YULI AHMADA: Januari 2019

Rabu, 30 Januari 2019

Why won’t The New Yorker keep you logged in? Mystery: Solved (kind of): The latest from Nieman Lab

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Why won’t The New Yorker keep you logged in? Mystery: Solved (kind of)

“Right now, there isn’t actually a specific bug that is happening. That’s what’s driving us a little crazy.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

Has Bill Simmons’ The Ringer figured out the model for podcast success?

Plus: What will happen to the podcasting sector when the next recession hits, Gimlet bets again on true crime, and “a pickle jar of listener malcontent.” By Nicholas Quah.

What We’re Reading

The Logic / Murad Hemmadi

Canada is spending $7 million to fight disinformation online ahead of this year’s federal election →

“The money will be split between organizations conducting digital-literacy programs to help voters assess online information better and groups running specific campaigns to increase understanding of disinformation and misinformation.”

New York / Madison Malone Kircher

This Michigan teen wrote 692 quizzes for BuzzFeed (and all she got was this lousy t-shirt) →

“I saw a tweet earlier saying they hoped the college student who caused people to get laid off gets ‘depression and stuff.’ That's not the nicest thing to read. I just hope now that my name is out there I can find a job. Maybe not at BuzzFeed, but still a job.”

Twitter / Joshua Benton

The found poetry of BuzzFeed quizzes →

Do you have a lot of Starbucks lovers? / Do you remember? / Don’t forget the jazz hands. / Don’t turn off the lights. / Don’t you just love love?

Kickstarter / Lewis Wallace

A Kickstarter for Lewis Wallace’s “The View from Somewhere: A Podcast about Journalism with a Purpose” →

“The podcast features journalists from marginalized and oppressed communities who have pushed back on the ‘objective’ framework, or attempted new ways of thinking about and practicing journalism.”

Mother Jones / Tim Murphy

The inside story of Beto O’Rourke’s short-lived alt-weekly →

“His target was the city's only major English-language newspaper, the Gannett-owned El Paso Times. ‘Too often we have heard the lament of our fellow El Pasoans who feel neglected and uninspired by the daily paper, beholden to a corporate board that meets in McLean, Virginia, where they don't know the word adelante and they've never heard of Pat O'Rourke.'”

The Guardian / Amanda Meade

BuzzFeed loses 11 staff in Australia amid global job cuts →

“It is unclear how many of the jobs lost will be in news, but every member of the 14-strong team received a letter. There are 40 employees in Australia across editorial and commercial roles in Sydney and Canberra.”

New York / Brian Feldman

BuzzFeed’s experimental era is over →

“All BuzzFeed ever got from Facebook is some high praise and the corporate equivalent of a free tote bag. Now BuzzFeed appears to be taking the same approach, turning to unpaid users to make more of its content — and hundreds of employees are out of work.”

The Verge / Jon Porter

GDPR makes it easier to get your data, but that doesn’t mean you’ll understand it →

“II decided to test the ‘Right of Access’ offered by four of the biggest tech companies operating in the EU: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. What I found suggested that while you can certainly get the raw data, actually understanding it is another matter, which makes it harder to make informed decisions about your data.”

CNN / Oliver Darcy

After backlash, BuzzFeed says it will pay out earned PTO to laid-off employees →

“BuzzFeed will pay recently laid off employees for the paid time off they had earned but not used, it said Monday, reversing course after hundreds of current and former staffers signed an open letter demanding that it do so.”

Axios / Sara Fischer

Bloomberg’s TicToc expands out of Twitter with its own site →

“It’s hoping that the next generation of news consumers that are drawn to its pithy format will discover its original content beyond their social feed directly on TicToc’s site, now that it’s developed some brand recognition.”

The Fresno Bee / Joe Kieta

Readers asked The Fresno Bee questions and the editor answered →

“Q. I wish The Bee would highlight and focus on stories that directly impact our community. We can consume only so much national news via social media and TV.”

Digiday / Sahil Patel

Sinclair is building a streaming video bundle by focusing on local →

“The centerpiece of the streaming service is the Stirr City channel, which Sinclair said will offer a custom, 24-hour programming lineup based on where the viewer lives. This programming, which will include daily morning and evening news shows, regional sports broadcasts and city-focused lifestyle shows, will come from the local Sinclair TV station in that city or the Sinclair station that's closest to the market a user is in.”

