國際傳媒新聞：2018/03/09~2018/03/15
This site is trying to teach people about fake news by publishing it
“We were brainstorming and thinking about how to reach people who like and share fake news online,” said Maarten Schenk, who runs the Lead Stories debunking site in Belgium. “Fake news sites don’t have any trouble reaching them, because your crazy uncle on Facebook always comes up with new fake news sites that you’ve never heard of. So we thought, ‘What if we try to mimic their tactics and see if we can beat the enemy with their own weapons?’”
POYNTER / DANIEL FUNKE / MAR 9
The New Yorker raised the price of its print–digital bundle to $120/year, and it’s working
“It was scary to think about charging three-figure sums. Then, we thought, people in their 20s are paying for Netflix when we were embarking on this increase. And The [New York] Times’ success is encouraging, as well as The Washington Post’s growth. The lesson of the past five years has been not to undervalue ourselves.”
DIGIDAY / LUCIA MOSES / MAR 9
NewsWhip’s February 2018 list of top reporters on Facebook includes 2 reporters from fake news sites
“Beyond the Onion, the top authors were primarily from hyper-partisan sources like the Daily Wire, Truth Examiner, Breitbart, Washington Press, and several small but politically-charged sites….Horrifyingly enough, two authors from fake news sites featured. An author from the fake news site Your Newswire was towards the top of our list, ranking in at #12. Baxter Dmitry wrote 81 articles in February, driving more than 1.7 million Facebook interactions altogether. Jay Greenberg featured at #38 for fake stories from the site Neon Nettle.”
NEWSWHIP / GABRIELE BOLAND / MAR 9
We need to get better at covering studies about fake news
“We should be drawing many small lessons about misinformation from these new studies. Instead, we are hammering our audiences with an inaccurate generalization — that fakery is rampant and undefeatable.”
POYNTER / ALEXIOS MANTZARLIS / MAR 9
Chuck Todd: Transparency is The New Objectivity
Journalists gathered in Washington March 8 to honor their own and call for solidarity–and solid reporting rather than snarky reporting–in the face of attacks from the President. That was one of the takeaways from Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press at the Radio-Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) First Amendment awards. Todd, who was receiving the First Amendment Award, said that the media had rightly been criticized for its coverage of the Iraq War (the mission that was not quite accomplished), and that the current battle against the Trump Administration’s brand of fake news was this news generation’s Iraq war. “What we’re doing now, this is our Iraq war,” he said. “And if we blow this, if the public loses more faith in us because we don’t cover this moment correctly, then we will have a problem when it comes to our own credibility.” Todd said that when there is the temptation to be “a little snarky,” remember others will be judged by that snarky comment. He said there are plenty of people motivated to undermine the news media for their own political gain. “Just keep that in mind. We just need to be fair, credible, honest and most of all transparency, the last which he called “the new objectivity,” adding: “Show your work.”
Broadcasting&Cable / John Eggerton Mar o9
How journalists are using Spotify to circumvent press censorship
‘The Uncensored Playlist’ has already helped ten stories bypass countries’ censorship laws.
MEDIUM / MEDIAMONKS / MAR 12
After 10 years, could independent publisher Mediapart be a model for the whole news industry?
The site, exclusively funded by its 140,000 subscribers, pulls in around $17 million a year.
MEDIUM / BERTRAND PECQUERIE / MAR 12
President Trump’s cultural assault on the First Amendment
There is no shortage of explainers detailing President Donald Trump’s limited ability to mess with the First Amendment. No, he can’t just snap his fingers and “open up” our libel laws so that he can more easily sue news outlets that publish scoops about him. No, he can’t just shut down a large broadcast network whose reporting he doesn’t like. There’s a lot of bluster in the president’s widely disseminated attacks on the press. “But as we approach the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration,” wrote Politico magazine’s Jack Shafer last November, “we discover that the president’s gibbering about the alleged menace posed by the press has been followed by no action.” At a recent event organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association, President Trump’s anti-media rhetoric — including his frequent invocations of “fake news” — drew something short of outrage and incredulity from a panel of journalists. Peter Baker, who has two decades of experience covering the White House, said, “The people who say this has a broad impact on society and the credibility of the media and so forth and so on, I get their point.” He continued: “I don’t dispute that. In terms of my job, worried about working as a reporter in the White House, it doesn’t have that much impact. I mean, it’s just theater.”
