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Monday, October 30, 2017
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CNN’s three month-old daily Snapchat show The Update avoids the “bells and whistles and flashes”“We’re telling great stories on the platforms where they live. They’re getting to know those three red and white letters for what it stands for: great news and information.” By Christine Schmidt. |
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A snap election (and global worries over fake news) spur fact-checking collaborations in Japan“We looked at First Draft News' guide and realized in Japan, we have very little understanding of where false information originates or how it spreads.” By Masato Kajimoto. |
What We’re Reading
Twitter / max_benwell
BuzzFeed’s Tasty dropped from 74M Facebook interactions in May 2016 to 20M in September 2017 →
(And more charts. From CrowdTangle data.)
Columbia Journalism Review / Pete Vernon
Behind the success of Dirty John, The LA Times’ hit true-crime thriller podcast →
“Dirty John, a psychological-thriller-slash-true-crime story told in six installments by the Times’ Christopher Goffard, has already been downloaded more than seven million times (and grabbed more than one million unique visitors to the print version) since its debut at the start of the month.”
Digiday / Max Willens
In the hunt for reader revenue, publishers give micropayments another look →
Another look, yes. But, said one executive who participated in Blendle’s U.S. launch: “There's been no action there. We went into it as a test, thinking maybe it helps us get some data points for our strategy when it comes to paywalls or metering, but nothing is happening.”
MediaNama / Shashidhar KJ
HuffPost’s partnership with the Times of India Group collapses →
“A HuffPost source told MediaNama that the company is planning to make new offers to existing employees, but they will be coming from New York directly. The source said that members of the global team, including Lydia Polgreen, will be meeting the staff on November 22: ‘The idea is that Huffington Post will be relaunching in India.'”
Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism / Silvia Majo-Vazquez and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
News audience attention and engagement on Twitter during the German federal election →
“This study shows that coinciding with increased popular support for far-right parties in Germany, some news outlets with a clear national-conservative political position, including several digital-born brands and one newspaper, generated much more engagement than their posting activity and generally limited audience reach would suggest.”
The Guardian / Emily Bell
Silicon Valley helped Russia sway the US election. So now what? →
“Social media has made a practice – and a fortune – out of erasing traditional boundaries between different types of material. Where once we had propaganda, press releases, journalism and advertising, we now have ‘content.’ Where once we had direct marketing, display advertising and promotions, now we have ‘monetization.’ Where we once had media owners, ad agencies and clients, now we have ‘partners.’ Who could possibly object to partners monetizing their content? It sounds so mutually beneficial and efficient. On the other hand neo-Nazis paying to target pensioners with racist propaganda has a less wholesome ring to it.”
The New York Times / Megan Specia and Paul Mozur
A war of words puts Facebook at the center of Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis →
“In Myanmar, Facebook is so dominant that to many people it is the internet itself. And the stakes of what appears on the site are exceptionally high because misinformation, as well as explicitly hostile language, is widening longstanding ethnic divides and stoking the violence against the Rohingya ethnic group.”
Journalism.co.uk / Madalina Ciobanu
Dutch startup The Playwall is giving readers the option to pay for online content by answering questions →
“From those 40,000 people, only 0.3 per cent wanted to pay with money, and 13.5 per cent wanted to pay with their answers, and the two groups don’t overlap so it’s not like the people who used to pay with money now pay with data.”
Medium / Heather Bryant
Talking about journalism's class problem →
“A few months ago I wrote a small post about my husband and my frustrations with my own industry. And it blew up. Which is a weird feeling when what I published was an early morning rant with most of the snark taken out. In the post I shared an example of a weird interaction with another journalist in which they were put off by my husband's occupation, as a trash truck driver.”
Medium / Filip Struhárik
What Facebook taught us when it destroyed our organic reach →
“So what do we need reach for if it can swing up or down by 50% in a day, while actual traffic isn't affected?”
BuzzFeed
How Myspace and GateHouse Media became pawns in an ad fraud scheme →
“Consulting firm Social Puncher recorded more than 200 hours of video of ads being fraudulently displayed on the Myspace and GateHouse subdomains. This footage often shows multiple video players playing at once on a single page, redirects happening between different websites without any user action, and/or editorial content being cut off by automated page refreshes in order to display more ads.”