國際傳媒新聞：2018/07/06~07/12
Judd Legum is leaving ThinkProgress to launch a one-man, paid political newsletter
“Popular Information will be free for everyone for the first six to eight weeks in order to gain an audience; after that, the Monday edition will be free, and the other three days accessible only to paying members.”
WIRED / EMILY DREYFUSS / JUL 12
Facebook Watch is struggling to win fans
“In addition to lackluster viewership, [publishers] cited nearly non-existent ad revenue and poor promotion of shows by Facebook. One media executive said the ad revenue it got from its Watch show was in the ‘tens of thousands’ of dollars. Others said the revenue was negligible…’We certainly walked away from that experience saying we’re not going to work with these guys again,’ said an executive at a media company.”
THE INFORMATION / TOM DOTAN AND JESSICA TOONKEL / JUL 12
People trust local news so much, the Russians took advantage of it
@ElPasoTopNews, @MilwaukeeVoice, @CamdenCityNews and @Seattle_Post: “These accounts apparently never spread misinformation. In fact, they posted real local news, serving as sleeper accounts building trust and readership for some future, unforeseen effort.”
NPR / TIM MAK / JUL 12
The pace of nonprofit media growth is picking up
“Back when I founded the Center for Public Integrity … it was just the third of its kind in the whole country. Two decades later, when I co-founded what later morphed into the Institute for Nonprofit News, there were at least 27 of these operations.”
THE CONVERSATION / CHARLES LEWIS / JUL 12
What it’s like to survive a newsroom shooting
“It was just one of those things where I couldn’t imagine being at work, and I couldn’t imagine not being at work. Nothing felt right because it was such a horrible time.”
POYNTER / RACHEL SCHALLOM / JUL 12
How The New York Times’ Mark Thompson became the latest thorn in Facebook’s side
“A few years ago, the Times was one of the handful of publishers picked to debut Facebook’s then-big initiative, Instant Articles, and to get funds to make live video for the platform. Thompson then spoke enthusiastically about the Instant Articles opportunity. Since then, the Times has ditched Instant Articles, sat out Facebook’s subscriptions test and passed on participating in Facebook’s news section for Watch, its video tab.”
DIGIDAY / LUCIA MOSES / JUL 11
Battling fake accounts, Twitter plans on slashing millions of followers
“Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES / NICHOLAS CONFESSORE AND GABRIEL J.X. DANCE / JUL 11
Facebook Watch’s news shows are starting next week — here’s the second batch
Bloomberg, BuzzFeed, ABC stations, McClatchy, NowThis, and Tegna are on board.
THE WRAP / SEAN BURCH / JUL 11
Tegna asks viewers: What do you want us to check about the news?
“The whole purpose is to connect with viewers and say, ‘what are the questions, claims or rumors going around that you’re curious about?’” said Jason Puckett, a national Verify reporter. “Send them to us and we’ll dig in and let you know what’s real, what’s not real.”
POYNTER / TAYLOR BLATCHFORD / JUL 11
Getting laid off is just a part of life in the media game, but that doesn’t keep it from hurting
“People tell me it seems like I’m doing great, but I’m not sure what that means anymore. I’ve seen the cycle of layoffs at other media companies continue across the United States and Canada. Sometimes it’s framed as yet another ‘pivot to video,’ other times, a business transaction. It’s sad and scary to work in media, it scares me to think of what future I have in an industry where losing your job can be met with an ‘it happens.’”
HAZLITT / SARAH HAGI / JUL 11
BBC touts gender pay gap progress, warns of West Coast “threat to British content”
“The BBC in its annual report for fiscal year 2017-2018, published Wednesday, touted improvement in its gender pay gap, amid pay cuts for some top-earnings male on-air stars, and highlighted continued challenges from U.S. streaming and technology giants, such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple.”
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER / GEORG SZALAI / JUL 11
The Financial Times mixes journalism with performance to engage wider audiences
“Through the Contemporary Narratives Lab, an ongoing research project which explores the future of storytelling, the publisher teamed up with People’s Palace Projects, an independent arts charity at Queen Mary University of London, and performance space Battersea Arts Centre, to hold early work-in-progress, scratch performances of its stories on stage.”
JOURNALISM.CO.UK / CAROLINE SCOTT / JUL 11
A BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporter was fired one month after a politician’s complaint
“To be put out of a job 30 days later because I was asking questions — I find that frankly astounding. It’s a ridiculous position and that’s why I’m speaking out.”
PRESSGAZETTE / FREDDY MAYHEW / JUL 10
The New York Times has 14 million subscribers across its 55 newsletters
One of its most popular emails, the morning briefing goes to 1.6 million subscribers: “We’re in a very busy news period, and the amount of journalism that we produce every day can be pretty daunting, even for someone who gets paid to synthesize it. I think readers appreciate having someone else do a lot of the work in sorting out what’s important and highlighting what in The Times they should spend their (limited) time on.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES / MELINA DELKIC / JUL 10
Print versus digital: Four reasons why print is still around
“Over the past few years, the digital age has made a major impact on how business is done and how consumers are engaged. However, in the age-old battle of print versus digital, why is it that print still comes out on top?”
MEDIA UPDATE / AISLING MCCARTHY / JUL 9
A lesson from the tech world on diversifying the newsroom hiring pool
Step One: “Ditch the quotas. You’re setting yourself up for failure if you’re merely working toward filling an equal employment opportunity quota. Those benchmarks do little more than minimize individuals’ value in the organization, and by chasing a goal like “raise proportion of women on the engineering team by 10% this year,” you risk embracing a mind-set that makes it harder to see how every engineer–no matter who they are–is contributing to the team’s collective goals.”
FAST COMPANY / JORI FORD / JUL 9
WhatsApp on its misinformation problem: “Fact-checking is going to be essential”
“There seems to be an overall recognition of how this platform has evolved in India, and that they need to do something about it and start working on it. If I was discouraged in the past that they were ignorant, I do get a sense now that they are pretty reasonably clued in and working to fix whatever they can fix.”
POYNTER / DANIEL FUNKE / JUL 9
A journalist’s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI. Here’s why
“It’s not a decision I regret.”
WASHINGTON POST / MARGARET SULLIVAN / JUL 9