Washington Post / Erik Wemple MAR 12
Facebook is preparing to launch a news video section for Watch this summer
The platform is testing different video partnerships with roughly 10 publishers, Axios reported. “Facebook is in touch with both legacy and digital-first news publishers to test a daily video feature that would run for at least a year, according to multiple sources familiar with the effort. The content needs to be a minimum of three minutes.”
AXIOS / SARA FISCHER / MAR 13
This major challenge to local news has gone almost unnoticed
The proposed acquisition of Tribune Media by the Sinclair Broadcast Group is under consideration by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department. Approval would likely trigger a hemorrhage in local reporting and voices and a sharp decline across much of the nation in balanced coverage of politics and government. The core principles undergirding the Communications Act are localism, diversity and competition. Approval of this merger, along with erasure of the previous limits on ownership, would open a floodgate, likely leading to more mergers by media conglomerates, whether liberal or conservative. This would mean more monopolies or oligopolies in broadcast news, which is a primary source of information for a significant share of Americans — those older, poorer and more rural citizens who do not have access to cable or satellite television. This merger would be a major setback for America’s media and electoral process. And it is not an exaggeration to predict that it would signal the end of local TV as we know it.
Washington Post / Norman J. Ornstein MAR 13
“This initiative builds on others that have taken place in other countries: Electionland in the US, or CrossCheck in France. The initiative is the result of a concept by Animal Politico, AJ+ Español, Pop-Up Newsroom and Newsweek Español, but #Verificado2018 is a collaborative project in which all media will contribute with their work.”
VERIFICADO 2018 / MAR 14
Sourcing Innovation from a ‘Rural Journalism Lab’
Building on our previous research through the Tow Center and a workshop we held in August 2017 on strengthening storytelling networks and civic engagement in this region of Kentucky, over the past few months we embarked on a series of experiments with the Bratcher brothers in what we’ve coined a “rural journalism innovation lab.” Our work explored a range of approaches—around promotion, news products, and community engagement—aimed at driving residents into a deeper relationship with The Ohio County Monitor and supporting the outlet’s move to a $5-monthly subscription model, supported by very limited advertising. What we found is that while Facebook drives the most traffic to the site, its algorithm over-prioritizes local crime stories from The Monitor, pushing stories into local residents’ feed that don’t drive the kind of readership likely to translate to subscriptions. A number of Facebook ad spends to promote Monitor-sponsored events and gift subscriptions also weren’t useful in getting people to show up or subscribe. Thus far, livestreaming community events has proved unreliable, due to unpredictable internet connectivity at venues in the rural county, and a weekly podcast was hard to promote and challenging for readers to discover and follow.
Columbia Journalism Review / Sam Ford and Andrea Wenzel MAR 14
In East and Southeast Asia, misinformation is a visible and growing concern
How governments and journalists in Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Japan are dealing with their misinformation ecosystems.
POYNTER / MASATO KAJIMOTO / MAR 15
NBC News is planning a streaming service for younger viewers, and no, it’s not sharing with Facebook
“Facebook doesn’t have value for publishers,” NBC News chairman Andy Lack said.
REUTERS / JESSICA TOONKEL / MAR 15
Inside the Seattle Times’ newsletter strategy
“Short-term: The Times wants to make it easier to automate some of its emails. Long-term: The Times wants to add more personalization features.”
LENFEST INSTITUTE / JOSEPH LICHTERMAN / MAR 15
Some media companies are shifting their attention from Facebook to YouTube
“While Facebook Watch hasn’t taken off as a revenue source for publishers and the social network has deprioritized publisher content, YouTube offers something of a safe harbor for publishers that want to get into the video business. For example, publishers can direct-sell into their video on YouTube, said Kai Hsing, svp of marketing and operations at Bustle, which recently rekindled its interest in YouTube. YouTube was the most lucrative platform for publishers after Facebook, according to a Digital Content Next report.”
DIGIDAY / TIM PETERSON / MAR 15
“Is it repetitive/boring? Could an intern do it? But would you feel an overwhelming sense of shame if you asked an intern to do it?”
GLOBAL EDITORS NETWORK / FREIA NAHSER / MAR 15
