I have written on journalism and media trends eariler few years ago. So it is time for update. What is the state of journalism and news publishing in 2017? NiemanLab’s predictions for 2017 are a good place to start thinking about what lies ahead for journalism. There, Matt Waite puts us in our place straight away by telling us that the people running the media are the problem.
There has been changes on tech publishing. In January 2017 International Data Group, the owner of PCWorld magazine and market researcher IDC, on Thursday said it was being acquired by China Oceanwide Holdings Group and IDG Capital, the investment management firm run by IDG China executive Hugo Shong. In 2016 Arrow bought EE Times, EDN, TechOnline and lots more from UBM.
Here are some article links and information bits on journalist and media in 2017:
Soothsayers’ guides to journalism in 2017 article take a look at journalism predictions and the value of this year’s predictions.
What Journalism Needs To Do Post-Election article tells that faced with the growing recognition that the electorate was uniformed or, at minimum, deeply in the thrall of fake news, far too many journalists are responding not with calls for change but by digging in deeper to exactly the kinds of practices that got us here in the first place.
Fake News Is About to Get Even Scarier than You Ever Dreamed article says that what we saw in the 2016 election is nothing compared to what we need to prepare for in 2020 as incipient technologies appear likely to soon obliterate the line between real and fake.
Headlines matter article tells that in 2017, headlines will matter more than ever and journalists will need to wrest control of headline writing from social-optimization teams. People get their news from headlines now in a way they never did in the past.
Why new journalism grads are optimistic about 2017 article tells that since today’s college journalism students have been in school, the forecasts for their futures has been filled with words like “layoffs,” “cutbacks,” “buyouts” and “freelance.” Still many people are optimistic about the future because the main motivation for being a journalist is often “to make a difference.”
Updating social media account can be a serious job. Zuckerberg has 12+ Facebook employees helping him with posts and comments on his Facebook page and professional photographers to snap personal moments.
Wikipedia Is Being Ripped Apart By a Witch Hunt For Secretly Paid Editors article tells that with undisclosed paid editing on the rise, Wikipedians and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to stop the practice without discouraging user participation. Paid editing is permissible under Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use as long as they disclose these conflicts of interest on their user pages, but not all paid editors make these disclosures.
Big Internet giants are working on how to make content better for mobile devices. Instant Articles is a new way for any publisher to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook. Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a project that it aims to accelerate content on mobile devices. Both of those systems have their advantages and problems.
Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier article tells that there’s a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating. The centralization of the internet via app stores has made government censorship easier. If the app isn’t in a country’s app store, it effectively doesn’t exist. For more than a decade, we users of digital devices have actively championed an online infrastructure that now looks uniquely vulnerable to the sanctions of despots and others who seek to control information.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Hannah Kuchler / Financial Times:
Google’s Contributor services now let some publishers ask ad-block users to whitelist sites or pay a small fee per page view to make up for lost ad revenue
https://www.ft.com/content/71d92114-4704-11e7-8519-9f94ee97d996
Tomi Engdahl says:
George Slefo / Ad Age:
Google says it will preinstall an ad filter in Chrome starting early 2018 aimed at ads deemed “annoying” by the Coalition for Better Ads
Google Chrome Will Automatically Block Annoying Ads
http://adage.com/article/digital/official-google-chrome-ad-blocker/309238/
Google’s Chrome browser will soon come with preinstalled technology that will block the most annoying ads currently marring the web experience, the company confirmed on Thursday.
Publishers will be able to understand how they will be affected through a tool Google is dubbing “The Ad Experience Report.” It will basically score a publisher’s site and inform them which of their ads are “annoying experiences.”
At the same time, Chrome will give publishers the option to force a choice on people running their own ad blocking software: whitelist the site so its non-annoying ads can display or pay a small fee to access the content ad-free.
The moves, which had been anticipated since word got out in April but hadn’t been previously confirmed by Google, will impact the entire advertising ecosystem because Chrome is the most popular web browser for both desktop and mobile.
“We’ve all known for a while that the ad experience is a real problem, and that it’s confused and angered users,”
In an effort to develop a Better Ads Standard and slow the spread of ad-blocking software, the Coalition set out to determine which ad formats were most at fault. It paid some 25,000 study participants in the U.S. and Europe to rate 104 different ad experiences on desktop and mobile. Chrome’s “filter” is informed partly by the results.
The industry is particularly eager to keep ad blocking from taking off on mobile devices, where it has a 1% adoption rate, the way it already has on desktop computers, where the figure is 18%
The option for publishers to charge for ad-free access is called Funding Choices.
Users who opt to shell out to avoid ads will pay with their Google Play account, Spencer said.
Google said it expects to roll out the features in early 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alexandre Aragão / BuzzFeed:
The real-world consequences of misinformation and false rumors on WhatsApp in Brazil, where the app has 100M users — The story spreading on Brazilian WhatsApp went like this: a couple — a young woman and an older man — were kidnapping children to sell them as part of an international scheme.
WhatsApp Has A Viral Rumor Problem With Real Consequences
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexandrearagao/whatsapp-rumors-have-already-provoked-lynch-mobs-a?utm_term=.gs4Rmo2dGK#.rmnKxoLXEr
The rumors spread among WhatsApp’s more than 100 million users in Brazil can vary from the weird — like the mattress dealer who allegedly made a deal with Satan — to the potentially deadly.
The story spreading on Brazilian WhatsApp went like this: a couple — a young woman and an older man — were kidnapping children to sell them as part of an international scheme.
The rumor circulated on the messaging app without much consequence until April 5, when someone spotted a 20-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man together in the center of Araruama, a city of 110,000 in Rio de Janeiro’s picturesque Lake District. This stranger snapped a photo of them in a white 1989 Ford Escort, the license plate visible. The image quickly spread in WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts, which identified them — with no evidence — as the con artists who were abducting kids.
Within hours, a crazed mob tracked down the pair, seeking to impose street justice. They beat both of them and set the man’s car on fire.
independent surveys indicate that between 80-92% of Brazilians with an internet connection use WhatsApp. It’s the world’s leading messaging app, with 1.2 billion users, of which approximately 100 million are in Brazil.According to a survey of Brazilian WhatsApp users commissioned by the company, 53% say they use the app to share “jokes, memes and funny things” and 35% share “news and items from newspapers, magazines, and other media.”
WhatsApp isn’t the only platform plagued by viral misinformation, of course. But unlike Facebook and Twitter, where dubious stories can often be tracked and traced back to the accounts that originated them, the private, closed nature of messaging apps makes it impossible to know how many rumors are circulating.
Vendors had already noticed the issue was affecting sales
He recorded a video to repudiate the “Satanic connection” about three months after it began circulating in October 2015, and posted it on Facebook.
His explanation racked up 3 million views. “It helped a lot, and also strengthened our brand in some states which had until then been underperforming,” Gazin said.
Another fake news story circulating widely on WhatsApp was simply too good to be true.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The communication expert opens up the force of politics in politics – “It’s easier to lie with the text than on the face”
“It is dangerous to think that the number of likes, consequences, and rhythms will tell about popularity,”
According to Kortesuo, social media is an extremely powerful instrument of power.
Some are the world of fast reaction and emotion, where manipulation is easier than face to face. A busy some user will easily slip from checking sources.
