How college students can help save local news
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022
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How college students can help save local newsPartnerships are key ways to sustain local news in places where news coverage is diminishing or critical issues are going underreported. By Lara Salahi Christina Smith. |
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Want to reach skeptics? Researchers suggest leaving the term “climate change” out of some news coverageAn experiment finds small changes in framing and word choice can elicit significant changes in how science skeptics engage with news coverage of climate change. By Denise-Marie Ordway. |
What We’re Reading
The Verge / Richard Lawler
The TweetDeck Mac app will go away on July 1st →
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
The Washington Post / Margaret Sullivan
Why the press will never have another Watergate moment →
“Fifty years ago, the nation was gripped by media coverage of Nixon's crimes — and there was no Fox News to tell it to look away.”
Press Gazette / Bron Maher
How the News Revenue Hub used blood-bank expertise to help local publishers raise $61 million →
“It's evolved into this real-time learning laboratory where we not only help them build membership programs…we help them optimize their site so that it's a lead generation engine. And they're getting more and more people into their email list because that's the engine through which they convert to membership.”
Press Gazette / Andrew Kersley
An NPR exec denies accusations of a “catastrophic” staff exodus →
“Earlier this year, the US non-profit broadcaster was hit by a spate of resignations of senior talent including Audie Cornish, the long-term host of flagship news programme All Things Considered, Noel King of Morning Edition and Lulu Garcia-Navarro of Weekend Edition…’I think we used to have a 2% rate of people leaving [annually], now it's something like 5%, and it's never gone beyond 7%.'”
The Guardian / Michael Savage
A group of Afghan journalists is suing the U.K. over a broken promise to let them move there →
“Members of the group told the Observer they had worked with British media, reporting on operations against the Taliban, programmes to rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure, the rights of women and the fight against the drugs trade. They said that since the Taliban's takeover, they had received warnings that they were being targeted.”
The Guardian / Kate Lyons
Pacific journalists have been blocked from asking questions of China’s foreign minister on his foreign tour →
“At each stop, Wang [Yi] has signed bilateral deals but he is yet to take a single question from a Pacific journalist, who are instructed at the beginning of the press conferences that no questions will be permitted.”
The Guardian / Dani Anguiano
That other American tradition: After a mass shooting, the media comes to town →
“They fill up hotel rooms, make sometimes small and traumatized communities feel busier than ever and at times create traffic around memorial sites. In Uvalde, a small Latino community of 16,000 in south-west Texas, residents welcomed the sudden surge of journalists as a sign of support, but were also utterly overwhelmed.”
The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin
Substack has stopped trying to raise money from investors →
“Substack has told investors that it had revenue of about $9 million in 2021, the people with knowledge of the fund-raising talks said, meaning that the discussions valued the company at a hefty premium relative to its financial results. Such a high valuation for a company with relatively small revenue was more common in the latter months of 2021, when the stock market was booming and venture firms were more bullish on start-ups.”
The New York Times / Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin
Forbes is scrapping its plan to go public via SPAC →
“SPACs, also known as blank-check firms, are publicly traded shell companies that raise money with the express purpose of taking a private firm public. Investor enthusiasm around blank-check companies peaked early last year but deflated after a number of SPACs failed to live up to their promises to investors.”
Reuters / Nate Raymond
PACER searches will (soon? eventually?) be free for non-commercial users →
“Federal judiciary policymakers have approved a plan to eliminate costly fees for online docket searches amid debate in Congress about whether to force the court system to make its PACER electronic court record system free for the general public…How long that will take is unclear.”
Bloomberglaw
The Supreme Court has blocked Texas’ attempt to ban banning on social media →
“The tech groups…said the measure would unconstitutionally bar platforms from removing neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan screeds or Russian propaganda about its invasion of Ukraine…An unusual collection of justices dissented: liberal Elena Kagan and conservatives Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.”
Axios / Kerry Flynn
HuffPost turned profitable after BuzzFeed’s acquisition →
“BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti had said HuffPost’s losses exceeded $20 million in 2020 and that it was on a similar trajectory for 2021. But Peretti quickly changed that through dramatic cuts and new investments.”
The New Yorker / Rachel Monroe
How the staff of Uvalde’s local paper covered the worst day of their lives →
“My idea still is, someone ran in there and he's hiding…I thought, They're going to find him and lead him out the back in handcuffs. A perfect photo of him being caught and all the kids safe. That's what I was waiting for.”
CNN / Joan Biskupic
The Supreme Court’s leak investigation is intensifying →
“…taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits, three sources with knowledge of the efforts have told CNN. Some clerks are apparently so alarmed over the moves, particularly the sudden requests for private cell data, that they have begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel. The court’s moves are unprecedented…”
Sky News / Andy Hayes
Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff is the latest journalist to be killed in Ukraine →
“Leclerc-Imhoff, who worked for 24-hour news channel BFMTV, was on the road to Lysychansk near the eastern city of Severodonetsk in Luhansk, Ukraine, when the strike happened. BFMTV said the 32-year-old reporter was covering the humanitarian operation in an armoured vehicle and was the ‘victim of shrapnel.'”
The Washington Post / Gerrit De Vynck
How Web3 is Going Just Great became one of crypto’s leading critics →
“[Molly] White documents case after case of crypto malfeasance: investments that turn out to be scams, poorly-run projects that collapse under mismanagement and hacks that drain supporters' money…White has led a small but scrappy group of skeptics pushing the other way whose warnings have seemed vindicated by the cratering in recent weeks of cryptocurrency prices.”
The Guardian / Matthew Cantor
“No way to prevent this”: Why The Onion’s gun violence headline is so devastating →
“This week, however, the site went for the jugular. Normally, the piece appears as the site's lead story after an attack. But after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 21, the Onion filled every slot on its homepage with different iterations of the story, making its point all the more grim.”
The New York Times / David Yaffe-Bellany
The Guardian / Jim Waterson
The FT is rebranding its How To Spend It magazine as HTSI because of “changing times” →
“…because spending big is no longer seen as a positive quality. The luxury magazine, packaged with the FT's Weekend edition, is stuffed with expensive adverts for high-end watches, safaris, and yachts aimed at its jet-set wealthy readership — making it a money-spinner for the newspaper.”
Press Gazette / Bron Maher
The Economist is considering a paywall for its podcasts →
“…how it came to be that a publication known for its lack of bylines made it big in a medium all about personalities…[flagship podcast] The Intelligence gets approximately 350,000 downloads an episode. In a month, Prideaux said the podcast can now reach as many as two million listeners.”
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