Sabtu, 29 Juni 2019

Newsonomics: The New York Times puts personalization front and center — just For You

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest
Editor’s note: Nieman Lab will not be publishing next week for the July 4 holiday. We'll be back in your inbox again on July 8.

Newsonomics: The New York Times puts personalization front and center — just For You

The Times knows its editors’ judgment of what’s important is one of its critical selling points. But in order to surface more than a sliver of its journalism each day, it’s now willing to respond to readers’ interests in a much bigger way. By Ken Doctor.

When a local team wins a national championship, your daily newspaper will tell you all about it! (Um, 36 hours later)

Cost-cutting by newspaper chains has moved up print deadlines that even the biggest stories can't make the paper if they happen after 6 p.m. That's what happened in Nashville this week when Vanderbilt won the College World Series. By Joshua Benton.

Yes, it’s worth arguing with science deniers — and here are some techniques you can use

Plus: A fake news game that seems to inoculate players against fake news. By Laura Hazard Owen.

During the Indian election, news audiences consumed a wide and diverse range of sources

“Given the dearth of empirical studies about news audience behavior in the world's largest democracy, our study provides a benchmark for future comparative research on news consumption across platforms and across countries to build on.” By Subhayan Mukerjee and Sílvia Majó-Vázquez.
What We’re Reading
Pew Research Center / Mason Walker and Jeffrey Gottfried
Republicans far more likely than Democrats to say fact-checkers tend to favor one side →
“Seven-in-ten Republicans say fact-checkers tend to favor one side, compared with roughly three-in-ten Democrats (29%) – a 41 percentage point difference. Conversely, most Democrats (69%) say fact-checkers deal fairly with all sides, a view shared by just 28% of Republicans. “
RTDNA
Inside The Texas Tribune’s formula for small-team social media success →
“I would estimate about 60%-70% of my time is spent towards running on our daily social operations and the other 40%-30% of my time is towards long term planning and strategizing. I've been telling myself for a long time now that it needs to be more like 50-50, but that balance is really hard to strike.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Quartz lays off business-side employees for the second time this year →
“Altogether, Quartz has seen 25 people, close to 10% of the company headcount, depart either voluntarily or through layoffs over the past 12 months, a majority of them from the business side.”
CBS Baltimore / Danielle Gillis
June 28 marks one year since the Capital Gazette shooting →
“The Capital Gazette released a special edition this morning describing how the survivors have coped with the trauma and used each other to heal and try to move forward.”
The Verge / Makena Kelly
Twitter will now hide — but not remove — harmful tweets from public figures →
“This notice will only apply to tweets from accounts belonging to political figures, verified users, and accounts with more than 100,000 followers. If a tweet is flagged as violating platform rules, a team of people from across the company will decide whether it is a ‘matter of public interest.’ If so, a light gray box will appear before the tweet notifying users that it's in violation, but it will remain available to users who click through the box. In theory, this could preserve the tweet as part of the public record without allowing it to be promoted to new audiences through the Twitter platform.”
Wall Street Journal / Anne Steele
Wondery raises $10 million to take podcasts global →
“Wondery Inc. has raised $10 million in a funding round that values the podcast network at more than $100 million, according to people familiar with the matter, as it seeks to add to its slate of original programs and expand internationally.”

Jumat, 28 Juni 2019

The Associated Press and Google are building a tool for sharing more local news — more quickly

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

The Associated Press and Google are building a tool for sharing more local news — more quickly

“We’re living in an age of journalism where people want to help each other and are prioritizing collaboration over competition. We want to seize on that in a way that ensures no matter who is in the newsroom there's still a mechanism for them to use this.” By Christine Schmidt.

Here’s The Correspondent’s budget for its English-language expansion

“This represents five full-time correspondents working in different parts of the world, as well as at least five freelancers each month.” By Christine Schmidt.

