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Wednesday, May 20, 2020
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By securing Joe Rogan’s insanely popular show, Spotify gets closer to complete domination of the podcast spaceThe terms for the Spotify licensing deal were not disclosed, but I imagine a crap-ton of money was involved in this arrangement. By Nicholas Quah. |
What We’re Reading
Poynter / Kristen Hare
The coronavirus has closed more than 25 local newsrooms across America →
“In many places, it started with a cut in print days. Furloughs. Layoffs. Just to get through the crisis, newsroom leaders told readers. In some places, none of it was enough.”
Press Gazette / Freddy Mayhew
Despite record-breaking audiences, BBC faces £125m in lost income →
“On average, the BBC News reached over 26m people daily in late March / early April, compared with 16m people on average in 2019.” Their map showing confirmed coronavirus cases became their most-read page ever, with 118 million page views.
The Atlantic / Devin Gordon
One America News is the straight truth for Trump fans, and completely surreal for everyone else →
“When Robert [Herring] and his son decided that Fox News had gotten too soft, too centrist, they launched One America to compete with it.”
The Verge / Jay Peters
Don’t @ me. Twitter is testing a way to let users limit replies. →
In theory, “limiting who can reply to your tweets could help prevent abuse and harassment on the platform.”
Vulture / Nicholas Quah
Bill Simmons sold The Ringer to Spotify just in time →
“Spotify reminded me of that point when I was at ESPN and a lot of the stars had aligned. The big difference is [Spotify CEO] Daniel [Ek]. The guy is like a genius. He might be Steve Jobs for audio.”
Vulture / Megh Wright
Four months after being acquired by Cards Against Humanity, ClickHole is back →
As part of the all-cash deal with the company behind the popular card game, ClickHole staffers became majority owners of the site. “The only expectation, really, is that our writers will write things that they are excited about.”
Storybench / Maria Silvia Aguirre
How Paraguay’s El Surti is adapting to the age of COVID-19, boosting its fact-checking on WhatsApp, and launching a new podcast →
“For the pandemic, we enabled our WhatsApp list for users to send news, video, images or audio they received over WhatsApp [about COVID-19]. It became our principal source for our weekly podcast about fact-checking coronavirus news. For example, there were many young people asking if they should drink [disinfectant] to combat the disease. They started telling us they needed to check those things in order to share it with their grandmothers, aunts and family groups. The best compliments we received are the thank-you messages, and people saying their relatives weren't sharing fake news as before.”
Coda Story / Adam Zamecnik
An army of volunteer “elves” fights trolls and disinformation in the Czech Republic →
“Like other fact-checking organizations, the Elves spend a great deal of time poring over suspicious online articles and social media posts. In addition to monitoring individual accounts, the collective routinely challenges disinformation from larger outlets, such as Sputnik News and the news site Aeronet.cz.”
New York Times / Sheera Frenkel, Ben Decker, and Davey Alba
The widely debunked “Plandemic” movie gained more traction than mainstream online events featuring The Office cast and Taylor Swift →
The video was shared by a celebrity doctor who has appeared on Oprah, an M.M.A. fighter, and large political pages, like Reopen Alabama, on Facebook.
Digiday / Max Willens
USA Today is launching a fourth national coronavirus newsletter →
The new coronavirus newsletter, focused on sports, joins newsletters dedicated to news updates, self-care, and personal finance during the pandemic. “Newsletter ad revenue has leapt up during this period, though not in direct proportion to the growth of consumption.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
Following layoffs and ad revenue losses, TheSkimm launches a digital membership →
The millennial-targeted membership program, which will be free through 2020, is called “Teal Memb'rship.” (TheSkimm loves an apostrophe.)
Splice / Meghna Rao
Romania’s Decât o Revistã is doubling down on community during Covid →
The ten-year-old publication has launched a Slack community, started a collective journal with team members, and invited community contributors.
The Verge / Ashley Carman
Joe Rogan’s podcast, with a reported 190 million downloads per month, is becoming a Spotify exclusive →
The Joe Rogan Experience has never been available on Spotify, let alone exclusive to any platform. “Spotify's podcast ambitions always directly targeted Apple, which, up until now, has been the biggest name in podcast players. But with the Rogan deal, Spotify also has another new target: YouTube.”