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Tuesday, April 16, 2019
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Is Mailchimp ready to dive back into podcasts in a big way?Plus: How independent podcasters make money, Snap Judgment expands to a new platform, and Macs are getting a separate Podcasts app. By Nicholas Quah. |
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As Notre Dame burned, an algorithmic error at YouTube put information about 9/11 under news videosA reminder that even efforts to limit misinformation can end up spreading it instead — and that human editors watching over the algorithms can be a pretty good thing, too. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
NBC News / Olivia Solon and Cyrus Farivar
Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were on board with selling access to Facebook users’ data →
“In some cases, Facebook would reward favored companies by giving them access to the data of its users. In other cases, it would deny user-data access to rival companies or apps…Facebook ultimately decided not to sell the data directly but rather to dole it out to app developers who were considered personal ‘friends’ of Zuckerberg or who spent money on Facebook and shared their own valuable data, the documents show.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Eriq Gardner
Will it soon be legal to say curse words on broadcast TV? →
“Since Pacifica, the Supreme Court has refused to extend the indecency bar beyond ‘a situation in which a listener does not want the received message,’ and with a proliferation of options to access media, one might wonder if Pacifica is somewhat outdated.”
HuffPost / Lydia Polgreen
HuffPost is launching a membership program with three tiers, including a free one →
“Our membership program is not a paywall because we believe our journalism should remain freely available to everyone ― not just those who can afford to pay.” Paid tiers are $5.99/month or $99.99/year (which comes with a t-shirt).
Journalism.co.uk / Damian Radcliffe and Payton Bruni
5 trends to know about social media in the Middle East →
One third of the population is below age 15, and almost two thirds say they first turn to Facebook and Twitter for news (compared to just a quarter three years ago). And in three years, the number of MENA YouTube channels grew by 160 percent.
Axios / Sara Fischer
The Trump campaign is spending 44 percent of its Facebook ad budget targeting users over 65 →
“Other data points pulled from the Facebook ad archive show that the President is using most of those ads targeted towards older people to talk about immigration… In total, the Trump campaign is only targeting voters 18-35 with 4.3 percent of his total ad budget.”
Recode / Eric Johnson
If Congress cancels federal funding for PBS, rural areas will be hurt the most, PBS CEO says →
“Some in urban centers like New York and Washington, DC, might be able to get by with the money they get from other sources, including corporate underwriters and individual donations. But the threat is a more ‘existential’ threat for stations in rural areas that ‘are not going to make it … unless there is some federal support.'”
Wired / Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein
15 months of fresh hell inside Facebook, based on interviews with 65 current and former employees →
“Heated emails flew back and forth between Switzerland and Menlo Park. Solutions were proposed and shot down. It was a classic Facebook dilemma. The company's algorithms embraid choices so complex and interdependent that it's hard for any human to get a handle on it all…. It's ultimately a story about the biggest shifts ever to take place inside the world's biggest social network. But it's also about a company trapped by its own pathologies and, perversely, by the inexorable logic of its own recipe for success.”
Digiday / Lucinda Southern
Schibsted becomes the latest publisher to back Spotify’s feud with Apple →
“Apple is acting today as a whimsical feudal lord who either doesn't understand — or simply doesn't care — what its actions are impacting,” Schibsted editors wrote in an open letter decrying the platform’s 15-30 percent cut of in-app subscription revenues.
The Hollywood Reporter / Natalie Jarvey
Vox Media acquires Epic Magazine, creating a new studios division →
“Founded six years ago by journalists Josh Davis and Joshuah Bearman, Epic was designed to create a pipeline of sorts for magazine articles to become feature films or TV shows…. Bearman’s 2007 Wired story about a CIA scheme to rescue American diplomats from Tehran became the Ben Affleck film Argo, which won the Oscar for best picture in 2012. And Warner Bros. bought the rights to Davis’ Wired investigation on John McAfee.”
International Center for Journalists
Here’s a new accelerator with $1.5M to invest in Latin American media startups →
“Called Velocidad (‘Velocity’ in English), the accelerator program will provide both funding and expert consulting for news startups operating in Latin America. Velocidad is funded by Luminate and run by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and SembraMedia.”
The Hollywood Reporter / Natalie Jarvey
Bryan Goldberg says he expects Bustle Digital Group to edge into profitability this year →
“…with revenue topping $100 million, which would represent more than 30 percent growth compared with the $75 million the company clocked in 2018…. The idea is to create a modern-day Condé Nast, one untethered from the baggage of a legacy print business.”