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Monday, May 21, 2018
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Flush with spectrum-sale dollars, a Pennsylvania PBS station is doubling down on a different kind of local news“Our goal is a newscast that is complementary to the commercial news”: Think important local issues, not car crashes and sports scores. By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Sridhar Pappu and Jay Stowe
The Last Days of Time Inc. →
“An oral history of how the pre-eminent media organization of the 20th century ended up on the scrap heap.”
Adweek / Josh Sternberg
Why does the internet suck? →
Adweek spoke with several pioneers of the early web, researchers, thinkers and practitioners: “The way investors make money from social media platforms has primarily been ad based,” said one. “People often point to everyone who is designing the platforms — we need people to be diverse, true — and it's the C-suite…[which is] incentivized to prioritize clicks for ad metrics for valuations over experiences and, as a result, trust, privacy, the well-being of users.”
The New York Times / Gaia Pinaigiani
The mafia reporter with a police escort (and the 200 journalists like him) →
“‘Don't stop writing, Paolo,’ read an email Mr. Borrometi received two days after he was assaulted in 2014 outside his family's country home in Sicily by two men wearing balaclavas. ‘Our countries need free and investigative journalism. You have my respect.’ The note came from Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was herself killed in a car-bomb attack last year, after exposing her island nation's links to offshore tax havens and reporting on local politicians' crimes for decades.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Mathew Ingram
Adam Mosseri on Facebook's complicated relationship with the media →
"Facebook might be the majority of your traffic, but not the majority of people who care deeply about your content."
Poynter / Al Tompkins
The ‘hire a crowd’ business operates openly and makes journalism even more difficult →
“A few things to keep in mind: 1) Tell nobody you’re being paid 2) Tell nobody you’re being paid 3) Media will be present, do not talk to them 4) Tell nobody you’re being paid 5) If someone approaches you, don’t tell them you’re being paid”
Editor and Publisher / Rob Tornoe
Now that Reddit is welcoming brands to its platform, how will publishers use it? →
“It's part of a push headed by Alexandra Riccomini, Reddit's first director of business development and media partnerships, to encourage publishers to interact with the platform more. It's working with Boston NPR affiliate WBUR to produce the "Endless Thread" podcast, partnered with Time magazine and rolled out native video hosting for brands. Probably more interesting to media companies is the fact Reddit has unveiled new profile pages that let brands share their own content on the platform without the fear of having their website flagged and potentially banned.”
New York Post / Alexandra Steigrad
Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine has folded →
“The glossy periodical owned by billionaire Peter Brant — which lately has been mired in legal spats with former employees, as well as a dispute with its former landlord — has filed for a Chapter 7 liquidation and is closing shop on Monday, a senior employee told The Post. The bad news got delivered to staff members at an "all-hands meeting" Monday morning, according to a source who was there.”
The New York Times / Katrin Bennhold
Germany acts to tame Facebook, learning from its own history of hate →
“Germany, home to a tough new online hate speech law, has become a laboratory for one of the most pressing issues for governments today: how and whether to regulate the world's biggest social network. Banned posts, pictures and videos have routinely lingered on Facebook and other social media platforms. Now companies that systematically fail to remove ‘obviously illegal’ content within 24 hours face fines of up to 50 million euros.”
Wall Street Journal / Lara O'Reilly
Google will hold talks with publishers over their GDPR concerns →
“Last month, four trade bodies that together represent thousands of publishers in the U.S. and Europe, sent a letter to Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, lambasting the company for ‘waiting to the last minute’ to announce its GDPR proposals, which the trade groups say ‘undermine the fundamental purposes’ of the regulation. Earlier this week, Google invited the four trade bodies' leadership, plus two board members from each, to attend meetings with its executives hosted at its offices in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and London on May 24.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
TheSkimm gets more funding from a new group of investors including Shonda Rimes and Tyra Banks →
“With the latest round of funding, the company plans to expand its free and premium product offerings. The company currently has 72 full-time employees and expects to make additional hires across multiple areas of the business, including product and data analytics. TheSkimm also plans to use the new funding to expand the No Excuses political-engagement campaign, which it launched leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
With Facebook Live views falling, BuzzFeed now looks to Twitch (an Amazon-owned platform) →
“This year, some of BuzzFeed News' Facebook Live videos have had less than 50,000 views, others, like this broadcast of the bottom of the ocean, has had 168,000 views. On Twitch, BuzzFeed is starting off with zero fans, so it will be an upward climb: Discoverability on Twitch is more similar to YouTube than Facebook; audiences search rather than scroll through a news feed, and building audience organically takes time.”