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Friday, November 3, 2017
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The risk of billionaire-funded media, the importance of archiving, and other takeaways from the demise of DNAInfo and GothamistSigns that the sites’ owner Joe Ricketts didn't hold journalistic independence sacrosanct came soon after DNAinfo acquired Gothamist LLC, which promptly deleted at least five stories since 2010 about its new owner. By Ricardo Bilton. |
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Next up in the world of “information disorder”: Messaging apps and doctored audio and videoPlus: Facebook, Google, and Twitter face Congress, and new research into the spread of misinformation on WeChat. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
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How this local news co-op gets its members interested: Getting them involved in the production of newsThe Bristol Cable now has a solid stable of members who can be involved in every stage — from pitching story ideas to assisting in investigations to delivering the quarterly print paper. By Liam Corcoran. |
What We’re Reading
Evening Standard / Rosamund Urwin
Female journalists set up network to fight sexual harassment →
“Our aims at The Second Source (a journalistic riff on Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex) are to raise awareness, to ensure women know their rights and to work with organizations to bring about change. We are calling on companies to commit to tackling harassment by examining their policies, improving them through consultation and finally pledging that they will meet a high standard when it comes to handling complaints. We will also be a women's network to provide advocacy and support in what remains a boys' club of an industry.”
Columbia Journalism Review / Ross Barkan
The decimation of local news in New York City →
Not even the massive news market that is New York City is immune to the pressures facing the local news industry.
Medium / Nikki Usher
Reporting on journalist-on-journalist sexual harassment is a proxy for dealing with the trust issue →
“The culture of transparency in journalism needs to change. Doing superb, aggressive reporting about sexual harassment and assault in the news industry is important. But journalists, do not let this be the check mark for having been transparent about how news gets made, or a reason for pride. Let this be a starting point for telling us who makes the news and how it gets made.”
Twitter / Twitter Safety
Twitter has published a new version of its abuse policies →
The policies themselves haven’t changed, but Twitter is presenting them with more examples and context.
Axios / Mike Allen
American Lawyer, Court TV founder Steve Brill’s is raising money for a new start up that will rate news content for trust →
NewsGuard plans to hire 40-60 journalists, with former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz will be CEO.
Recode / Tony Romm and Rani Molla
The Washington Post, CBS, Vox, and other news sites helped spread tweets from Russian trolls →
“Tweets from 2,752 fake Twitter accounts created by Russian government trolls found their way into U.S. news stories. New data show that many news publications — from established outfits like the Post, the Miami Herald, CBS and even Vox, to controversial alt-right conservative hubs like InfoWars — were duped into citing some of these nefarious tweets in their coverage.”
Medium / Jacob L. Nelson
How perceptions of the news audience shape pursuits of the news audience →
“These findings suggest that journalism's shift from ignoring to embracing audience input is not relegated to one type of news organization, but is instead occurring throughout the profession as a whole. More importantly, they indicate that striving for a more collaborative relationship with the news audience is ill suited to a traditional mass audience approach to news production.”
Medium / David Cohn
“How to Fix Facebook” – First: Don’t assume it’s broken. Second: Break up its features →
“Fake news is downstream of Facebook's true purpose. To fix Fake news you would have to swim WAY upstream. And Facebook has no real incentive to go that far.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Popular food publishers are seeing declines in their recipe video views on Facebook →
Tastemade, Tasty, Delish, Food Envy and Food Network are have all seen declines over the past year.
Wall Street Journal / Benjamin Mullin
CNN plans to offer subscriptions for digital news next year →
“A proposed premium offering will give subscribers access to special content on topic-specific verticals such as CNN Money and CNN Politics, built around network personalities. A second option will provide additional, though less specialized, content across all of CNN's sites. Pricing hasn't been finalized.”