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Monday, December 10, 2018
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What does membership mean for BuzzFeed News — at a company that’s already raised nearly $500 million in venture capital?Even the most digital-native publishers cannot resist the siren call of a tote bag. But a membership pitch sounds different coming from a public radio station than from a private company with a billion-dollar valuation. By Christine Schmidt. |
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“So many times we forget to listen”: How Spaceship Media moderated a Facebook group of 400 political women without it going off the railsIt was hard to recruit Republican woman (“SO many Democrat white women”), and following the news of the day felt PTSD-inducing to many. But aggressive moderation and the help of a few librarians made a potentially uncivil discussion a little more respectful. By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
BuzzFeed News / Kevin Collier and Jeremy Singer-Vine
Millions of comments about the FCC’s net neutrality rules were fake. Now the Feds are investigating. →
“The Justice Department is investigating whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people's identities were posted to the FCC's website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules.”
New York Times / Jaclyn Peiser
Podcasts are getting newsier. Here are eight new ones worth a listen. →
“Since The Daily became a staple of the news junkie's morning routine, the number of daily podcasts has more than tripled.”
The Washington Post / Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker introduces Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again →
“The bar for the Bottomless Pinocchio is high: The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times. Twenty is a sufficiently robust number that there can be no question the politician is aware that his or her facts are wrong. The list of Bottomless Pinocchios will be maintained on its own landing page.”
Medium / David A. Bray
70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Internet luminaries are calling for a better digital future →
“This is why today, 10 December 2018, several original pioneers of the Internet — Vint Cerf, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Dame Wendy Hall, and many more — as well as contemporaries working towards a better future gather both in-person and online for ‘Our People-Centered Digital Future’ to discuss the unfinished work when it comes to digital technologies such as the Internet, Artificial Intelligence, and automation to ensure a more people-centered and community-centered future?”
Pew Research Center / Elisa Shearer
Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source →
“One-in-five U.S. adults say they often get news via social media, slightly higher than the share who often do so from print newspapers (16%) for the first time since Pew Research Center began asking these questions.”
The New York Times / Editorial Board
The war on truth spreads →
“A free and unfettered news media has long been anathema to authoritarian rulers, but even George Orwell might not have anticipated that some of the most unscrupulous assaults on press freedoms would one day be perpetrated by democratically elected governments.”
Washington Post / Paul Farhi
1 in 5 people in NPR’s union-covered newsroom workforce are temp workers, according to the union →
Several temps interviewed for this story use the same word to describe NPR's temp system: "Exploitative."
Long Beach Press-Telegram / Hunter Lee
What this journalist learned by being the local paper’s mascot →
“Suiting up at the parade, the large tube engulfing my body felt like being placed into a sensory deprivation tank. An almost supernatural force swept through me. I was no longer Hunter Lee, I was Petey the newspaper.”
GroundSource / Simon Galperin
How to reach every household in your community with a plan to convert them →
“The US postal service’s Every Door Direct Mail portal lets you send mail to every household on a particular postal route and provides additional demographic information about that route, including the how many properties are residences or businesses, the average income of people living on the route, and their age range.”
CNN / Nic Robertson
Jamal Khashoggi’s last words disclosed in a transcript: “I can’t breathe” →
“You are coming back,” the man says. “You can’t do that,” Khashoggi replies. “People are waiting outside.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Sam Eichner
What’s behind a recent rise in books coverage? →
“In some ways, mainstream book coverage is coming down from its historically lofty perch to join the rest of arts coverage, catering less to the intelligentsia and more to the casual reader, who may not be interested in literary fiction or nonfiction.”
The Guardian / Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin
Beijing is buying up media outlets and training scores of foreign journalists to “tell China’s story well” →
“Though Beijing's propaganda offensive is often shrugged off as clumsy and downright dull, our five-month investigation underlines the granular nature and ambitious scale of its aggressive drive to redraw the global information order. This is not just a battle for clicks. It is above all an ideological and political struggle, with China determined to increase its "discourse power" to combat what it sees as decades of unchallenged western media imperialism.”