Selasa, 29 Januari 2019

BuzzFeed laid off its Director of Quizzes because lots of people are willing to make quizzes for free: The latest from Nieman Lab

Monday, January 28, 2019

BuzzFeed laid off its Director of Quizzes because lots of people are willing to make quizzes for free

“This post has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed’s editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone create a post. Learn more or post your buzz!” By Joshua Benton.

Newspapers cost more than twice as much today as they did a decade ago (and that was a smart move by publishers)

Once print advertising collapsed, newspapers hiked prices to get more money from readers. If they hadn’t, they’d employ even fewer journalists and be in even worse shape today. By Joshua Benton.

Hot potato, hot potato: Alden Global Capital now reportedly wants to offload Digital First Media on Gannett

What We’re Reading

Splinter / Rafi Schwartz

Inside BuzzFeed’s Slack conversations with Jonah Peretti on Friday →

“IMO now is probably a god time to bring therapy puppies in for every office.” … “Jonah Peretti: good idea about dogs, we will do it.” … “I wish I was getting paid out my PTO, could spend even more time with my dogs :( “

9to5Mac / Guilherme Rambo

Here’s what Apple News’ magazine subscription service will look like →

“Today, we've been able to activate the landing page for this new service on Apple News running on iOS 12.2. It looks like the subscription service will be called "Apple News Magazines" and it will be associated to the user's iTunes Store account, just like Apple Music. There are many mentions of ‘bundle subscription’ in this beta, which makes us believe this can be a part of Apple's plan to release an all-in-one media subscription which will include Apple Music, TV shows and magazines.”

Slate / Jeremy Littau

The crisis facing American journalism did not start with the internet →

“Decades of sparse investment and enormous debt service left these companies exposed and hamstrung at a time when investment was needed, when mobile devices were changing the field at breakneck speed. The cost to the public is enormous.”

The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan

Cancel in protest? Or stay with a local newspaper that's being strip-mined for profits? →

“The paper has become almost useless to me, and it feels like paying for it is only helping a hedge fund instead of advancing journalism.”

Time / Billy Perrigo

How volunteers for India’s ruling party are using WhatsApp to fuel misinformation ahead of elections →

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has drawn up plans to have three WhatsApp groups for each of India's 927,533 polling booths, according to reports. With each group containing a maximum of 256 members, that number of group chats could theoretically reach more than 700 million people out of India's population of 1.3 billion.”

Reuters / Stephanie Nebehay

The U.N.’s human rights office appoints a team to conduct an inquiry into Jamal Khashoggi’s murder →

“Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told Reuters on Thursday she would travel to Turkey next week to head an ‘independent international inquiry’ into Khashoggi's murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct 2.”

J-Source

Introducing the Canadian Journalism Innovators, a collaborative of media outlets to tackle the lack of money, innovation, and diversity →

The nine participating media outlets so far are The Narwhal, Taproot Edmonton, The Pointer, Indian and Cowboy, The Sprawl, Media Indigena, The Public Record, The Deep, and The Discourse. The Vancouver Foundation has made an initial investment in the initiative.

Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt

The Guardian is still on track to break even in April this year →

“Guardian News and Media editor-in-chief Katharine Viner has said a hard paywall ‘isn't really a conversation’ at the news group anymore as she declared its "rewarding" donations method to be working.”

The Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin and Joe Flint

Four years after splitting with ESPN, Bill Simmon’s The Ringer made $15M in podcast ad sales in 2018 →

“Advertisers pay between $25 to $50 for every 1,000 people who hear each ad on The Ringer's podcasts, according to people familiar with the matter. The Ringer keeps at least two-thirds of the money, with the rest going to Midroll, the audio-advertising vendor that sells much of The Ringer's ad space, the people said.”

Sabtu, 26 Januari 2019

Do people fall for fake news because they’re partisan or because they’re lazy? Researchers are divided: The latest from Nieman Lab

Friday, January 25, 2019

Do people fall for fake news because they’re partisan or because they’re lazy? Researchers are divided

Plus: Real-life consequences after you get harassed online, watching your boyfriend become radicalized, and what is Fox News, exactly? By Laura Hazard Owen.

