 |
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
 |
In cities across America, this morning’s newspaper told you there was an election yesterday — but nothing about itTo save money on newsprint and late press runs, Gannett told its newspapers not to bother printing results and to direct the curious online. Here’s how that played out. By Joshua Benton. |
 |
Can this network of lit-to-be-local newsletters unlock younger civic engagement?6AM runs six sites in four states across the Southeast, in areas “where they are not big enough to have multiple daily papers, yet they are big enough to have a huge life force and a huge heart.” By Christine Schmidt. |
 |
YouTube helps a majority of American users understand current events — but 64 percent say they see untrue infoWhen a one-hour outage on the platform can result in a 20 percent net hike in traffic to publishers' websites, YouTube's got a special share of the attention economy. By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Columbia Journalism Review / Alexandria Neason
ProPublica's Electionland pitches in, from tip to story →
“Their command center would serve 250 reporters in 125 newsrooms, many of which have seen their budgets diminished in recent years. ProPublica employees wore bright blue T-shirts decorated with stickers that read ‘I covered voting.’ On large monitors near the front of the room were three maps of the United States; on one of them, clusters of tiny pink dots blinked and pulsated. They were news tips.”
The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin
The networks dawdled on calling the House until Fox News went for it first →
“ABC, CBS and NBC allotted a supersize block of time — three hours in prime time — to feed viewers' appetite for political news. Usually, midterms only merit an hour of coverage on the Big Three broadcast stations, usually starting at 10 p.m. Cable news networks, whose ratings now regularly beat rival channels like ESPN, constructed glossy new sets for the occasion; Fox News, for instance, built a hub outside its studio on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Priyanjana Bengani
After the Pittsburgh shooting, national and local outlets relied on each other →
“Tow Center senior research fellow Priyanjana Bengani has been using news organizations' social media feeds to research trends in local and national coverage. By cross-referencing a list of prominent national news sources with local news organizations reporting at the site of the shooting, Bengani is able to show which outlets cited one another over three days—Saturday, the day of the shooting, Sunday, and Monday—either to bolster or to criticize their reporting.”
The Verge / Jon Porter
Facebook admits it screwed up on Myanmar, but refuses to take all the blame →
” Since it was conducted by the Business for Social Responsibility, an independent nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, it certainly qualifies as independent, but it stops short of the worldwide audit that the coalition called for. Although Facebook claims to agree with the value of transparently publishing data about enforcement efforts and points toward a recent example covering its Myanmar moderation (it also posted a similar report about Iran), it makes no specific commitments about how regularly it will publish these reports in the future.”
Digiday / Tim Peterson
Axios is on track for $20 million in revenue — growing without a high-end subscription →
“In November 2016, VandeHei said that Axios would roll out a subscription product that would cost $10,000 a year or more. That's still the plan, though it's unlikely to move out of the beta-testing phase by the end of this year, VandeHei said. When the high-end subscription product does officially launch, it may not be the only one Axios offers. ‘There is a newer one we're looking at, but I'm not going to talk about it,’ VandeHei said, citing ‘competitive reasons.'”
The Hollywood Reporter / Natalie Jarvey
Social-driven Defy Media is closing, blaming “market conditions [that] got in the way of us completing our mission” →
“Defy, which was formed in 2013 through the merger of Break Media and Alloy Digital, benefited for several years from the digital media boom. It counts Lionsgate, Viacom and ABS Capital as investors and, in 2016, raised $70 million from Wellington Management Co. But the business has struggled over the last year amid an industrywide downturn. In March, Defy laid off 8 percent of its staff as it closed its programmatic advertising business.”
Digiday / Jessica Davies
Publishers step up the fight against cookies gone rogue →
“The Association of Online Publishers and The Media Trust have come up with a way to give publishers free access to a cookie repository. The idea is for this cookie pool, which publishers will be given access to once ready in the coming weeks, to act like a giant encyclopedia for cookies. Publishers will be able to see every single cookie type that is dropped on their sites, and by which vendors. They can access this information via a log-in. Publishers including News UK and The Guardian plan to use the repository.”
Journalism.co.uk / John Crowley
Mood boards and social media lockdown: How one newsroom is dealing with notification overload →
“Alex Entwistle, assistant editor, BBC Radio 5 Live is dialling down the pressure in an innovative way. He has turned off social media messages during certain office hours, introduced meetings at the end of the working day and has encouraged his team to express their feelings through a musical ‘mood board’.”