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Tuesday, March 26, 2019
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Most Americans think that local news is doing well financially, and not many pay for itOnly 14 percent have paid for or given money to local news of any kind — print, digital, public radio pledge drive, anything — in the past year. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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Spotify is still hungry for podcast companies, gobbling up ParcastPlus: Gimlet pushes back on its aspirant union, Acast gets more continental, and Joe Rogan’s galaxy brain. By Nicholas Quah. |
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The great British brush-off: The BBC and Google are fighting over who gets to control the podcast experienceWhich is more important for a public broadcaster: distributing its content as widely as possible or putting its own interests above a tech company’s? By Caroline Crampton. |
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Apple News Plus is a fine way to read magazines, but a disappointment to anyone wishing for a real boost for the news businessFew entities have the potential to help improve news production and consumption more than Apple. This falls short of hopes. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
How Reuters is training reporters to spot deepfakes →
“In the last two years, Reuters has doubled the number of people who work on verifying video content from six to 12. According to Baker, the global team verifies around 80 videos a week. How long it takes to verify video content varies; the team only spends time verifying content that it believes to be true.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Zainab Sultan
Why Broadly and Vice made their own stock photos for stories on the non-conforming gender community →
“By limiting our representation of trans and non-binary people, we also limit the range of stories we can imagine them in.”
Local News Lab / Teresa Gorman
Have an idea that can help with North Carolina’s info needs in natural disasters? Apply for funding →
“Having trustworthy, accurate and timely news and information is vital for North Carolina's communities as they recover, but, as Melanie Sill wrote in an op-ed in the News & Observer, there aren't emergency agencies to help the news outlets and to keep information flowing.”
WIRED / Lauren Goode and Peter Rubin
The real choice you make when you subscribe to Apple’s services →
“What matters is the convenience and safety of rooting yourself ever more firmly in its ecosystem.”
Business Insider / Lucia Moses
Here’s a list of all the major publishers in Apple News Plus →
“Publishing giants Hearst, Meredith, and Condé Nast have their publications included in the bundle because they are contractually obligated to be as former owners of the app, according to sources.”
The Correspondent / Ernst Pfauth
The Correspondent has closed its NYC office, building its English-language HQ in Amsterdam →
“We don't aim to be a national US news organization (we have founding members from more than 130 countries around the world!) but instead want to cover the greatest challenges of our time from a global perspective—in English.”
Digiday / Max Willens
“Peter is not the type to take on the plight of the publishers”: More on the former cable TV exec leading Apple’s subscription services →
“When Stern joined Apple in 2016, Apple watchers predicted he might help bridge the cultural gaps that had formed between Apple and the entertainment companies it was trying to engage for its TV service.”
TechCrunch / Anthony Ha
Google launches a new real-time data product for journalists →
“RCI presents the data in the form of an image-heavy dashboard showing how many readers are looking at a story currently, and how many views the story's gotten in the past 30 minutes. You also can see how well the site is doing today, compared to a normal day's traffic, and break down your traffic by geography and referral sources.”
Recode / Peter Kafka
We still don’t know what’s in Apple’s streaming service, how much it will cost, or why we should pay for it →
“Apple did promise that the subscription service would be ad-free and that it would be available in more than 100 countries. And it played the briefest of sizzle reels, which allowed the audience to see that Apple's production team has indeed shot footage for some of its shows. But that was it, and that was surprising.”