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Tuesday, January 8, 2019
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A gloomy vision for “fake news” in 2019: Low-trust societies, the death of consensus, and your own lying eyesA predictions playlist: “The media landscape is overrun with toxic narratives and polluted information not because our systems are broken, but because our systems are working.” By Joshua Benton. |
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These are the trends to watch for podcasting in 2019Plus: More daily news podcasts are on the way, a union win at WNYC, and Kanye. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Local public meetings are a scrape and a tap away, on City Bureau’s Documenters tool“The goal is not to produce content for media outlets. It's to repair broken bridges with local government, to get people to the meetings, get their voices heard, and figure out the line between where the active citizen and journalist is.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Bloomberg Businessweek / Shira Ovide
Apple and Google’s 30% cut of subscriptions is too damn high →
“The backlash is growing. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in November from a group of iPhone owners trying to sue Apple for creating a monopoly with the App Store and driving up app prices.”
Axios / Ina Fried
Verizon says its media units will “need to survive on their merits” →
“This is a sharp departure from the company’s original premise for buying Yahoo and AOL: that Verizon could use its detailed data on subscribers to take on Google and Facebook, which together dominate digital advertising.”
The Atlantic / Taylor Lorenz
Don’t reply to your emails: The case for inbox infinity →
“Adopting inbox infinity means accepting the fact that there will be an endless, growing amount of email in your inbox every day, most of which you will never address or even see. It's about letting email messages wash over you, responding to the ones you can, but ignoring most.”
Columbia Journalism Review / An Xiao Mina
How memes counter disinformation and spread awareness of pollution in Beijing →
“What's remarkable is how, in a country where trust in institutions is low but censorship and misinformation are high, a critical mass of people recognized that they were being tricked by government data about pollution.”
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Campaign journalism needs an overhaul. Here’s one radical idea. →
“As the presidential election season kicked off in earnest this month, it was obvious the media would do what it always has done: focus on personalities and electability; get distracted by gaffes and blow them way out of proportion.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
With 800,000 members, The Sun’s loyalty program is driving other revenue streams →
“The Sun Hols, a promotion the title runs three times a year — during January, April and July — where members pay £9.50 ($12.12) for a holiday, is the biggest driver in getting people to buy copies of The Sun and sign up to Sun Savers. “
Axios / Sara Fischer
NBCUniversal will reduce the number of commercial breaks in primetime TV by 20 percent →
“The company also says it’s looking to decrease ad breaks during additional shows outside of the lucrative primetime slot, like ‘The Today Show’ or ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show,’ although it hasn’t committed to a percentage reduction yet.”