 |
Friday, May 11, 2018
 |
BuzzFeed News’ podcast cohost, Jojo the bot, wants to help listeners follow along without friction“One of our goals has been to talk about the news in a way that invites our audience into the news cycle. We're trying to make it a little bit easier for people to be engaged." By Christine Schmidt. |
 |
You see it, you buy it: Just being exposed to fake news makes you more likely to believe itPlus: A trove of Russian Facebook ads, “antecedents of bullshit,” and a week with Radio Sputnik. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Twitter / Julia Angwin
Facebook just publicly thanked Julia Angwin for finding (and reporting on) the platform’s issues →
“Wow, thanks @facebook. I've never been thanked before by a company that I've covered so aggressively.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
GDPR scrambling has spawned a swell of data protection “charlatans” →
“One data protection trainer and consultant has posted on his LinkedIn profile: ‘Data Protection trainer and consultant. Not GDPR certified because nobody is.’ Another industry executive added that there are no real GDPR qualifications, but ‘plenty of charlatans.'”
The Atlantic / John Wenzel
The gutting of The Denver Post is a death knell for local news →
“The rapid cutting at The Denver Post is neither inevitable nor defensible, at least not by anyone with coherent ethics. I've had conversations with the now-departed editors of our pioneering marijuana-news website, The Cannabist, about how much weed-advertising money Digital First execs have left on the table, even as the industry becomes a multibillion-dollar pillar of the Colorado economy. As of this summer, The Cannabist will become an automated website with no staff or editor.”
Awful Announcing / Matt Yoder
The end of ESPN’s public editor position completes a disappointing decline in relevancy that could have been avoided →
“Perhaps the onus (and the blame if you want to call it that) is on ESPN for the public editor's job losing its usefulness instead of there being an inherent issue with the position itself.”
Current / Jennifer Dargan
With systemwide coverage review, public radio can reveal and address its racial inequities →
“I myself have rebroadcast on public radio The Lone Ranger and other such shows. The Lone Ranger's Native American sidekick, Tonto, was first played on commercial radio by John Todd, a white man. The character spoke without using articles — ‘You risk life. Tonto risk life.’ How can we justify perpetuating such harmful stereotypes by continuing to broadcast them?”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Why Wall Street keeps giving Tronc a little love →
“But despite the sweet payouts to top executives, stop-and-start efforts at digital transformation and some disastrous leadership bungling at the Los Angeles Times, Tronc is the rare newspaper stock that has held its value and actually increased share price — for the year to date and also reaching back a full year.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jillian Bauer-Reese
Reframing economic injustice in America's poorest big city →
“A local, collaborative reporting initiative…is working to reframe despairing poverty narratives by digging deep into its complex causes and highlighting solutions that have the potential to make a difference.”
Digiday / Tim Peterson
Apple News officially lets publishers use Google’s DoubleClick to serve ads →
“The move is meant to make it easier for publishers to sell their Apple News articles with inventory on their own sites and their Google Accelerated Mobile Pages and Facebook Instant Articles inventory. That way, publishers may start to see some real revenue from Apple News and be more willing to produce the higher-quality, exclusive content that Apple seeks, especially on the video side, where the company has even started paying publishers for premieres. Publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue from the Apple News ads they sell directly.”
Deadline / Dawn C. Chmielewski
News Corp CEO calls for governments to create an “algorithm review board” →
"These algorithms are already potent, but they are destined to be much more formidable, and their abundant potential to skew news and skewer customers needs to be better understood and monitored.”