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Friday, March 1, 2019
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Here’s the state of African-American media today — and steps it can take going forward“We are watching organizations like Huffington Post determine what Black stories are elevated to national news stories. We plan to drive that narrative too, instead of others having the final say in what's important to us.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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How local TV news stations are playing a major (and enthusiastic) role in spreading the Momo hoaxOther participants: Fire stations, and police departments, and schools. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
ProPublica / Rachel Glickhouse
Want to start a collaborative journalism project? ProPublica is building tools for that →
“Even newsrooms without dedicated developers will be able to launch a basic shared investigation, including gathering tips from the public through a web-based form and funneling those tips into a central database that journalists can use to find stories and sources. Newsrooms with developers will be able to extend the tools to enable collaboration around any data sets.”
The New York Times / Lara Takenaga
From 1969 to 2019, a day at The New York Times →
“By 4 a.m. Eastern, operations in Hong Kong, 13 hours ahead of New York, are winding down. Editors there do a ‘handoff’ via video conference to London, where it's 9 a.m. local time, pitching their articles for The Times's home page and noting what to watch. The team in London resumes where Hong Kong left off, editing and updating stories as needed.”
The Lenfest Institute for Journalism / Joseph Lichterman
Duke and North Carolina are basketball rivals, but off the court their student newspapers collaborated on a fundraising challenge →
“In advance of the Duke-North Carolina men's basketball game, the two schools' student newspapers wanted to find a way to a way to collaborate. They launched The Rivalry Challenge, a fundraising competition, and the two papers jointly produced a special print section that was inserted in print and also given as a reward to donors. UNC's Daily Tar Heel won by raising $29,892.54. The Duke Chronicle finished with $24,660.”
San Francisco Chronicle / Soleil Ho
Words you’ll never see this critic use in restaurant reviews →
“What makes food ‘slutty’? Does it lie in the visual parallels between genitalia and an oozy egg yolk dripping over a brioche bun, the forbidden aspect of eating ortolan or the cheapness of a Taco Bell Doritos Loco taco?”
Intelligencer / Max Read
Who pays for Silicon Valley’s hidden costs? (Hint: Human content moderators) →
“Any company bragging about automated solutions is likely hiding a much larger shadow workforce supporting those solutions, like the one Facebook employs through Cognizant… if adequately staffing and compensating content moderators is too expensive for Facebook to sustain, that doesn't seem like a problem with moderation. It seems like a problem with Facebook.”
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Twitter is working on a “Hide Tweet” feature to let you hide nasty replies from everyone →
“Like it sounds, ‘Hide Tweet’ functions as an alternative to muting or blocking a user, while still offering some control over a conversation…Immediately, there were concerns that an option like this would allow users to silence their critics — not just for themselves, as is possible today with muting and blocking — but for anyone reading through a stream of Twitter Replies.”
9to5Mac / Chance Miller
Apple won’t kick you out of iTunes for putting an episode number in your podcast episode title →
Good to know. (An email earlier this week seemed to suggest they would.)
BuzzFeed News / Pranav Dixit and Nishita Jha
While tensions rose between Pakistan and India, a full-blown misinformation battle was underway online →
“Facebook did not respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment about why videos that had been debunked by its own fact-checking partners were still available on the site.”
YouTube Creator Blog
YouTube disables comments on videos featuring minors →
“A small number of creators will be able to keep comments enabled on these types of videos. These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior.”
OneZero / Alex Feerst
“The judges and janitors of the internet” →
Medium’s head of legal Q&A’s content moderators from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, Google, Automattic, Slack, Tumblr, Airbnb, Etsy, Quora, Internet Archive, and Medium: “I ended up here by being sort of a troll and a super complainer on the internet. As a result, my karma is now to deal with people like me.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Natalie Jarvey
LinkedIn is launching a weekly podcast about work →
“Hello Monday is LinkedIn editorial’s first big push into original podcasts and comes as editor-in-chief Dan Roth has grown the tech company’s editorial arm to over 50 editors in nine countries.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
After Cohen’s hearing, the Mueller-disputed BuzzFeed bombshell looks better — and worse →
“If you think the only thing that news stories have to do is get things mostly right, Wednesday was a vindicating day for BuzzFeed, which has stalwartly stood by its story.”