Forget national politics for a sec. A new site brings a local lens to criminal justice and voting rights.
 |
Monday, February 28, 2022
 |
Forget national politics for a sec. A new site brings a local lens to criminal justice and voting rights."Issues that seem really intractable at the national level often aren’t at the local level. That's why we think there’s a lot of opportunity for coverage there.” By Sarah Scire. |
 |
AP cancels auction of overcrowded migrant boat NFT after outcryThe AP’s NFT marketplace is still up; a “commemorative NFT” by Anja Niedringhaus, the German AP photojournalist who was killed in Afghanistan in 2014, is being resold for $1.5 million. By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Puck / Dylan Byers
Report: The New York Times’ Dean Baquet will step aside for Joe Kahn “in the coming months” →
“The passing of the editorial torch, which we've been anticipating since the fall, will surprise exactly no one at the paper of record…Kahn is so instrumental to the editorial leadership and such a well-known quantity that, even at a moment when nearly every news organization is putting a premium on diversity, no one is likely to balk at the appointment of a 57-year-old, Harvard-educated white man to the top of the Times masthead.”
9to5Mac / José Adorno
Twitter is prepping a way to tweet only at your inner “Circle” →
“For at least the past eight months, Twitter has been developing an Instagram-like Close Friends feature for its platform…the tweets look the same, although a green bar will show that this isn't an ordinary tweet but one from Circle — the same way Twitter already does with Super Follows subscribers.”
WAN-IFRA / Neha Gupta
Behind BloombergQuint’s successful subscription business →
“BQ found that 80 percent of its users visited the website only once. The brand chases a magic number of five and refers to people who visit the website 2-3 times a month as potential loyalists…’The idea is to convert those potential loyalists into loyalists through the RFM model — recency, frequency, monetary value,’ said Khanna.”
Press Gazette / William Turvill
How Canada's Online News Act will differ from Australia's news media bargaining code →
“The Online News Act, like Australia's code, will compel Google and Meta to agree licensing deals for the online content of broadcasters as well as written news publishers. Previously, it was unclear whether broadcasters would be included…Press Gazette previously reported that Canadian news publishers expected the law to result in the tech giants paying them up to CA$150m a year.”
The Washington Post / Jeremy Barr
Jennifer Griffin keeps fact-checking her Fox News colleagues on Ukraine →
“Griffin has also used her reporting appearances on Fox News programs to push back on some of the assertions made by her colleagues, particularly those who host opinion programs. In doing so, Griffin has performed an exercise in real-time, intra-network fact-checking that is unusual on a television news channel, and particularly at Fox News, which has long valued internal harmony.”
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
This rural news startup has two reporters and an editor with no broadband — and it’s making an impact →
“‘It was depressing,’ Yancey said [of his old job at a Lee newspaper]. ‘The job I had was great, but all around me, things were collapsing. It was like living in a grand old mansion with the roof falling in.'”
The Guardian / David Rozado, Musa al-Gharbi, and Jamin Halberstadt
Use of “sexist” and “racist” in The New York Times increased over 400% since 2012. Why? →
“Analyzing 27m news articles published in 47 popular news media outlets between 1970 and 2019, we find that there was a rapid uptick in the use of words related to prejudice and discrimination beginning in the early 2010s. These shifts occurred in left- and right-leaning media alike…we found that the major shifts observed in print media seem to have been mirrored in television news coverage as well.”
The Guardian / Kari Paul
Can Trump’s “free speech haven” Truth Social overcome its rocky start? →
“To observers, the delay and technological challenges did not come as a surprise. ‘Since Trump wants to run for office again, the timeline of the app is driven by political objectives — not by readiness of the platform,’ said Jennifer Grygiel, a professor of communications at Syracuse University.”
The New York Times / Alex Vadukul
The lit mag of the moment is The Drift →
“The Drift's predecessors include, among many others, Partisan Review, The Paris Review, Commentary and Dissent, whose co-founder Irving Howe once said, ‘When intellectuals can do nothing else, they start a magazine.'”
Poynter / Rick Edmonds
Gannett is gaining a lot of digital subscribers, but at the cost of giant discounts →
“Digital-only subscriptions had grown to 1.6 million by the end of the year, and roughly a third of its revenues came from various digital ventures….Gannett's surge appears to be driven by deeply discounted introductory rates. Revenues did not grow nearly as much year-to-year as the number of subscriptions — 26% vs. 49%. Average revenue per subscription is a bit more than $60 per year.”
The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum and Katie Robertson
Cable news covers Ukraine with on-the-ground reporting and in-studio rhetoric →
“Some partisan accounts on Twitter pointed out the jarring nature of an Applebee's commercial, with a jingle about ‘a little bit of chicken fried,’ that aired during CNN's coverage. (Applebee's said later that it had contacted CNN to pause its advertising on the network; "it never should have aired," a representative for the restaurant chain said.)”
Columbia Journalism Review / Steve Waldman
Our local-news situation is even worse than we think →
“As reporting staffs have shrunk, the American population has grown. Since 2004, the number of newspaper newsroom staff per 100,000 people — a measure we might call ‘coverage density’ — has dropped by a staggering 62 percent. This shows statistically what we knew anecdotally: reporters are spread far thinner than they used to be.”
Axios / Mike Allen and Sara Fischer
CNN is expected to refocus on hard news under new boss Chris Licht →
“Jeff Zucker’s successor at the CNN helm will be Licht — showrunner of ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ and a popular, pioneering producer who knows his way around America’s top control rooms…Axios is told that Licht and [Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David] Zaslav share a view that CNN was chasing prime-time ratings at the expense of the brand.”
The Washington Post / Sarah Ellison and Travis M. Andrews
Don’t call Ukraine more “civilized” than other war zones →
“In one notable CBS News segment, senior foreign correspondent Charlie D'Agata, reporting from Kyiv, said Friday that Ukraine ‘isn't a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city, where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen.'”
Android Central / Jay Bonggolto
TikTok is taking aim at YouTube with longer 10-minute video uploads →
“It’s not the first time, though, that TikTok has extended the video limits for users. In July of last year, the platform rolled out the ability to create videos up to three minutes, a significant increase from only 60 seconds previously.”
The Markup / Alfred Ng and Jon Keegan
Despite Apple and Google’s efforts, it’s still easy for app developers to sell your location data →
“‘The challenge, and this is a challenge with data brokers in general, is that you're playing whack-a-mole, where these companies have many different vectors through which they get people's sensitive information,’ Justin Sherman, a cyber policy fellow at the Duke Technology Policy Lab, said.”
Axios / Sara Fischer
Axios taps Jamie Stockwell as its executive editor for local news →
“Stockwell will oversee Axios’ plan to expand its coverage to 25 local cities by the summer, and 50 by the end of 2023. Eventually, it hopes to be in over 100 cities and every state.”
Washington Post / Rachel Lerman
You can track the invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps →
"In the old days, we would have relied on a reporter to show us what was happening on the ground. Today, you can open Google Maps and see people fleeing Kyiv."
The Verge / Richard Lawler
Tumblr will let you ditch its terrible ads for $4.99 a month →
“Founder David Karp was opposed to allowing advertising, and once the company bent on that principle, it's been plagued by tacky, cheap-looking advertisements that seemed to flood the feed and often make little to no sense. But now, anyone who still uses Tumblr can have the ad-free version of the site back — if they pay up.”
No comments