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Friday, March 15, 2019
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Can our corrections catch up to our mistakes as they spread across social media?Even the best reporters eventually get something wrong. This experiment tried to use the tools we use to spread our stories to spread our mea culpas. By Dan Gillmor. |
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A European movement encourages Facebook and Twitter to contact every person who has seen fake newsPlus: Pro-China accounts on Reddit, and same-day election misinformation. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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One year in, Facebook’s big algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated — and very engaged! — News FeedThis is not “time well spent.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Washington-based regional journalism is crucial. It’s also in serious trouble. →
“I really wonder what Americans are missing, and what members of Congress are getting away with because, in some cases, there is no one watching them closely.”
Thinknum / Joshua Fruhlinger
BuzzFeed employee morale and CEO sink to lowest levels yet as the company shrinks on LinkedIn →
“As CEO Jonah Peretti and company seek out a future that includes [profit and scale], employees at BuzzFeed are growing sour on what was once considered one of the best companies to work for, according to data that we track via Glassdoor.”
The Independent / Anthony Cuthbertson
Tumblr has lost 20 percent of traffic since its porn ban →
“The decision to ban adult content on Tumblr proved controversial among many users and prompted a movement known as the ‘log off’ protest to encourage people to leave the site.”
Folio / Greg Dool
After a decade-long struggle, F+W Media declares bankruptcy →
“The company's decision to focus on e-commerce and de-emphasize print and digital publishing accelerated the decline of the company's publishing business, and the resources spent on technology hurt the company's viability because the technology was flawed and customers often had issues with the websites.”
The Verge / Nick Statt
Slack says it removed dozens of accounts affiliated with hate groups →
“The announcement…is a rare admission from the company that its platform can and has been used as a way to organize hateful groups of users, some of which may in the future take real-world violent action.”
Time / Mahita Gajanan
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ “The Last Column” honors journalists killed in the line of duty →
“The project, which includes a book and a short documentary series, seeks to immortalize the work of reporters from all over the world who have died. The Last Column weaves together the final works of reporters including Marie Colvin, whose war coverage for The Sunday Times cemented her as a legend among foreign correspondents, and the Washington Post's Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered last year at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in an event that triggered international alarm and controversy.”
HuffPost / Ashley Feinberg
Facebook, Axios, and NBC paid this guy to whitewash Wikipedia pages →
“The vast majority of the people who propose and make changes to Wikipedia are volunteers. A few people, however, have figured out how to manipulate Wikipedia's supposedly neutral system to turn a profit. That's Sussman's business. And in just the past few years, companies including Axios, NBC, Nextdoor and Facebook's PR firm have all paid him to manipulate public perception using a tool most people would never think to check.”
BuzzFeed / Mark Di Stefano
The Daily Mail let readers download the New Zealand mosque attacker’s manifesto directly from its website →
“The Mail was one of several British news outlets which defied requests from New Zealand police on Friday not to spread the terrorist’s first-person footage, which had been repeatedly shared across social media platforms in the wake of the attack.”
Deadspin / Laura Wagner
Sports media company Minute Media buys The Big Lead from Gannett →
“The Big Lead, which was founded in 2006 and then bought by Gannett in 2012, was one of the internet's original sports blogs. Its sale today to this shady sweatshop of a digital media company is the end of an era, even if that era was mostly boring and vapid.”