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Thursday, July 25, 2019
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How to cover 11,250 elections at once: Here’s how The Washington Post’s new computational journalism lab will tackle 2020“We’re not super-interested in telling a story about one Iowa county using this infrastructure. But we’re making sure our reporters know which county in Iowa to go if they’re looking for one that has particular characteristics.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Five years after crowdfunding, here’s how Krautreporter is keeping its members engaged (and building tools for you to, too)“You don't feel like you're trying to convince people you're not lying.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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Should Facebook have a “quiet period” of no algorithm changes before a major election?Several Facebook News Feed updates leading up to the 2016 U.S. election disadvantaged traditional news sources and favored less reliable information shared by your uncle. Should regulation keep the playing field static? By Jennifer Grygiel. |
What We’re Reading
The Conversation / Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
The internet is rotting — let’s embrace it →
“Every year, some thousands of sites — including ones with unique information — go offline. Countless further webpages become inaccessible; instead of information, users encounter error messages. Where some commentators may lament yet another black hole in the slowly rotting Internet, I actually feel okay. Of course, I, too, dread broken links and dead servers. But I also know: Forgetting is important.”
Vice News / David Uberti
“Get ready for local news — brought to you by the Democrats” →
“Rather, Priorities USA is planning to flood swing states — many of which have lost their local papers — with stories favorable to the Democratic agenda. Four ‘news’ outlets staffed by Democratic operatives will publish state-specific information across social media in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin. They'll also boost content by independent sources.”
Variety / Cynthia Littleton
NBCUniversal’s streaming service will launch in April →
“Nielsen research shows that viewership of ‘Office’ episodes amounts to 5% of all Netflix volume. The comedy series that aired on NBC from 2005 to 2013 is ‘tied to the DNA’ of NBC, Burke said. ‘We see “The Office” as one of the tentpole programs on our platforms.'”
Ad Age / Garrett Sloane
Amazon wants to put audio ads between songs on your Alexa device →
“Amazon audio ads are interactive in a way Spotify and Pandora can’t match, according to advertisers. Listeners can speak to the ads and tell Alexa to add products to shopping carts and other functions. Amazon also is the default music option on Alexa devices when people ask for any random song or genre.” (Prime members won’t get the ads — for now, at least.)
Pew Research Center / Michael Barthel
Traffic to news websites seems to have leveled off →
“Time spent on these websites has declined as well: The average number of minutes per visit for digital-native news sites is down 16% since 2016, falling from nearly two and a half minutes to about two per visit.”
Digiday / Max Willens
The challenges of doing product at a publisher →
“‘Introduce looking at data, bringing other parts of the product in line and getting the CEO to realize what people we need if we are hoping to get real growth. All our clients want is 10,000 pageviews with zero targeting for $20,000. It's so hard to talk product, user experience or data’ — business head of a digital-native publisher”
Rtdna / Tim Scheld
New York’s “mugshot ban” leaves newsrooms in the dark, but is meant to stop taking advantage of incarcerated people →
“News organization do have a responsibility to use information released by public safety agencies in a responsible and judicious manner. A Tallahassee, Florida, television station, WTXL, recently shut down the popular booking page on its website after careful consideration about the value of posting the information and photos from every single arrest in the local community. WTXL General Manager Matt Brown wrote that the newsroom was getting two to three calls per week from people complaining about the posting of information or mugshots in cases that were ultimately dropped or expunged.”
Engaged Journalism Accelerator
How Bureau Local runs its “open newsroom” Slack discussions for members →
“The team wanted to create regular time and space to enable members to connect, share expertise and ask questions about the stories that Bureau Local was working on, and to ensure the network remained active and informed between investigations. Already using Slack for internal communications, they decided to use it to pilot the first 'open newsroom' in November 2018.”
Quartz / Jeremy B. Merrill
How Quartz used AI to help reporters search the Mauritius Leaks →
“Our AI aided the investigation by applying a journalist's human judgment identifying a particular kind of document—like a tax return or a business plan—across the entire document trove. While the AI didn't do anything a human couldn't do (after all, knowledgeable journalists know what a tax return looks like), it did the job a lot faster, freeing humans to do other tasks.”
Press Gazette / James Walker
Vice U.K. journalists win union recognition after months of negotiations →
“The latest drive for a Vice UK editorial union came three years after an earlier attempt was rejected by management…In March, after the millennial media brand revealed plans to axe 10 per cent of its staff jobs globally — resulting in up to 250 job losses, although no UK editorial staff were affected — UK staff again pushed to unionise.”
Reynolds Journalism Institute
Mizzou launches an investigative fellowship program to support authors →
“The Watchdog Writers Group is supported by funding from The 11th Hour Project of the Schmidt Family Foundation, a nonprofit foundation based in Palo Alto, California. The 11th Hour Project has a long history of funding independent journalism at universities and publications around the country, and the WWG marks its most significant investment in journalism produced in the Midwest.”