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Thursday, March 8, 2018
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With Lab 351, The Globe and Mail is creating both new products and a culture of “bottom-up” innovationA driving principle for the incubator is to make it so “ideas can bubble up from the bottom, or the middle, or the top” of the organization. By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Living in a sea of false signals: Are we being pushed from “trust, but verify” to “verify, then trust”?BuzzFeed’s fake-news reporter outlines some of the dangers ahead: “We have a human problem on our hands. Our cognitive abilities are in some ways overmatched by what we have created.” By Craig Silverman. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / Kristen Hare
Tronc, late to the game, is doing a massive digital remake of its newsrooms →
“Newsrooms will be reorganized. All Tronc papers will be designed and produced out of a Chicago headquarters, called the Design and Production Studio. Most newsrooms will be "hiring new talent" and increasing pay.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
Bustle plans its UK expansion with 10 staffers →
The 5-year-old site already has a U.K. following: In January, Bustle had nearly 3 million unique visitors in the U.K., putting it slightly ahead of PopSugar (2.9 million) and Refinery29 (2.7 million), according to comScore.
ICFJ
Explore the ICFJ’s data on newsroom technologies here →
ICFJ’s new data visualization tool uses findings from ICFJ’s State of Technology in Global Newsrooms, the first-ever global survey (we wrote about those findings here) of the adoption of technology by the news media.
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
A case for Meredith keeping Time magazine and other news titles →
“What remains unsaid, but highly relevant, is that the Time titles provide a much larger share of the digital traffic and digital ad revenue for the new Meredith, than do Meredith’s pre-merger holdings. Time, along with Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly, account for roughly 35 million of the 170 million, Meredith spokesman Art Slusark told me. Subtract those out and you are left with a less imposing 135 million and no top 10 ranking.”
Wall Street Journal / Lara O'Reilly and Lukas I. Alpert
Ad tech firms blacklist Newsweek sites, alleging website traffic manipulation →
“AppNexus, one of the vendors NMG used to sell online ads, and SpotX, an ad-tech company that helps sell video ads, each said they have ended their relationships with Newsweek Media Group. They cited concerns over invalid traffic on the publisher's International Business Times websites. DoubleVerify, a company that offers software for advertisers and ad vendors to authenticate the quality of the locations where their ads appear, has flagged four IBTimes sites and Newsweek.co.uk as having invalid traffic.”
Wall Street Journal / Shalini Ramachandran and Keach Hagey
Univision is searching for a new CEO and undertaking a business review that could lead to large cost cuts →
“Randy Falco’s accelerated exit is a surprise. In November, Univision extended Mr. Falco's employment agreement for an additional two years, through January 2020. Some people familiar with the matter said that he had begun to lose favor with some on the board in recent months. The business review could result in cost cuts in the range of $200 million, including significant layoffs, some of the people said. The expense reductions and business review would be aimed at improving the company's performance and sprucing it up in advance of courting suitors for a potential sale.”
Recode / Jason Del Rey
Amazon thinks it has a fix to Alexa’s terrifying laughing issue →
“Amazon thinks it has a solution to freaky reports of Alexa-powered devices like Amazon Echo laughing unprompted: In rare circumstances, Alexa can mistakenly hear the phrase ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are changing that phrase to be "Alexa, can you laugh?" which is less likely to have false positives, and we are disabling the short utterance ‘Alexa, laugh.’ We are also changing Alexa's response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.”
Digiday / Sahil Patel
‘Make TV more like digital TV’: Networks are removing clutter to improve TV viewing →
“Fox Networks Group said it wants to cut advertising on its networks to two minutes per hour by 2020. NBCUniversal said it plans to reduce the number of ads in its commercial pods by 20 percent and the total ad time by 10 percent on more than 50 original prime-time programs across its networks. Turner's TruTV has already been reducing ad loads on its original programs and plans to expand the offering over the next three years.”
CNNMoney / Brian Stelter
Sinclair’s new media-bashing promos rankle local anchors →
“Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’ … This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. At the end of the promo, viewers are encouraged to send in feedback ‘if you believe our coverage is unfair.’ The instructions say that ‘corporate will monitor the comments and send replies to your audience on your behalf.'”
Wired / Felix Salmon
The improbable rise of the daily news podcast →
“[W]e come to Act 4, Vox's new podcast, Today Explained — a daily news podcast which has had ultrahigh production values from inception. That kind of up-front commitment, without any guarantee of popularity or commercial success, would have been unthinkable just a few months ago: It's a big-money move that even Gimlet and The New York Times didn't dare attempt — let alone public radio stations, which are by nature more fiscally cautious.”