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Wednesday, April 25, 2018
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Who’s who in local news: A guide to the biggest brains and bank accounts in the fight for local journalismLocal news consortiums, labs, associations, and more. By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
TechCrunch / Frederic Lardinois
Say hello to the new Gmail with self-destructing messages, email snoozing and more →
“The other major new feature in this update is "confidential mode." The idea here is simple: When you write an email, you can select for how long the recipient will be able to read the email. Recipients will not be able to forward, copy and paste, download or print the content. You can't stop anybody from taking a picture of the screen of course, but what's maybe more important here is that if anybody ever hacked the recipient's account, that email with your confidential information will be long gone.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Ricardo Gandour
As election looms, Brazil braces for fake news →
How Brazil is preparing for misinformation in its election.
Reporters Without Borders
U.S. falls to #45 in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index (from #43) →
“The climate of hatred is steadily more visible in the Index, which evaluates the level of press freedom in 180 countries each year. Hostility towards the media from political leaders is no longer limited to authoritarian countries such as Turkey (down two at 157th) and Egypt (161st), where "media-phobia" is now so pronounced that journalists are routinely accused of terrorism and all those who don't offer loyalty are arbitrarily imprisoned. More and more democratically-elected leaders no longer see the media as part of democracy's essential underpinning, but as an adversary to which they openly display their aversion.”
TechCrunch / Ingrid Lunden
Travel writing site Culture Trip, which uses a contributor model, raises $80M →
“The startup works with some 300 paid contributors globally, who write light stories, take pictures and make videos on everything under the bigger umbrella of local culture, just no politics and current affairs…There have been some 75,000 articles published since 2011, with the rate currently at 3,000 articles per month.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education / Dan Bauman and Chris Quintana
Drew Cloud, a student loans expert quoted in papers like the Boston Globe and Washington Post, is not a real person →
“After The Chronicle spent more than a week trying to verify Cloud’s existence, the company that owns The Student Loan Report confirmed that Cloud was fake. ‘Drew Cloud is a pseudonym that a diverse group of authors at Student Loan Report, LLC use to share experiences and information related to the challenges college students face with funding their education,’ wrote Nate Matherson, CEO of LendEDU. Before that admission, however, Cloud had corresponded at length with many journalists, pitching them stories and offering email interviews, many of which were published. When The Chronicle attempted to contact him through the address last week, Cloud said he was traveling and had limited access to his account. He didn't respond to additional inquiries.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
After years of chasing Facebook traffic, Mic goes for “deliberate distribution” →
“Before, we would have said to a platform, ‘What do we need to do?’ Now, we'll experiment, but less so.”
the Guardian / Mark Sweney
Guardian on track to break even as company halves its losses →
“Guardian News & Media reported a £19m loss in the year to the end of March, in the previous financial year. The publisher, which is now in the final year of a three-year plan to break even, has cut losses to a third of the £57m reported when the drive to reshape the business began.”
Wall Street Journal / Jonathan Randles
Peter Thiel agrees not to buy Gawker →
“Mr. Thiel has agreed to withdraw from the sale process and to provide the eventual buyer a legal release for articles in the Gawker archive.”