Wednesday, December 18, 2024 |
| A news board game, a “power” read-it-later app, journalist-designed jewelry, so many books, and more. By Nieman Lab Staff. |
| “We can’t be intimidated by the attacks that are coming. We have to do the rigorous accountability journalism that pisses off people in power.” By Susan Chira. |
| “When left-brain thinkers dominate, media products face a value proposition crisis — funnels and operations are optimized, but creativity is stifled.” By Ritvvij Parrikh. |
| “Concurrent challenges create a seemingly impossible situation.” By Paul Cheung. |
| “Every item that could be stripped out because it contained enough value to stand on its own was, sometimes by the very news organizations themselves.” By Sam Cholke. |
| “Some potential donors will be scared of retribution. Some won’t be happy with their investment. Some will just be tired. Some will instead send their money to things like Trump’s inauguration party.” By Andrew Donohue. |
| “The internet itself is now flooded with careless content, AI-generated or otherwise, and the effort to sift through it doesn’t pay off like it used to.” By Joanne McNeil. |
| “It’s not enough to just drop something into the laps of local teams and hope they’ll use it exactly as-is.” By Emma Carew Grovum. |
| “We need mission-based funding — financial support that reflects our mission, not one that forces us to conform to commercial models that don’t work for us.” By Lela Savic. |
| “Audiences need to ‘try before they buy.'” By Sarah Marshall. |
| “What’s the point of the exercise here? Is it to inform people, or to show off what we know and how sophisticated we sound?” By Matt Waite. |
| “To ensure state funding includes effective safeguards, several countries have developed schemes that could serve as potential best practices.” By Elena Herrero-Beaumont. |
| “Audience engagement has been narrowly tackled by our industry for far too long, often treated as a side initiative rather than a central purpose of journalism.” By Dmitry Shishkin. |
| “Any time you hear about publishers using AI to produce journalism as if it’s factory output, that’s when you know they’ll have a bad year ahead.” By Thomas Baekdal. |
| “Far too many in this country were uninformed, misinformed, or simply lied to about the topics that journalism is meant to communicate clearly, truthfully, and widely.” By Damon Krukowski. |
| “For too long, newsrooms have created content based on their own routines, preferences, and platforms, churning out long stories or endless updates without really thinking about what the audience wants — or can keep up with.” By Lynn Walsh. |
What We’re ReadingWashington Post / Erik Wemple
How much abuse can a local newspaper reporter take? →“Those attacks have implications for the newspaper on many fronts, including its morale, its financial viability and its ability to build trust with conservatives in its own circulation area. Yet the events in Lancaster County bear just as heavily on a question that has vexed leaders in journalism in recent decades: Just how should they respond to the frequent, strident and often flimsy attacks from Republican politicians? Should they stick to the industry’s default mode of turning the other cheek? Or should they speak up to challenge the gripes?”The Verge / David Pierce
Flipboard’s Surf app is a big new idea about the future of social →“Surf’s big theory is this: in a decentralized social world, the internet will be less about websites and more about feeds…Surf’s job, in that world, is to help you discover and explore all those feeds. The app can see three kinds of feeds: anything from ActivityPub, which means things like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anything from AT Protocol, which means Bluesky; and any RSS feed…Just imagine a nicely designed, vertically scrolling feed, somewhere between a Twitter timeline and the Apple News homepage.”The New York Times / Adam Liptak and Sapna Maheshwari
Supreme Court to hear TikTok’s challenge to law that could ban it →“In setting aside two hours for the argument, the justices signaled that they viewed the case as presenting questions of exceptional importance…The court did not block the law while the case moves forward, which suggested that it may issue a ruling before the Jan. 19 deadline set by the law. That would mean that the case may be resolved before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.”The Atlantic / Kaitlyn Tiffany
The pro-eating-disorder internet is back →“Most of the large social-media platforms have been aware of this reality for years and have undertaken at least basic measures to address it…X is not only hosting eating-disorder content but actively recommending it in the algorithmically generated ‘For You’ feed, even if people don’t wish to see it”The New York Times / Brooks Barnes
Inside Disney’s decision to settle the Trump suit against ABC News →“Disney executives had anticipated the blowback. But they also determined that they had a flawed case — and that the company could risk damaging press protections for everyone by continuing to fight, as well as hurt the Disney brand…In the worst-cast scenario, Disney concluded, fighting the case could lead to the Supreme Court and become a vehicle for Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the landmark First Amendment decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.”The Verge / Mia Sato
Forbes is cutting ties with freelance writers, citing Google spam policies →“Forbes has an especially wide pool of outside contributors publishing to its site. Many of these writers are legitimate journalists who do fair, in-depth reporting. But there’s also the Forbes contributor network, a group of thousands of marketers, CEOs, and other outside experts who get to publish questionable content under the trusted Forbes name…Google’s spam policies state that the existence of freelancer content in and of itself is not a running afoul of the site reputation abuse policy — it’s only a violation if that content is also designed to take advantage of the site’s ranking signals.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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
