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Thursday, June 25, 2020
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“Google paying publishers” is more about PR than the needs of the news industryGoogle and Facebook are happy to pay for news — as long as it’s on their terms. By Joshua Benton. |
 | Philly news outlets are collaborating to offer new kinds of COVID-19 coverage“How to get information out has been a real struggle, because folks might not be on social networks or may not be listening to news." By Andrea Wenzel and Letrell Crittenden. |
What We’re Reading
Nieman Storyboard / Rachael L. Kelley
L.A. Times reporter Angel Jennings on approaching stories involving trauma and racial injustice →
‘When I was talking to Nipsey Hussle's brother, I shared some of myself with him and other people I interviewed … When you allow yourself to feel with the people you're interviewing and kind of channel that feeling in your questioning, and then in your writing, you pour some of the emotions that you're feeling into your work. That's what resonates the most.”
Intelligencer / Josh Barro and Olivia Nuzzi
Did the Washington Post violate its own guidelines with a piece on blackface at a Halloween party? →
“The Post's editorial standards declare that ‘fairness includes relevance.’ The non-recent, non-criminal bad acts of non-public figures are not ordinarily considered news, and before June 17, Schafer was a graphic designer with no public profile and no apparent power or ambitions to obtain it … The Post said Schafer's transgression was news because it happened in front of Tom Toles [the Post's Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist] and somewhere possibly in the vicinity of columnist Dana Milbank.”
Reporters Without Borders
Nora Younis, editor of the independent news website Al-Manassa, was arrested in Cairo →
“After searching the website's offices and seizing cameras and computers, they took her to a police station in the Cairo suburb of Maadi … Before founding Al-Manassa in 2015, Younis ran the online daily Al-Masry Al-Youm and worked for the Washington Post. The Al-Manassa site has been blocked in Egypt since 2017, like that of another independent media outlet, Mada Masr, whose editor, Lina Attalah, was detained last November and again in May, when she was held for several hours and the website's premises were searched.”
TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker
Facebook will show users a pop-up warning before they share content that’s more than 90 days old →
“Facebook acknowledged that old stories shared out of their original context play a role in spreading misinformation. The social media company said ‘news publishers in particular’ have expressed concern about old stories being recirculated as though they're breaking news.”
Bloomberg / Jason Kelly
With a $100 million investment, LeBron James will build a new media empire →
SpringHill is named for the Akron apartment complex where James and his mom once lived. James and his childhood friend and business partner Maverick Carter hope to distribute “all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who've been pandered to, ignored, or underserved.”
Jezebel / Emily Alford
“He broke me”: Inside the toxic workplace at groundbreaking Latinx culture site Remezcla →
“…Twelve other women, all former employees and associates at Remezcla, tell a similar story: working punishing hours only to have their labor dismissed by a CEO who seemingly used startup culture as an excuse to create a chaotic work environment—a work culture so toxic that many employees cited taking time to ‘recover’ or leaving the industry altogether after an often brief tenure with the company.”
NPR.org / Kelly McBride
In choosing the wrong photo, NPR editors paved the way for partisan attack →
“A copy editor might have flagged the photo as well. But this story was not copy edited until 4:30 p.m. Sunday afternoon, long after it was published. In fact, a significant number of NPR digital stories are not copy edited prior to publication or at all, because of a lack of resources, Jenkins said. Possibly as many as half.”
The Kashmir Walla / The Kashmir Walla Editorial Board
The Indian government’s new media policy furthers the bureaucratization of Kashmir’s journalism →
“As per the policy, the government is empowered to declare journalistic work as ‘fake news’, ‘foster a genuinely positive image of the Government’, and also ‘thwart mis-information, fake news, and be alert to any attempts to use media to incite communal passions, preach violence or to propagate any information prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India’. The policy also adds that journalists will be subject to background checks for accreditation and newspaper owners and its ‘key staff’ for empanelment to receive government advertisements.”
National Press Club Journalism Institute
The Atlantic’s Ed Yong gives advice to the next generation of journalists →
“Pay attention to structure, and learn how to report well; remember that most writing problems are actually structuring problems, and most structuring problems are actually reporting problems.”
Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Violence in Minneapolis and Buffalo have shown video can change the world. Is there a right to record? →
“Sue Brisk, a freelance photographer, told the Tracker that she was photographing demonstrations at 42nd Street in Times Square with her NYPD-issued press pass clearly displayed. Brisk said that, before she knew what was happening, her head was slammed to the ground and she found herself pinned under at least three New York City police officers. Weeks later, she was still trying to retrieve her camera.”