Monday, May 1, 2023 |
| After all, who would news companies rather trust their revenue to than the guy who calls them a “relentless hatestream”? By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re ReadingSemafor / Ben Smith
ABC News execs didn’t realize Nate Silver owns much of FiveThirtyEight’s election forecasting model →“‘They have put very very very little bandwidth into managing 538, and they seem pretty clueless about who-owns-what IP questions,’ one person familiar told Semafor.”Bloomberg / Rachel Metz
Will the debate over the ethics of using AI in news be a short one? →“I think of it as like having another person on the team…If you’re taking sentences or clauses or small fragments of ideas from the large language model — in my view, we’re going to be discussing it for six months — and I guarantee, in two years, it’s not going to matter.”New York / John Herrman
The media bet its future on Facebook. Did it learn from that mistake? →“BuzzFeed was riding a wave created by the social-media companies I was charged with covering. In part because it made sense to us, but also because it was the prevailing wisdom and mood of the place, we covered Facebook and Twitter (and Instagram and Pinterest and Snapchat) like they were the most important companies in the world.”The Verge / Alex Cranz
The best part of ad-supported streaming is what it takes away: choice →“I’ve been watching TV on demand for over 20 years. Well before streaming, I was picking up the whole run of The Sopranos from the college library and making my way through the seasons…But lately, I’ve been using Pluto TV, and I’ve found myself realizing just how relaxing it is to just let go.”The New York Times / Maureen Dowd
Maureen Dowd’s “requiem for the newsroom” →Mark Leibovich: “I can’t think of a profession that relies more on osmosis, and just being around other people, than journalism. There’s a reason they made all those newspaper movies, ‘All the President’s Men,’ ‘Spotlight,’ ‘The Paper.’ There’s a reason people get tours of newsrooms. You don’t want a tour of your local H&R Block office.”The Guardian / Mark Sweney
“The smell of blood in the water”: Where does the Fox News unrest leave the Murdoch succession? →“With Joe Biden running for president 80 is the new 60, and for Rupert 92 is the new 80. He doesn’t look as if he is going anywhere soon.”The New York Times / Noam Scheiber and John Koblin
Speaking of…will a chatbot write the next “Succession”? →“To the mix of computer programmers, marketing copywriters, travel advisers, lawyers, and comic illustrators suddenly alarmed by the rising prowess of generative A.I., one can now add screenwriters.”Press Gazette / Dominic Ponsford
How reader support has allowed the Kyiv Independent to trump oligarch cash →“Early on, [editor Olga] Rudenko said, one of the richest people in Ukraine offered to cover all the title’s expenses and give it editorial freedom. But the team did not want to swap one oligarch owner for another and decided instead to seek funding from their readers. Today the Kyiv Independent has nearly 10,000 supporters paying more than £68,000 per month to support its journalism — far more than the oligarch was offering.”The Verge / Jay Peters
Bluesky is starting to feel like Twitter →“Yes, I know it’s still invite-only. Yes, I know there are only thousands of people on the platform right now. Yes, I know that it’s still missing table-stakes features like video uploads and DMs. Still, I’m starting to feel that Bluesky is where it’s at.”Variety / Todd Spangler
Clubhouse axed more than 50% of its employees in a corporate “reset” →“…as the world has opened up post-Covid, it’s become harder for many people to find their friends on Clubhouse and to fit long conversations into their daily lives. To find its role in the world, the product needs to evolve.”The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
Jerry Springer, TV’s master of trash, and the world he left us →“Cheating spouse reveals. Baby daddy reveals. Teenage stripper reveals. Racists, badasses, and brawlers. Springer, who died Thursday at 79, mined the depths and put what he dredged up on his show. By the best possible reading — the absolute best — Springer’s self-named show was about the aggrieved, the wronged, and the dispossessed, a grungy cohort that television had forever tried to ignore until his ilk came along.”The New York Times / Peter Baker and Katie Robertson
Biden gets a chance to mock Fox News, and gleefully takes it →“And hell, I’d call Fox honest, fair, and truthful. But then I could be sued for defamation.”The New York Times / Natasha Singer
States’ push to protect kids online could remake the internet →“People in Louisiana who visited Pornhub in recent months were met with a surprising new demand. Before they could stream sexually explicit videos, they had to provide proof that they were at least 18…Attempts to impose age restrictions on the internet have faced constitutional challenges in the past.”The Washington Post / Elahe Izadi and Jeremy Barr
How CNN miscast Don Lemon as a morning person →“Don is probably the first person to tell you that he is not an ensemble performer…He needs to be the guy in the spotlight.”The Verge / Emma Roth
Reddit is trying chat rooms again →“The Discord-like channels will live within various subreddits, allowing you to swap between browsing through posts and chatting with other Redditors about a range of topics.”The New York Times / Jacob Bernstein
Time magazine celebrates as web pioneers wonder what’s next →“With the backing of a billionaire, Time can afford to wait out a challenging period in the journalism business, according to the journalist Kara Swisher. ‘It’ll stand as long as he wants it,’ she said at the party.”Press Gazette / Bron Maher
Vice makes a “long-term commitment” to Twitch →“Few news publishers have tried to publish to Twitch — and most attempts so far seem to have failed. But two staffers overseeing the effort at Vice tell Press Gazette the publisher is ‘beyond just the “let’s give it a try” phase’ on Twitch. Having established an audience, its next move is to figure out monetization.”The Guardian / Jim Waterson and Kiran Stacey
Rishi Sunak is under pressure to stop choosing Tories for BBC jobs →“…after Richard Sharp’s resignation prompted criticism the party had undermined the broadcaster by flooding it with cronies. Sharp quit as BBC chair on Friday morning after an investigation concluded he had failed to disclose key information about his relationship with the former prime minister Boris Johnson when applying for the job in 2021. Sharp helped facilitate an £800,000 loan guarantee for Johnson when he was in the running to take over the broadcaster but did not tell the appointments panel.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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