國際傳媒新聞：2018/09/21~2018/09/27
The New York Times expands international newsletters
“The New York Times is launching a limited-edition newsletter for the U.K. that’s dedicated to demystifying U.S. politics ahead of November’s midterm elections. The “Abroad in America” newsletter, which launches next week, will be written by Sarah Lyall, a London-based American Times journalist and longtime U.K. resident. London-based illustrator Dominic Kesterton will design the artwork.”
DIGIDAY / JESSICA DAVIES / SEP 27
Indonesia’s government will hold weekly “hoax news” briefings
“Rudiantara said the weekly briefings were designed to encourage Indonesians to think more critically about the news they consume. A specialised ministerial content control team, comprised of 70 people, will be tasked with identifying fake news stories.”
THE GUARDIAN / KATE LAMB / SEP 27
“Covering the full breadth of the continent was really important to me”: Reuters’ Africa Journal launches
“The international news agency looks to publish 16 to 20 concise multimedia packages a week talking about the latest innovations and developments coming out of the continent.”
JOURNALISM.CO.UK / JACOB GRANGER / SEP 27
It may be ‘data journalism,’ but Julia Angwin’s new site the Markup is nothing like FiveThirtyEight
“That makes the not-yet-launched Markup’s form of ‘data journalism’ different from outlets like FiveThirtyEight, which analyze existing data sets and make predictions about topics ranging from political elections to Major League Baseball. “That’s totally legitimate and awesome work,” Angwin said, but once the new site launches in early 2019 she and her team will be proactively building new data sets — something she and her co-founder Jeff Larson previously did at ProPublica — in the interest of investigative journalism.” (We wrote about The Markup here.)
RECODE / PETER KAFKA / SEP 27
‘I could be doing this all day’: In an 80 minute press conference, Trump delights in sparring with the press
“And in true ‘Apprentice’ style, he urged audience participation. When Hallie Jackson of NBC News pressed him on a follow-up, Mr. Trump mockingly tried to leave her at the mercy of the crowd. ‘Should I let her ask another question?’ he asked her assembled colleagues, who shouted their approval. ‘O.K., go ahead.’”
THE NEW YORK TIMES / MICHAEL GRYNBAUM / SEP 27
After anti-media tweets from a newly appointed publisher surface, Lee Enterprises backtracks
“McArthur ‘liked’ tweets posted by conservative commentators criticizing mainstream news coverage as unfair or inaccurate, including a quote from Dinesh D’Souza that ‘the press isn’t so much the enemy of the people, more that it’s the enemy of the truth.’”
MISSOULIAN / DAVID ERICKSON / SEP 27
Billionaires, buyouts, and a newspaper empire in the balance: The continuing saga of Tronc
“Journalism is an acquired taste for an owner. You either really believe in that mission, and the notion that this is a civic responsibility and that you carry out this work without fear or favor—and that means without fear or favor of and to the owner—or you don’t.”
THE RINGER / KATE KNIBBS / SEP 27
L.A. Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong calls the spread of fake news on social media “the cancer of our time”
“‘The short attention span we’re creating in this millennium is actually very dangerous,’ said Soon-Shiong, the new owner of the Los Angeles Times. ‘It’s the unintended consequences of social media.’”
CNBC / BERKELEY LOVELACE JR. / SEP 27
Facebook is giving advertisers access to your shadow contact information
“The researchers also found that if User A, whom we’ll call Anna, shares her contacts with Facebook, including a previously unknown phone number for User B, whom we’ll call Ben, advertisers will be able to target Ben with an ad using that phone number, which I call ‘shadow contact information,’ about a month later. Ben can’t access his shadow contact information, because that would violate Anna’s privacy, according to Facebook, so he can’t see it or delete it, and he can’t keep advertisers from using it either.”
GIZMODO / KASHMIR HILL / SEP 27
The New York Post plans a paid membership program
“Rather than focus on a metered paywall like its crosstown rival, The New York Daily News, the New York Post is planning to pursue consumer revenue through memberships. The Post intends to orient them around extra services or experiences targeted at fans of its sports coverage, or its popular gossip news sub-brand Page Six.”