Habit formation: How The Wall Street Journal turned user-level data into a strategy to keep subscribers coming back

The Journal went on a quest to identify the user actions — an app download, an article share, repeat reading of a particular reporter's stories — that can turn a new subscriber into a loyal one. Then it turned that knowledge into churn-reducing action. By Anne Powell, John Wiley, and Peter Gray.
What We’re Reading
The Wall Street Journal / Charlie McGee
Curious about the pay of media CEOs? (Yes, including Facebook, Netflix, and AT&T.) Here you go: →
“The median raise for the media CEOs who were in their roles the entire year was 4.4%. Three of them more than doubled their pay, while one got a substantial pay cut.”
Variety / Todd Spangler
Bustle Digital group’s Bryan Goldberg has acquired yet another outlet →
“BDG plans to bring back Nylon in print — not as a monthly mag, but in special issues tied to ‘flagship cultural moments’ like Coachella, Goldberg said. It would be Bustle Digital's first foray into print publishing. ‘We view print as an extension product," he said. "It's impossible to think about Nylon without thinking about the magazine covers. Print is part of who Nylon is.'”
Columbia Journalism Review / James G. Robinson
Journalists are open to engaging with readers, but their perception of their audience is still the same →
“As much as journalists like to talk about the five W's of a news story—who, what, where, when, and why—the practice of journalism rests on three other, equally important questions: ‘Who am I writing for? Why is it important for them to read it? And what will they find interesting?'”
European Journalism Centre / Stella Volkenand
Five tips for actually doing engaged journalism →
“We underestimated how many resources are needed. We thought we could sit down once a week and chat a bit. But it is a lot of back and forth, a lot of explaining and much asking. Don't underestimate how much time it takes.”
Better News / Rick Hirsch and Adrian Ruhi
How the Miami Herald created a sports-only subscription plan to lure out-of-market readers →
“Q: What didn't work? A: Miami's sports teams. Winning teams drive audience. Sadly, the Dolphins, Hurricanes and Heat all had disappointing seasons. With enthusiasm down among fans, it became harder to market a sports subscription to our readers.”
CNN / Brian Stelter
The Washington Post is expanding to Spanish language content with a podcast and columns →
“Within the Post’s competitive set, the paper has some catching up to do. The New York Times has a Spanish language home page with multiple stories translated from English each day. Before joining the Post, Lopez was the editorial director and founder of the New York Times in Español. The Los Angeles Times has a similar page full of Spanish language stories.”
Wired / Nicholas Thompson
Mark Zuckerberg explains his company’s thought process on deepfakes →
“‘Our government is the one that has the tools to apply pressure to Russia, not us.’ As he spoke, an elderly voice hollered from the back, ‘Not true!'”
NBC News / Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins
Reddit restricts r/The_Donald community, a “never-ending rally,” over violent threats →
“Reddit has recently been cracking down on subreddits used by extremists. The site banned r/frenworld last week, a subreddit for white nationalist, neo-Nazi and alt-right memes. The subreddit had evaded a ban for months by using codewords, like replacing the word "murder" with "bop" in conversations about genocide.”
Washington Post / Paul Farhi
How news outlets decided to use the photo of the border drowning deaths →
“The AP does not transmit highly graphic or disturbing photographs for their own sake. We also avoid images that are gratuitously violent. But we have through our history made the decision at times to show disturbing images that are important and that can convey the human cost of war, civil unrest or other tragic events in a way that words alone cannot.”

Kamis, 27 Juni 2019

TV is still the most common way for Americans to get local news, but fewer people are watching

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

TV is still the most common way for Americans to get local news, but fewer people are watching

Cable news is growing, local TV news is declining, and network news is roughly flat. By Laura Hazard Owen.

SmartNews has shown it can drive traffic. Can it drive subscriptions too?

