publishing less to give readers more“When something happens, we write a story. When something else happens, we write a new story. News event? New story! New developments? New story! New responses? New story!” By Ernst-Jan Pfauth. |
 | Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives“Next year, I predict many more publishers will push to establish business models with which, as one executive at a national publication recently put it during my research for the Tow Center’s Platforms and Publishers project, ‘you can kind of give the finger to the platforms.'” By Nushin Rashidian. |
 | Looking beyond news for inspiration“Some considerations are unique to our industry, but working in a deadline-driven business with tight margins is surprisingly universal.” By Emily Goligoski. |
 | The year ownership mattered“We will follow in the powerful footsteps of those who came before us, busting down doors, slapping away the hands who wanted to touch us, our bodies, our hair, our minds, just to say that diversity mattered. It didn’t.” By Andrew Ramsammy. |
 | The firehose of falsehood“None of this is brand new; politicians have always sought to smear journalism they didn’t like. What’s new is that the attack is no longer about this or that story, but about journalism itself. It’s a challenge to the very notion of an independent accounting of facts.” By Monika Bauerlein. |
 | A longer view on the pivot“Users are looking for journalism to fit their busy lives instead of finding ways to fit its former rigid form into their own. We should embrace creating content in diverse formats not because the platforms demand it, but instead because users do.” By Julia Beizer. |
 | External forces“The only hope for a serious pushback against misinformation will come from progress in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. But it will take a while to come up with reliable models able to process at scale a firehose of news.” By Frédéric Filloux. |
 | The year of machine-to-machine journalism“Search and social helped tailor information choices to individuals to a degree by leveraging content recommendation technology. But what happens when the content itself can be created, processed, and distributed through algorithms?” By Francesco Marconi. |
 | The only pivot that might work“It’s easy to blame the platform monopolies for publishers’ quandaries, but it’s time to also acknowledge that there are simply too many of us in the digital news space.” By Michael Kuntz. |
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Storify’s demise shows nothing lasts forever (but the use of social media embeds in stories persists)“When we started there was no Twitter embed and no Instagram embed or Facebook embed. The idea of using the content that people post as raw material was novel.” By Christine Schmidt. |
 | The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media“The Russians are doing it. Cambridge Analytica is doing it. Why haven’t newsrooms seen this as an opportunity?” By Alan Soon. |
 | Gatekeeping the gatekeepers“‘The algorithm knows best’ is now a laughably naive position to take, even for the companies that initially pushed that narrative.” By Joanne McNeil. |
 | Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up“Either Facebook and Google are platforms, in which case they need to manage their infrastructure in a way that allows independent journalism to thrive. Or they are publishers, in which case they need to provide direct financial support for the journalism their platforms deliver.” By Kinsey Wilson. |
 | Refactoring media literacy for the networked age“An awful lot of highly educated folks, skilled in all sorts of traditional media literacy, are hopelessly lost on the web. (Many of these people are faculty).” By Mike Caulfield. |
 | Good journalism won’t be enough“If journalists want the public to listen, then journalists have to listen to the public. If journalists want the public to care, then journalists have to care about the public.” By Molly de Aguiar. |
 | No assholes allowed“The price? Toxic workplaces, talent drain, skewed covering, lawsuits, long-term damage to news organizations’ reputation and credibility, and loss of revenue from advertisers, subscribers, and members.” By Marie Gilot. |
 | Journalists inventing revenue streams“Ideas are already bubbling up around audio, syndication, licensing, partnerships, foundation grants, and more. These approaches enable journalists to preserve independence and integrity while allowing for funding that supports critically important work.” By Joanne Lipman. |
 | Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you“Turns out you don’t have to live on a coast to be treated with suspicion reserved for ‘elites.'” By Jesse Holcomb. |
 | Longform video leads the way“Whether journalists recognize it or not, we’re all on a march to making video content that’s worthy of Netflix. 2018 will show longform video journalism can be appointment viewing and bingeable.” By Imaeyen Ibanga. |
 | We get serious about algorithms“More and more, we're getting comments from NPR One listeners along the lines of ‘I don't want personalization, I want the news.’ My answer is, that’s exactly what we are using personalization algorithms to do.” By Tamar Charney. |
 | Pivot to tomorrow“Will all this have a massive impact in 2018? Maybe not. But I’m reminded of the Bill Gates line that we always overestimate the change that will come in the next two years and underestimate the change that will come in 10.” By Vivian Schiller. |
 | Attacks on the press will get worse“Such a partisan split indicates something foundational going on, like the plates of a fault line that had been producing tremors for years suddenly and violently pulling apart.” By Matt Carlson. |
 | Let’s build our way out of this“By leveraging design-thinking principles and deep audience insights, we can better understand our readers on an individual level, determine the commonalities between large groups of individuals, come up with practical ideas that solve real problems, and quickly test for efficacy.” By Kyle Ellis. |
What We’re Reading
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
Facebook confirms it will stop subsidies for Facebook Live publishers but encourages them to use mid-roll ads →
“A lot of the deals … were always meant to be temporary," Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo said. "We have been funding content for a while. We thought we'd launch a new type of format, and we tried to help publishers learn how to make that content work."
