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Wednesday, May 9, 2018
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No print, no private owners, fewer problems? Quebec’s 134-year-old La Presse is going nonprofit“Today, after a deep reflection on the future of the company, we announce that La Presse will now fly on its own.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Zetland’s members asked for an audio version — and now it’s more popular than their written stories“We're definitely not a short-form news outlet. When we launched, we thought it would be late evening media, something where you would crash on the sofa and read our stories.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
ESPN / Kevin Merida
ESPN is discontinuing its public editor position →
“While ESPN has valued the input and dedication shown by everyone who held the position, we too have seen how access to the Internet and its social platforms has created a horde of watchdogs who communicate directly with us to share observations and questions.”
The New York Times / John Coblin
The New York Times will have a weekly TV show called — wait for it — The Weekly →
“FX has given ‘The Weekly’ a 30-week commitment and a Sunday night time slot. The show, at 30 minutes per episode, is expected to debut later this year, possibly in time in for the midterm elections. Hulu has the rights to stream the new series, giving the program a dedicated streaming platform the day after it premieres on cable.”
NPR / Frank Morris
The CEO of GateHouse’s parent company on why “efficencies of scale” can work →
“JOHN DARKOW: They see the newspaper not as journalism but as dollar signs. MIKE REED: That’s garbage. It’s garbage. Yeah, it’s just the opposite.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Meg Dalton
A unified front against Alden Global Capital makes its way to New York →
“Until now, DFM employee's grievances have taken the form of tweets, scathing editorials, and open letters. Today was different. Frustrated, yet empowered, they took their efforts offline and to Alden's doorsteps, with help from the NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America, which defrayed the costs of DFM employees' flights to the demonstration.Three hours later, at noon mountain time, another contingency gathered at the Post's printing plant in Adams County, the paper's acting newsroom, 2,000 miles away.”
Recode / Kurt Wagner
Facebook is making its biggest executive shuffle in company history — who’s who again? →
Adam Mosseri is leaving News Feed for Instagram.
Poynter / Daniel Funke
This Facebook chatbot wants to help you stay ahead of fake news →
“While Fátima and Projeto Lupe! draw upon each organization's respective fact checks to answer questions in real time, Facterbot delivers a general roundup of popular pieces of misinformation Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Users can choose from pre-selected responses to either learn more about each story or ask about different topics. It even offers translations in Spanish.”
Digiday / Kerry Flynn
Inside the Snapchat Creators Summit where 13 Snapchat users met the boss →
“Spiegel's personal Snapchat account may be private, but Snap's CEO embraced the limelight on his own platform this week during the first Snapchat Creators Summit. The two-day event welcomed 13 people who have dedicated a part of their lives to the app. While Snapchat has brought many of them financial success and celebrity status (in some circles), the company had kept these homegrown stars at bay. As Snapchat strives to compete against Facebook's Instagram and faces its own slowing user growth, that resistance to embrace influencers has disappeared.”
The New York Times / Kevin Roose
After founding Twitter and Medium, Ev Williams wants to fix the Internet →
“Last week, Mr. Williams sent me a kind of mini-manifesto — a two-page document containing his thoughts about technology's potential, the problems with ad-supported media and the regulation of social media platforms. We followed up with a phone interview, in which he expanded on the ideas, some of which he has been thinking about and refining for years but had yet to make public.”
Knight Center at the University of Texas at Austin
Here’s a guide (in three different languages!) to innovators in Latin American journalism →
“The series looks at journalists and media professionals in the region who are innovating with design, storytelling format, distribution methods, business models, transnational collaboration, residency programs, niche markets, and more. It also includes four brief guides written by Latin American journalists that offer practical advice for innovating in crowdfunding, design thinking, transnational collaboration and business model.”
Variety / Brent Lang and David Lieberman
Do media chiefs deserve the lavish pay packages they rake in — and what are those packages, really? →
“Before the media landscape gets upended or shareholders take up pitchforks, here's a breakdown of some of the prominent pay packages from the top ranks of entertainment executives.”