國際傳媒新聞:2018/05/11~2018/05/17

Vox Media chief Jim Bankoff on the future of digital media and his Hollywood ambitions

Q: What’s an area of growth for Vox Media? A: Podcasting.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER MAY 17

With Rover, David Arkin takes a mobile-first, enjoyable approach to local news

“Budget stories are painful for readers to get through, but guiding them through the process with points and data makes it more consumable.”

STREET FIGHT / DAVID ARKIN MAY 17

News media and political attitudes in the United Kingdom

“In the UK, those on the left and right do not differ in regard to the media source they turn to most for news. Both those on the ideological right and left cite the BBC as their main news source.”

PEW RESEARCH CENTER MAY 17

The Local Connection is a new email newsletter to help you localize national news stories

“The Local Connection is a weekly newsletter, sent on Mondays, that features a handful of national and regional news stories with specific details about how to find a local connection or angle.”

MEDIUM / JOE AMDITIS MAY 17

The Senate considers rolling back the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality

“Until today, many senators will have been able to largely stay silent on the issue, and a vote to support this highly unpopular rule may come back to bite them come midterms. Net neutrality may very well be an issue constituencies care about, or at least that’s what Democratic challengers are hoping for.”

TECHCRUNCH / DEVIN COLDEWEY MAY 16

Mark Zuckerberg will go to Europe to answer regulators’ questions — in private

The Facebook CEO is headed overseas “as soon as possible.”

RECODE / KURT WAGNER MAY 16

Covering rural America: What reporters get wrong and how to get it right

“Barely a majority of the eligible voting population ends up at the polls, and then somewhere around under half of people vote for the candidate who wins that state, and then the whole square is colored red on a cable news graphic …The underlying poison of this whole discussion is that it renders enormous swaths of this country invisible: people of color in rural areas; moderate or left leaning people in rural areas; and, for that matter, conservative people in urban areas, of which there are many. One of them is now the president of our country.”

JOURNALIST’S RESOURCE / CHLOE REICHEL MAY 16

Kenya’s president signs cybercrimes law opposed by media rights groups

“Violations to be penalized under the law include cyber-espionage, false publications, child pornography, computer-borne forgery, cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying among others, the statement said, without spelling out the penalties. Offenders convicted for sharing ‘false’ or ‘fictitious’ information and propagating hate speech will be liable to a fine of 5 million shillings ($49,776.01) or sentenced to two years in jail, or both.”

REUTERS MAY 16

Deepfakes, misinformation, and what journalists can do about them

“Dire as the case may be, it could offer a great comeback opportunity for mainstream media. As the public learns that it can no longer trust what it sees online, few intermediaries are better placed to function as trusted validators and assessors of mediated reality than professionally trained journalists with access to advanced forensics tools. To capture this opportunity, journalists and news organizations should pursue strategies like forensics training, technical tool development, and process standardization and transparency.”

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW / NICHOLAS DIAKOPOULOS MAY 16

The Wall Street Journal and National Geographic are collaborating on a magazine

“This magazine is about what to do when your meetings are over,” writes Wall Street Journal editor in chief Gerard Baker in a statement.

TALKING BIZ NEWS / CHRIS ROUSH MAY 16

In an era of disinvestment, how should local news push back?

“What is the model we should be advocating for? And what are journalists and their audiences supposed to do about it? While answers to those questions aren’t clear, many staffers and audiences are no longer going to silently watch as journalism is ‘strip-mined.’ Those pushing back have a variety of tactics, but they collectively demonstrate that the fate of local news isn’t sealed. We have choices.”

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW / ANNA CLARK MAY 16

In this town, you can flip the channel all you want — the news is often the same

“News stories broadcast on WJAC, the NBC affiliate in Johnston, Pa., have appeared on nearby station WATM, the ABC affiliate. And many of those stories are broadcast on WWCP, the Fox station there, as well. Not just the same topics — identical stories, reported by the same reporter or anchor, and repeated, almost verbatim at times, by the other stations. All three stations are either owned or managed by the Baltimore-based Sinclair Broadcast Group.”

WASHINGTON POST / PAUL FARHI, JACK GILLUM, AND CHRIS ALCANTARA MAY 15

Seeking a wider readership, News Corp’s The Australian reaches out with its Chinese-language website

“While community newspapers have catered to Chinese and other ethnic communities here for decades, the right-leaning national newspaper The Australian is the first major commercial outlet to offer news specifically catered to non-English speakers. High levels of Chinese immigration to Australia in recent decades have created a sizable pool of potential news consumers and advertisers that remain largely untapped by mainstream media.”

