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Tuesday, September 4, 2018
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Here’s how a technical innovation meant for advertising helped Welcome to Night Vale give 1 story 3 different endingsPlus: The Washington Post is ramping up work on its upcoming daily podcast, a U.K. show gets an HBO deal, and the rise of sports gambling podcasts. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Google isn’t just a search engine — it’s a literal extension of our mindWhen we integrate things from the external environment into our thinking processes, they play the same cognitive role as our brains do. They become just as much a part of our minds as neurons and synapses. By Benjamin Curtis. |
What We’re Reading
NPR / David Folkenflik
Newsrooms at Tronc’s 2 newspapers in Virginia want to unionize →
“We’re taking this step to give our newsroom a seat at the table with whoever our owners may be.”
Fast Company / CALE GUTHRIE WEISSMAN
Joshua Topolsky’s The Outline has laid off all of its staff writers →
“Editors seem to be the only remaining full-time editorial staff the site has left. It's unclear what the Outline's plans are, or how many people were laid off today. The company does not appear to be folding, but may simply rely on freelance work from now on.”
BuzzFeed News / Davey Alba
How Dueterte used Facebook to fuel the Philippine drug war →
“If you want to know what happens to a country that has opened itself entirely to Facebook, look to the Philippines. What happened there — what continues to happen there — is both an origin story for the weaponization of social media and a peek at its dystopian future. It's a society where, increasingly, the truth no longer matters, propaganda is ubiquitous, and lives are wrecked and people die as a result — half a world away from the Silicon Valley engineers who'd promised to connect their world.”
Reuters / Shoon Naing and Aye Min Thant
Myanmar court jails Reuters reporters for seven years in landmark secrets case →
Reuters’ editor in chief: “We will not wait while Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo suffer this injustice and will evaluate how to proceed in the coming days, including whether to seek relief in an international forum.”
The Daily Beast / Will Sommer
This Facebook alternative for liberals is a hive of false claims about Trump →
“Now, Rivero wants to take the diehard liberals from Occupy Democrats—and anyone else he can get—onto a social network of his own. In early August, Rivero quietly launched Liker, an upstart that looks very similar to Facebook, if Facebook was only about politics. Like Occupy Democrats, though, Liker has quickly filled with fake information about Trump.”
Wired / Renee DiResta
As politicians accuse tech giants of censorship, the real focus should be on opaque algorithms and reckless amplification of harmful content →
“The conversation we should be having—how can we fix the algorithms?—is instead being co-opted and twisted by politicians and pundits howling about censorship and miscasting content moderation as the demise of free speech online. It would be good to remind them that free speech does not mean free reach. There is no right to algorithmic amplification. In fact, that's the very problem that needs fixing.”
Digiday / Tim Peterson
Publishers aren’t ready to commit resources to Instagram’s IGTV →
“For Discovery and three other publishers interviewed for this article, two months after its launch IGTV remains something of an enigma: a platform to experiment with but not to devote much in the way of dedicated resources to, at least not until there's a clear way to reap some revenue in return. That means taking videos already distributed on other platforms and repurposing them for IGTV.”
Times of India
WhatsApp kicks off radio campaigns in India to remind users about fake news →
“These campaigns advise users to verify authenticity of messages before forwarding them and to report content that they might find to be inflammatory. It also cautions users to be careful about forwarding messages that contain misinformation and said doing so could have serious repercussions.”
The Atlantic / Chuck Todd
It’s time for the press to stop complaining and fight back →
“I'm not advocating for a more activist press in the political sense, but for a more aggressive one. That means having a lower tolerance for talking points, and a greater willingness to speak plain truths. It means not allowing ourselves to be spun, and not giving guests or sources a platform to spin our readers and viewers, even if that angers them. Access isn't journalism's holy grail—facts are.”
BuzzFeed News / Ben Smith
He helped create insider political journalism — now he says it’s time for it to go away →
“A Brazilian editor once told me that you could tell his country was in political crisis because everyone was talking about politics all the time. In a normal country, nobody cares about politics. And I think that most of all, the political journalism of that crisis is no longer a special genre of journalism, but instead the core of the profession: getting to the truth, explaining the world, and often telling stories with a clear right and wrong.”