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Tuesday, October 16, 2018
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Civil’s token sale has failed. Now what? (Refunds, for one thing.)“For those who purchased tokens, first of all, thank you. We'll offer full refunds.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Where are the weeklies? Still kicking, Penelope Abernathy’s news desert report saysOf the 1,800 newspapers lost since 2004, 1,700 of them were weekly papers. But it’s not because their audience disappeared — it’s because the papers did. By Christine Schmidt. |
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“Yelling at her family in public, in your headphones”: Reality TV comes to podcastsPlus: The state of Slate, Podtrac wariness, and national/local podcast collaborations. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
Axios / Sara Fischer
Facebook traffic to publishers is down so much that “a user is now more likely to find your content through your mobile website or app than from Facebook” →
A Chartbeat report finds that Google Search on mobile has grown more than two times, direct mobile traffic to publishers’ websites and apps has grown by 30 percent, and Apple News has grown, although it’s unclear how much.
Cheddar / Alex Heath
Facebook is developing hardware for the TV — a camera-equipped device that allows video calling →
The device and others in progress “represent Facebook's widening ambition to build a consumer hardware business outside of its virtual reality brand Oculus.”
Politico / Jason Schwartz
Advertisers aren’t flocking to Ingraham’s Fox News show months after David Hogg’s boycott →
“Before the boycotts, Ingraham had significantly more ad time — nearly 15 minutes per show — but [Fox head of ad sales Marianne] Gambelli said that was due to preexisting advertising obligations. Once the controversies began, she said, the network decided to keep a lighter load to help buoy the show, then just five months old.”
Stanford News / Stanford University
Stanford launches an initiative to helping journalists find data for investigative reporting at a lower cost →
“Stanford students in Phillips' fall course will work with local newsrooms to collect data needed for in-depth stories — such as gathering government records, in some cases by making Freedom of Information Act requests. The students will then transform that information into datasets that journalists can analyze. Students will also help journalists navigate the data.”
Twitter / Rob Wijnberg
The main difference between subscription and membership →
“Subscribers pay money to get a product (i.e. access to a site). Members join your (journalistic) cause. In our case: to be their antidote to the daily news grind.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
What Norwegian publisher Aller Media has learned from its personalized paywall →
“The algorithm is based on four factors: how recently the content was posted (as a news site, this is important); collaborative filtering, or, what similar audience profiles are reading; impressions; how many times an article was served but not clicked on; and how many times an article converted readers to subscribers.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Nate Silver will make one firm prediction about the midterms. Most journalists won’t want to hear it. →
“Media understanding about probability, margin of error, and uncertainty is very poor.”
The New York Times / Paul Mozur
Myanmar’s military said to be behind Facebook campaign that fueled genocide →
“The campaign, described by five people who asked for anonymity because they feared for their safety, included hundreds of military personnel who created troll accounts and news and celebrity pages on Facebook and then flooded them with incendiary comments and posts timed for peak viewership.”
Reuters / Joseph Menn
Facebook is banning misinformation on voting in the U.S. midterms →
It “will ban false information about voting requirements and fact-check fake reports of violence or long lines at polling stations.”
BuzzFeed News / Arianna Rebolini
BuzzFeed is launching a book club →
The books will be discussed in the BuzzFeed Book Club Facebook group.