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Wednesday, September 19, 2018
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How to buy into journalism’s blockchain future (in only 44 steps)Blockchain-and-journalism startup Civil aims to build a decentralized infrastructure for news, and you can invest in their vision. It just might take you a while. By John Keefe. |
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How the Broke in Philly collaboration is focusing local media’s attention on poverty and economic mobility“As journalists, we're taught to be competitive and territorial. On the other hand, things are changing dramatically, so don't assume other people in your local market don't want to collaborate.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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How France beat back information manipulation (and how other democracies might do the same)“French success resulted from a combination of structural factors, luck, as well as the effective anticipation and reaction of the Macron campaign staff, the government, and civil society, especially the mainstream media.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / Kara Swisher
It's the ultimate irony: Those who almost killed us are making us stronger →
“Each of these billionaires could afford to buy just about anything at all. Why a magazine and not a sports team, when media is a messier and less certain bet? Perhaps it's because it offers a heady mix of altruism, power and ego.”
The Wall Street Journal / Alexandra Bruell
Amazon is expected to become the No. 3 player in digital ad sales this year →
Passing Verizon’s Oath (AOL/HuffPost/Yahoo/TechCrunch/etc.), meaning Nos. 1 (Google), 2 (Facebook), and 3 (Amazon) will all be technology companies not in the traditional hiring-reporters-to-create-content business.
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
BuzzFeed News cuts its podcasting team to, whelp, focus on video →
“We've decided to move to a production model that is more like our TV projects — that is, treating shows as individual projects, with teams brought on as needed,” Shani Hilton, BuzzFeed News’s vice president of news and programming, wrote in a memo to staff.
Nieman Reports / Michael Petrou
Re-examining Walter Lippmann’s journalistic legacy →
“He obviously inhabited the world of Washington. He consorted with these people, he talked to them, he was interested in having influence on them. But he was not predictably in one camp or another. And I think that's why he was so influential and so widely read as a columnist for many years, because he wasn't knee-jerk, he wasn't a hack.”
Apple / Wenson Hsieh
You can now view websites on an Apple Watch; here’s how to design for them →
“Most responsive content is already well proportioned when laid out at 320 CSS pixels, the width of iPhone SE. We ensure that it’s also well-proportioned on Apple Watch by laying out at this width and then computing the initial scale of the page such that the content width fits within the viewport. This means that text and images may appear smaller but the overall layout of the page is preserved.”
Ethan Marcotte
Google’s control of AMP is opening up — but not in the really important way →
“The new governance model…doesn't influence AMP's integration into various Google-owned properties, products like Search and Gmail. And as I've written before, those proprietary integrations are the reason AMP provides any value to the companies and publishers that adopt it.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
Project Feels: How USA Today, ESPN and The New York Times are targeting ads to mood →
“Hitting people with a message when they're likely to be receptive is as old as advertising, but using artificial intelligence to target people based on their mood is another level of manipulation.”
Twitter / Matt Dempsey
20 local newsrooms just chipped in to buy the “prohibitively expensive” Texas Voter Registration Database →
“Each newsroom had to provide a signed affidavit saying we would not use this data for commercial purposes. We will only use this data for news gathering and stories. We’ve all agreed to NOT post the entire data online.” The total cost was $3,600.
Inc / Christine Lagorio Chafkin
How Reddit’s co-founders patched their fractured friendship to save the company that defined them →
“Huffman and Ohanian met for an early lunch at Super Duper Burgers on San Francisco’s Market Street. It was going to be a hell of a day, so they each inhaled a locally sourced, organic burger. They were to meet Sam Altman, a Reddit board member and the 30-year-old president of Y Combinator, outside the front door of 101 New Montgomery at noon. Altman was to usher Huffman, Reddit’s original creator, up into HQ to meet his new employees. As of this day, he was chief executive of Reddit.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Andrew McCormick
Time EIC Edward Felsenthal on the magazine’s foundation + Benioff future →
“Q: You've said the print magazine will remain the center of Time's operations — A: Center is probably the wrong word. I see it as the foundation of everything we're doing.”
Washington Post
The Washington Post is launching a midterms cheat-sheet for Snapchat Discover →
“Hosted by The Washington Post's Hannah Jewell and produced by Grace Raver, the videos will be featured every Tuesday leading up to Election Day. Today's video features original interviews with Parkland students as Jewell explores the issue of gun control.”
De Correspondent / Rob Wijnberg
“We can do better than strive for objectivity” →
“Behind every report, every feature, every news item, inevitably lies a worldview rooted in a whole range of assumptions: ontological (what's real?), epistemological (what's true?), methodological (how do we find out?), and moral (why does it matter?). There is, in short, no such thing as ‘no point of view’.”