DIGIDAY / MAX WILLENS / SEP 26
Tech and ad giants sign up with Europe’s first weak bite at ‘fake news’
“Only slightly less vague and woolly is a commitment that signatories will ‘put in place clear policies regarding identity and the misuse of automated bots’ on the signatories’ services, and ‘enforce these policies within the EU’. (So presumably not globally, despite disinformation being able to wreak havoc everywhere.)”
TECHCRUNCH / NATASHA LOMAS / SEP 26
New York Magazine teams up with a new nonprofit outlet (led by a New York Daily News alum) to cover local news
“The City will be accessible through the magazine’s website, and some of its articles will be posted there. The magazine will also provide technological infrastructure and office space, at least for the time being. But there will be no financial connection between the two organizations…. Ben Smith, the editor of BuzzFeed News, will be the chairman of The City’s board of directors. Other members include Sarah Bartlett, the dean of the CUNY journalism school; Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor of New York; and S. Mitra Kalita, the senior vice president for news, opinion and programming for CNN Digital.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES / JACLYN PEISER / SEP 26
A judge demanded a Mexican journalist provide proof of his work, so librarians and translators collaborated to unearth his old stories
“In July, Emilio Gutiérrez Soto seemed to have had a happy ending. He was freed from an El Paso detention facility after his case was championed by the National Press Club, and he moved north to attend a prestigious mid-career journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan. But a hearing remains in October before a immigration judge in Texas, who has doubted Gutiérrez Soto’s work or his reason to fear persecution if deported.”
POYNTER / DAVID BEARD / SEP 26
Apple is wooing the media with a human touch and a huge audience. But where’s the money?
“The problem, publishers say, is that Apple doesn’t sell many ads within the app—not nearly as many as you’d find on most websites—and it doesn’t make it particularly easy for publishers to sell their own. Apple News doesn’t support some of the common ad formats or systems that dominate ad sales on the web, and not all media companies find it worthwhile to develop and sell custom ads just for Apple News. (Those that do can keep all the revenue or they can let Apple sell them, in which case Apple takes a 30 percent cut.) As Matt Karolian, the Boston Globe’s director of new initiatives, told me, ‘The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.’”
SLATE / WILL OREMUS / SEP 26
In a class-action lawsuit, a content moderator sues Facebook and says the job gave her PTSD
“An outsider might not totally comprehend, we aren’t just exposed to the graphic videos—you’ll have to watch them closely, often repeatedly, for specific policy signifiers,” one moderation source told Motherboard. “Someone could be being graphically beaten in a video, and you could have to watch it a dozen times, sometimes with others present, while you decide whether the victim’s actions would count as self-defense or not, or whether the aggressor is the same person who posted the video.” Facebook has roughly 7,500 content moderators worldwide.
MOTHERBOARD / JASON KOEBLER AND JOSEPH COX / SEP 26
How the culture of News Corp might change under Lachlan Murdoch, who is said to be more conservative than his father
“The downsized empire will be focused on News’s traditional news business – newspapers, online real estate, book publishing and Foxtel – alongside a growing portfolio of sporting rights, to which it added cricket rights in Australia in April. The Murdochs also will hang on to the top-rating Fox News channel in the US and Fox sports cable channels after the Disney sale. The Murdochs had also hoped to keep the UK satellite TV service, Sky, and take full control but met resistance from UK regulators concerned about the extent of the Murdochs’ media influence, and was ultimately outbid by Comcast. So what will News Corp be like under Lachlan?”
THE GUARDIAN / ANNE DAVIES / SEP 26
Partisans remain sharply divided about the news media
82% of Democrats say “media criticism of political leaders keeps them from doing things they shouldn’t,” vs. 38% of Republicans.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER / JEFFREY GOTTFRIED, GALEN STOCKING, AND ELIZABETH GRIECO / SEP 25
U.K. newspapers are demanding a tax on Facebook and Google to pay for news
“It also called on the government to introduce a tax credit system, similar to that used to encourage investment in the British film industry, which would allow newspapers to claim a cash rebate for investment in areas such as investigative journalism.”