A typical big news story in 2018 lasted about 7 days (until we moved on to the next crisis)

What We’re Reading

Recode / Peter Kafka

BuzzFeed is hoping to save itself by merging with another media company →

“BuzzFeed began laying off 15 percent of its staff — about 200 employees — on Friday. Its next move could be a merger with Group Nine, another big digital publisher.”

The Washington Post / Nick Anderson and Peggy McGlone

Johns Hopkins to buy Newseum building in D.C. as journalism museum plans to relocate →

“The Newseum has operated since 2008 at the Penn Quarter location, near the Mall and a few blocks northwest of the Capitol, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year but enduring financial challenges as it charged an admission fee while neighboring Smithsonian museums were free. The Freedom Forum announced in August 2017 that it was studying options for the building, including a sale, to escape what had become an untenable run of perennial budget deficits at the Newseum.”

BuzzFeed News / Trish Bendix

The past, present, and precarious future of LGBT media →

“At this point, do we really need to keep prostrating ourselves — proving that LGBT stories are not only valuable, but ‘safe’ — to straight and cis-led corporations and advertisers who want to appear inclusive but not too inclusive? Do we want to be another business's cool new vanity project until they get tired of us and pull the plug? And perhaps most importantly, are we getting too far away from the reason LGBT media was created in the first place?”

Washington Post / Elizabeth Dwoskin

YouTube says it is changing its algorithms to stop recommending conspiracies →

“In a blog post that YouTube plans to publish Friday, the company said that it was taking a ‘closer look’ at how it can reduce the spread of content that ‘comes close to — but doesn't quite cross the line’ of violating its rules. YouTube has been criticized for directing users to conspiracies and false content when they begin watching legitimate news.” On Thursday, BuzzFeed published an investigation into how YouTube’s recommendation algorithm sends people down conspiracy theory rabbit holes.

Vanity Fair / Peter Hamby

A media manifesto to prevent 2020 from becoming 2016 →

“If we think about policy journalism as simply the impact of governance on the American condition, the real human consequences of decisions made in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals, then policy journalism isn't actually ‘really tough.’ It's just journalism. And in the Trump era, the best of it has grabbed us. So as we search for clues on how journalists can repair the forever broken state of campaign reporting, it's useful to sort through the moments when meaty policy fights have overtaken the national political conversation, to understand how attention works in today's media.”

New York Times / Mike Isaac

Zuckerberg plans to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram messaging, and Facebook Messenger →

“Mr. Zuckerberg has also ordered all of the apps to incorporate end-to-end encryption, the people said, a significant step that protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in the conversation. After the changes take effect, a Facebook user could send an encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, for example. Currently, that isn't possible because the apps are separate.”

Medium / Lizzy Raben

Q&A: Sam Felix, director of audience and platforms at The New York Times →

“Obviously Reddit is not new, it's actually been around for a very long time, but they are sort of emerging for us, in a way. When we look at how we engage with Reddit and what sort of investment we put into it, one of the things that was most attractive to us was leveraging AMAs as a way to expose this very engaged Times audience to our journalists and answer questions about how the report is made, pulling back the curtain on The New York Times.”

The Verge / Andrew Liptak

How a Vermont social network became a model for online communities →

“The site looks like a relic from another era; its website is clean and minimal, without the pictures, reaction buttons or comment fields that most social platforms have implemented today. Users register using their real name and address, and gain access to the forum for their town or neighborhood. This network of 185 forums covers each town in Vermont, as well as a handful in neighboring New York and New Hampshire. “

Twitter / Maxwell Tani

“You cannot pitch or write a story that is simply something someone said on Twitter” →

Business Insider is “banning” Twitter for its reporters and editor for a week. It’s definitely a “ban”: “We will have a few editors monitoring Twitter at all times in case news does break there.”

Reuters / Stephanie Nebehay

U.N. names members of international inquiry on Khashoggi murder →

“The U.N. rights office said in a statement that the independent panel would seek to establish ‘the nature and extent of States' and individuals' responsibilities for the killing.'”

Digiday / Sahil Patel

WarnerMedia shuts investment arm that backed Mic, Mashable, and other digital media startups →

“WarnerMedia Investments, formerly known as Time Warner Investments, is no longer its own corporate entity as of the end of 2018, according to six sources familiar with the matter. Allison Goldberg, the executive in charge of the investment group, has also left the company.”

