 |
Thursday, January 11, 2018
 |
Global unhappiness with the news media is high. In the U.S. (surprise!) partisanship drives what people think about the mediaIn the U.S., supporting the party in power correlates with thinking the media does a terrible job. The opposite is true in nearly every other country surveyed. By Shan Wang. |
 |
It’s not “citizen journalism,” but it is “citizens taking notes at public meetings with no reporters around”Chicago’s City Bureau is betting on local residents doing this sort of low-key not-quite-journalism at meetings, and now it’s expanding the model to Detroit. By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
The Cut / Moira Donegan
I started the ‘Shitty Media Men’ list →
“[T]he value of the spreadsheet was that it had no enforcement mechanisms: Without legal authority or professional power, it offered an impartial, rather than adversarial, tool to those who used it. It was intended specifically not to inflict consequences, not to be a weapon — and yet, once it became public, many people immediately saw it as exactly that.”
Solution Set / Joseph Lichterman
How Minnesota-based nonprofit news site MinnPost is helping other local nonprofits and making some extra money at the same time →
“MinnPost sells ad slots at set rates on a weekly basis, so if you decide to advertise with the site your ad will run Monday-Sunday and you're guaranteed at least 35,000 impressions. Often times, however, MinnPost will have excess ad inventory. When it does, MinnPost will sell it at a steep discount to small local nonprofits with less than $1 million in annual revenue.”
Poynter / Daniel Funke
In Argentina, fact-checking organization Chequeado’s latest hire is a bot →
“Chequeabot is a tool that automatically identifies claims in the media and matches them with existing fact checks. The bot draws upon natural language processing and machine learning to help perform everyday tasks for fact-checkers — who are already using it in the newsroom.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Mia Shuang Li
How influential individuals on WeChat are becoming a main news source in China →
“If a reader likes WeChat content, they can tip the creator a small amount of money with one click. WeChat columnist He Caitou said earlier in 2017 that on average he receives $602 per article, and once received $4,815 for a short piece he wrote. He used to get paid $75 per thousand-words by magazines.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
How many people did that story reach? It depends who’s counting →
“In several cases, audience numbers Nielsen provided digital publishers through Digital Content Ratings are dramatically higher than those provided by comScore's Media Metrix Multi-Platform product. Mic reached 11.9 million unique visitors in October, according to comScore; Nielsen reported they reached 40 million people. PopSugar reached 34 million unique visitors in October, according to comScore; Nielsen reported they reached 80 million.”
The Wrap / Jon Levine
Vox Media has voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East →
“The move will affect roughly 400 employees across Vox Media's eight verticals. In addition to Vox, WGA East also represents employees from VICE, HuffPost, The Intercept, Gizmodo Media Group, ThinkProgress, MTV News, Thrillist and Salon.”
Recode / Eric Johnson
Digital media companies are headed for a crash, Hearst Magazines president David Carey says →
"We reject this notion of 'digital first,' because we think that denigrates the core business," said Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines, on the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka. "We think there's a lot of money to be made in the print business."