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Monday, November 26, 2018
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To improve local TV news, ABC’s stations are betting on a Localish brand and community-level hires“The reality is we do not have folks who are embedded in the communities they serve who actually are responsible for telling these stories.” ABC is making local hires as one step to try to fix that. By Christine Schmidt. |
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New data suggests African audiences see significantly more misinformation than Americans doMore than a quarter of Kenyans and Nigerians surveyed said they had shared stories that they knew were made up. By Herman Wasserman and Dani Madrid-Morales. |
What We’re Reading
Nieman Foundation
December 1 is the (rapidly approaching!) deadline for non-U.S. citizens to apply for a Nieman Fellowship →
Still time for a hustling journalist to get that application done. (U.S. citizens have until January 31.)
CNN Business / Jill Disis
How NYT Cooking amassed 120,000 subscriptions in a year and a half →
“In addition to the 120,000 paid subscriptions, the Times says about three million people now subscribe to its main Cooking newsletter, which doesn’t require a subscription. It has also grown its recipe library to about 19,000.”
Digiday / Max Willens
The Washington Post’s new 20-minute daily news podcast (launching Dec. 3) will wrap in late afternoon →
“While the Post said that the producers will not be held to download targets, the Post's sales team has big plans for Post Reports. It is estimating 1 million downloads per episode, according to an advertising rate card shared with Digiday.”
CNN Business / Zahraa Alkhalisi
Fox launches TV streaming service with Saudi media group →
“Fox’s streaming service, which is already available in southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, will be offered in 24 countries on MBC’s Shahid Plus platform.” ESPN and Disney lost subscribers this year, according to a Disney filing.
BuzzFeed News / Pranav Dixit
WhatsApp finally hires a head for India, the company’s largest market, responsible for monetizing and misinformation-fighting →
“WhatsApp has been under fire in India for its role in spreading misinformation and hoaxes that caused violent mobs to kill at least 29 people this year, and has been criticized repeatedly by India's government for not doing enough to find a solution to the problem.”
Recode / Kara Swisher and Jameel Jaffer
Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? It’s complicated. →
“The First Amendment is concerned principally with government power, but we resisted the centralization of control over the public square in the government because we didn't like the idea of centralization of that kind of power. Maybe we should resist the idea of centralizing power in the social media companies for the same reason.”
Digiday / Max Willens
How BuzzFeed and The New York Times used Black Friday to drive commerce revenue →
“The start of the shopping season is an all-hands-on-deck situation for Wirecutter, when staffers across the organization comb through tens of thousands of deals to figure out which ones are worth sharing with readers. Last year, it had 65 people across editorial, product and other departments pitching in; this year, it will have ‘around 100,’ Wirecutter deals editor Adam Burakowski said.”
Monday Note / Frederic Filloux
By pushing the "link tax" on Google, publishers are shooting themselves in the foot three times over →
“Until today, Google had maintained a tough ‘we-will-never-pay-for-snippets’ stance. Except that now, the obligation is carved in European law, reigniting the fantasy of European publishers of a looming windfall.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Sean Hannity, Chris Wallace and why Trump wants to control follow-up questions →
“— the very definition of lame —”
the Guardian / Carole Cadwalladr
The U.K. seized a cache of Facebook internal papers, still frustrated over Cambridge Analytica →
“The documents seized were obtained during a legal discovery process by Six4Three. It took action against the social media giant after investing $250,000 in an app. Six4Three alleges the cache shows Facebook was not only aware of the implications of its privacy policy, but actively exploited them, intentionally creating and effectively flagging up the loophole that Cambridge Analytica used to collect data. That raised the interest of Collins and his committee.”
The New york Times / Patrick Kingsley and Benjamin Novak
Four years after reminding Hungary it still had a free press, this news site was forced into a media booster →
“Origo's editors were never imprisoned and its reporters were never beaten up. But in secret meetings — including a pivotal one in Vienna — the website's original owner, a German-owned telecommunications company, relented. The company, Magyar Telekom, first tried self-censorship. Then it sought a nonpartisan buyer. But, ultimately, Origo went to the family of Mr. Orban's former finance minister.”
TechCrunch / Josh Constine
LinkedIn launches its own Snapchat Stories. Here’s why it shouldn’t have →
“LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that it plans to build Stories for more sets of users, but first it's launching ‘Student Voices’ just for university students in the U.S. The feature appears atop the LinkedIn home screen and lets students post short videos to their Campus Playlist. The videos (no photos allowed) disappear from the playlist after a week while staying permanently visible on a user's own profile in the Recent Activity section.”