“It is easier for the text to lie than it is, so it is easier for a liar to tip more in a live text than in a text context.” The possibility of manipulation is unimaginably large, and almost everyone finds that they have been manipulated “, Kortesuo points out.
However, you might want to think twice if you decide to go for a bigger popularity by mimicking Trump.
In Finland, it would hardly go far: in the United States, the magnitude and power that Trump communicates strongly in his twists are the cultural chips that bite into that culture and especially the Republicans. In Finland, however, the power is not the value that gains popularity. Cultural differences also apply to social media.
“In Finland, the most important communications chips are humor and some kind of equality, anyone can talk to the prime minister and get an answer, and it’s also an important chip,” said Kortesuo, “if one feels that someone has achieved something without effort, we do not like it.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/viestintaasiantuntija-avautuu-somen-voimasta-politiikassa-tekstilla-on-helpompi-valehdella-kuin-ilmeilla-6654322
Tomi Engdahl says:
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Government leakers and the journalists who depend on them deserve to be honored, not jailed — Ever since taking office, President Trump has been condemning leaks, leakers and the journalists they leak to. — “I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks,” Trump said in February.
Of course Washington is plagued by leaks. That’s a good thing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/of-course-washington-is-plagued-by-leaks-thats-a-good-thing/2017/06/02/f6a8245c-46e7-11e7-98cd-af64b4fe2dfc_story.html?utm_term=.72fae5b4a2bf
Ever since taking office, President Trump has been condemning leaks, leakers and the journalists they leak to.
“I’ve actually called the Justice Department to look into the leaks,” Trump said in February. “Those are criminal leaks.”
Only days after he took office — as we know from a leak — Trump asked then FBI-director James B. Comey to consider jailing journalists who publish government secrets.
And just a few days ago, Trump again ranted about leakers who “should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Paul Steiger stakes out the opposite position. The revered former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal (and founder of ProPublica, the investigative nonprofit) put it this way:
“It is not the publishing of these secrets that threatens national security. Publishing these secrets threatens the secret-keepers. It protects the public interest by letting us know what powerful people are doing when they think no one is looking.”
Accepting a journalism award, Steiger summed it up: “We need more journalists revealing more secrets, not fewer.”
He’s right. In a government increasingly obsessed with secrecy, and guilty of rampant over-classification, leaks are necessary and, largely, a very good thing.
And although there are legitimate national security concerns in some cases, I’d far rather live in a leaky America than one sealed up tight
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook is broken
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/04/when-you-look-into-the-news-feed-the-news-feed-looks-into-you/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
The problem is this: Facebook has become a feedback loop which can and does, despite its best intentions, become a vicious spiral. At Facebook’s scale, behavioral targeting doesn’t just reflect our behavior, it actually influences it. Over time, a service which was supposed to connect humanity is actually partitioning us into fractal disconnected bubbles.
The way Facebook’s News Feed works is that the more you “engage” with posts from a particular user, the more often their posts are shown to you. The more you engage with a particular kind of post, the more you will see its ilk.
First, this eventually constructs a small “in-group” cluster of Facebook friends and topics that dominate your feed; and as you grow accustomed to interacting with them, this causes your behavior to change, and you interact with them even more
Second, and substantially worse, because “engagement” is the metric, Facebook inevitably selects for the shocking and the outrageous.
Whatever’s happening is far more complicated than just “Facebook is driving us apart.”
Facebook is like a powerful greenhouse gas for our collective social atmosphere. TV was too, of course, but it was CO2 to Facebook’s methane.
Nothing like Facebook has ever existed before. It is a company that is also a massive global experiment, one with some excellent outcomes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google to give 6 months’ warning for 2018 Chrome adblockalypse – report
We’re talking ’bout blockage, blockage… Eyeo, Eyeo* away
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/02/google_6_months_to_publishers/
Publishers will get a six-month headsup before Google kills intrusive advertising on Chrome, sources close to the ad giant have reportedly said.
Google will also hand online publishers a special tool to make sure that their ads are “compliant”, the firm blogged yesterday. It will be called “Ad Experience Reports” – ostensibly to be based on the recommendations of industry group the Coalition for Better Ads, of which Facebook and Google are members.
It’s going to be good news for many Chrome users as some of the worst ad offenders have made the CBA’s “unacceptable” list, which was released in March.
Alphabet’s Google is not just the world’s dominant online advertiser – along with Facebook, it controls “99 per cent” of new digital ad cash – it also owns, in Chrome, its dominant web browser.
Tomi Engdahl says:
BBC:
Following London terror attack, tech giants reject UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s claims that they provided a “safe space” for terrorist ideology — Technology companies have defended their handling of extremist content following the London terror attack.
London attack: Tech firms fight back in extremism row
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40149649
Technology companies have defended their handling of extremist content following the London terror attack.
Prime Minister Theresa May called for areas of the internet to be closed because tech giants had provided a “safe space” for terrorist ideology.
But Google said it had already spent hundreds of millions of pounds on tackling the problem.
Facebook and Twitter said they were working hard to rid their networks of terrorist activity and support.
Google, which owns Youtube, along with Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, and Twitter were among the tech companies already facing pressure to tackle extremist content.
‘No place on our platform’
Google said it had invested heavily to fight abuse on its platforms and was already working on an “international forum to accelerate and strengthen our existing work in this area”.
The firm added that it shared “the government’s commitment to ensuring terrorists do not have a voice online”.
Facebook said: “Using a combination of technology and human review, we work aggressively to remove terrorist content from our platform as soon as we become aware of it – and if we become aware of an emergency involving imminent harm to someone’s safety, we notify law enforcement.”
Meanwhile, Twitter said “terrorist content has no place on” its platform.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd said on Sunday that tech firms needed to take down extremist content and limit the amount of end-to-end encryption that terrorists can use.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gerry Smith / Bloomberg:
After blocking Google users from reading free articles in February, The Wall Street Journal’s subscription business soared but traffic from Google plummeted 44% — Publisher says Google visitors dropped after hardening paywall — Google says ‘first click free’ good for users and publishers
WSJ Ends Google Users’ Free Ride, Then Fades in Search Results
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-05/wsj-ends-google-users-free-ride-then-fades-in-search-results
Publisher says Google visitors dropped after hardening paywall
Google says ‘first click free’ good for users and publishers
After blocking Google users from reading free articles in February, the Wall Street Journal’s subscription business soared, with a fourfold increase in the rate of visitors converting into paying customers. But there was a trade-off: Traffic from Google plummeted 44 percent.
The reason: Google search results are based on an algorithm that scans the internet for free content. After the Journal’s free articles went behind a paywall, Google’s bot only saw the first few paragraphs and started ranking them lower, limiting the Journal’s viewership.
Executives at the Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., argue that Google’s policy is unfairly punishing them for trying to attract more digital subscribers. They want Google to treat their articles equally in search rankings, despite being behind a paywall.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed:
Ad network Revcontent launches anti-fake news initiative, while working with 21 sites that post fake news — An ad network launched a new initiative to “continue the fight against fake news” at the same time it was working with 21 websites that have published fake news stories, according to a review conducted by BuzzFeed News.
