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Thursday, March 7, 2019
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Spirited Media is selling off its local sites and pivoting to consulting“You're going to have micro-community sites with 72 lost-dog stories a day and [you’ll have] investigative reporting — but most of the things between those are going to struggle if we can't figure out the model.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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How to buy into journalism’s blockchain future (but this time in only 33 steps)Five months after its failed token sale, Civil is back with a revised, streamlined process. If you’re not an experienced cryptocurrency trader, though, it’ll still take you a while. By John Keefe. |
What We’re Reading
Better News / Nation Hahn
How nonprofit education news site EdNC built its own loyalty tracker →
“Here's how it works: The newsroom can set a value for each article read, email opened and survey taken. Each reader receives a certain number of points assigned for each action. At the same time, the newsroom can set a goal for how many points a reader must get to be considered loyal. Our formula then goes to work. If any given reader gets enough points for two consecutive months, then they are deemed loyal.”
The Lenfest Institute for Journalism / Joseph Lichterman
The Minneapolis Star Tribune experimented with calendar invites to remind readers of important dates related to the midterm elections →
“It's the kind of thing that some slow Friday, if you're just sitting around, you could spin it up for the entire next election season. We'll probably try it again but will scale it up a little bit more.”
WIRED / Nicholas Thompson
Mark Zuckerberg on pivoting to privacy →
“This isn’t a product announcement, it's a statement of the principles that we think are necessary to build this privacy-focused social platform.”
BuzzFeed News / Pranav Dixit
“Hoax alert!” YouTube will show fact-checks when users search for topics “prone to misinformation” →
“The spokesperson also provided BuzzFeed News with a screenshot of an information panel in Hindi containing a debunk for a Hindi search query for ‘CCTV footage of the Pulwama terror attack’ that yields videos trying to pass off a bomb explosion in Syria as that of an attack on Indian paramilitary forces.”
The New York Times / Farhad Manjoo
“Pictures were doctored, doctored pictures were shared and aired, and real pictures were dismissed as doctored” →
Analyzing the misinformation in the Pakistan-India conflict: “The lies fit a pattern, clamoring for war, and on both sides they suggested a society that had slipped the bonds of rationality and fallen completely to the post-fact order.”
Reuters / Vivian Sequera and Corina Pons
Venezuela released an American journalist (and his local colleague) after holding him in custody for 12 hours →
“In the latest crackdown on a challenge to his rule by opposition leader Juan Guaido, Maduro also expelled the German ambassador, accusing him of repeated meddling in the country's affairs. The United States said it was set to impose sanctions on banks to ramp up pressure on Maduro to leave office.”
NBC San Diego / Tom Jones, Mari Payton, and Bill Feather
The U.S. government is tracking journalists covering the migrant caravan →
“The documents list people who officials think should be targeted for screening at the border. The individuals listed include ten journalists, seven of whom are U.S. citizens, a U.S. attorney, and 47 people from the U.S. and other countries, labeled as organizers, instigators or their roles ‘unknown.’ The target list includes advocates from organizations like Border Angels and Pueblo Sin Fronteras.”
Recode / Eric Johnson
Laurene Powell Jobs sees the future of news as a public good rather than entirely owned by rich people like her →
“Now that we have sort of a really beautiful portfolio of properties that I think are super high quality and important journalism, I'm open to more. I do think the more should come in the form more like the American Journalism Project, where there's a fund that will support great local ownership and sustainability, and find another model, rather than just, you know, rich people accumulating properties.”