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Monday, March 19, 2018
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Newsonomics: “Retiring” from Tronc, what is Michael Ferro up to?Three possibilities: Tronc merges with Gannett, Ferro tries to take the company private, or — maybe — Tronc begins to act more like a normal company. By Ken Doctor. |
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Live life like a local: Whereby.Us adds two more cities to its growing roster“I want people to enjoy the newsletter like they would a nice conversation over coffee or a cocktail or while sitting in a wooden swing on a porch.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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How digital leaders from the BBC and Al Jazeera are planning for the ethics of AI“We have to remember, as media, we are gatekeepers to people’s understanding of the modern world.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Buzzfeed / Craig Silverman
How Facebook Groups are being exploited to spread misinformation, plan harassment, and radicalize people →
“Mark Zuckerberg wants to get a billion people in ‘meaningful’ Facebook groups. But to get there he'll have to battle the spammers, hackers, and trolls who exploit and hijack groups to make money or sow chaos.”
The New York Times / John Herrman
An argument that tech companies like YouTube are taking advantage of nonprofit Wikipedia →
“A cross between a piece of infrastructure, a public commons and an online community, Wikipedia has been a boon to some of the largest companies in the world. Whatever benefit Google, the owner of YouTube, hopes to wring from the crowdsourced encyclopedia is likely to pale in comparison with the value it receives from including Wikipedia entries in its search results.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Amanda Palleschi
A profile of New York’s The Cut →
“I've had editors at glossy women's magazines say to me, ‘Forget the nuance. We're trying to make a really clear argument here.’ No editor at The Cut has asked me to forget the nuance,” [Ann] Friedman says. “Internet conventional wisdom is you need a very clear take that can be put into a clicky headline. Some of the worst #MeToo writing and response has been that — ‘Here's why so-and-so is bad.’ That is just not The Cut's M.O.”
eMarketer
Emarketer: Google and Facebook’s digital ad power will decline (slightly) in 2018 →
“eMarketer estimates the two companies will capture a combined 56.8% of US digital ad investment in 2018, down from 58.5% last year. These figures have been adjusted downward, as smaller players such as Amazon and Snapchat are experiencing faster-than-expected growth. Importantly, Google and Facebook’s share of new digital ad dollars is declining as well. This year, they will garner nearly 48% of new expenditures. By comparison, that figure was nearly 73% in 2016.”
Recode / Kurt Wagner
In non–Cambridge Analytica Facebook news, FB will start letting video creators charge $5/month →
“The subscription will cost $4.99 a month, and Facebook won't take a cut. But Apple and Google, which will process the transactions on their respective platforms, will take the standard 30 percent cut they take for all in-app purchases they facilitate. That means creators will get about $3.50 for each subscription.”
Splinter / David Uberti
How the old bosses won at the new Gothamist →
“‘The public narrative has its bad guy, and it's the perfect bad guy: Joe Ricketts,’ a former DNAinfo staffer told me Wednesday. ‘He's rich, he owns the Cubs, he likes Trump. But in real life there are a lot of villains. And there are a lot of losers, too.'”
First Draft News
First Draft launches a free online course on identifying misinformation →
“Our free, one-hour course teaches journalists and the general public how to verify online media, so that they don’t fall for hoaxes, rumors and misinformation.”
Reuters
Meredith reportedly moves to sell Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated →
“The move illustrates how Meredith sees some of Time Inc.’s titles that attract primarily male readership as not playing to its core strength in women’s magazines, which include Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle and Martha Stewart Living.”
NPR / Jolie Meyers and Monika Evstatieva
How a freelance investigative journalist embedded herself inside Russia’s “troll factory” →
“My friend taught me the ropes. She told me that I had to write posts that were natural — like, for example, ‘I am cooking or I am walking down the street and I had this thought about how bad the [pro-Western] Ukrainian president is.’ ”
Business Insider / James Cook
The YouTube Kids app has been suggesting a load of conspiracy videos to children →
“The app suggested several videos from prominent conspiracy theorist David Icke in which he claimed that the world is ruled by reptile-human hybrids.”