An Ad Network That Helps Fake News Sites Earn Money Is Now Asking Users To Report Fake News
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/an-ad-network-that-works-with-fake-news-sites-just-launched
In response to queries from BuzzFeed News, Revcontent removed four fake news publishers from its network.
An ad network launched a new initiative to “continue the fight against fake news” at the same time it was working with 21 websites that have published fake news stories, according to a review conducted by BuzzFeed News.
When contacted for comment, Revcontent subsequently removed four of the sites from its network, and in a statement suggested that a previous BuzzFeed News story about ad networks on fake news sites could itself be considered “fake news.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucinda Southern / Digiday:
CNN’s short-form video subsidiary, Great Big Story, makes its first international expansion, to the Nordic countries — Great Big Story planted its flag firmly in Swedish soil last week. The social video network and independent CNN subsidiary has taken the wrapper off a Swedish
Inside CNN’s Great Big Story Nordics expansion
https://digiday.com/media/cnns-great-big-story-nordics/
The Nordics were an obvious choice for Great Big Story’s first physical presence outside the U.S. Great Big Story already has an audience of 3 million across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, according to the company. This audience has tuned into Great Big Story’s short-form videos, which focus on stories around cultural history, perseverance or achievement and inspiration. The company said it was seeing completion rates upward of 70 percent across Nordic audiences, which is comparable to the levels of engagement it sees in its U.S. audience.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Smith / BuzzFeed:
Interview with Margaret Sullivan on the end of The New York Times’ public editor position, criticism of media, and possible prosecution of Assange — Margaret Sullivan on the New York Times. — BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief — When the news broke that the New York Times had killed off its public editor …
Why Have A Public Editor When Twitter Will Do It For Free?
Margaret Sullivan on the New York Times.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/newsfeed-sulliview
When the news broke that the New York Times had killed off its public editor, I emailed Dean Baquet, the paper’s editor, to congratulate him — no newspaper editor enjoys a professional, staff gadfly — and to try to get him on my podcas
What’s more, the in-house critic’s role is inevitably compromised: If you criticize your employer, the criticism takes on undue weight because even the New York Times public editor is hitting the paper. If you back your employer, well, that’s hardly surprising.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sahil Patel / Digiday:
Sources: publishers testing Facebook’s mid-roll video ads are making money, when videos scale; one video with 24M views brought in $11K, after FB’s 45% cut — Three months since Facebook started running ads in publishers’ videos, participants are finding there’s money to be made — as long as they have a ton of scale.
‘It’s going to be a slow burn’: Publishers are starting to see money from Facebook’s mid-roll ads
https://digiday.com/media/scale-equals-revenue-early-on-in-facebooks-mid-rolls-test/
Four video publishers that are part of Facebook’s beta test for mid-roll ads said the product is bringing in some revenue, with three of them saying it’s already matched or surpassed the revenue they made from Facebook’s Suggested Videos product. (Suggested Videos was one of Facebook’s first attempts to help video owners make money on the platform by inserting ads between different recommended videos.) In other words: Nothing to write home about yet.
“It’s on par with suggested videos, but not excessively over,” said one publishing source. “I wouldn’t say Facebook has fully figured this out but I also wouldn’t say this is a bust; it’s working but it’s going to be a slow burn.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joe Uchill / The Hill:
WikiLeaks offers a $10K bounty to get Intercept reporter fired for trying to verify leaked report without removing evidence incriminating leaker
WikiLeaks offers $10,000 to get Intercept reporter fired
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/336518-wikileaks-offering-10000-to-get-intercept-reporter-fired
WikiLeaks offered a $10,000 bounty Monday aimed at getting a reporter for The Intercept fired, following the arrest of a government contractor who allegedly leaked an NSA report to the site.
It has been widely reported that Winner allegedly leaked documents from the NSA to The Intercept about Russian attempts to hack U.S. elections officials.
Investigators were able to find Winner in part, according to a government court filings, because of clues gained when an Intercept reporter showed the leaked report to the government.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Public Is Growing Tired of Trump’s Tweets, Says Voter Survey
https://politics.slashdot.org/story/17/06/07/2054214/the-public-is-growing-tired-of-trumps-tweets-says-voter-survey
President Donald Trump is the tweeting president. His @realDonaldTrump handle has 31.8 million followers and “35K” tweets. While the president claims to use Twitter to “get the honest and unfiltered message out,” many Americans aren’t so fond of his favored form of communication. According to a new voter poll, the public is growing tired of Trump’s tweets.
Ars Technica reports:
The Twitter presidency is getting old, according to a new voter survey
“They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out,” Trump tweets.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/growing-tired-of-trumps-tweets-new-poll-says-most-americans-are/
A Morning Consult, Politico survey published Wednesday found that 69 percent of voters who took the online survey said they thought Trump tweets too much. T
The survey said that 82 percent of Democrats polled thought Trump tweets too much,
Republicans came in at 53 percent saying the president used Twitter too often
Overall, 57 percent of voters who took the survey said Trump’s tweets are hurting his presidency.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Weinberger / Business Insider:
Yahoo shareholders officially approve $4.48B sale to Verizon; deal will close on June 13th
It’s official: Yahoo shareholders approve the $4.48 billion sale to Verizon
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/yahoo-verizon-sale-approved-2017-6?op=1&r=US&IR=T
Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch:
Sources: Verizon will cut about 15% of AOL-Yahoo staff, or as many as 2.1K jobs, after merger closes
Confirmed: Verizon will cut ~15% of AOL-Yahoo staff after merger closes
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/confirmed-verizon-will-cut-15-of-aol-yahoo-staff-after-merger-closes/
The proportion of jobs being made redundant across AOL and Yahoo is around 15 percent globally, we have confirmed with our sources.
This shakes out to as many as 2,100 jobs being lost as part of the corporate merger.
Yesterday Re/Code suggested up to 1,000 jobs will be cut across the combined company, as duplicate roles in departments such as finance, HR, marketing and admin are taken out, but our sources said that figure is too low.
We understand there are around 14,000 employees in total across AOL and Yahoo today.
Last July Verizon, AOL’s parent company, announced it had finally sealed an agreement to acquire Yahoo (Disclosure: AOL is also TechCrunch’s parent company).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Max Greenwood / The Hill:
Al Jazeera Media Network says it is under cyberattack, following Tuesday’s revelation that Russian hackers may have breached the Qatar state news agency
Al Jazeera network reports being under cyberattack
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/336959-al-jazeera-media-network-under-cyber-attack
Al Jazeera Media Network was in the midst of a cyberattack on Thursday, according to Al Jazeera News.
The organization reported that its websites and digital platforms were the victims of “continual hacking attempts,” though the platforms have not been compromised.
According to Al Jazeera, the attempts to breach the organization’s digital properties are growing in intensity.
The reported attack followed the revelation on Tuesday that U.S. investigators believe that Russian hackers may have been responsible for breaching Qatar’s state news agency and posting a fake news story that prompted several countries to cut diplomatic ties with Doha.
The abrupt decision by several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, to sever relations with Qatar sparked the worst diplomatic crisis among Gulf Arab states in decades.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Katie Bo Williams / The Hill:
Comey says he authorized a “close friend” at Columbia Law School to leak the content of his Trump memo to the press to prompt a special counsel investigation — Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized “a close friend” to leak the contents of his memos …
Comey leaked memos to prompt special counsel
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/336932-comey-leaked-memo-to-prompt-special-counsel
Shortly after his dismissal as head of the FBI, James Comey authorized “a close friend” to leak the contents of his memos to the press in order to prompt a special counsel investigation.
