 |
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
 |
Newsonomics: How will the pandemic panic reshape the local news industry?A new round of consolidation could kill off half of what were the major U.S. newspaper chains just a few months ago. But the possibility of platform cash is sparking hope. By Ken Doctor. |
What We’re Reading
Twitter / Maxwell Tani
BuzzFeed hopes to keep its coronavirus-related losses under $20 million →
Plans include 68 employees furloughed, most for three months; extending temporary salary cuts to the end of 2020; and subleasing its office space in Minneapolis and Washington. “We will begin a negotiation with the News Guild about the need to reduce costs in News. While we weren’t planning for News to be profitable, we were hoping to minimize losses this year and increase our efforts at monetization.”
Peabody Awards
These are this year’s 60 nominees for the Peabody Awards →
Including three for Frontline, two each for NPR, CNN, NBC News, and podcast publisher Pineapple Street, plus noms for CNN, The Texas Tribune, The Marshall Project, Newsday, and local stations WTVF, WBBM, and KXAS — plus many more.
Facebook Oversight Board
These are the first 20 members of Facebook’s oversight board →
Including two journalists: former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and Jakarta Post senior editor Endy Bayuni. (As well as law professors from Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Oklahoma, one Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and one former prime minister of Denmark.)
Medium / Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger: Why I’m joining Facebook’s oversight board →
“Facebook's operating principle is to move fast and break things. In creating this Oversight Board, the company has proceeded extremely slowly and tiptoed over eggshells.”
The Guardian / Kim Willsher
The French government took down a COVID-19 “fake news” website →
“A page called Desinfox — a play on the word desintox (detox) — appeared on the government's website last week. It claimed to be busting disinformation about coronavirus in the French media. After the country's journalists' union reported the government to the Conseil d'État, the highest administrative court in France, France's culture minister, Franck Riester, announced that the page would be removed.”
MediaPost / Joe Mandese
eMarketer and Business Insider Intelligence are merging →
“The consolidated research division will be known as Insider Intelligence, and [Axel Springer, which owns both] said it was integrating the two assets to ‘better serve its clients needs across our research and media businesses.'”
Medium / Cory Schouten
How The Wall Street Journal’s new calendars help readers plan for the news →
“Our embedded calendars integrate with a reader's Google, Apple or Outlook calendar to deliver a few hand-curated, critical news events per week. We update the events with news, analysis and links to our coverage to help our readers stay informed and get ahead. The thinking was that calendars — like inboxes — are a productivity tool that help us integrate our work and personal lives, keeping both in order amid the chaos.”
The Atlantic / Renée DiResta
Health experts don’t understand how information moves →
“All too often, the people responsible for protecting the public do not appear to understand how information moves in the internet era. Meanwhile, people who best understand what content is likely to go viral are using that knowledge to mislead.”
The Times of India / Digbijay Mishra and Madhav Chanchani
For the first time, India has more rural internet users than in urban areas →
“The latest report by the Internet & Mobile Association of (IAMAI) and Nielsen showed rural India had 227 million active internet users, 10% more than urban India’s about 205 million, as of November 2019.”
The Daily Beast / Lloyd Grove, Maxwell Tani, Lachlan Cartwright
The National Enquirer’s publisher is seeking a $5-6 million stimulus loan →
“Their gumption is breathtaking.” Note: The Enquirer and other AMI properties are owned by Chatham Asset Management, the hedge fund likely to take over McClatchy.