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Thursday, October 26, 2017
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When a Facebook test moves news stories to a separate feed, traffic — and public discourse — are at stake“It's important politically how this is going to play out.” By Shan Wang. |
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Reading the news on Trump: Are we empty vessels or active filters?Fake news and misinformation should be understood as a series of societal challenges long in the making. No algorithm will solve them, because no algorithm created them. By Pablo Boczkowski. |
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The Guardian Mobile Lab’s latest experiment targets public transit commuters with an offline news app“The app is a really good first step for gathering information, using it in a respectful way, and seeing how people feel about that.” By Christine Schmidt. |
What We’re Reading
Taylor & Francis / T. Franklin Waddell
Telling people a robot wrote a news story makes them believe it less →
“But not all news readers were negatively influenced by the perception of machine automation, as those readers able to freely recall a robot portrayal from past media were less influenced by variations of anthropomorphism than those unable to recall any media exemplars of robotics. Popular media, and the portrayals of robotics they offer, may thus play a role in the acceptance of robotics in traditionally non-automated domains, such as journalism.”
Twitter
Twitter is killing off all advertising from RT and Sputnik →
“This decision was based on the retrospective work we’ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government.”
Digiday / Lucia Moses
To get to 10 million subscribers, The New York Times is focusing on churn →
“This falls to Clay Fisher, svp of consumer revenue, who oversees a team of 100 people. Since he arrived at the Times two years ago, Fisher has tripled the number of people working on retention to 25, hiring consumer marketing experts from industries outside of newspapers, such as banking and retail. He said turnover and retention have improved, but wouldn't say by how much.”
The Membership Puzzle Project / Emily Goligoski
Want to launch membership? First, ask these four questions →
Spolier alert: “Why membership? How did you decide membership was an approach worth trying? What assumptions did you make about who would support you and why? How much time are you planning for the program launch and/or redesign? What are your biggest unsolved questions and challenges?”
New York Times / Chad Bray
Twitter says it overstated monthly-user figures for three years →
But Bloomberg’s Selina Wang points out that “Twitter shows signs of life with renewed user growth.”
MediaPost / Wayne Friedman
TV networks are adding even more live TV programming →
“Exclamation marks at the end of these live show titles are an obvious marketing ingredient — all to make the impression of seeming more immediate!”
MediaShift / Jason Alcorn
Artificial intelligence is coming for publishers’ analytics →
“There is simply too much data, even if newsrooms were filled with trained statisticians. ‘A human can't keep up, a machine has to.'”
Poynter / Kristen Hare
How has digital journalism changed your workday? →
“This week I spoke with Tyler, whose 125-year-old newsroom refashioned itself to think like a startup, and Ryan, who has a background in alt-weeklies. While we spoke, one was headed to class and the other was driving to work. I was immobile at the time.”
WGBH / Dan Kennedy
In defense of neutrality: Why news organizations are right to crack down on social media →
“Now, [Mathew] Ingram is among our sharpest media observers, and he makes some strong points in favor of being transparent about our biases rather than trying to pretend they don't exist. And yet at the risk of coming off as an old fogey, I have to disagree with him.”
MLK50
MLK50 receives a $100,000 grant from the Surdna Foundation →
“The Surdna grant supports efforts of the yearlong nonprofit reporting project timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of King's death. MLK50 uses journalism to engage Memphis and the broader community with Dr. King's vision of economic inclusion.”
HuffPost / Wendell Potter
The new reader-funded investigative nonprofit Tarbell is crowdfunding →
“We'll explain how and why the wrong-doers get away with it, and we'll connect the dots to show readers how political corruption financed by moneyed interests affects their lives. We'll also go the additional and essential mile of spotlighting solutions and helping our community of readers figure out how they can make a difference.”
Online News Association
All the notes from ONA’s Table Talks →
From chatbots to “We’re f*cked if we don’t fix out the revenue problem,” the notes from all the ONA17 Table Talks are now online.