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Wednesday, May 8, 2019
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Fact-checking can’t do much when people’s “dueling facts” are driven by values instead of knowledge“Perhaps the most disappointing finding from our studies — at least from our point of view — is that there are no known fixes to this problem.” By David Barker and Morgan Marietta. |
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“Why should I tell you?” A new guide aims to make reporting on communities less “extractive”“Journalists love to deceive ourselves about how important our work is because it makes us feel better about doing sometimes morally ambiguous things.” By Joshua Benton. |
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The New York Times launches its (evidence-driven, non-judgy) Parenting vertical, with an eye toward making it a subscription product“We wanted to be as useful as possible to people in as many different situations as possible.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Digiday / Tim Peterson
How Bleacher Report is using Instagram Stories for app downloads →
“When people share a post from Bleacher Report's app to Instagram Stories, a thumbnail of the post will appear in the story, including its title, main image, how long ago it was published, how many comments it has received and how many people have liked the post in the app. Atop the post will appear the caption ‘Open in Bleacher Report’ that people can tap on to install or open the app.”
Wall Street Journal / Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
Advance Publications is investing $10 billion to rely on more than media — into theater, esports, and more →
Advance, the owner of outlets including the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Oregonian, and the Star-Ledger, also holds a substantial stake in Reddit. Now it’s diversifying further with acquisitions of “a group of European theaters, a maker of plagiarism-detection software, a majority stake in an esports analytics firm and a stake in a rocket operator specializing in low-Earth-orbit satellite launches.”
The Salt Lake Tribune / Tony Semerad
The legacy newspaper Salt Lake Tribune is seeking nonprofit status →
“News of the shift emerges less than a year after Huntsman laid off a third of The Tribune’s staff, citing an unexpectedly steep dip in ad revenues. Newsroom staffing now stands at about 60 employees, down from 148 in 2011. It also comes a little more than a year after The Tribune put up a paywall to charge readers for accessing its content online.”
TechCrunch / Anthony Ha
US digital advertising exceeded $100 billion in 2018 →
“Total domestic spending reached $107.5 billion, a 22% increase from 2017. Mobile advertising has become increasingly dominant, growing 40% year-over-year, to $69.9 billion. And video ad spending grew 37% to $16.3 billion.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Lyz Lenz
The leadership of the NewsGuild — representing 20,000 journalists — is facing a combative election →
“Lunzer, who has refused to be on conference calls with Schleuss, told Labor Notes that the LA journalists are a ‘very demanding group.'”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Curious what the CEOs of newspaper companies make? Here’s a list →
The New York Times’ Mark Thompson received $6.1 million; Tribune Publishing’s Justin Dearborn, who was let go at the end of 2018, only received his salary of $611,000 (after a $5.2 million payment in February 2016).
The Atlantic / Jonathan Rauch
How live, automated fact-checking worked during the State of the Union →
“I grew uneasy as the first minutes of Trump's speech ticked by and no fact-checks appeared on the screen. Finally, about five minutes in, the first one popped up. It was laughably off-target, bearing no relationship to what the president was saying. Several more misses followed. But then came several that were in the ballpark. And then, after about half an hour: bull's-eye.”
BuzzFeed News / Craig Silverman and Jane Lytvynenko
Disinformation and harassment is disproportionately impacting Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities to silence them →
“Researchers found that online messages and images on platforms such as Twitter that originate in the Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities are co-opted by extremists to spread division and disinformation, often resulting in more social media engagement for the extremists. This causes members of social groups to pull away from online conversations and platforms, and to stop using them to engage and organize, further ceding ground to trolls and extremists.”
The Open Notebook / Kendra Pierre-Louis
Navigating newsrooms as a minority →
“I have experienced racism in the newsroom. This hasn't surprised me. I have been black my whole life, so racism has been a fixture of my whole life. What has surprised me, as someone who transitioned to journalism from other work, is that I've encountered racism more frequently in journalism than I did in previous professions.”