THE GUARDIAN / JIM WATERSON / SEP 25
How BBC Africa verified a gruesome video
“After weeks of denying that the video showed members of the Cameroonian army, the government changed its tune in August and announced that seven members of the military had been arrested and were under investigation for the killings.”
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW / MATHEW INGRAM / SEP 25
Local and national newspapers in Ireland call on the Irish Government to slash the levy on newspapers
“Currently consumers pay a reduced 9 per cent VAT rate for newspapers in Ireland, but the campaign is pressing the government to use part of its 2019 budget to reduce the rate down to 5 per cent. It has also asked for Ireland’s draconian defamation laws to be reformed ‘to ensure that the stories that need to be told, are told’, according to a spokesperson.”
PRESSGAZETTE / DOROTHY MUSARIRI / SEP 25
How BBC Africa used Google Street View, Facebook profiles, and sundials to dispel the Cameroon military’s “fake news”
“In August, there was a sudden change in the govt’s position. After weeks of denying that these killings took place in Cameroon, the Minister of Communication announced that 7 members of the military had been arrested and were under investigation.”
TWITTER / BBC AFRICA / SEP 24
Bloomberg Media is trying to turn its Twitter network TicToc into a full-fledged media brand
“Publishers are trying to make social video that gets people to watch for longer periods of time, but they’ve had limited success so far. Three-fourths of videos published in 2017 were less than 2 minutes long, according to Vidyard. TicToc videos tend to run under 70 seconds. TicToc is also honing its format mix to match what people are looking for, but like other publishers, it’s a work in progress.”
DIGIDAY / LUCIA MOSES / SEP 24
Vox Media is expected to miss its revenue goal for this year by more than 15 percent
“One concern for Vox Media, much like other digital media firms, is that revenue from sponsored content isn’t growing as fast as it once did, the people familiar with the matter said.”
WALL STREET JOURNAL / BENJAMIN MULLIN AND AMOL SHARMA / SEP 24
Where are podcasts rolling in money? China’s “pay-for-knowledge” economy
“Podcasts with subscription fees, interactive Q&A’s online with experts or celebrities and live-streaming lecture-sessions where the audience can participate and pay as they wish are what people in China refer to as the ‘pay-for-knowledge’ economy. It was estimated to be worth $7.3 billion last year, with the bulk of the revenues from paid podcasts, according to a research institute run by China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. The figure is focused only on consumers paying directly for content online and does not include ad-driven podcasts.”
MARKETPLACE / JENNIFER PAK / SEP 24
13 journalists have been killed in Afghanistan in 2018 — the highest number in a single year since the start of the war
“The risk now of going to a bomb site, of getting hit by a second bomb… outweighs the journalistic value in doing that.”
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE / ALLISON JACKSON / SEP 24
The New York Times is suing the FCC for records that might reveal Russian government interference
“The FCC has ‘thrown up a series of roadblocks’ to prevent the Times from obtaining records, which were first requested by Confessore and Dance in June 2017, the plaintiffs said. About half a million comments on the FCC’s proposal were submitted from Russian email accounts, including some sent by automation, the Times alleged, citing data from a Washington Post op-ed by Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.”
BLOOMBERG BNA / JON REID / SEP 24
Press coverage of Trump’s tweet fails to explain what’s wrong with it
“Stories about Trump’s tweets shouldn’t be simply about the fact that he tweeted them. And they shouldn’t just assume that readers can understand what’s so wrong about them. Journalism requires context, here more than ever.”
WHITE HOUSE WATCH / DAN FROOMKIN / SEP 21
How The New York Times, Mother Jones, and others are asking readers to help them cover election misinformation
“What we hope to do in the coming days and weeks is target voters and use Facebook’s own technology and use paid promotion to reach voters.”
POYNTER / DANIEL FUNKE / SEP 21
Old media giants turn to VC for their next act
“Of the traditional media companies that have committed to corporate venturing, there are two distinct strategies: those whose investing seems to be about replacing the historic classifieds section of newspapers and diversifying into a range of consumer-facing marketplaces, and those whose investing is concentrated on capturing an early glimpse (and early equity stake) in startups reshaping media.”
TECHCRUNCH / ERIC PECKHAM / SEP 21