THE SPLICE NEWSROOM MAY 15

BBC News is completely dominating “news” results right now and Google is trying to fix it

“Last week, the website Indivigital noticed that British searches for the term ‘news’ in Google News returned a flood of BBC News articles. Four days ago, every single result in the top 50 was a BBC News article, with 97 of the top 100 coming from the British broadcaster. By Monday morning, 48 of the top 50 were BBC News. It’s an issue that appears confined to the UK.”

BUZZFEED / MARK DI STEFANO AND RYAN MAC MAY 15

It’s a good time to be a reporter covering Trump if you like money and going on TV

“Reporters’ windfall has stemmed, in part, from a shift in strategy by CNN President Jeff Zucker and NBC News chairman Andy Lack, two old-school executives leading the major networks that supplement reporters’ income (the contributor well for Fox News tends to differ from its rivals). Dinged by critics for featuring roundtables of talking heads, Zucker and Lack have been on a buying spree to sign reporters who break news to paid contributor contracts. That way, when the Washington Post or New York Times breaks a big Russia–Trump story — and they often do — their network will have exclusive access to the bylined reporter. In the hyper-competitive world of political television, the coin of the realm has become five magic words: ‘The author joins us now.’”

BUZZFEED NEWS / STEVEN PERLBERG MAY 14

Medium will “pay each of the affected publishers four month’s worth of any revenue they were making through this program”

After abruptly canceling the membership programs of its 21 remaining subscription publisher partners, Medium’s VP of product promises help with “smoothing the transition.”

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW / KELSEY SUTTON MAY 14

The new rules when spies hack journalism

“I happened to have written the sentence that distressed Ms. Chozick, and I don’t find either her mea culpa or Mr. Shafer’s championing of the old rules fully satisfying. For reporters, withholding valuable information from the public is anathema. But in a world in which foreign intelligence services hack, leak and fabricate, journalists will have to use extreme caution and extra transparency.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES / SCOTT SHANE MAY 14

A Q&A with The Guardian’s chief supporter officer (sort of) on selling journalism

“The primacy of our editorial platform does mean that it is not always the case that the ‘customer is always right’. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think of ourselves as having a reader first philosophy. The reader has a right to be listened to, and respected, but at times their opinion might differ to our editorial line — and that is important to acknowledge.”

GLOBAL EDITORS’ NETWORK / FREIA NAHSER MAY 14

All the problems at NBC News aren’t just coincidence — they’re symptoms

“‘Props to NBC for being so consistent in its terrible handling of everything from Brian Williams to Matt Lauer to Joy Reid to Hugh Hewitt to Tom Brokaw,’ wrote Andrew Kirell, senior editor at the Daily Beast. (Anchor Brian Williams is back on the air, though in a diminished role, after glorifying his reporting history. MSNBC host Joy Reid suffered not a single disciplinary consequence after her dubious claims that some of her anti-gay statements from years ago were the result of her being hacked. And NBC brass gave only a tap on the wrist to a serious conflict of interest by Hewitt, and seemed to shrug off accusations of misconduct by network icon Tom Brokaw.)”

WASHINGTON POST / MARGARET SULLIVAN MAY 14

The end of ESPN’s public editor position completes a disappointing decline in relevancy that could have been avoided

“Perhaps the onus (and the blame if you want to call it that) is on ESPN for the public editor’s job losing its usefulness instead of there being an inherent issue with the position itself.”

AWFUL ANNOUNCING / MATT YODER MAY 11

With systemwide coverage review, public radio can reveal and address its racial inequities

“I myself have rebroadcast on public radio The Lone Ranger and other such shows. The Lone Ranger’s Native American sidekick, Tonto, was first played on commercial radio by John Todd, a white man. The character spoke without using articles — ‘You risk life. Tonto risk life.’ How can we justify perpetuating such harmful stereotypes by continuing to broadcast them?”

CURRENT / JENNIFER DARGAN MAY 11

Apple News officially lets publishers use Google’s DoubleClick to serve ads

“The move is meant to make it easier for publishers to sell their Apple News articles with inventory on their own sites and their Google Accelerated Mobile Pages and Facebook Instant Articles inventory. That way, publishers may start to see some real revenue from Apple News and be more willing to produce the higher-quality, exclusive content that Apple seeks, especially on the video side, where the company has even started paying publishers for premieres. Publishers keep 100 percent of the revenue from the Apple News ads they sell directly.”

DIGIDAY / TIM PETERSON MAY 11

News Corp CEO calls for governments to create an “algorithm review board”

“These algorithms are already potent, but they are destined to be much more formidable, and their abundant potential to skew news and skewer customers needs to be better understood and monitored.”

DEADLINE / DAWN C. CHMIELEWSKI MAY 11