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Wednesday, March 6, 2019
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Health coverage loses its booster shot after funding runs out for this media critic“The dreck is conflicted single-source stories that should not be called journalism but should be PR and advertising drivel, because it is simply taking spoon-feeding in an unquestioning way and fawning over it.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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In New York City? Grab a BuzzFeed print newspaper, today only“Social. Mobile. Recyclable.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Recode / Kurt Wagner
Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook’s future is private messaging →
“‘As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today's open platforms,’ Zuckerberg wrote. ‘I expect future versions of Messenger and WhatsApp to become the main ways people communicate on the Facebook network.’ Let's spell it out clearly: That's an incredibly important acknowledgment, and a move away from what has made Facebook a massive, global powerhouse.”
Talking Biz News / Chris Roush
The Wall Street Journal is adding five departments (and three dozen jobs): Young Audiences, Membership Engagement, Newsroom Innovation, and Audience Data, and R&D →
“The slate of new jobs includes developers, designers, product managers, data specialists, and also, crucially, journalists.”
Local News Lab / Damon Kiesow
Journalism’s Dunbar number: Audience scales, but community doesn’t →
“‘Dunbar's number’ is 150 — and he argued it was set by the cognitive capacity of the human brain. Smaller primates with smaller brains have smaller social groups. Media have a similar limit — it is the number of readers who feel you are part of their community and are willing to invest their time or money with you.”
Digiday / Aditi Sangal
USA Today’s COO: In this industry, you’re either the consolidator or consolidated →
“We're still one of the few big national brands that employ thousands of journalists that make content accessible to people for free. We do charge in our local markets. We have north of half a million digital subscribers within our local marketplaces. But USA Today will remain free for the foreseeable future and not go behind a paywall.”
The Wrap / Jon Levine
The National Association of Black Journalists calls out CNN over its lack of diversity →
CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC have all met with NABJ, but CNN is holding out because it refuses to meet with NABJ vice president Roland Martin, who was accused of leaking the CNN town hall questions to the Clinton campaign in 2016.
International News Media Association / Dawn McMullan
Here are INMA’s finalists for the 2019 Global Media Awards →
“India had the highest number of finalists with 39, followed by the United States with 37, Norway with 22, and Australia with 17.”
Digiday / Max Willens
The Atlantic delays its shift to subscriptions →
“Asked if preliminary testing caused a change to the announced plans, [The Atlantic’s president Bob] Cohn said it never rolled that first paywall out. ‘It was a realization that this requires a level of staffing that we're not yet at.'”
Civil / Matthew Iles
Civil is relaunching March 6 — here’s their 2.0 plan →
“This is NOT just another ‘token sale’: there are no hard caps, soft caps or time limits. The entire experience happens on our own website…. Token buyers and supporters of journalism can also donate directly to the Civil Foundation just by using a credit card.”
Fast Company / Amy Webb
How can we design AI for the best long-term interests of humanity? →
“If it's possible to use natural language processing, graph algorithms, and other basic machine-learning techniques to ferret out biases in literary awards, those can also be used to find biases in popular training data sets.”
the Guardian / Rebecca Ratcliffe and Samuel Okiror
Millions of Ugandans quit internet services as social media tax takes effect →
“A daily levy, introduced in July to tame ‘idle talk’ online and raise revenue, affects more than 60 online platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. To use such sites, Ugandans are expected to pay a tax of 200 Ugandan shillings (4p) a day.”