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Wednesday, April 29, 2020
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The Wire China is a new journalism-and-data business hoping to help unlock the country for others“I think how wasteful is it that most journalists throw away or never use or don’t pass on any of their notes or records. Everyone that comes behind them does the research all over again…I think many great stories are sitting out there in the data, but it’s just too tiresome to go through all of it. People just give up.” By Sarah Scire. |
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Could New Jersey be the home for a new solution to the local news crisis?State law might be able to support the funding of local news the way it supports the funding of local libraries. By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re Reading
The Guardian / Jim Waterson
BBC expects its income will drop £125 million this year and is preparing cuts →
“Income from the TV licence is forecast to be below expectations, with door-to-door enforcement activity stopped during the pandemic and a call centre that handles payments shut down because of physical distancing rules.” Still: “The financial outlook for the BBC is substantially better than many of its commercial rivals.”
Pew Research Center / Amy Mitchell, J. Baxter Oliphant, and Elisa Shearer
7 out of 10 U.S. adults say they need to take breaks from COVID-19 news →
“A majority of Americans say they need to take breaks from it, many say it makes them feel worse emotionally and half say they find it difficult to sift through what is true and what is not, according to the survey, which is a part of the Election News Pathways project.”
YouTube
YouTube has introduced its fact-check panels to searches in the United States →
“[YouTube’s] fact check information panel relies on an open network of third-party publishers and leverages the ClaimReview tagging system. All U.S. publishers are welcome to participate as long as they follow the publicly-available ClaimReview standards and are either a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network's (IFCN) Code of Principles or are an authoritative publisher.”
Vanity Fair / Lisa Napoli
How CNN’s coverage of the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan foretold today’s cable news cycle →
“A producer tried to fight the edict to stay on the story. ‘We don't have any information,’ he argued. ‘We don't know anything!’ ‘It doesn't make any difference,’ came the order. ‘Get Bernie back in the chair, and get ready to go.'”
Axios / Jim VandeHei
Axios is returning its PPP loan →
“In the four weeks since Axios applied for the loan, based on big coronavirus business losses, there has been a public backlash against a variety of companies for taking the PPP, including us.” Axios is “nearing a deal for an alternative source of capital.”
Twitter / Nathan Ruiz
Perhaps the most enraging newspaper correction of all time →
“The Baltimore Sun regrets the error.”
PRX / John Barth
How PRX's news programs are handling production during the coronavirus pandemic →
“The newsroom remains mostly empty throughout a busy day with only a skeleton staff of editors and engineers, all keeping their distance, through the frenetic pace of show production. Masks on, they set to work.”
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Media coverage of Trump is getting better, but history will not judge us kindly →
“We remain mesmerized, providing far too much attention to the daily circus he provides. We normalize far too much, offering deference to the office he occupies and a benefit of the doubt that is a vestige of the dignified norms of presidencies past. And day after day, we allow him to beat us up. And then we come back for more.”
The Atlantic / Ed Yong
Why the coronavirus is so confusing →
“If officials — and journalists — are clear about uncertainties from the start, the public can better hang new information onto an existing framework, and understand when shifting evidence leads to new policy. Otherwise, updates feel confusing.”
Digiday / Kayleigh Barber
“Wearing our pain on our sleeve”: Skift’s survival strategy in a travel-free world →
“The silver lining [Rafat] Ali sees is that costs have come down for running a media company and leaders should be taking advantage of that. From an operational standpoint, the cost of talent is lower, business travel is out of the picture and for Skift, in particular, he said that they have realized they can continue working remotely and likely do not need to pay for an office — all of which adds up.”
The Times of London / Matthew Moore
The U.K. was about to start regulating Facebook. So Facebook hired the guy writing the regulations. →
“Tony Close, Ofcom's director of content standards, has been heavily involved with drawing up rules to rein in the tech giants and protect the public…’He was obviously privy to all their thinking about online harms,’ [a former senior Ofcom official] said. ‘Facebook wants regulation that isn't going to adversely affect their profits too much, so it's in their interest to recruit people with inside knowledge.'”
Variety / Brian Steinberg
April was CNN’s best ratings month among viewers 25–54 in 15 years →
CNN was up 179% in the demo, with Fox News up 83% and MSNBC up 54%.
Spotify
How Spotify’s listening patterns have changed: “Every day now looks like the weekend” →
“This trend was seen more significantly in Podcasts than in Music, likely due to the fact that Car and Commute use cases have changed quite dramatically….We've also seen an uptick in consumption of podcasts related to wellness and meditation over the last few weeks.”
Canadian Press / Aleksandra Sagan
Canada’s Postmedia is closing 15 newspapers and laying off 80 →
“Postmedia will shutter 15 community newspapers in Manitoba and Ontario's Windsor-Essex area for good, the memo says, calling the publications ‘not financially sustainable.'”