 |
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
 |
Alexa, can you get my kid to brush his teeth? (Oh, and Alexa? How exactly can I make money with you?)Plus: Spotify sees growth in spoken audio, one network goes cult-happy, and Marc Maron upgrades his garage. By Nicholas Quah. |
 |
This new initiative deploys humans to review, research, and rate U.S. news sites“We’re making the kinds of judgments that we think will be noncontroversial, but still are the kind of judgments that platforms, rightly, don’t want to be making themselves.” By Shan Wang. |
What We’re Reading
Washingtonian / Andrew Beaujon
Axios criticizes “the media” for acting like Axios →
“This isn't the first time VandeHei and Allen have criticized ‘the media’ for doing something their own organization prosecuted with enthusiasm.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
Techmeme is launching a podcast, The Techmeme Ride Home →
It’s “a slightly NPR-ified version of Techmeme — a straight-ahead summary of whatever dominates Techmeme that day, though a little more fleshed out than Techmeme's trademark headline-and-tweet aggregation.”
The Drum / John Glenday
British newspaper company Trinity Mirror to rebrand as “Reach” →
“We think this is a name which better reflects what we do and what our ambitions are.”
Axios / Dan Primack
HQ Trivia raises $15 million to become the next TV →
“It’s millennial Jeopardy, but with interactive engagement — and a bet by investors that appointment viewing can be recreated in a mobile world.”
Wall Street Journal / Ben Mullin
The Athletic raises $20 million to fund expansion →
“The Athletic plans to use most of the financing to continue its expansion across the U.S., establishing a presence in every market with a professional sports team by the end of the year. By the end of 2018, the Athletic plans to have between 200 and 350 employees, up from its current staff of 120. The company currently has a foothold in 23 markets across the U.S. and Canada, and plans to expand to roughly 45 markets by the end of the year.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
Funny Or Die is retiring its decade-old website and will migrate to Vox Media’s platform →
The site “served us very well for the last 10 years,” said Chris Bruss, president of Funny Or Die. “But as things have changed so much over the years — and a lot over the last year or two — it was important for us to think about the future of FunnyOrDie.com.”
Vanity Fair / Joe Pompeo
“What does Rolling Stone mean to a millennial audience or younger?” →
“Can you hit the reset and make Rolling Stone into a thing that feels vital again, for people who have never listened to the Eagles, or don't even know who they are?”
The Washington Post / Tony Romm
Senate investigators want answers from Reddit and Tumblr on Russia meddling →
“Staffers for lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a briefing with Tumblr soon, and they're seeking more information from Reddit after it acknowledged Monday it shuttered hundreds of suspicious accounts in 2015 and 2016, according to a person close to the panel who was not authorized to speak publicly.”
Washington Post / Erik Wemple
Facebook working on approach to classifying satirical news pieces →
“The Erik Wemple Blog wishes Facebook and its fact-checking partners a whole lot of luck in drawing off-the-cuff lines between all the various forms of bogus and satirical stuff on the Internet.”