BuzzFeed News / Caroline O'Donovan and Charlie Warzel

From BBC News to QANon: We went down YouTube’s recommendation rabbit hole →

“Despite year-old promises to fix its "Up Next" content recommendation system, YouTube is still suggesting conspiracy videos, hyperpartisan and misogynist videos, pirated videos, and content from hate groups following common news-related searches.”

Jumat, 25 Januari 2019

In the latest sign things really are dire, BuzzFeed is laying off 15 percent of its staff: The latest from Nieman Lab

Thursday, January 24, 2019

In the latest sign things really are dire, BuzzFeed is laying off 15 percent of its staff

“The restructuring we are undertaking will reduce our costs and improve our operating model so we can thrive and control our own destiny, without ever needing to raise funding again.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

It doesn’t take a ton of nasty comments to sink a reader’s perception of a news site

“This research suggests people make judgments about a news site based on the predominant tone of the comments, not on whether the first comments are civil or uncivil.” By Christine Schmidt.

Meet the eight European news organizations with (funded) plans for engaged journalism

What We’re Reading

CNN / Tom Kludt

Layoffs are underway at HuffPost a day after Verizon, its parent company, announced cuts →

“In all, the media industry lost about 1,000 jobs nationwide this week.”

TechCrunch / Lucas Matney

Twitter is testing an “Original Tweeter” tag to distinguish who started a thread →

“This solution obviously only helps users distinguish the ‘owner’ of the thread they are viewing, but it's a worthwhile start. As the company verifies more accounts but still allows users to easily change their names or profile pictures, this could avert some imitation issues.”

Twitter / Jarrod Dicker

Jarrod Dicker, who left the Washington Post for blockchain startup Po.et, rejoins the Washington Post →

“The reality is that we're facing a long road to adoption & need to be sensitive to a market that has speed limits. What does 100MPH really accomplish other than tickets, accidents, and extra gas?” Here’s the Post’s announcement on his rehire, as vice president of commercial technology and development.

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Meera Selva

Five things to know about the future of journalism →

“5. News is more diverse than ever, and the best journalism in many cases better than ever, taking everyone from the most powerful politicians to the biggest private companies.”

The New York Times / Farhad Manjoo

Is Twitter ruining American journalism? →

“But Twitter is not that carefree clubhouse for journalism anymore. Instead it is the epicenter of a nonstop information war, an almost comically undermanaged gladiatorial arena where activists and disinformation artists and politicians and marketers gather to target and influence the wider media world.” (Remember, Farhad spent time “away” from Twitter before.)

Columbia Journalism Review / Joshua Carroll

A Reuters article — paid for by Thailand’s military junta — highlights ethical issues with native advertising →

“It's not very likely that the typical reader would understand that this is a sponsored story,” Bartosz Wojdynski, director of the Digital Media Attention and Cognition Lab at the University of Georgia, says. “Typically somewhere between a tenth and a quarter of readers get that what they read was actually an advertisement.”

Digiday / Jessica Davies

“The industry can’t say it hasn’t been warned”: Media execs react to Google’s $57M GDPR fine →

“This is the regulators going for the most public — and arguably prolific — name in town when it comes to the use of consumer data,” said Jon Slade, chief commercial officer of the Financial Times. “But publishers and anyone handling data would be crazy not to look at this strong enforcement of GDPR and double-check themselves.”

New York Post / Keith J. Kelly

The dullest parts of Hearst — like its financial and aviation safety data companies — are growing the fastest →

“The newspaper group, with titles such as the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle, which once formed the backbone of the company, is now the fifth-largest division in terms of revenue. But [CEO Steve] Swartz points out that it is still profitable. And as The Post reported Monday, the group is still in expansion mode, kicking the tires on some of the newspapers at Tribune Publishing.”

The Guardian / Alex Hern

Facebook is setting up an anti-scam project (as part of a dropped lawsuit from a consumer finance journalist) →

“The first time my attention was drawn to this was a man who accused me of scamming him out of £19,000. I don't do adverts, full stop. Any advert with me in it is a lie, it's a scam. That's where the anger came from.”

Variety / Janko Roettgers

Patreon will pay as much to creators this year as it has paid since its launch six years ago →

“Patreon now has more than 3 million patrons who pay to support any of its over 100,000 creators every month, the company announced Wednesday. It's also on track to pay more than $0.5 billion to creators this year.”

