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Thursday, April 11, 2019
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Experience experiments: What Whereby.Us’s membership model looks like after adding a Spirited Media site“I would love to be in 25 cities and I wish we could've lived up to that. The financial reality and the operational reality of it was not quite ready for that.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Is Julian Assange’s arrest a threat to press freedom or an appropriate response to hacking?The initial indictment against the WikiLeaks leader doesn’t seem to implicate journalistic issues as directly as some had feared — but some still see darker impacts on reporting, and more charges could be coming. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times launches a $500K fundraiser for investigative journalism with the Seattle Foundation →
“Our goal is to build one of the largest local investigative teams in the nation to increase our ability to engage the public, call for accountability, and explore solutions to make a difference for the people of our region…. This first phase of funding will provide one editor, two investigative reporters and research resources.”
Wall Street Journal / Yoree Koh and Betsy Morris
The Wall Street Journal was unable to speak with nine of the top 10 YouTube kids channels →
“On the ‘Kids Diana Show’ channel—where a little girl pretends to play with toys like a hot-pink Barbie car or gets surprise deliveries of Disney toys—the ‘about’ page says it is located in the U.S. but includes links in Russian.”
Associated Press / RISHABH R. JAIN
Before India’s election, voters feed on false information →
“There was just one problem: The photos were not of militants but of casualties of a 2005 earthquake that killed thousands of people in Pakistan.
But the 50-year-old didn't see anything amiss. ‘It's news,’ he said. ‘How can it be fake?'”
Reuters / Fanny Potkin
Fact-checkers vs. hoax peddlers: a misinformation battle ahead of Indonesia’s election →
“‘We're in a war for content … people are doing anything they want,’ said one fake news creator, who has written stories depicting Indonesian officials as paid off by Beijing. The person declined to be identified because such work is illegal.”
Techdirt / Mike Masnick
The Internet Archive got 500 takedown demands from European agencies for hosting terrorist content — but they were wrong →
“Are we to simply take what's reported as ‘terrorism’ at face value and risk the automatic removal of things like THE primary collection page for all books on archive.org?”
Digiday / Max Willens
Who is new Gizmodo boss Jim Spanfeller? →
“‘He's original digirati,’ said Wenda Millard, vice chairman of MediaLink, who's known Spanfeller since he was at Playboy. ‘He's a builder and a fixer.'”
WIRED / Emily Dreyfuss
Facebook is changing News Feed (again) to fight misinformation →
“Click-Gap, which Facebook is launching globally today, is the company's attempt to limit the spread of websites that are disproportionately popular on Facebook compared with the rest of the web.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
The New York Times sells premium ads based on how an article makes you feel →
“A year ago, without ceremony, The New York Times piloted ad placements based on the emotions certain articles evoke. ‘Project Feels’ has now generated 50 campaigns, more than 30 million impressions and strong revenue results (the Times declines to specify how much).”
Digiday / Max Willens
VR hype has been replaced by AR hype among publishers →
“The reality is that VR remains a niche technology that no longer interests marketers and is getting less push from platforms such as Google and Facebook.”