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Tuesday, March 19, 2019
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Look for the union label (it’s coming to a podcast company near you)Plus: Dystopian corporate podcasts, Slow Burn wins an Ellie, and why a weekly release schedule can be a recipe for burnout. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Pittsburgh local news site The Incline finds a new home at WhereBy.UsThe news comes a couple of weeks after The Incline’s previous owner, Spirited Media, said it was selling off its local news sites. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Bloomberg / Thomas Seal
The New York Times has cut the number of stories it gives to Apple News →
Also, CEO Mark Thompson said at the Oxford Media Convention, “We do not want the principal consumption of the New York Times to be on Facebook.”
Wall Street Journal / Lukas Alpert
LA Times owner sets ambitious goal: Five million digital subscribers (up from 150K now) →
Soon-Shiong envisions the LA Times “as a kind of superregional news source, with its primary focus on being the paper of record for California's 40 million residents, rather than trying to compete directly for a national audience with the New York Times or Washington Post. But he also wanted to expand the L.A. Times's audience reach into Mexico, western Canada and across the Pacific Rim, as well as into surrounding states.”
Medium / Simon Owens
Inside The New York Times’ video strategy →
“I think we've figured out how to work differently where we're no longer looking at print budgets and saying ‘that would make a great video, let's make a video to go with that story.’ There are two challenges with that. One is that those ideas are often conceived for print, which doesn't always play to the strengths of video. But it also creates a pretty redundant experience for our audience. And also the production process is so different that either the video or the article are finished before the other, and then trying to roll them out, it's just not a fluid process.”
Reuters
Facebook plans more fact-checking ahead of European Parliament election →
“On Monday, Facebook said it was setting up an operations center that would be staffed 24 hours a day with engineers, data scientists, researchers and policy experts, and coordinate with external organizations.”
The New York Times / Julia Jacobs
On C-SPAN’s 40th anniversary, a top executive reflects on its political impact →
“I think most people who are in their 20s or younger, if they have an experience with C-Span it is through social media, it is through the late-night comedians. The creation of our video library in 1987 was every bit as significant as the original creation of C-Span.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
Trump’s’s 2020 reelection campaign has spent nearly 2x as much as the entire Democratic field on Facebook and Google ads →
“Trump is outspending the top-spending Democratic candidates (Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris) 9-to-1 when it comes to total advertising spend on Google and Facebook so far.”
Medium
Medium is looking for publishing partners (again) →
“In some cases, we will offer a minimum guarantee of $5–50k per month to help publishers get started and lessen the risk.”
Media Matters / Timothy Johnson
Until today, Alex Jones had a secondary YouTube channel where he claimed the New Zealand mosque shootings were a false flag →
YouTube took the channel down after Media Matters reported on it. Alex Jones was banned from YouTube last year.
NBC News / Dylan Byers
Politico’s publisher is launching a tech site →
The site “will aim to cover the technology industry as aggressively as Politico covers politics. It will be helmed by veteran journalist Tim Grieve, who has served as vice president of news at McClatchy, editor-in-chief and president of National Journal and managing editor of Politico.”