“If the publisher ecosystem is healthy, then SmartNews is healthy. That’s going to be an important thrust going forward.” By Laura Hazard Owen.
What We’re Reading
The Washington Post / Cat Zakrzewski
The 2020 test: How platforms are preparing to combat disinformation in this week’s Democratic debates →
“This is the first time tech companies companies will be monitoring a U.S. presidential debate since overhauling their election integrity strategies post-2016. Debates are a prime target for actors aiming to plant bogus information and amplify tensions because they're one of the key moments during an election when many Americans are tuned into politics — even if they don't typically pay attention to the day-to-day news cycle.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
How The New York Times revamped its local coverage →
“In that respect, the Times, for all its resources, had the same slow-to-change newsroom dynamics that chains and individual metro papers have been grappling with for years. Culture change was part of the fix.
the Guardian / Michael McGowan
In Australia, media companies are scrambling after a judge rules they’re liable for Facebook comments →
“News organizations in Australia were already liable for Facebook comments made on articles posted on their public pages, but until now the test related to whether a publisher had been negligent in not removing potentially defamatory comments. However, in a pre-trial ruling on Monday, Rothman found media companies in effect had a responsibility to pre-moderate them.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Paula Ramón
Inside Venezuela’s news abyss →
“I call my aunt frequently to hear how she is getting by. ‘Everything is okay in here, darling,’ she told me in March, after five days without electricity or water. ‘I just watched the news. The power is back. It was a sabotage, but the government fixed it.’ The truth, for her, is whatever state TV broadcasts.”
TheHill / Joe Concha
Some Democratic hopefuls want a review of Sinclair’s acquisition of regional sports networks →
“‘It is clear that Sinclair has an explicit interest in, and commitment to, relaying partisan political messages to its viewers — making its recent anti competitive expansion attempts into millions of additional households all the more concerning,’ they wrote in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Justice.”
Apple Newsroom
Apple News now has a guide to the Democratic candidates →
“The candidate guide offers readers one convenient place to find information on each candidate from a diverse set of news sources, including ABC News, Axios, CNN, Fox News, NBC News, Politico, The Hill, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, Vox and others.”
Hmm Daily
Civil newsroom Hmm Daily is closing →
“For various reasons, all the futuristic underpinnings of the system took longer to develop and deploy than had originally been planned, and the innovations were harder to use. The Hmm Daily business model ended up consisting of spending a time-limited cash grant while asking readers to send us regular old fiat-currency United States dollars….”
Daily Kos / David Nelwert
Twitter banned this journalist for his book-promoting profile picture. Here’s why he compromised →
“The problem for them wasn't the image itself but rather its isolation: If it appeared in a way that provided better context, then they were fine with it.”

Rabu, 26 Juni 2019

“It’s just become daily news”: Six Florida newsrooms are teaming up to cover climate change

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

“It’s just become daily news”: Six Florida newsrooms are teaming up to cover climate change

"It's not a science story for us here in South Florida. It's not some kind of theoretical exploration. It's real. It's what many in our community experience in their neighborhoods." By Laura Hazard Owen.

Could technology built for advertising make public radio less top-down and more bottom-up?

Plus: A British podcast company finds surprising success stateside, the Supreme Court provides a S02E14 for In the Dark, and a documentary about Freaknik. By Nicholas Quah.

Can you spot a fake photo online? Your level of experience online matters a lot more than contextual clues

Whether an image looks like a random Facebook post or part of a New York Times story doesn't make much of a difference. But your level of experience with the Internet and image editing does. By Mona Kasra.
What We’re Reading
The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
Migrant children are suffering at the border. But reporters are kept away from the story. →
“The blackout on press access has left Americans largely in the dark about conditions in government facilities designed to handle migrants who have crossed the border. Photographs and TV images are both rare and often dated. Rarer still are interviews with federal agency managers and employees and with the children themselves.”
Texas Monthly
Texas Monthly has been sold, again →
It's been a rocky stretch for the beloved monthly, which went through an editor-in-chief mismatch and was last sold in late 2016. New owner Randa Duncan Williams "wants to own it forever."
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe names Mike Stanton and Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan as Spotlight Fellows →
“The Boston Globe on Monday announced that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Mike Stanton and Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, the creative force behind the Netflix investigative series ‘Rotten,’ have been selected as the news organization's new Spotlight Fellows.”
The New York Times / Lara Takenaga
Dean Baquet says The New York Times was “overly cautious” about reporting E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations against Trump →
“He said the critics were right that The Times had underplayed the article, though he said it had not been because of deference to the president.”
Politico / Josh Gerstein
Supreme Court rules against newspaper seeking access to food stamp data →
“The high court ruling rejected a nearly half-century-old appeals court precedent that allowed the withholding of business records under the Freedom of Information Act only in cases where harm would result either to the business or to the government's ability to acquire information in the future.”
The Guardian / Michael McGowan
Media companies scramble after an Australian judge rules they are liable for Facebook comments →
“On Monday in the New South Wales supreme court judge Stephen Rothman found that commercial entities, including media companies, could be regarded as the publishers of comments made on Facebook, and as such had a responsibility to ensure defamatory remarks were not posted in the first place.”
BusinessWire
GateHouse Media launches national investigative reporting team →
The 30-person team “will be headed by managing editor Emily Le Coz, an award-winning journalist and GateHouse Media's first national digital projects editor.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
LinkedIn has changed its algorithm to favor posts that “cater to niche professional interests, as opposed to elevating viral content” →
“LinkedIn has done this in part because internal research found that participation wasn’t even across the platform, and that much of the attention in on LinkedIn was skewed towards the top 1% of power users.”

