Wednesday, April 15, 2020 |
| “What felt appropriate two weeks ago may not be appropriate today.” By Sarah Scire. |
|
| Plus: Spotify promotes hosts like musicians, live shows pivot to streaming, and Planet Money covers yet another giant pool of money. By Nicholas Quah. |
The Los Angeles Times’ advertising revenue “has nearly been eliminated” What We’re ReadingVanity Fair / Joe Pompeo
At The New York Times, food, sports, and style staffers are now pitching in to write obits →“Those We’ve Lost to the Coronavirus” was conceived as a solemn echo of “Portraits of Grief,” the long-running series that featured short obituaries of people who died in the 9/11 attacks.Financial Times / Mark Di Stefano and Alex Barker
British newspapers are pretty much all cutting costs →“The Financial Times, Guardian and Telegraph media groups have unveiled significant cost cuts, the latest in a wave of publishers squeezing staff budgets to weather the coronavirus crisis….the Guardian [estimates] a hit of close to £20m over the next six months.”Digiday
How The Daily Beast is accelerating revenue diversification →“Coronavirus content earns approximately $0.77 on the dollar in terms of advertising revenue, however, it performs very well in driving memberships because readers have a hunger for content that not only informs, but offers opinions and insights into the second-order issues coming out of the pandemic.”The Juggernaut / Meena Thiruvengadam
India Abroad has printed its last issue →“India Abroad started in New York in 1970 and billed itself as a ‘window into the Indian American world,’ and that’s exactly what it was for a generation of Indian immigrants and their children.”Adweek / Sara Jerde
Axios released its app today, weeks ahead of the original launch date, due to coronavirus →“Under normal circumstances, Axios is still weeks away from releasing its app. The more time to beta test, the better. But with COVID-19 striking across the U.S., the political and news media company pushed up the timeline, and today the app — for iOS users — goes live.”Vox / Theodore Schleifer
Google’s former CEO hopes the coronavirus makes people more “grateful” for Big Tech →“Some activists are worried that the calls for antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech — which have been rising from both the left and the right in the years leading up to the pandemic — will recede in part due to the big roles that tech companies and its leaders are playing during it.”The Guardian / Jim Waterson
The Daily Telegraph has stopped publishing a Chinese paid-propaganda section →“The long-running China Watch section, funded by the government-controlled China Daily news outlet [and] written by Chinese state journalists, presents relentlessly upbeat views on China’s standing in the world in both print supplements and on a branded section of the Telegraph’s website.” China Watch has run in many major papers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post;
we wrote about it in 2010.Big Local News
A Stanford project offers free-to-embed localized visualizations of COVID-19 data →“…to make it possible for local journalists to easily embed up-to-date visualizations related to the coronavirus pandemic on their sites for readers, and free up time for other important local journalism.”The Verge / Adi Robertson
A court ruled that a photographer can’t sue a website for embedding an Instagram post →“The case stems from a 2016 Mashable post on female photographers, which included Stephanie Sinclair and embedded an image from her Instagram feed. Mashable had previously failed to license the image directly, and Sinclair sued parent company Ziff Davis for using Instagram embedding as a workaround.”Nieman Reports / Brian Friedberg, Gabrielle Lim, and Joan Donovan
Covering voter suppression during the coronavirus pandemic →“A healthy democracy depends on reliable information so people feel like they’re making sound decisions. This information is the responsibility of federal and local governments to disseminate. We rely on journalism to hold these bodies accountable and point out where we are being deceived.”FierceTelecom / Mike Robuck
U.S. broadband usage hit a record high on Easter Sunday →“Easter Sunday downstream consumption hit 16.3 GB per subscriber, which marked an increase of almost 16% over the previous Sunday (14.1 GB) and of 37.9% over Sunday, March 1 (11.8 GB), the latter of which was before COVID-19 social distancing measures started to take effect.”The Wrap / J. Clara Chan
Fortune lays off about 10% of staff →That’s 35 employees worldwide.The New York Times / Taylor Lorenz
The news is making people anxious. You’ll never believe what they’re reading instead. →“Google searches for ‘good news’ spiked a month ago and have only continued to rise…’It’s just been an avalanche of people writing and saying how much they need these stories or they read a story and tears are just streaming down their face,’ said Allison Klein, who runs the Inspired Life blog at The Washington Post. ‘People are constantly saying thank you for showing something that made them not feel terrible.'”TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
YouTube launches a free tool for making short videos →“The YouTube Video Builder, as the new tool is simply called, has been in testing with a small group of customers for months but has been rushed to launch more publicly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, where in-person video shoots are no longer an option, and many small businesses are strapped for cash.”Google / Richard Gingras
Google launches a global Journalism Emergency Relief Fund for local news →The funding is open to news organizations providing original news to local communities and will range from the low thousands of dollars for small hyper-local newsrooms to tens of thousands of dollars for larger newsrooms. You can
apply now through April 29.
Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo
Twitter / Facebook
View email in browser
Unsubscribe
You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org.
Nieman Journalism LabHarvard University1 Francis Ave.Cambridge, MA 02138
Add us to your address book
