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Thursday, June 13, 2019
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Investigative Network aims to bring more documentary video to local TV (but it’ll need funding first)“What I've seen with most nonprofits is they're driven by former print people who have transitioned to digital. I can't tell you how many times I see a digital story and think it would have been a good 10-minute, 15-minute, hour-long documentary piece.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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How could deepfakes impact the 2020 U.S. elections?Seven scenarios — from faked scandalous audio to voter intimidation to imagined journalistic corruption — show the sorts of misinformation disruptions that could be coming. By Nicholas Diakopoulos and Deborah Johnson. |
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The New York Times has a course to teach its reporters data skills, and now they’ve open-sourced itYou can now VLOOKUP the SUMPRODUCT of the Times’ training efforts. It’s SORT of a TREND; even AVERAGE journalists can CONVERT data skills TO_DOLLARS. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
FiveThirtyEight / Jay Boice and Gus Wezerek
How good are FiveThirtyEight forecasts? →
“Until now we've been spotty about letting you know whether our predictions were any good, sometimes leaving that task to other publications. With this project, we've created a single place where we hope you'll come back as we add future forecasts and help keep us honest.”
Twitter / Yoel Roth
If you want to research state-backed fake Twitter accounts, here’s a giant corpus of data about them →
“By making this data open and accessible, we seek to empower researchers, journalists, governments, and members of the public to deepen their understanding of critical issues impacting the integrity of public conversation online, particularly around elections.”
Medium / Jennifer Brandel
Hearken and the Membership Puzzle Project are building a citizens agenda for 2020 coverage →
“This is not putting out one questionnaire that goes to 500 people, and calling it audience involvement. This means planning ahead, bringing the public into the process of your journalism and story production, evaluating the success of your outreach efforts to reach new audiences, establishing real metrics so you can determine where you're succeeding and what to adjust.”
Digiday / Kerry Flynn
Publishers have been playing more with Twitch and maybe even making money off of it →
“As the Amazon-owned live video platform grows its sales team, publishers like The Washington Post, Cheddar and BuzzFeed have invested in creating specific shows catered to the platform over the last year. Publishers said Twitch is useful not only as a way to grow audience numbers but also to learn from a community that's quite active in the comments. Publishers also can benefit from Twitch's direct monetization options including in-stream ads and subscriptions.”
AdWeek / Sara Jerde
Here’s what Bustle Digital Group has planned for Mic’s relaunch →
Shanté Cosme, former executive editor of Complex Media, is Mic’s new executive editor. Mic will be tackling more social justice issues, events, and branded content.
Knight First Amendment Institute
More than 200 researchers sign on to support a safe harbor for research on Facebook →
“The letter of support comes in the midst of ongoing negotiations between the Knight Institute and Facebook about the safe-harbor proposal. The Knight Institute sent a letter to the tech giant in August 2018 urging it to amend its terms of service to create ‘a safe harbor for certain kinds of journalism and research while appropriately protecting the privacy of Facebook's users and the integrity of Facebook's platform.'”
BuzzFeed News / Megha Rajagopalan
Facebook failed to delete 93 percent of posts containing speech violating its own rules in India →
“But Equality Labs, a South Asian American advocacy group focusing on technology and human rights, said Facebook had made little progress on these issues in India — home to some 300 million Facebook users — including during India's 2019 general election. The report's authors, who studied 1,000 posts over the past year, stated that widespread doxxing of activists and journalists takes place on the platform.”
The Verge / Ashley Carman
All that’s missing is weather and traffic: Spotify has a new driver-friendly news and music playlist →
Still, 81 percent of Americans recently said they’ve listened to an AM/FM radio in their cars in the past month, versus 28 percent for online radio.
Columbia Journalism Review / Emily Tamkin
Here’s CJR’s first public editor piece, on CNN hosting Trump talking points →
“Guilfoyle has not worked as an economist. She has not crafted foreign or immigration policy. She is not an expert on Central America. What possible value, I wondered, were CNN's viewers getting from watching Guilfoyle speak about this subject? If Cuomo wanted Trump talking points, couldn't he have just played a clip of Trump himself?”
Reuters / Jonathan Stempel
Tribune Co’s former executives reach a $200M settlement stemming from 2007 →
“Zell took Tribune private in an $8.2 billion buyout in December 2007 that saddled the Chicago-based owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and WGN superstation with too much debt.”