Business Insider / Mike Shields
Refinery29 is laying off 7.5 percent of its workforce →
“Refinery29 is hardly immune to the climate, even after receiving a cash infusion from Turner in 2016. The company’s revenue has grown this year and will net out in the nine-figure range, according to a person familiar with the matter. But like many in the space, it has pushed for audience growth outside of its core fashion and lifestyle content (such as a push into hard news in 2015, as Digiday reported) and is now facing a need to focus on its biggest revenue growth opportunities.”
Wired / Klint Finley
After the FCC votes to dismantle its net neutrality regulations, activists move the fight into the courts and Congress →
“The most likely argument: that the commission's decision violates federal laws barring agencies from crafting ‘arbitrary and capricious’ regulations.”
Recode / Rani Molla
Global internet speeds got 30 percent faster in 2017 →
The U.S. ranks 44th in mobile download speeds.
Washington Post / Callum Borchers
Why USA Today published an unusually forceful editorial about Trump →
“As the unofficial newspaper of U.S. travelers, USA Today strives for political neutrality, even on its opinion page. It has never endorsed a presidential candidate.”
Politico / Jason Schwartz
The New York Times’ D.C. bureau adds its first fact-checker in an extra push for accuracy →
"I think we learned very early on that even honest mistakes, small mistakes, things that are certainly not intended to take on a political cast have been twisted and interpreted into the most sinister possible version that could be used against a reporter," the Times’ chief White House correspondent Peter Baker said. "There's no margin at this point, so we have to be as good as we can possibly be."
CNN Money / Hadas Gold and Charles Riley
Disney is buying most of 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion in a deal that could help them fend off streaming rivals →
“The deal allows Disney to expand its content, especially for streaming services. In addition to a majority stake in Hulu that it will have once the deal closes, Disney is preparing to launch two separate streaming services, one for sports and another focusing on entertainment. And it is pulling its content from Netflix in preparation for the launch. Adding Fox’s television and movie studios and the content they own means adding to the stable of must-watch content it can offer directly to consumers — and that streaming competitors can not.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Germany’s Axel Springer joins American publishers association in negotiating with Facebook and Google →
“The News Media Alliance has established a priority of trying to negotiate fair compensation from Facebook and Google for original content displayed on the two platforms. Axel Springer has been particularly aggressive in battling the so-called duopoly in Europe, where various forms of government regulation are in place and new ones being tried.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
Business Insider is dropping the Business →
“Next year, the company is planning to launch Insider Coffee, Insider Wine and Insider Toys as brands on social media, which may eventually expand to other platforms…. The company is not yet profitable, but it is projecting that it will reach profitability in the second half of 2018.” Nieman Lab questioned CEO Henry Blodget this summer.
Digiday Podcast / Aditi Sangal
Vox Media's Lindsay Nelson: 'Digital media was drunk on scale' →
Vox’s chief marketing officer on media buying, brand safety, the duopoly, digital media companies' mistakes in 2017, and what she expects in 2018.