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. “I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
The New York Times first reported the memos on May 16.
He also said that he did not release the memos to the media himself because he “worried it’d be like feeding seagulls at the beach.”
Washington Post:
A look at how cable news chyrons from MSNBC, CNN, and Fox covered the Comey hearing — Coverage of former FBI director James B. Comey’s testimony looks about the same across cable news channels. A closeup of a senator forming a question, a wide show of the room — there’s just not much to show on TV.
How cable news networks reacted to Comey’s hearing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/comey-hearing-chyrons/?tid=pm_politics_pop&utm_term=.9f04bf3cc8cf
Coverage of former FBI director James B. Comey’s testimony looked about the same across cable news channels. A closeup of a senator forming a question, a wide show of the room — there’s just not much to show on TV. But the ALL CAPS text in the bar at screen bottom differentiates networks, exposing what they want viewers to take away from the hearing.
These captions — also called chyrons or lower-thirds — are windows into how different networks interpret the same reality.
Pay attention to the quotes networks display.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Upbeat PR raises $1.5M to offer membership based PR service to clients, appropriate and targeted pitches to journalists — “Our goal has been to just start from the ground up: If you were to design a PR agency today, from a software engineer’s perspective, how would you approach it?”
PR pitches are the worst. This agency is trying to make them better (and I…I like it)
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/06/pr-pitches-are-the-worst-this-agency-is-trying-to-make-them-better-and-i-i-like-it/
“Our goal has been to just start from the ground up: If you were to design a PR agency today, from a software engineer’s perspective, how would you approach it?”
This spring, something unusual happened: I got a good pitch.
It was about a successful email newsletter, The Hustle, that I hadn’t heard of before. I like writing about email newsletters! I responded to the pitch and ended up writing a story about the company.
The original email pitch allowed me to respond to whether or not I was interested in the story directly from the email. When I hit “yes,” I was sent to a webpage that included the Hustle CEO’s email and phone number so that I could get in touch directly, as well as all of the other info (press releases, past coverage, images, etc.) that a PR company would normally ask me if I wanted to receive after I agreed to an embargo. A process that is normally annoying for journalists and requires a bunch of back-and-forth emails required no emails at all, in this case.
This PR company is called Upbeat PR, and it’s announcing Wednesday that it has raised $1.5 million from Silicon Valley
“Everybody knows what’s wrong with PR and pitches,” Yean (who, along with his cofounder and CTO David Tran, has written extensively about how growing up poor makes an entrance to Silicon Valley very difficult) told me. “People complain about agencies being unreliable and expensive. If you look at the problem from [the journalists’] side, it’s easier than ever to find journalists’ contact info, so really anyone can email, and the cost is so low for spamming that it’s led to a ton of poorly targeted emails. The best agencies really vet and keep a high-quality client roster, but the margins are low. Our goal has been to just start from the ground up: If you were to design a PR agency today, from a software engineer’s perspective, how would you approach it?”
It’s easy to be wary of companies that claim they’re going to disrupt an industry “from a software engineer’s perspective.” That tends to imply that they don’t know much about the industry they want to disrupt.
“We try to get out of the way as fast as we can and connect you directly to the founders,” Yean said.
Upbeat has 300 clients. They pay an annual membership fee of $800, which includes one PR campaign, and $500 for each additional campaign. (By contrast, companies may pay large traditional PR agencies in the range of $25,000 a month.)
Yean said Upbeat has built a database of several hundred thousand journalists (including freelancers and bloggers); its software tracks what they write and tweet to see how their interests are changing. “We can track every single article, Laura, that you’ve written, in the past for Gigaom, or for paidContent, or elsewhere,” he said
“We can see how your interest has evolved over time. We’re looking at your tweets. We’re looking at your interactions with our pitches, as well.” If I click that “no,” I’m not interested on an Upbeat PR pitch too many times, “we’ll stop pitching you until we can really figure out what you’re interested in.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
BuzzFeed:
NowThis News requires its staffers to sign a non-compete that bars them for two years from taking a job at places like CNN, Vice, BuzzFeed, and Vox — New hires at the social news outlet must sign a contract that forbids them from taking a job at places including CNN, Vice, BuzzFeed and Vox.
NowThis Forbids Staff From Taking Jobs At Other News Outlets
https://www.buzzfeed.com/coralewis/nowthis-news-noncompete?utm_term=.uhR7NZOL8r#.qnoGg7mVaL
While non-compete clauses have long been added to contracts for top-level executives and highly sought-after staff, employers in various industries have been adding the provisions to contracts for workers much further down the corporate food chain in recent years — including hourly workers in fields like construction. A 2014 survey found one in five workers in the United States had non-compete language in their contracts.
Non-competes in media are difficult to enforce with lower-level staffers, according to corporate officers.
“Sounds like it’s more of a scare tactic than anything else,” said one media executive.
But scare tactics can be effective, as workers have learned the hard way. Studies have found the clauses dampen wages, reduce employees’ bargaining power, and discourage them from taking their talents elsewhere, hurting career development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Liberals Are Being Scammed By Fake Political Organizations And Fake News
http://modernliberals.com/liberals-are-being-scammed-by-fake-political-organizations-and-fake-news/
What these fake political organizations and self-proclaimed “news sites” have in common is that they provide propaganda that the left wants to believe in. Some of these organizations even go so far as to pit Bernie Sanders supporters against Hillary Clinton supporters for extra clicks, which is a needless and harmful sideshow.
They will also fight each other over readers and traffic.
This is an ongoing issue with fake political organizations and fake news sites fighting internally and externally over what will bring them the most traffic and resulting ad revenue from sources like Google AdSense or RevContent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amy Qin / New York Times:
A large number of Chinese celebrity news blogs have shut down in recent days as media censors tighten online publishing regulations — BEIJING — Whether read openly and voraciously or behind closed doors, celebrity gossip plays an integral role in the entertainment world …
Chinese Censors Have New Target: Celebrity News
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/world/asia/china-celebrity-news-wechat.html
BEIJING — Whether read openly and voraciously or behind closed doors, celebrity gossip plays an integral role in the entertainment world, connecting stars and the big businesses that back them to an audience eager for the juiciest of details.
But to some officials in China, the bloggers that report those tidbits play another role: a threat to public order.
A large number of Chinese “celebrity news” blogs have disappeared in recent days after coming under the scrutiny of China’s cyberspace regulators. Their absence comes amid a broader tightening of online and media controls ahead of a once-in-every-five-years meeting of top Communist Party leaders this year, at which party officials will consider major decisions about who will lead the country in the coming years.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Horwitz / Quartz:
Tencent launches a new WeChat feature to collect and debunk online rumors, but government sources debunking political articles in the app may cause confusion — Today Chinese internet giant Tencent launched a new feature (link in Chinese) for its WeChat app designed to collect and debunk online rumors …
WeChat has a great new tool for fighting fake news, but there’s one little problem: Beijing
https://qz.com/1002262/wechats-new-tool-for-fighting-fake-news-could-filter-out-real-news-in-china-tencent-hkg0700/
Today Chinese internet giant Tencent launched a new feature (link in Chinese) for its WeChat app designed to collect and debunk online rumors, which remain just as common in China as they are in other parts of the world.