Selasa, 25 Juni 2019

Publishers will soon no longer be able to detect when you’re in Chrome’s incognito mode, weakening paywalls everywhere

Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

Publishers will soon no longer be able to detect when you're in Chrome's incognito mode, weakening paywalls everywhere

A growing number of news sites block incognito readers, figuring they’re probably trying to get around a paywall. But a change from Google will again let people reset their meter with a keystroke. By Christine Schmidt.

R.I.P. Quartz Brief, the innovative mobile news app. Maybe "chatting with the news" isn’t something most people really want to do?

Just because people like to chat on their phones doesn’t mean they want to chat with you, news organizations. By Joshua Benton.
What We’re Reading
BuzzFeed News / Ryan Broderick
How a network of young women is fighting back against TikTok’s predator problem →
“‘I run this account where I would just post creepy TikToks to Instagram and I just posted a random video [from the account of a man who had become viral]. One of my followers DM’d me and was like, ‘Hey, I’m 14, do you want me to find out if he is [a predator] or not.'”
The Coral Project / Andrew Losowsky
The first myth of community design: “Everyone should be able to be reached by everyone” →
“In our study of gender nonbinary people of color, women of color, and online commentary, participants talked about having to constantly run a cost-benefit analysis on participation in any online conversations, based on the likelihood that they would be attacked, merely for participation.”
The Guardian / Amanda Meade
News Corp tabloid Herald Sun is offering journalists $10 to $50 for driving digital subs →
“The new three-tier system at the Herald Sun will reward reporters who reach a certain number of subscriptions via their bylines. They will earn more cash each week if the number of paying customers goes beyond a targeted number and if those subscribers reach a certain number of page views.”
New York Post / Keith J. Kelly
Another journalist has left Gawker →
Ben Barna is replaced by Nate Hopper, recently the ideas editor at Time magazine. “Gawker's only two full-time writers quit in January in protest of an executive who they said used anti-gay slurs and made derogatory comments about Asians and celebrities deemed to be overweight. The site is now slated for a relaunch in ‘fall 2019.'”
The Business of Content / Simon Owens
Why algorithm-governed Techmeme launched a daily podcast →
“It's news aggregation and it is TLDR as a service.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Gus Bova
Catholic talk radio replaced public radio in the Rio Grande valley — but residents are working to bring it back →
Brenda Riojas, a spokesperson for the diocese, says running the stations was a "service to the community," but other needs grew more pressing. The Catholic programming that now runs on the same frequencies, she adds, "is more in line with the mission of the church."
Digiday / Max Willens
Why podcasts grew into a top source of IP for NBCUniversal’s production outfit →
“In total, UCP has development rights to ‘about 12’ podcasts, all of which have been acquired over the past 18 months, UCP President Dawn Olmstead said. Though books remain the top source of intellectual property for UCP's 13-person development team, podcasts have turned into a top-three source, Olmstead said. Four years ago, UCP had zero podcast-derived projects on its development slate.”
New York / Allison Davis
The wild ride at Babe.net →
“what was always unclear was how much the site's writers — often with little or no journalistic experience or training — understood the traditions they were turning inside out or ignoring. Nor was it clear whether staff recognized the parallels between the gray-area #MeToo themes of its Ansari piece and the complicated sexual-power dynamics of their own office, the ones that would partly lead to the collapse of the site.”
Medium / Evan Peck, Sofia Ayuso, and Omar El-Etr
How rural Americans rated different kinds of data visualizations →
“As we analyzed and coded our interviews, we were reminded of something that we often forget — data can be intimate and personal. If someone found a personal connection to any graph, it didn't matter the color, the style or the technique. For the people we talked to, charts with personal connections superseded all other design dimensions.”