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Tuesday, November 20, 2018
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Is it finally time for media companies to adopt a common publishing platform?Media companies are each independently trying to solve the same technical problems, rather than focusing on competing with Facebook. Is the usual answer to “buy or build?” changing? By Jesse Knight. |
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New limited-run podcasts are fun to listen to, but hard to sell. Can that change?Plus: How the BBC is decentralizing political podcasting, and the battle of the Thanksgiving afternoon podcasts. By Nicholas Quah. |
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Polarizing the network: The most interesting new digital and social media researchJournalist's Resource sifts through the academic journals so you don't have to. Here's their latest roundup, including research into how Twitter impacts reporters’ news judgment, how often we remember where we read something, and why Facebook makes you feel bad. By Denise-Marie Ordway. |
What We’re Reading
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Embattled and in over his head, Mark Zuckerberg should — at least — step down as Facebook chairman →
“If Zuckerberg really wants to be ‘responsible for what happened here,’ he'll step aside as chairman and encourage some stringent internal oversight. And, as part of that, true transparency to the public and the press.”
Pacific Standard / Sophie Yeo
Why the decline of newspapers is bad for the environment →
“New research suggests that corporations pollute more when there aren’t local papers to hold them accountable.”
Washington Post / Philip Bump
Cable news networks spend far more time talking about hurricanes than wildfires →
“The Camp Fire is the deadliest fire in the history of California. On Fox News and MSNBC, the peak density of coverage through Sunday has never matched the lowest density of coverage on those networks in the first two weeks after the formation of Hurricane Irma in 2017.”
New York Times / Jaclyn Peiser
Glamour magazine to cease regular print publication →
“Although the number of Glamour's paid subscribers has remained stable over the last three years, at around 2.2 million, [Samantha] Barry said it was time for the publication to break away from the printed page.”
CNN / Kaya Yurieff
Instagram tries to crack down on fake likes, follows, and comments →
“Instagram said it built machine learning tools to help detect and remove fake popularity boosting. Users can sign up for such services by providing their username and password in exchange for more likes and followers. These services use bots that leave comments and like posts on real Instagram accounts, often for a fee.”
New York Times / Jolie Kerr
How to talk to people, according to Terry Gross →
“The beauty in opening with ‘tell me about yourself’ is that it allows you to start a conversation without the fear that you're going to inadvertently make someone uncomfortable or self-conscious. Posing a broad question lets people lead you to who they are.”
Business Insider / Bryan Logan
How Blavity is redefining the media world by helping African-American millennials “tell their own story” →
Blavity “closed a $6.5 million Series A round with Google Ventures in July, bringing its total venture investment so far to $8.5 million. That’s an almost of unheard-of amount of money for an early-stage, black-owned startup, much less a new digital publication — especially one with a young, black, female CEO, Morgan DeBaun, Samuels’ cofounder.”
Vox / Ezra Klein
The case for slowing everything down a bit →
“Our digital lives dispense with friction. We get the answers we seek instantly, we keep up with friends without speaking to them, we get the news as it happens, we watch loops of videos an algorithm chose for us, we click once and get any product in the world delivered to our doorsteps in less than two days.”
Digiday / Tim Peterson
Quartz forms Quartz AI Studio with $250k grant from Knight Foundation →
“Quartz will use the $249,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to hire a developer and a producer to join the Quartz AI Studio alongside John Keefe, technical architect for bots and machine learning at Quartz. Quartz expects to make those hires in time to begin working on stories in January, said Keefe.”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
ASNE diversity survey: meager participation but progress among those reporting →
“Some told me that they have been barely able to hire the last five years and were… embarrassed to show their numbers.” Among 1,700 organizations surveyed, 293 responded, far below the 661 organizations that returned surveys last year.