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Monday, December 11, 2017
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Former Gawker employees are crowdfunding to relaunch a Gawker.com that’s owned by a nonprofit and funded by readersA Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $500,000 before January 8 to try to buy back and relaunch Gawker.com, which will be owned by a newly established nonprofit Gawker Foundation. By Shan Wang. |
 | A growing turn to philanthropy“In 2018, more nonprofit newsrooms will be launched than North Korean test missiles.” By Bill Keller. |
 | Scooped by AI“I’m not talking about computer-generated stories about earthquakes, earnings reports, or sports scores. These will be stories on your beat, written by humans who understand how to use machine learning to aid their reporting.” By John Keefe. |
 | Retailers move into content“The challenge to Internet users will be the same challenge we face in all aspects of journalism these days: How do you decide who to trust, and which takes seem authentic?” By Jacqui Cheng. |
 | The new journalism commons“How might we design open-ended systems for news production built around common pooled resources to collectively address critical issues, such as verification or the digital divide?” By Carlos Martínez de la Serna. |
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Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time“And when we forego a panel or a keynote or a book chapter or media appearance because it is not paid, we will reinvest that time into our own work, reclaiming not only our time but our worth.” By Juleyka Lantigua-Williams. |
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The year of the voter“What does that look like? It means less reporting from the party and campaign level, more reporting from communities.” By Kristen Muller. |
 | Writing answers before you know the question“A couple weeks ago, I tried asking Alexa, ‘What’s the latest with Roy Moore?’ She couldn’t help me. But it seems to me that news organizations need to prepare for that question and the logical following conversation sooner rather than later.” By Laura E. Davis. |
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Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact“The winners will be the ones who have built a meaningful journalistic report that transcends, and likely capitalizes on, the platform moment.” By Cory Haik. |
 | The year local publishers get smart(er) about change“We know that change is continuous, and yet we’ve gotten comfortable in thinking about change initiatives as having a beginning and end. Even the word we often use — transformation — suggests a stable end state, a time when the change is done and we can all just get back to work.” By Eric Ulken. |
 | Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities“Almost all of the female voters I have interviewed who spoke to the press last year experienced some form of harassment afterward, ranging from insulting social media messages to threatening calls and letters.” By Ruth Palmer. |
 | Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity“Artificial neural networks are advancing rapidly in their ability to synthesize content — including images, videos, and texts — that are increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content.” By Nicholas Diakopoulos. |
 | Your journalism curriculum is obsolete“What processes are you establishing that will allow your program to remain current over time? What’s preventing you from taking action? Is it accreditation standards, university bureaucracy, or faculty interest/competency?” By Cindy Royal. |
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Seeking trust in fragmented spaces“Chat apps are hybrid media, with complex and shifting features. As a result, they pose challenges for reporters trying to develop trust with users.” By Valérie Bélair-Gagnon. |
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With “My WSJ,” The Wall Street Journal makes a personalized content feed central to its app“We don't have to ask you anything. We just know, by virtue of you being a Journal reader, what you'd like to read and what you should read. You don't have to tell us anything.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
BuzzFeed / Charlie Warzel and Remy Smidt
YouTubers made hundreds of thousands off of bizarre and disturbing ‘family-friendly’ content →
According to screenshots from one YouTuber's account reviewed by BuzzFeed News, this father of two made more than $100,000 on his videos featuring his young kids — after YouTube's 45% cut. Emails obtained by BuzzFeed News also show that twelve videos from the channel — videos that included "suspenseful" scenarios — were manually deemed "suitable for all advertisers" in November.
The New York Times / Mike Ives
Eluding censors, a magazine covers Southeast Asia’s literary scene →
“The quarterly review aspires to be for Southeast Asia what Minh Bui Jones, Mekong Review's founding editor and publisher, said the New York Review of Books and The London Review of Books had been since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mekong Review is a long shot on many levels, not least because it covers a region where English literacy is patchy, postal systems are unreliable and newspapers that are not controlled by governments tend to struggle against censorship and chronic financial constraints.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
Bloomberg’s 24-hour news network for Twitter is called TicToc →
The network goes live Dec. 18. TicToc will be supported by a team of about 50 reporters, editors, producers and social-media analysts, overseen by M. Scott Havens, Bloomberg's global head of digital, and Mindy Massucci, who is the editorial lead of TicToc.
The Guardian / Justino Mora
DACA recipients will guest-edit our the Guardian’s US edition →
“At a time when so many are feeling threatened, the Guardian has invited a group of Dreamers to guest-edit Guardian US for three days. Our goal: to elevate voices often excluded from the national conversation. Four Dreamers came to the Guardian's Washington, D.C. office for many hours of brainstorming. Around mountains of Bugles and Chex Mix, we hashed out ideas and developed stories.”
Marketing Land / Tim Peterson
Facebook will (finally) adjust its organic reach metric to only count posts that have been viewed →
From Facebook, last November: “On Pages, we've historically defined reach as a person refreshing their News Feed and the post being placed in their feed. For paid ads reports, we've moved to a stricter definition that only counts reach once the post enters the person's screen ("viewable impressions"). With the stricter definition, we estimate that reported organic reach will be 20% lower on average.”
Boston Business Journal / Catherine Carlock
Boston Globe details incidents of sexual harassment within its own newsroom but doesn’t name names →
In a story published online just before 6 p.m. Friday, the Globe said a male journalist had resigned following allegations of lewd conduct from both inside the paper and outside the company. The story — mainly positioned as a broader look at harassment in media companies — reports that a female Globe employee in her 20s filed an internal complaint after the male journalist allegedly "propositioned her to have sex with his wife, using vulgar language" last November.
Washington Post / Julie Zauzmer
Their family and friends call the media ‘fake news.’ But these students want to be journalists →
“Anytime I mention journalism and people, especially older people, say, 'That's such a terrible, dark field,' it just encourages me to pray: 'God, use me as your vessel to bring You glory,” TJ Davis, a Liberty University senior, said.
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
How do you use an anonymous source? The mysteries of journalism everyone should know. →
"A lot of people seem to think that when we use anonymous sources, we don't even know who they are — that they're anonymous to us”: That's definitely not the case. Anonymity is granted to known sources under tightly controlled circumstances because they can't speak on the record with their names attached for a variety of reasons.
Boston Herald
Boston Herald’s publisher is selling the company to GateHouse Media →
The Herald, which filed for bankruptcy, had some 900 employees at its peak in 2000. Today it has 240; more than 120 of them work in the newsroom. After several weeks of confidential negotiations, the newspaper company, agreed to sell on Friday.