 |
Thursday, July 19, 2018
 |
Chance the Rapper, Chance the Philanthropist, and now Chance the PublisherHe marked his purchase of Chicagoist — formerly part of the media empire of Joe Ricketts, whose family owns the Cubs — by beefing with Crain’s Chicago Business. By Christine Schmidt. |
 |
The hit podcast In the Dark is bringing “meaningful interactions” — and money — to the investigationThe podcast has found opportunity with a donors-only Facebook group. Its second-season subject Curtis Flowers is still in prison, on death row — so “giving somebody a mug for donating doesn't feel right.” By Christine Schmidt. |
 |
The universe of people trying to deceive journalists keeps expanding, and newsrooms aren’t ready“It’s going to be a while before we really have an understanding of how we work to combat it beyond the traditional methods that we have used for a few years now.” By Heather Bryant. |
What We’re Reading
The Membership Puzzle Project / Melanie Sill, Emily Goligoski, Amy Ashida
A cheatsheet for hosting communities of practice (and why there is no cutting corners when convening people) →
“Forming a community means challenging engrained models of programming and organizing. Even for MPP.”
Lenfest Institute / Joseph Lichterman
Digging around for new treasures: How the Conversation re-uses archival coverage →
“The Conversation's staff recognizes that readers aren't coming to the site for breaking coverage, but The Conversation wants its analysis to be relevant to the news cycle and to provide readers — and its publishing partners — with additional context and background on the news of the day. In recent years, The Conversation began looking inward for coverage: If it couldn't get a fresh story immediately, could it update and re-use what it already has published?”
The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum
Facing a hostile White House, reporters try a new tactic: Solidarity →
When Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to answer a reporter’s follow-up question, another reporter gave her his chance: “Hallie,” he said, “go ahead if you want.”
CNBC / Michelle Castillo
Facebook will begin taking down fake news that encourages violence →
“Facebook will work with to-be-named outside local and international organizations as well as its own internal image recognition technologies to help spot these types of offensive items. Parties will have to confirm the information is false, and other groups may be asked to weigh in. Although the policy change is upcoming, the company used these principles to remove posts in Sri Lanka alleging Muslims were poisoning food given or sold to Buddhists.”
Wired / ISSIE LAPOWSKY
Meet digital fake news sleuth Jonathan Albright →
“So that weekend, sitting alone in his studio apartment at the northern tip of Manhattan, Albright pulled an all-nighter, following YouTube recommendations down a dark vortex that led from one conspiracy theory video to another until he'd collected data on roughly 9,000 videos. On Sunday, he wrote about his findings on Medium. By Monday, his investigation was the subject of a top story on Buzzfeed News. And by Thursday, when I met Albright at his office, he was chugging a bottle of Super Coffee (equal parts caffeine boost and protein shake) to stay awake.”
Paste / Jacob Weindling
What to expect when you’re reporting on ICE →
Molly Crabapple: “At Port Isabel, immigrants are only allowed to speak to reporters for a half hour at a time on Wednesday mornings. When I applied to meet five immigrants who wanted to speak to me, ICE called this ‘excessive’.”
NBC News / CLAIRE ATKINSON
Reader revenue tops $130 million at The Guardian →
“As paywalls have proliferated across the internet, The Guardian continues to give its stories away for free and is still losing money doing it — but is losing much less.” We wrote about their reader revenue approach last year.
Bloomberg / Gerry Smith and Anousha Sakoui
Comcast drops out of the bidding war for Fox, handing the deal to Disney →
“Comcast will now turn its full attention on Sky, a key asset to help the Philadelphia-based cable provider expand overseas. While the Fox studios and TV networks would have been complementary assets to Comcast's own Universal studios and NBC TV assets, Sky would instantly give Comcast something it currently lacks: a global presence.”
Portland Press Herald / Eric Russell
What lawmakers said about the tariffs on the Canadian newsprint →
“Added King, an independent: ‘The press is the only industry in America with its own line in the Constitution and the First Amendment, and what you're considering today is a very unusual case that brings into conflict two principles that are important to the establishment of the country. One is, you have to obey the law, and the law is in regards to tariffs. But the other principle is the First Amendment, and I would argue that these two principles run into one another. They are in conflict. This is a special case.'”
Inside Philanthropy / Tate Williams
A philanthropy-backed journalism fellowship spotlights equitable climate solutions →
“When you start to hear about this kind of bottom-up work people are doing in communities, which is often tightly connected to public health, housing, labor, and more, it can give a kind of three-dimensional picture of climate change beyond talk of markets and models. That’s the kind of storytelling that’s potentially powerful for both environmental journalism and climate action.”
IJNet.org / Taylor Mulcahey
Nigeria’s Abubakar Ibrahim shares lessons for humanizing conflict stories →
“You have to understand what you’re trying to do in the first place and its value. You also have to understand that it’s not about you, it’s about other people. It’s about humanity.”