The feature is one of many new mini programs that function as “apps within an app,” keeping users inside WeChat even as they perform tasks they might otherwise do elsewhere. Opening the mini program shows a main page where users can search for possible rumors, and scan from a list of articles that debunk recent fake news items.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arrest in NSA News Leak Fuels Debate on Source Protection
http://www.securityweek.com/arrest-nsa-news-leak-fuels-debate-source-protection
It was a major scoop for The Intercept — documents suggesting a concerted Russian effort to hack US election systems — but the online news site is drawing fire in media circles following the arrest of the alleged source of the leak.
The Intercept, the investigative arm of the First Look Media organization created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is being criticized for sharing information which may have led to the arrest this week of National Security Agency contractor Reality Leigh Winner.
Winner, 25, was arrested and accused of mailing classified NSA documents to “a news outlet,” according to the US Justice Department, which said an investigation showed she had printed and shared the investigative report.
Did the news organization unwittingly provide clues to the government that led authorities to Winner? Some media analysts say the journalists were careless at best.
Some of the harshest criticism came from Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who called the case a “catastrophic failure of source protection” and argued that The Intercept “made egregious mistakes that doomed its source.”
“It handed USG (US government) a color copy of original doc & told a clearance-holding contractor the doc was mailed from Augusta. Where source lived,” tweeted Gellman, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who was part of a team reporting from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Jake Swearingen, a technology writer for New York Magazine, said Winner made her own missteps by printing the documents in a way that could be tracked and mailing them to The Intercept.
But Swearingen added that The Intercept may have sealed Winner’s fate by showing the document to a government official as part of an effort to verify its authenticity.
“It’s quite reasonable for The Intercept to seek confirmation,” Swearingen wrote. “But revealing the Augusta, Georgia, postmark to the third-party source clearly helped the government build its case.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Publisher’s Perspective
A Network You Can Trust
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=238&doc_id=1331882&
EE Times is now part of a network engineering sites that serve you. We value your intelligence, your contributions, your career, and your time, says the publisher of EE Times.
History shows us that human technology has never developed linearly. Advancements in the last 100 years have far surpassed the previous millennia, as has humankind’s life expectanc
AspenCore, publisher of EE Times, was founded three years ago. Through organic growth and acquisition of world-renowned assets such as EE Times, EDN, Electronic Products and ICC Media, we are now one of the leading global media companies dedicated to serving engineers and manufacturing professionals.
At AspenCore, we have believed since our founding that the most important relationship at a media company is that between two engineers: the one writing and another reading. As the engineer of today is assaulted daily by unverified information and listicle headlines, we see a global- and forward-minded audience of engineers who are hungry for serious, carefully vetted, and independent analysis. That is why since our founding, we have insisted on a transparent model, including our ownership by Arrow Electronics, even when our coverage does not cast our owners in favorable light. Nor have we shied from praising the good work by our owners’ competitors. We hold sacred this impregnable firewall between business and editorial, between press releases and news.
Whether it’s webinars, cloud-based tools, or social media, we are constantly striving to get the information you need to you, the way you need it, when you need it, where you need it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ken Doctor / Nieman Lab:
The NYT is overhauling its digital publishing system as it pivots from a platform-based approach to a reader-centric strategy in order to entice subscribers — With its business model squarely built around reader revenue, getting users logged in is a critical step toward payment.
Newsonomics: The New York Times’ redesign aims to match the quality of its products to its journalism
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/06/newsonomics-the-new-york-times-redesign-aims-to-match-the-quality-of-its-products-to-its-journalism/
With its business model squarely built around reader revenue, getting users logged in is a critical step toward payment. So the Times is making a “shift from platform to reader.”
Those three words — a request as old as the web — now drive the strongest strategy of our news era: reader revenue.
Today, The New York Times announces and starts to rollout the most significant redesign in its digital history. That redesign, 18 months in the arduous making, won’t turn heads or surprise many eyes, but its underlying thinking aims to empower the Times newsroom to deliver more timely, more nuanced, and more dramatic products to its readers — and thus for the Times to get more readers to pay for more of them.
The Times calls the new system Vi — pronounced “vie”, not “six.”
2015 and 2016 were all about platform for major news publishers — social discovery, distributed content, feeding Facebook — and this return to reader-centricity happens even as Facebook finally plans more publisher-friendly, subscription-supporting features. For the most part, the money in digital news is in attracting and retaining paying subscribers. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other platforms can acquaint readers with top news brands, but it’s the on-site, on-browser, on-app experience that’s got to seal the deal.
“This year is the year for us to deliver on both our journalistic and our business ambitions,” Wilson says.
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
The New York Times begins using Alphabet’s machine-learning powered Jigsaw to weed out toxic comments, increasing the number of articles that allow comments
The New York Times is teaming up with Alphabet’s Jigsaw to expand its comments
http://www.poynter.org/2017/the-new-york-times-is-teaming-up-with-googles-jigsaw-to-expand-its-comments/463135/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Condé Nast is closing Style.com, its first major experiment in online fashion retail, nine months after its launch; the site will redirect to Farfetch — Condé Nast, the publishing giant that owns magazine titles like Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, is closing its first major experiment …
Condé Nast Closes Style.com Months After Its Debut
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/fashion/conde-nast-closes-style-dot-com-farfetch.html?_r=0
Condé Nast, the publishing giant that owns magazine titles like Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, is closing its first major experiment in online fashion retail, a mere nine months after its high-profile introduction.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that Style.com, a global multibrand e-commerce site in which it had reportedly invested more than $100 million, had ceased all trading operations. Effective immediately, visitors to that website will be redirected to that of its new partner, Farfetch, a rapidly growing online marketplace for high-end boutiques in which Condé Nast was an early investor.
The move is a stunning strategic backtrack by the publishing empire, which first announced a multimillion-dollar rebranding of Style.com, formerly the encyclopedic digital home of all Condé Nast runway coverage, in 2015. It also reflects the current turmoil in the glossy magazine industry, which has struggled to adapt to the digital age.
“Our experience with Style.com taught us that content is a powerful driver of commerce, and the combination of great editorial with a great shopping experience creates a great user experience and revenue upside,” said Matt Starker, the general manager of digital strategy at Condé Nast. He acknowledged, however, that the skill sets required to create content and those required to run a seamless shopping site were different.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Max Willens / Digiday:
Magazine publishers like Time and Condé Nast are turning to brand licensing as they try to recoup losses from declining print advertising revenue — Twelve years ago, Gary Caplan took a meeting with Time Inc. to discuss pots and pans. Caplan, a brand-licensing agent from California …
Why Time, Conde Nast and other magazine publishers are charging into brand licensing
https://digiday.com/media/publishers-brand-licensing/
In the U.S. and Canada, the retail value of all the brand-licensed goods sold in 2016 totaled $272 billion worldwide. While that money is spread across a wide swath of industries, publishers are taking a big bite out of it. The biggest actor in the space is Meredith, parent of Better Homes and Gardens, which accounted for over $22 billion, up from $17 billion two years ago and second only to the $57 billion generated by Disney, according to License Global.
