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Friday, August 16, 2019
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Don’t click this: When should news organizations use “nofollow” links?Plus, a new free course for online fact-checking taught via workspace app Notion. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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One potential route to flagging fake news at scale: Linguistic analysisIt’s not perfect, but legitimate and faked news articles use language differently in ways that can be detected algorithmically: “On average, fake news articles use more expressions that are common in hate speech, as well as words related to sex, death, and anxiety.” By Fatemeh Torabi Asr. |
What We’re Reading
Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
The BBC defies Kashmir media blackout by increasing its shortwave broadcasts →
“The BBC said the communications shutdown, which includes internet access and mobile and landline phone services, has left people in the region with very few options for accessing news. But BBC news services are still available through shortwave radio transmissions in English, Urdu, Hindi, Dari and Pashto.”
The Atlantic / John Temple
Some alternatives to the Gannett-GateHouse route for local news →
“What we need is not a giant local-news company along the lines of the new Gannett, structured to reduce expenses and buy time until it finds a way to ride the digital wave. What we need instead is a network of local-news organizations that can offer tools that enable local people to focus on the important job of telling their communities' stories.”
Medium / The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan
City Bureau and WDET are expanding the public meeting Documenters program in Detroit →
“The new civic reporter for WDET will be responsible for combing through the meeting notes from the Documenters and pursuing larger stories that originate in these public meetings. From school board decisions to meetings with the Detroit Charter Revision Commission, WDET found the information captured by the Documenters led to formal stories.” Here’s more about the initiative, from us in January.
BuzzFeed News / Craig Silverman
The Drudge Report switches up its advertising partner →
“Drudge cast off his advertising representative of close to 20 years, Intermarkets, in favor of a new and unknown company, Granite Cubed. It has no record in the digital ad industry, was only registered as a company in March of this year, and lists no staff or owners on its websites. Yet it just landed one of the biggest websites in the US.”
Adweek / David Cohen
Half of U.S. teens get their news from YouTube (especially influencers) →
“Among teens who actually turn to news organizations for their news, 65% said it helps them better understand what is going on, while just 53% of those who get news from social media expressed the same sentiment, and 19% said getting news via social networks makes them more confused about current events.”
BuzzFeed News / Ryan Broderick
Secret no more: Facebook is changing from closed or secret groups to “public” or “private” →
“Once the change is implemented, groups that were once marked ‘secret’ will be labeled ‘private’ and only be visible for members of the group. Group admins will have the option to have public or private groups and also be able to toggle whether the group is visible in search results.”
Arizona State University / Dan Gillmor
The ASU News Co/Lab is trying to see if a journalistic correction can catch up to its mistake on social media →
“We're going to work with top researchers, including Dartmouth's Brendan Nyhan; technologists; and news organizations including three newsrooms, one of which is The Kansas City Star, from the McClatchy media company, where the idea for this project originated. We'll do experiments, research, and — this is key — develop a software tool to make it easier for journalists to propagate corrections and key updates in ways that mirror the original posts and shares.”
The Big Lead / Ryan Glasspiegel