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Monday, January 14, 2019
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Calling racism racism and remembering not everyone is white: Some predictions for 2019 about diversity in news“Who exactly do we mean when we say ‘we’?” By Joshua Benton. |
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Newsonomics: Let the 2019 Consolidation Games begin! First up: Alden seeks to swallow GannettAmerica’s most hated newspaper company wants to bring its special brand of cost-cutting and newsroom-gutting to about 100 more cities. By Ken Doctor. |
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Heightening the CMS race: WordPress.com and News Revenue Hub devise a toolkit for local newsrooms“It's not rocket science to put a CMS together. It is a bit of rocket science to figure out how to make the most effective use of it and create a sustainable business model.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Current / Mike Janssen
To diversify its audience, Nevada’s KUNR goes bilingual →
“Like most other public radio stations, KUNR once offered news only in English. But the contrast between its largely white audience and Reno's racially diverse population spurred KUNR to start experimenting with multilingual news in early 2017. Hispanics made up 24.6 percent of Reno's population in July 2017, according to U.S. Census data, whereas only about 5 percent of KUNR's weekly audience is Latino.”
The Nation / Kyle Chayka
How content-management systems shape the future of media businesses →
“The worst thing that a reader can do, we now know, is to consume whatever pops up at the top of a Facebook feed or Google search — the pond scum floating on the surface of the Internet. What we need is a digital-media version of organic food or a local farmers' market: ethically sourced, sustainably funded, and integrity-certified, all the way from CMS up.”
Recode / Kara Swisher and Eric Johnson
CNN.com’s editor-in-chief’s 2019 resolution for journalists: Earn the public’s trust by showing your work →
“In 2019, we [should] go beyond the marketing campaigns of ‘Facts First’ and ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ and all of that. That's great. That's really good stuff. We need to go further now. We need to actually do better about showing our work … Dial up the efforts to be transparent about when we get things wrong or when we change things, why have we done that. I think there's so much of the journalistic process that audiences don't understand and we need to lay that bare. I think that will increase the trust.”
The Conversation / Jon Roozenbeek, Melisa Basol, and Sander van der Linden
Behind the scenes of one research team WhatsApp commissioned to fight misinformation →
“WhatsApp has also commissioned us and several other research groups to investigate the problem of misinformation on the app and look for alternative ways to address it. Our prior research shows that a game-based inoculation approach can help people develop resistance to online deception.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Despite limitations, publishers plot more augmented reality for 2019 →
“The New York Times produced 13 different augmented reality projects in 2018, ranging from an investigation into a bombing in Syria to a visit to the large hadron collider at CERN; Time Magazine launched its first-ever augmented reality issue of its magazine; The Washington Post, which started producing augmented reality content in 2017, continued producing projects in 2018.”
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Spotify is increasing its focus on podcasts in 2019 — including selling its own ads →
“In growing its collection of originals, the company found that podcasters who joined Spotify exclusively were actually able to grow their audience, despite leaving other distribution platforms.”
MotherBoard / Sinclair Target
The future once looked so bright for RSS. What happened? →
“That little tangerine bubble has become a wistful symbol of defiance against a centralized web increasingly controlled by a handful of corporations, a web that hardly resembles the syndicated web of Werbach's imagining.”
Insider / Ellen Cranley
CBS News’s election team gets called out by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for its lack of black staff →
Kerry Washington also @’d them: “Dear @CBSNews, I am encouraged by the diversity you DID include. But when it comes time to discuss the inevitable role that race and racism will play in the election, who will you turn to for a perspective with nuanced & personal understanding of the African American experience?”
The New York Times / Sarah Mervosh
Stephen King gets Maine’s largest daily newspaper to keep regional book reviews — with 100+ new subscribers →
“‘Sales pitch? Blackmail?’ Mr. King wrote back. ‘Either way, 71 people have subscribed so far. Are there 29 more Twitterheads out there who want to ante up? Just asking.'”
The Atlantic / Emily Schultheis
Der Spiegel’s star reporter made up stories. How can it regain readers’ trust? →
“We're not this know-it-all, authoritative magazine that we sometimes pretend to be.”