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Thursday, August 15, 2019
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Finally, Instagram is getting fact-checked (in a limited way and just in the U.S., for now)“The potential to prevent harm is high here, particularly with the widespread existence of health misinformation on the platform.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The Information / Jessica Toonkel
Axios wants to sell its CMS to others because of course they do →
“Axios is planning to enter a new business that includes selling software for helping companies create newsletters for their employees…Axios wants to sell the software, which it is beta testing, to communications and human resources departments at companies with large numbers of employees, according to several people familiar with the plan.”
UNC School of Media and Journalism
The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting is now part of UNC’s journalism school →
“The society, to be housed in the MJ-school's Reese News Lab, was conceived by four black journalists in response to what they recognized as a dearth of journalists of color doing investigative reporting.”
Politico / Michael Calderone
Behind Nate Silver’s war with The New York Times →
Silver: “Given the extremely prominent and influential place that the Times holds in coverage of American politics, any media critiques are naturally going to invoke the Times frequently. I think they’d do well to take those criticisms to heart instead of constantly accusing their critics of having ulterior motives or acting in bad faith." The Times: “We don’t always agree with Nate but he sometimes offers smart criticism of our work and we value that, it makes us better.”
Masslive / Aviva Luttrell
Mayor: “There is no more real newspaper in the city of Worcester” →
The GateHouse-owned Telegram & Gazette laid off its longtime columnist Clive McFarlane this week. “The editorial section isn't even from Worcester anymore…It's a national editorial a lot of times. We're losing that voice. All this stuff worries me.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Jessica Lipsky
The enduring influence of the Black Panther Party newspaper →
“The Panther paper set the stage for contemporary Black media covering oppression. While today's Black publications are less overtly radical, and street-corner sales have been replaced by social media shares, Colorlines, The North Star, Zora, The Root, and others continue the Panther's mission of shining a light on injustice.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Mathew Ingram
Could WordPress and Tumblr create an alternative to Facebook? →
“If Tumblr was the Coney Island freak show of the blogosphere, WordPress is the more dependable cousin—the one with a steady job. Could the combination of the two bring back the glory days of independent blogging? Some are clearly hoping that it will, and if anyone has a chance of pulling it off, it's probably WordPress.”
Middle East Eye / Ian Cobain
A “woke” media company targeting Muslim identity is actually a UK counterterrorism initiative →
“Launched earlier this year, the network features videos with titles such as ‘A trillion ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica’ and ‘Millions of pangolins are hunted each year’. Alongside them are other videos with titles such as ‘It's time to hold extremism to account for terrorism, not Islam’. This video went viral, being viewed 1.7 million times.”
Quartz / Yomi Kazeem
Facebook and Africa Check are trying to tackle fake news in 11 more local African languages →
“But when it comes to the spread of misinformation in Africa, Facebook faces a bigger challenge with its WhatsApp messaging platform, which is the most popular social media messaging app used on the continent. For example, the platform was used both legitimately and unscrupulously by politicians and political operatives in February's presidential and state elections in Nigeria.”
USA Today / Mike Snider
GateHouse and Gannett share more specifics on their merger →
“Newspaper operations, according to the filing, could save more than $115 million with ‘rationalization of manufacturing & distribution’ and ‘centralization of management structure and consumer marketing.’ The combined company could save more than $70 million in corporate and procurement changes with lower prices for bulk purchasing, centralization of finance departments, and the ‘elimination of duplicative public company functions and costs’ the filing says.”
The New York Times / Claire Wardle ... or is it Adele?
The hype of deepfakes is more dangerous than the deepfakes themselves →
“The real danger of fakes — deep or shallow — is that their very existence creates a world in which almost everything can be dismissed as false.”
Twitter / David Sirota
The Bernie Sanders campaign has launched a Substack newsletter →
The newsletter will serve up “scoops, insights, and news nuggets about the election. Whether you are a journalist, an activist or a news junkie, this newsletter will have all sorts of goodies.” The campaign has complained about mainstream media ignoring the candidate.
The information / Jessica Toonkel and Beejoli Shah
BuzzFeed expects to break even this year, as its chief marketing officer is stepping down →
“While Mr. Kaufman will stay on as an adviser to the company, his stepping down as CMO raises questions about the commerce division's future success and, more broadly, about whether BuzzFeed can remain on its current, more stable track.”
What's New In Publishing / Esther Kezia Thorpe
How Glamour went all-digital (and brought more influencers onboard) →
“The publisher has gone all-in on Instagram's 'Stories' functionality, developing a daily programme of TV-style episodic viewing that their audience regularly tunes in to.”
OpenNews / Lisa Waananen Jones
Another way to teach journalism, inspired by SRCCON →
“Both in education and in news, we tend to think of engagement as a cheery, uniting experience—and it can be!—but getting along is not the point. The goal is creating spaces where we can be transformed by one another, and leave thinking in a slightly different way.”