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Thursday, November 2, 2017
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Facebook, Google, and Twitter faced Congress this week to talk Russian meddling. Here’s what we learned (and didn’t)“Your actions need to catch up to your responsibilities.” By Shan Wang. |
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“Instagram for data”: Grafiti wants to make it easier to create and share data visualizations on smartphones“These days we have all these conversations about policy and immigration where data comes up, and it’s amazing how much plain text is still used to explain these ideas.” By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Hack the Radio, a French startup, aims to liberate podcasts by streaming audio from a chatbot“If audio isn’t easily made viral, maybe it can be something else as strong.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
BuzzFeed / Alex Kantrowitz
Twitter offered Russia Today 15% of its total share of U.S. elections advertising →
“RT’s share of voice was 2% at the time of the pitch, according to a June 2016 email from a Twitter sales executive to RT staff members that RT shared with BuzzFeed News. The $3 million spent would multiply RT’s share of voice more than sevenfold, but still leave it short of CNN’s 56% and FOX’s 32%. RT declined the offer. Twitter did not dispute the email's validity.”
WWD / Alexandra Steigrad
Condé Nast is shutting down Teen Vogue’s print magazine and lower publishing frequencies for several other magazines →
“Teen Vogue's buzzy editor in chief Elaine Welteroth may remain working on the title in some capacity and will likely find an additional role at the company, an insider noted (the digital report has been largely run by Phillip Picardi, who also oversees Allure's web site). Another perhaps more plausible scenario is that Welteroth grows a new brand at Condé Nast, as Picardi has with Them, a site focusing on LGBTQ issues.”
The Hive / Joe Pompeo
“A different level of crazy”: Is a civil war breaking out at the Wall Street Journal over its editorial board’s Mueller coverage? →
“It's frustrating to have to contend with this, even if smart people recognize the separation between the editorial side and news,” one Journal reporter said. "We could disprove half the stuff" the opinion writers "are saying if they just read our own reporting. It's like living in some alternate universe,” another said.
Digiday / Lucia Moses
In the hunt for consumer revenue, publishers are hiring e-commerce marketing veterans →
“Magazine publisher Condé Nast has hired consumer marketers from such consumer companies as Expedia, Barclaycard and eBay. The Wall Street Journal has hired people with psychology, statistics, information systems and business analytics degrees. Time Inc., similarly, has hired most of its new consumer marketers from companies outside publishing, including Amazon, Visa, Netflix and Procter & Gamble.”
Journalism.co.uk / Caroline Scott
How BBC #newsHACK is driving innovation in news delivery →
“The BBC initiative brings together developers and journalists to develop new ideas and concepts based around the delivery of online news. Participants of the #newsHACK events, which are held in different places around the world including London, Nairobi and Cape Town, are set a brief and given two days to develop ideas.”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
You can make money off homecoming pics and 9 other simple ideas to borrow from local news →
One example: Ohio news site Richland Source’s galleries of area homecomings brought the site a total of 893,000 page views. They also went to advertisers to sell sponsorships around those galleries — those now go for $3,000 each and typically sell out early.
Pew Research Center / Elizabeth Grieco
More Americans are turning to multiple social media sites for news →
“About a quarter of all U.S. adults (26%) get news from two or more social media sites, up from 15% in 2013 and 18% in 2016. News users of LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp are particularly likely to get news on multiple social networks: Half or more of their news users get news on three or more social media sites.”
Politico / Renee Diresta and Tristan Harris
Why Facebook and Twitter can’t be trusted to police themselves →
“We've seen Twitter attempt to discredit independent researchers investigating the severe bot problem on the platform, claiming that they aren't using the right data. Both companies have made attempts to obfuscate, by deleting pages and posts as researchers identify them. And yet, every day brings new stories revealing additional Facebook Pages, Groups, YouTube channels, bot accounts and content caches.”
JSource / H.G. Watson
Why Twitter is betting big on livestreaming video →
“‘What we are ultimately trying to do is help partners grow their reach and their revenue on Twitter,’ Peter Greenberger, the global head of news at Twitter, said. He also said they see consistent growth among daily active users, which means people are logging in more frequently — something they believe is a result, in part, of livestreaming video.”
CUNY J-School
CUNY’s News Integrity Initiative Awards $2.5 Million to Internews and the European Journalism Centre →
The European Journalism Centre will use $1.5 million for its Engaged Journalism Accelerator, a program to help newsrooms develop tools and reporting that empower communities and their conversations across Europe. Internews will use $1 million to create the Global Media Solutions Coalition, which will research, support, and share systemic solutions to the decline of high quality, local news, and information around the world.