Other publishers that are active in licensing include Playboy, with $1.5 billion; Hearst, accounting for $350 million; Rodale, $155 million; and Condé Nast, $150 million. Those totals are largely flat year over year.
While Meredith stands head and shoulders over the rest of the publishing world, brand-licensing observers see a lot of runway for other magazine publishers. “I think it will get much bigger, especially as more of these magazines lean into becoming lifestyle brands,” said Karina Masolova, the executive editor of The Licensing Letter, which monitors brand licensing.
‘Untapped potential’
Like everything in media, brand licensing isn’t new. Playboy, which owes all of its profits to brand licensing, has been slapping its rabbit ears on everything from nightclubs to cigarettes for over 60 years. All Condé Nast’s 22 brands have done at least one brand-licensing program, said chief experience officer Josh Stinchcomb, who sees “untapped potential across the board” for further programs.
‘Fundamentally reimagine’ the business
In recent years, though, with print revenues dwindling, publishers have stepped up their brand licensing. Hearst hired a new vp of brand licensing, Steve Ross, in May. National Geographic, which saw its brand-licensed products account for $360 million in retail sales in 2016, hired two executives, Rosa Zeegers and Juan Gutierrez, away from brand licensing heavyweight Mattel. Condé Nast announced an expanded brand-licensing strategy a year ago. The results have already included Glamour-Lane Bryant clothing line, cookware from Epicurious and swim trunks for GQ.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Levin / The Guardian:
Report on cost of misinfo campaigns: $6K for about 40K “high-quality” likes, $5K for 20K comments, while creating and populating social media groups costs ~$40K
Pay to sway: report reveals how easy it is to manipulate elections with fake news
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jun/13/fake-news-manipulate-elections-paid-propaganda
Fake News Machine research comes amid increasing concern about hacking elections and the ways that fake news on social media has manipulated voters
Political campaigns can manipulate elections by spending as little as $400,000 on fake news and propaganda, according to a new report that analyzes the costs of swaying public opinion through the spread of misinformation online.
The report from Trend Micro, a cybersecurity firm, said it also costs just $55,000 to discredit a journalist and $200,000 to instigate a street protest based on false news, shining a light on how easy it has become for cyber propaganda to produce real-world outcomes.
The Fake News Machine research paper comes at a time of increasing concern across the globe about the hacking of elections and the ways that fake news on social media has manipulated voters.
Exploring the Online Economy that Fuels Fake News
http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/online-economy-fake-news/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Patreon announces redesigned app, improved analytics, Snapchat-like Lens feature for creators, and partners with Crowdcast for live video service
Patreon wants to be a one-stop social network for artists to reach fans
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/14/15785566/patreon-crowdcast-livestream-lens-app-redesign
Patreon, the subscription-based funding platform that supports creators like Amanda Palmer and the Kinda Funny team, is getting a major update that includes live-streaming capabilities and a new visual design. Patreon co-founder Jack Conte says the features are intended to give creators more ways to engage directly with their patrons, while also giving them more ways to analyze and keep track of their subscriber base. They’ve been tested with a limited number of people on the platform, but will now be rolling out on a large scale.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kelsey Sutton / Mic:
The Intercept is conducting an internal review after the publication of an NSA doc may have led to the government contractor who leaked it being identified — The investigative news site the Intercept has launched an internal investigation into the publication of a classified NSA document, the site’s co-founders said Tuesday.
The ‘Intercept’ is investigating its publication of the NSA document tied to Reality Winner
https://mic.com/articles/179880/the-intercept-is-investigating-its-publication-of-the-nsa-document-tied-to-reality-winner#.NcxiCdE4l
The investigative news site the Intercept has launched an internal investigation into the publication of a classified NSA document, the site’s co-founders said Tuesday.
The suspected source of that NSA document, which was provided to the Intercept anonymously and detailed efforts by Russian military intelligence to hack local election officials and gain access to U.S. voting systems company, was reported in early June to be 25-year-old government contractor Reality Winner.
Winner was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking classified information to an online news outlet. Her arrest was announced hours after the Intercept’s story went live.
Since Winner’s arrest, the Intercept had remained noticeably silent about the matter. The Intercept has been a vocal defender of government leakers, particularly Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.
Intercept co-founders and editors Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill said in a joint statement on Tuesday that the Intercept has been “institutionally constrained from speaking publicly about the accusations made by the Trump Justice Department and the FBI.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook Metes Out A Few New Ad Controls, But No Third-Party Brand Safety Measurement Yet
https://adexchanger.com/platforms/facebook-metes-new-ad-controls-no-third-party-brand-safety-measurement-yet/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steven Perlberg / BuzzFeed:
39 staffers laid off from HuffPost, with sources saying EIC Lydia Polgreen wants to reshape the news operation with a focus on the site’s DC bureau
Layoffs Hit HuffPost
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/layoffs-to-hit-huffpost-this-week?utm_term=.bc9EeNgqzZ#.nnVMJGRknD
The cuts, which come as Verizon combines HuffPost’s owner, AOL, with its new acquisition, Yahoo, hit the newsroom on Wednesday.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook celebrates the GIF’s 30th birthday by making the format usable in comments
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15806630/facebook-gif-comments-30th-birthday
Happy birthday to the GIF! The venerable file format turns 30 today, and Facebook is taking the opportunity to add a few GIF-related features to its service. Users could already post GIFs in status updates, but from June 15th, you’ll now be able to add GIFs in Facebook comments, allowing you to search through and select from a list of relevant files right there in the social network’s interface.
Facebook is also using the day to salute the surprisingly resilient format, throwing what it calls a “GIF party,” and offering statistics on its existing GIF usage. More than 13 billion GIFs were sent last year via Facebook Messenger, it says, after the company made the format usable on the chat service.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook requests input on hard questions about censorship, such as removing false news, and plans to begin explaining how it’s addressing each question — How should Facebook decide what’s allowed on its social network, and how to balance safety and truth with diverse opinions and cultural norms?
Facebook requests input on hard questions about censorship and terrorism
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/15/facebook-censorship-terrorism/
How should Facebook decide what’s allowed on its social network, and how to balance safety and truth with diverse opinions and cultural norms? Facebook wants your feedback on the toughest issues it’s grappling with, so today it published a list of seven “hard questions” and an email address — [email protected] — where you can send feedback and suggestions for more questions it should address.
Facebook’s plan is to publish blog posts examining its logic around each of these questions, starting later today with one about responding to the spread of terrorism online, and how Facebook is attacking the problem.
“Even when you’re skeptical of our choices, we hope these posts give a better sense of how we approach them — and how seriously we take them” Facebook’s VP of public policy Elliot Schrage writes.
Facebook’s methods for combatting terrorism on its social network include:
Image matching to prevent repeat uploads of banned terrorism content
Language understanding via algorithms that lets Facebook identify text that supports terrorism and hunt down similar text.
