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Friday, February 23, 2018
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With in-article chat bots, BBC is experimenting with new ways to introduce readers to complex topics“For us, this is a way to let people read and ask questions at their own pace, instead of having them read through a bunch of text. Often people aren’t engaged in stories because they haven’t had the right context.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Can we keep media literacy from becoming a partisan concept like fact checking?Plus: Screen time debates, and what the data says about kids and smartphones. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Anchor relaunches its app with more of a focus on podcast creation →
“While in the past, Anchor was carving out a niche for itself in the short-form, social audio space, the new version – Anchor 3.0 – aims to be everything you need to record, edit, host, publish, and distribute a podcast of any length, as well as track how well the podcast is performing.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Brown
RIP, Facebook Live: As subsidies end, so does publisher participation →
“The number of Facebook Live videos produced by paid partners more than halved by the end of 2017 — and in one case fell by as much as 94 percent — as once guaranteed payments ended and Facebook deprioritized the product, new Tow Center research suggests.”
The Outline / Paris Martineau
Medium suspends the accounts of alt-right leaders Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec, and Laura Loomer →
Medium changed its rules: “We do not allow posts or accounts that engage in on-platform, off-platform, or cross-platform campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. We may consider off-platform actions in assessing a Medium account, and restrict access or availability to that account.”
BuzzFeed / Charlie Warzel
Why can everyone spot fake news but the tech companies? →
“How is it that the average untrained human can do something that multibillion-dollar technology companies that pride themselves on innovation cannot? And beyond that, why is it that — after multiple national tragedies politicized by malicious hoaxes and misinformation — such a question even needs to be asked?”
Twitter / Andrew Beaujon
Marketing Land / Ginny Marvin
Facebook is removing 20 outdated, redundant ad metrics →
“The changes come after the company admitted a series of measurement problems in a span of nearly two years and has heard from advertisers that they want more clarity around how its metrics are calculated.”
Wired / Issie Lapowsky
A consortium of public radio stations is bringing back Gothamist, LAist, DCist, and DNAinfo →
The stations include WNYC in New York, WAMU in Washington, DC, and KPCC in Southern California. “The deal was spearheaded by Gothamist founders Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung, and is being funded by two anonymous donors who have contributed an undisclosed sum to acquire the brands. As part of the deal, the archives of those sites will remain online, and Gothamist, led by Dobkin and Chung, will begin publishing new stories this spring.”