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Friday, May 18, 2018
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Can signing a “pro-truth pledge” actually change people’s behavior online?Plus: Fake audio on WhatsApp in India, and do paywalls lead to increased polarization? By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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What a 2004 experiment in hyperlocal news can tell us about community voices todayCan a community news platform serve as "technology that protects our minds and replenishes society"? By Amedeo Tumolillo and Rich Gordon. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / Al Tompkins
In Houston, journalists are sorting rumors from fact live on television →
TEGNA-owned station KHOU, for instance, created a display to show what information the station has verified, what the station is still trying to check out and what false information is circulating.
NPR / Elizabeth Jensen
You call that breaking news?: NPR’s public editor on the increasing frequency of push notifications →
“NPR puts alerts into two categories: Breaking news that subscribers need to know now and feature alerts, which cover investigative work and original reporting that NPR wants to highlight, as well as live event coverage and new podcasts or programs. (New programming alerts are supposed to be “rare and far between,” per the guidelines.)”
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
Facebook says its Snapchat Stories clone has hit 150 million daily active users — now the ads are coming →
“Facebook Stories started testing its first ads in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. They're 5- to 15-second video ads users can skip, and while there's no click-through or call to action now, Facebook plans to add that in the coming months. Advertisers can easily extend their Instagram Stories ads to this new surface, or have Facebook automatically reformat their News Feed ads with color-matched borders and text at the bottom.”
J-Source / H.G. Watson
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s ‘Royal Fascinator’ is its experiment in limited-run newsletters →
The current open rate for the newsletter is 70 percent (CBC wouldn't share other metrics). While Royal Fascinator will end its run after the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle wedding ends. (But CBC has already launched another limited-run newsletter: The Campaigner, where writer Haydn Watters will look at the Ontario election campaign.)
Polygon / Julia Alexander
Vine follow-up V2 is dead, but Vine’s devoted forum-dwellers aren’t giving up →
"I haven't directly spoken with him, but I think between me and him, him and the experts, and him with everyone else on the forums, there's so much love and so much commitment. There are people who post topics about people treating [Vine cofounder] Dom [Hofmann] like a god, and you know everyone's praying for Dom to release an update. It's almost like Dom's a celebrity on the forums and people want to get everything out of him."
Digiday / Tim Peterson
WordPress poses another GDPR compliance headache for publishers →
“Through the open source version of WordPress, sites can use more than 55,000 plug-ins created by other companies and developers to provide features that a site needs, like forms for soliciting people's contact information. But these plug-ins may compromise a site's ability to abide by GDPR when the law takes effect on May 25.”
Wired / Jessi Hempel
What happened to Facebook’s grand plan to wire the world through Internet.org? →
“Facebook launched Internet.org with the bold arrogance that has defined its approach to many of its partnerships. It blundered blindly into areas where it had no expertise, apologizing after the fact when it made mistakes. That arrogance left it deaf to the feedback of partners, potential users, and people who had spent careers learning the lessons Facebook has had to piece together on its own. I reached out to the six original launch partners. Only one, Opera, said it was still working with the company's Internet.org initiative.”
New York Post / Keith J. Kelly
Time, Fortune, and Money have reportedly drawn bids close to $200 million each →
“Selloff activities and employee purges continued at Meredith this week. Sources say Citigroup is lining up management presentations for next week for potential suitors interested in buying Time, Fortune and Money, three of the four titles that are being divested.”