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Friday, May 4, 2018
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People who are delusional, dogmatic, or religious fundamentalists are more likely to believe fake newsPlus: “Women over 65 years write very rude things on the internet.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Nick Statt
The new Vine, tentatively called v2, has been postponed for an “indefinite amount of time” →
“[Vine co-founder Dom] Hofmann started the v2 project, in his words, ‘without a plan’ last year, mostly as a way to garner interest in a Vine successor…Now, Hofmann says that, despite the immense interest in his project, he has to take the time to make sure it doesn't fall apart before continuing. He cites a need for substantial venture funding to get v2 off the ground after initially thinking he may be able to self-fund it.”
Slate / Felix Salmon
“I am pro-paywall, but the Bloomberg paywall does not make sense” →
“So why is the paywall going up? Partly because it can. Paywalls are so common nowadays that Bloomberg was effectively leaving money on the table by not having one. Like the good capitalists that they are, Bloomberg's executives have decided to pick this low-hanging fruit. As a business decision, it's a no-brainer.”
The New York Times / Jack Healy
The Denver Post editorial page editor who went after his paper’s owner has resigned →
Chuck Plunkett wrote a followup editorial based on our Monday story on the industry-leading margins (and $160 million in annual profits) at the Post’s parent company, Digital First Media. His boss refused to run it; Plunkett resigned. “Our obligation is to the reader and the truth. We should not be allowing ourselves to be quiet about something our own people are doing that would be considered dangerous, bad for our communities and bad for democracy.”
TechCrunch / Anthony Ha
BuzzFeed built its own editing tool that lets any staff create short, meme-y social video →
“BuzzFeed says Vidder is being used by 40 or 50 team members to create 200 videos each month, with 800 videos created in all since October. Almost none of BuzzFeed's Vidder users are full-time video producers, and most of them had little to no experience with professional video editing software.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Vernon
The unavoidable Brian Stelter: CNN's media wonk doesn't want to waste a moment →
“Asked if he could see himself running a network one day, Stelter pauses, wrestling with the question in silence for a full eight seconds. Finally, he asks, ‘Can you just put me down for smiling at your question?'”
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Google will only sell U.S. election ads to American citizens or lawful permanent residents →
“Another part of those promised changes – a new Transparency Report focused on election ads – will arrive later this summer. The report will detail who's buying election ads and how much they spent. Google says it's building a searchable library for election ads, where anyone can look up this information, as well.”
American Press Institute / Daniela Gerson and Carlos Rodriguez
How can mainstream and ethnic media team up to produce better journalism? →
“‘When you're writing for an immigrant community, it's informational, it's like consumer reporting,’ she said. Stories for American readers, on the other hand, have more ‘background information to understand how policies work, but it doesn't apply to their lives.'”
AdAge / Garett Sloane
Google is revamping Google News to incorporate elements of the Newsstand app and YouTube →
“It’s a consolidation of all the ways you can interact with news on Google,” says one publishing executive who has been briefed on the plans, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There are a lot of Google services where you find news, and what they’re trying to do is bring it all under one brand.”
Journalism.co.uk / Catalina Albeanu
How De Correspondent’s new conversation editor is building her role →
“What you see is that a lot of newsrooms only moderate contributions or reactions. I really want to motivate people to share their knowledge. We don't just want to send information, we also want to receive it. In order to structure that incoming information a conversation editor comes in handy.”
Lenfest Institute / Joseph Lichterman
A pop-up newsroom in Canada is taking a slow journalism approach to local news →
“The Sprawl covers stories in editions. Klaszus will take on one story at a time, reporting on that topic in an in-depth manner for a few consecutive weeks. Then, when The Sprawl has exhausted its coverage of that topic, it'll wrap up its reporting and go into hibernation.” The one-person organization has 376 supporters on Patreon.
Bloomberg.com / Sarah Frier
Facebook is researching an ad-free, subscription-based version of the social network →
“The company has studied such an option in the past, but now there's more internal momentum to pursue it in light of Facebook's recent privacy data scandal, people familiar with the discussions told Bloomberg. (During his congressional testimony last month, Mark Zuckerberg left the door open for a subscription option.)”