Removing terrorist clusters by looking for accounts connected to or similar to those removed for terrorism
Detecting and blocking terrorist recidivism by identifying patterns indicating someone is re-signing up after being removed
Cross-platform collaboration allows Facebook to take action against terrorists on Instagram and WhatsApp too
Facebook employs thousands of moderators to review flagged content including emergency specialists for handling law enforcement requests, is hiring 3,000 more moderators, and staffs over 150 experts solely focused on countering terrorism
Facebook partners with other tech companies like Twitter and YouTube to share fingerprints of terrorist content, it receives briefings for government agencies around the world, and supports programs for counterspeech and anti-extremism
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook:
Facebook details its process to fight terrorism: AI including image matching, increased human intervention to flag posts and remove accounts, partnerships, more — By Monika Bickert, Director of Global Policy Management, and Brian Fishman, Counterterrorism Policy Manager
Hard Questions: How We Counter Terrorism
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/06/how-we-counter-terrorism/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab:
A month after the death of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a group of publications and organizations are campaigning for journalists’ protection — “It is a problem that is affecting fundamental human rights of all Mexicans — the right to freedom of expression, the rights to access information.”
One month after the death of Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a new campaign pushes for journalist protection
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/06/one-month-after-the-death-of-javier-valdez-cardenas-a-new-campaign-pushes-for-journalist-protection/
“It is a problem that is affecting fundamental human rights of all Mexicans — the right to freedom of expression, the rights to access information.”
To draw attention to these risks, a handful of groups and publications, including our sibling publications Nieman Storyboard and Nieman Reports, are supporting a campaign today that encourages journalists in Mexico and around the world to write and share articles, editorials, videos, cartoons and other works that discuss Cárdenas’ murder, the dangers of reporting in Mexico, or journalist protection overall.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook has a solution to all the toxic dross on its site – wait, it’s not AI?
No, it’s human janitors toiling away, cleaning up wads of hate and terror incitement
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/16/zuckerberg_counters_terrorism_with_ai/
Facebook is once again trying to scrub clean its public image after it was criticized for allowing extremism to spread on its social media platform.
“Our stance is simple: There’s no place on Facebook for terrorism. We remove terrorists and posts that support terrorism whenever we become aware of them,” the company declared in a blog post on Thursday.
“Although academic research finds that the radicalization of members of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda primarily occurs offline, we know that the internet does play a role – and we don’t want Facebook to be used for any terrorist activity whatsoever,” it admitted.
Facebook has good intentions, but its systems are not yet advanced enough to carry out the tasks
Algorithms still have trouble understanding the broader context of what makes content harmful and if something should be considered terrorism or not.
So for now, despite boasting about how its AI could solve its problems, Mark Zuckerberg’s empire will instead rely on human users to report harmful accounts and terrorist content. Over 150 people are employed by the California giant to focus on countering terrorism, we’re told.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gregory Wallace / CNN:
CNN files lawsuit against FBI seeking Comey’s memos about his talks with Trump, accusing the agency of violating the federal FOI Act — Washington (CNN)In federal court Thursday, CNN filed a lawsuit seeking to force the FBI to turn over former director James Comey’s memos documenting his conversations with President Donald Trump.
CNN files lawsuit seeking Comey’s Trump memos
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/15/politics/cnn-lawsuit-comey-trump-memos/
Washington (CNN)In federal court Thursday, CNN filed a lawsuit seeking to force the FBI to turn over former director James Comey’s memos documenting his conversations with President Donald Trump.
Comey described the meetings and his note-taking in detail last week while testifying before the Senate intelligence committee.
Despite high public interest in the content of the memos, Comey’s testimony that the records are not classified and a ruling from the Justice Department that the FBI should expedite CNN’s FOIA request for the memos, the FBI has not provided either the documents or a reason to withhold them, according to the lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Kantrowitz / BuzzFeed:
Analysis: at least 45 instances of violence, including rapes, murders, and suicides, have been broadcast via Facebook Live since its debut in December 2015
Violence On Facebook Live Is Worse Than You Thought
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/heres-how-bad-facebook-lives-violence-problem-is?utm_term=.xb3B1b0NPo#.rleenkDQKy
According to a new BuzzFeed News analysis, Facebook Live has a violence problem far greater than the one portrayed in national headlines.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kent Walker / Google:
Google and YouTube announce four new steps to combat extremist and terrorist content
https://blog.google/topics/google-europe/four-steps-were-taking-today-fight-online-terror/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Austen Hufford / Wall Street Journal:
Many media startups are relying on unpaid student writers to fill their site with content, like Spoon University, which once had ~8,000 unpaid student writers
Media Startups Try a Lower-Cost Model: Unpaid Student Writers
https://www.wsj.com/articles/media-startups-try-a-lower-cost-model-unpaid-student-writers-1498050000
Chapter-based, for-profit media companies like Spoon University and Odyssey have been popping up in college markets across the U.S.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jon Lafayette / Broadcasting & Cable:
In a first for broadcasters, Fox to adopt six-second ads that are created internally and billed by viewable impressions — Short format will air first on-demand, later on linear — Fox Networks Group said it will adopt the six-second ad format introduced by YouTube.
Fox Joins YouTube in Endorsing Six-Second Ads
Short format will air first on-demand, later on linear
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/currency/fox-joins-youtube-endorsing-six-second-ads/166632
Fox Networks Group said it will adopt the six-second ad format introduced by YouTube.
The non-skippable six-second commercials will first appear in programming on Fox’s digital and on-demand properties. Eventually they will also appear on linear television, the company said, marking the first time a broadcaster has endorsed the very short ad format.
Fox announced its plans to air the tiny spots during a joint appearance with YouTube at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mădălina Ciobanu / Journalism.co.uk:
Media research firm Kaleida launches The Attention Index, an open-source algorithm to measure the quality and impact of stories — The index looks at whether a story is featured prominently on the homepage and for how long, as well as how readers engage with it on Facebook, to measure attention
Kaleida launches The Attention Index, an open-source algorithm to measure the impact of stories
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/kaleida-launches-the-attention-index-an-open-source-algorithm-to-measure-the-impact-of-stories/s2/a706038/
The index looks at whether a story is featured prominently on the homepage and for how long, as well as how readers engage with it on Facebook, to measure attention
How does the prominence editors and news organisations assign to stories on the homepage compare to what readers actually pay attention to and engage with?
To find out, media research company Kaleida is launching The Attention Index today (21 June), an open-source algorithm aimed at measuring the impact and quality of news articles.
The Attention Index uses data collected by Kaleida using the company’s own content analysis tools as well as third party platforms, such as APIs from Google which help identify the subject of an article, and information from a service called Aylien which performs sentiment analysis on stories.
On the publisher side, the data taken into account to measure attention includes an article’s headline and URL, as well as the editorial emphasis publishers give to stories, for example whether an article is promoted as a featured story on the homepage and for how long it holds that position for.
“That’s a strong indicator the publisher thinks it’s an important story, but it might not necessarily be something the public finds interesting,” Matt McAlister, chief executive of Kaleida, told Journalism.co.uk.
The Attention Index
Kaleida’s Attention Index is an open standard for measuring premium media.
https://kaleida.github.io/attention-index/
The algorithm combines data about what professional media orgs value with what consumers of media value. The scoring system surfaces high impact media and data which can be used to support healthier economics across the media ecosystem. The data, algorithm and methodology are publicly available with a Creative Commons license.
