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Monday, March 18, 2019
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Facebook enters the news desert battle, trying to find enough local news for its Today In featureStarting in May, Facebook will also solicit ideas for ways to build community through local news, looking for around 100 participants to receive funding and mentorship. By Christine Schmidt. |
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Is the business model for American national news “Trump plus rolling scandals”? And is that sustainable?An interview with researcher C.W. Anderson: “You do have to wonder how long we can keep up before people have a nervous breakdown.” By Lívia Vieira. |
What We’re Reading
Al Jazeera
The colonial-era laws that still govern African journalism →
“Once [European colonizers] took power, they wrote laws designed to ensure that the colonized would not rise up against the colonizers; laws that could also be used to silence, censor, jail or intimidate journalists who refused to toe the line. Much of that colonial legislation is still in place today, and there is now a growing list of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa falling afoul of those laws.”
The White House
For the third straight year, Trump’s budget proposes eliminating all federal funding for PBS and NPR stations →
Stations: “Fortunately, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate understand [public broadcasting’s] contributions…very well.” See our piece last week for more context.
Washington Post / Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg
Inside YouTube’s struggles to shut down video of the New Zealand shooting — and the humans who outsmarted its systems →
“But in this case, the hashing system was no match for the tens of thousands of permutations of video being uploaded about the shooting in real time, Mohan said. While hashing technology can recognize simple variations — such as if a video is sliced in half — it cannot anticipate animations or two- to three-second snippets of content, particularly if the video is altered in some way.”
Boing Boing / Cory Doctorow
Myspace lost all the music and other files its users uploaded between 2003 and 2015 →
“It’s been a year since the music links on Myspace stopped working; at first the company insisted that they were working on it, but now they’ve admitted that all those files are lost.”
Folio / Kayleigh Barber
The numbers behind Wired’s paywall, newsletters, and Apple News experience →
“Wired's [paywall] included the subscriber benefit of getting an ad-free digital experience, which is something that the brand's readers explicitly expressed they wanted—and has, so far, worked. ‘Our subscription numbers [are] over 100,000 subscriptions in the year after we launched the paywall, which is a crazy number when you compare it to the number of digital subscriptions we had the previous year.’ With roughly 30,000 subscriptions prior to the paywall, the number is up 272 percent YOY.”
Reuters / Bhanu Pratap
Facebook says it removed 1.5 million videos of the New Zealand mosque attack →
“New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she wants to discuss live streaming with Facebook.”
Motherboard / Joseph Cox
How Facebook moderates livestreams — especially when they display terrorism →
“In a copy of the attack video viewed by Motherboard, the attacker shows several weapons right at the start of the stream, and they frequently reappear through the footage as the attacker drives to the mosque. ‘I'm not sure how this video was able to stream for [17] minutes,’ the second source with direct knowledge of Facebook's content moderation strategies told Motherboard.”
Bloomberg / Tracy Withers
Sky Network Television, New Zealand's biggest satellite TV provider, removed Sky News Australia over terrorism footage →
“We stand in support of our fellow New Zealanders and have made the decision to remove Sky News Australia from our platform until we are confident that the distressing footage from yesterday's events will not be shared.”
Poynter / Daniel Funke
Africa Check has a new director. Here’s his vision for fact-checking on the continent. →
“Formerly deputy director of the fact-checking outfit, he said that he plans to make Africa Check's coverage more representative of the needs of individual countries on the continent. ‘With each country, we need to learn what resonates and what has the biggest impact, and then adopt our strategies to the local conditions,’ he said.” “
Columbia Journalism Review / Charles R. Davis
The Intercept lays off its research team →
“It remains curious, and especially so in the wake of layoffs: with a billionaire for a founder, why does The Intercept need to solicit donations from its readers? And now, with cuts being made from the bottom of the organization, eyes are on its salaries at the top. First Look Media Works, Inc. — the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) side of FLM, and parent of The Intercept — paid Greenwald more than $1.6 million from 2014 to 2017, the last year for which there is a financial disclosure.”
CryptoGlobe / Siamak Masnavi
ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin claims Civil was “the most successful failed token launch in history” →
Lubin to Manoush Zomorodi at SXSW.
Twitter / Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press: “AjdwhlAKjdhlakjd;lkajwd;lkAj;lkda” →
“Can’t wait to submit this one for a Pulitzer.”