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Thursday, August 1, 2019
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Newsonomics: The “daily” part of daily newspapers is on the way out — and sooner than you might thinkSeven-day newspapers aren’t just talking about cutting out one or two days a week in print — they’re talking five or six. Is this the only way to accelerate the transition to digital or speeding their own decline? By Ken Doctor. |
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What does a solutions-focused newscast on public TV look like? PBS39 has been at it for nearly a year“It wasn’t, like, ‘bam bam soundbite soundbite you’re done.'” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
The New York Times / The Last Edition
How four initiatives are rebuilding and reimagining local news →
“What happens when the presses stop rolling? Who will tell the stories of touchdowns scored, heroes honored and neighbors lost? We asked news industry innovators to share their visions for what comes next, and what fills the void.”
The Verge / Dami Lee
PBS will stream live for the first time with YouTube TV →
“While you could already stream episodes of some PBS shows on the channel's website or through a PBS Video app, some of them live, YouTube TV will have live access to the entire channel, including all 330 PBS member stations that choose to participate, including PBS Kids channels.”
Bloomberg / Mark Bergen
YouTube tweaked its algorithm to convince the FTC it was safe for kids but of course it’s not perfect →
“Most of the time, we don't even notice it. Whatever was tweaked about a week and a half ago was very noticeable.'”
CNN Business / Donie O'Sullivan
Facebook has taken down an influence campaign tied to the Saudi government →
“In June, Bellingcat released a report claiming that Saud al-Qahtani, bin Salman’s communications chief who was implicated in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, purchased hacking services and was involved in creating fake social media accounts. Facebook said that while it benefited from the information Bellingcat published, it did not find any direct links between the pages it removed and al-Qahtani.”
Facebook Journalism Project / Tim Griggs, David Grant, and Joseph Lichterman
What metro newspapers learned from Facebook’s local news subscriptions accelerator →
“Half of Accelerator publishers saw gains of more than 50,000 net new email subscribers during the Accelerator period — and several publishers saw gains of 100,000 or more.”
New York Post / Keith J. Kelly
Nylon’s editor Gabrielle Korn is leaving after Bustle Digital Group acquired it →
“In a farewell note to readers, Korn recalled her elevation to the top spot just as the print edition was being jettisoned. ‘Being charged with keeping editorial afloat without the anchor of a beloved publication was scary, but it was also an absolute honor to get the title, one that I didn't take lightly,’ she wrote in a farewell note posted to social media.” Bustle is planning to return Nylon to a print edition, but hasn’t shared specifics.
Fast Company / Ben Paynter
Inside The Daily Show’s Democratic debate social media war room →
“In part, The Daily Show is playing to where its audience lives: During the second quarter of this year, digital viewership on those platforms was up 18% year-over-year, with 700 million total streams on the aforementioned social channels and YouTube.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Brenna Wynn Greer
Historians breathe a sigh of relief at the foundations’ purchase of the Ebony and Jet photo archives →
“Johnson Publishing never made its photograph collection widely available as an academic resource. The vast majority of the images were never public, and the company is known among scholars for being difficult.”
Associated Press
A Mexican newspaper closed its print edition — still publishing online — after an attack →
With a caveat: “We will not publish absolutely any crime story, no matter how important it might be.”
Vox / Kaitlyn Tiffany
Can YouTubers really unionize? →
“This week, they launched what Sprave is calling an "internet movement," named FairTube. The 18,000 members of the YouTubers Union are collectively protesting changes to YouTube's advertising rules, which date back to the spring of 2017 and are colloquially known as the ‘Adpocalypse.’ (So far, no major YouTube stars have publicly endorsed FairTube — likely, at least in part, because FairTube is protesting what it considers special treatment for big moneymakers.)”
University of Birmingham
WhatsApp has both promoted the spread of election misinformation and strengthened accountability →
A UK-Nigerian research team examined the app’s use in the 2019 elections in Nigeria: “One of the most notorious messages of the election – the false story that President Buhari had died and been replaced by a clone from Sudan – was widely circulated on WhatsApp. But candidates also used WhatsApp to alert citizens to false stories and to ‘set the record straight’.”