Please join us and get involved in developing better data for the media ecosystem.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
Reuters Digital News Report: ad blocking growth has stalled, digital assistants are outstripping watches, 18% of 18-24yo people in US pay for online news, more
News apps are making a comeback. More young Americans are paying for news. 2017 is weird.
The Reuters Institute’s annual report on digital news contains some surprises.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/06/news-apps-are-making-a-comeback-more-young-americans-are-paying-for-news-2017-is-weird/
The United States recently elected an unusual president. And to go with the times, Americans are exhibiting some behaviors in media consumption that are, if not unusual, then at least different from those of people in other countries.
That’s one of the recurring findings in a report out Thursday from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
Adblocking has stalled
The hottest fear of 2015-2016 is subsiding (though it could rev back up when Google builds an adblocker into Chrome): The report finds that the growth of adblockers has stalled on desktop, at around 24 percent, and “crucially, despite industry fears, it has not spread to the smartphone where only less than one in ten (7%) have worked out how to install blockers or browsers that block by default…Another hopeful sign has been the increasing proportion of respondents (43%) who have agreed to temporarily turn off their ad blocker for particular news sites.”
Alexa > Apple Watch
It’s super early days, but “voice-activated digital assistants like the Amazon Echo are emerging as a new platform for news, already outstripping smart watches in the U.S. and U.K.”
Americans still like social media for news. Residents of others countries, not so much.
Fifty-one percent of the people the Reuters Institute surveyed in the U.S. now get news from social media, up five percent since 2016 (and a doubling since 2013). “Two-thirds of social media users in the United States also watch television news (67%) and two-thirds also visit mainstream websites or apps (66%).”
A third of 18- to 24-year-olds (33 percent) across all the countries surveyed now say that social media is their main source of news, bigger than online news sites (31 percent) and TV news and printed newspapers combined (29 percent).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alan Feuer / New York Times:
A civil case from Murray Energy in a New York appeals court is testing whether the state’s shield law protects small, subscriber-based news organizations — In 1970, when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed
Case Tests Limits of Law Protecting Journalists’ Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/nyregion/ny-appeals-court-shield-law-journalists-reorg.html
In 1970, when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed legislation protecting New York journalists from being forced to reveal their anonymous sources, he issued a memo describing freedom of the press as “one of the foundations upon which our form of government is based.”
As “the nation’s principal center of news gathering,” he wrote, New York would become under the statute — known as the Shield Law — “the only state that clearly protects the public’s right to know.”
But as any newshound knows, media outfits have changed enormously in the past half-century, with some adopting innovative — and more obviously commercial — tactics for charging customers for information. And now a civil case pending in a state appeals court is testing the limits of the Shield Law by posing the question of whether small, subscriber-based news organizations can avail themselves of its protections.
In his affidavit, Mr. Steiger said he was concerned about the precedent that might be set by compelling Reorg to reveal its sources.
“To force disclosure of confidential sources would seriously harm the ability of Reorg Research — and by fear of precedent, all journalistic organizations — to produce and unearth information of great value to the public interest,” Mr. Steiger wrote.
In February, Justice Carol R. Edmead ruled in Murray’s favor, ordering Reorg to disclose its sources. In her decision, Justice Edmead wrote that while “extraordinary protections are afforded to the press by our laws,” companies like Reorg, which cater to select, wealthy clients, “do not carry out the vital function of informing the public.” Indeed, she added, Reorg’s business model “deliberately keeps its information from reaching the general public.”
When Reorg filed an appeal in March, it was joined by several media outfits, like Reuters, Politico and The Economist, all of which argued that the news business had changed and now includes organizations — themselves, among them — that provide different tiers of information, some of which is available to the public free or at low cost but some of which is sold at a premium.
“Journalism comes in all shapes and sizes, with the universal goal of publishing truthful, newsworthy information,” the companies wrote. “All are deserving of the application of the Shield Law.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Benjamin Mullin / Poynter:
The Knight Prototype Fund awards $1M to projects aimed at fighting misinformation, including a mobile game that tracks falsehoods and a media literacy program — A mobile game that tracks falsehoods, a tool that busts lie-spewing internet bots and projects aimed at increasing the reach …
Knight Foundation awards $1 million to projects aimed at fighting misinformation
http://www.poynter.org/2017/knight-foundation-awards-1-million-to-projects-aimed-at-fighting-misinformation/464300/
A mobile game that tracks falsehoods, a tool that busts lie-spewing internet bots and projects aimed at increasing the reach of fact checks are among the winners of a $1 million challenge from The Knight Prototype Fund aimed at improving the flow of accurate information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Rosoff / CNBC:
Jeff Bezos advice at Future of Newspapers conference: ads alone won’t support investigative journalism; hire, don’t eliminate workers; and ask people to pay
Jeff Bezos has advice for the news business: ‘Ask people to pay. They will pay’
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/jeff-bezos-lessons-from-washington-post-for-news-industry.html
Jeff Bezos spoke at the Future of Newspapers conference in Turin, Italy.
His advice for the newspaper industry includes: Focus on readers first and ask them to pay.
“When you’re writing, be riveting, be right, and ask people to pay.”
Jeff Bezos has advice for the news business: ‘Ask people to pay. They will pay’
Jeff Bezos has advice for the news business: ‘Ask people to pay. They will pay’
6 Hours Ago | 00:50
Jeff Bezos made his fortune founding Amazon, and spent $250 million of his riches to buy The Washington Post in 2013.
After nearly four years running the Post, which Bezos says turned a profit in 2016 and is expected to do the same this year, Bezos has some valuable lessons to pass along to the rest of the news industry, which is struggling to compete for ad dollars against online juggernauts Google and Facebook.
Bezos delivered some of this advice at the Future of Newspapers conference in Turin, Italy, on Wednesday. Here are the highlights:
Focus on readers first, not advertisers.
You can’t shrink your way to relevance.
Don’t look for a patron or expect charity.
Use technology, but don’t be a slave to it.
Advertising alone will not support investigative journalism. Bezos thinks the current online ad landscape is incompatible with the kind of journalism the Post wants to do.
“This industry spent 20 years teaching everyone in the world that news should be free. The truth is, readers are smarter than that. They know high-quality journalism is expensive to produce, and they are willing to pay for it, but you have to ask them. We’ve tightened our paywall, and every time we’ve tightened our paywall, subscriptions go up.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook updates mission statement to “give people power to build community, bring the world closer together”, from “making the world more open and connected” — “Making the world more open and connected” had one fundamental flaw: it didn’t push for any specific positive outcome from more connection.
Facebook changes mission statement to ‘bring the world closer together’
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/22/bring-the-world-closer-together/
“Making the world more open and connected” had one fundamental flaw: it didn’t push for any specific positive outcome from more connection. Technically, it could encompass digital voyeurism via the News Feed, trading in-person friendship for online acquaintanceship or the filter bubbles and echospheres that have further polarized the United States.
So today, as Facebook approaches 2 billion monthly users, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed a new mission statement, to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kang-Xing Jin / Facebook:
Facebook introduces new group admin tools, including group analytics, scheduled posts, membership request filtering, more — Today we hosted our first-ever Facebook Communities Summit in Chicago with hundreds of group admins where we announced new features to support their communities on Facebook.
Our First Communities Summit and New Tools For Group Admins
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/06/our-first-communities-summit-and-new-tools-for-group-admins/