RTDNA / Michelle Billman

How Reno’s public radio station plans for bilingual work (and won a Murrow Award through it) →

“In under five minutes, Stephanie was able to tell a story that resonates far beyond any soccer team or sporting event. She gave voice to a struggle many children and their families are experiencing in this country by doing what the best reporters do—cultivating understanding and empathy through personal storytelling.”

Kamis, 24 Januari 2019

With tech’s reality a little too dystopian, The Verge is turning to science fiction for inspiration: The latest from Nieman Lab

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

With tech’s reality a little too dystopian, The Verge is turning to science fiction for inspiration

And turning away a bit from Facebook video: “Our video lives on YouTube. We’re going to program for the YouTube audience.” By Christine Schmidt.

How many paying subscribers do you need to keep a money-losing magazine afloat? Arkansas Life finds out

“Here we are in 2019 and while it may be easier to read a free digital copy or an article that your friend shares, a quality, printed publication showcasing your state is VITAL.” By Laura Hazard Owen.

What We’re Reading

Wired / Louise Matsakis

Google gives Wikimedia $3 million →

“Wikimedia and Google will soon broaden Project Tiger, a joint initiative they launched in 2017 to increase the number of Wikipedia articles written in underrepresented languages in India, and to include 10 new languages in a handful of countries and regions. It will now be called GLOW, Growing Local Language Content on Wikipedia.”

Variety / Janko Roettgers

Netflix users on iOS can now post what they’re watching directly to their Instagram Story →

This would be a good feature for a news app to copy: “Here’s what I’m reading right now.”

Press Gazette / Freddy Mayhew

The Guardian earns its first Oscar nomination →

“Black Sheep follows the true story of Cornelius Walker whose mother moved him and his family from London to Essex after the murder of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor. Walker lived near Taylor, was the same age and also black. ‘Cornelius suddenly found himself living on a white estate run by racists,’ the Guardian description of the film says.”

FiveThirtyEight

Is media coverage of the Mueller investigation a problem? →

“…reporters are not perfect. And editing systems are never completely foolproof. But the internet means that mistakes never go away, so reporters who've had problems in the past should expect to see those reputation issues dragged up again and again if they continue to get in tough spots, especially if they work on important stories, like those about the special counsel's investigation.”

The Daily Beast / Maxwell Tani

Gawker 2.0 implodes as its only reporters quit →

“On Wednesday morning, the site's only two full-time writers — former Vanity Fair writer Maya Kosoff and former Cosmopolitan writer Anna Breslaw — announced in a statement to The Daily Beast that they have left over concerns about Carson Griffith, the recently hired editorial director.”

First Draft News

First Draft leaves Shorenstein and will now operate as an independent entity in London and New York →

“We are building on our pioneering work around elections in the US, France, UK, Germany, Brazil and Nigeria to support the development of sustainable, collaborative efforts globally in 2019. We have plans to support projects in Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain and Uruguay, plus a cross-border project to investigate misinformation tactics and trends in Europe.”

Wired / Lauren Goode

Have phones become boring? Well, they’re about to get weird →

“Our glass slabs will be punctuated by pop-out cameras, foldable displays, hole-punched notches, and invisible fingerprint sensors. These features will be marketed as innovations. Some will be innovative. Some will just be weird, in the way that tech inevitably feels forced when design decisions are borne out of a need to make mature products appear exciting and new.”

Wall Street Journal / Jeffrey Trachtenberg

Condé Nast will put all its titles behind paywalls by the end of this year →

“Condé Nast currently has three titles behind metered paywalls that allow access to four free articles each month: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Wired…Ms. Ray said it wasn't clear what form the paywalls would take for each of the other titles, which include Glamour, Self, Teen Vogue, the tech website Ars Technica, and Them, which serves the LGBTQ community.”

Digiday / Lucinda Southern

The Economist launches a daily news podcast with eight staffers →

“The Economist plans to differentiate by delivering stories with a world view, drawing on its global correspondents as well as covering news that doesn't always make the headlines but still has significance. Case in point: During pilot episodes, it featured how the changing sales of mooncakes — sent as gifts or sometimes bribes in China — act as a barometer on the health of the economy.”