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Friday, October 19, 2018
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If you’re poor in the UK you get less, worse news — especially online, new research suggestsPoorer people are less likely to go straight to a news site, and the researchers found no online news brand that was read by significantly more poorer people than wealthier people. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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College students broadly mistrust news. Fake Kardashian gossip probably won’t help.“Why give them the ammo?” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / David Beard
What newspapers’ podcasts are teaching traditional text reporters →
“Fowler was able to extend his one-hour prison interview to a wild 3 1/2-hour conversation. The problem? ‘The tape is horrible, through double-pane glass with a grate at the bottom,’ said Fowler, a Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer reporter who suddenly had to think audio for a seven-part series and seven-episode podcast about Carruth, the onetime Carolina Panthers wide receiver convicted of conspiracy in the 1999 murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams.”
Columbia Journalism Review / David Uberti
Forecasting the midterms: Uncertainty with a chance of finger-pointing →
“Across this small but growing cohort of campaign analysis, the marching orders are to avoid any appearance of the sort of certainty given off two years ago.”
The New York Times / Jaclyn Peiser
Lenny Letter has now shut down →
“In recent weeks, lawyers representing Lenny Letter had approached potential investors seeking ways to keep it running through the 2020 election, according to an email obtained by The New York Times.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
The strange case of the $846 subscription offer to the Kansas City Star →
“A couple of months after he declined to pay the $846, a representative of the Star called and asked if he would consider coming back. The offer was three months at $0.50 a day or six months at $1.25 a day. Black declined, fearing that the rates would jump right back up. Finally he suggested $0.75 a day for a year, Black said, which works out to $262.50. The salesperson agreed to that, and home delivery has resumed.”
Wall Street Journal / Georgia Wells and Lukas I. Alpert
In Facebook’s effort to fight fake news, human fact-checkers struggle to keep up →
“Out of Factcheck's full-time staff of eight people, two focus specifically on Facebook. On average, they debunk less than one Facebook post a day. Some of the other third-party groups reported similar volumes. None of the organizations said they had received special instructions from Facebook ahead of the midterms, or perceived a sense of heightened urgency.”
The Daily Beast / Will Sommer
Alex Jones and Infowars are still on Twitter, despite “ban” →
“Two months after Jones and InfoWars were supposedly shunned, a number of accounts remain live and tweeting.”
NBC News / Ben Collins and Shoshana Wodinsky
Twitter pulls down bot network that pushed pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist →
“Some of the bot accounts tweeted using a hashtag in Arabic that became the top worldwide Twitter trend on Sunday. The hashtag roughly translated to "#We_all_trust_Mohammad_Bin_Salman," the Crown Prince and putative leader of Saudi Arabia, who has come under international scrutiny following the disappearance of Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post.”
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
Publishers say Facebook’s bad metrics *aren’t* to blame for their pivots to video →
“‘Mic's decision to build out a premium video journalism newsroom in 2016 was a result of growing digital video consumption, which has only accelerated across all platforms including social, mobile, web and streaming. It did not have to do with Facebook's average watch-time metrics,’ a Mic spokeswoman said.”