Monday, November 22, 2021 |
| This time it’s Lee Enterprises in the cross-hairs. Adding it to its empire would leave two American local newspaper giants — Gannett and Alden — and everyone else far behind. By Joshua Benton. |
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| This subtle form of misinformation, which scholars have called “fossil fuel solutionism,” involves cherry-picking data and talking points. By Jill Hopke. |
What We’re ReadingPress Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Thirty staffers from Ukraine’s Kyiv Post are starting own outlet after their mass firing →“The English-language Kyiv Independent was announced on Monday with the launch of a crowdfunding Patreon page, which says the new title will rely firstly on readers and donors before adding commercial activities later down the line. It said: ‘We are not backed by a rich owner or an oligarch.'”The New York Times / Marc Tracy
WNYC has retracted four articles on its news site, Gothamist, and moved their writer →“‘After publishing this story, WNYC found it contained unattributed words or phrases,’ each note said. ‘We have decided to retract this article and are investigating the editing process that led to this mistake.'”Search Engine Land / Henry Powderly
Twitter is phasing out support for AMP, another nail in its coffin →“Previously, if a mobile user clicked on a link to your site, Twitter would redirect them to the AMP version of that page if an AMP version was available. Now, that won’t happen and users will just load the native mobile/responsive version of your content…Looking at our own data, we’ve seen sharp Twitter referral declines since August. But, traffic completely bottomed out in November suggesting the rollout is complete.”Digiday / Max Willens
The Philadelphia Inquirer bets on live streaming video sports coverage →Local newspapers seem to get interested in live video to compete with TV every few years — hasn’t worked out yet. “‘You have to have more than text-based content,’ Huang added. ‘We have to establish products, both based on all of our content and creating [new] content, that goes across multiple platforms.'”Financial Times / Anna Nicolaou
“What does Silicon Valley do on the weekend?”: The Information launches a lifestyle edition →It’s also announcing that it has 225,000 active users — but note that “active users” includes both people who pay $400 a year for a subscription figure and people who subscribe to a free email newsletter. Bloomberg / Gerry Smith and Lucas Shaw
As it seeks a sale and new subscribers, The Athletic has laid off staff and scrapped some podcasts and a documentary unit →“On a day last week, none of The Athletic’s shows rank among the top 25 sports podcasts, according to PodCharts. Meanwhile, three competitors — ESPN, The Ringer and Barstool Sports — had more than one show in the top 25.”Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Thomson Reuters signed a U.K. government pledge to support U.K. armed forces; a backlash made them take it back →“Thomson Reuters said it had decided to withdraw to protect the ‘safety and neutrality’ of Reuters journalists. The news agency’s staff feared that if it was seen as being supportive of the British armed forces or foreign policy it could put reporters working in certain countries, where British soldiers are not seen as a force for good, at risk. “The Guardian / Tory Shepherd
Adele was going to give one interview to an Australian news outlet about her new album. The interviewer forgot to listen to the album. →“The host of Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise, Matt Doran, and a crew flew to London for the chat…After Doran conceded during the interview that he had only heard one track from her latest work, 30, the interview was canned. Sony is refusing to release the footage. Doran said he simply missed the email that contained a preview of the album.”the Guardian / Jim Waterson
The U.K. culture secretary, currently negotiating the BBC’s funding levels, has thoughts about how it covers Boris Johnson →“Would she agree with me it is highly inappropriate for a government minister overseeing licence negotiations to seek to influence editorial decisions, including how the prime minister was interviewed, and using the threat of reducing BBC licence funding while doing so?”Digiday / Sara Guaglione
Why publishers are introducing (and growing) product box programs →“Why do publishers find product boxes a worthwhile investment? It can be a tactile way for a media company to engage with people, show off its editorial curation abilities with products that people want to try out (and for less money — most boxes can be bought at a price lower than the total value of the products inside), deepen relationships with advertisers and diversify its e-commerce offerings.”Protocol - The people, power and politics of tech / Issie Lapowsky
Facebook and Apple’s privacy war is thwarting voter turnout efforts →A window into the impact of Apple’s user tracking restrictions: “the cost of driving [iOS users] to the website shot up to an average of $424 per conversion — more than three times what Musapatike said she would have expected during an off-year election….Before the iOS change, more than 60% of the group’s conversion ads on Facebook were delivered to iOS devices. After the privacy update, that figure was just under 37%.”The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum
A judge has blocked The New York Times’ coverage of Project Veritas →“The order raised immediate concerns among First Amendment advocates, who called it a violation of basic constitutional protections for journalists, a viewpoint echoed by The Times. Project Veritas issued a statement in support of the order, arguing that it did not amount to a significant imposition on the newspaper’s rights.”The Guardian / Jim Waterson
An editor switch at the Daily Mail likely ends one of Fleet Street’s most bitter rivalries →“Often to the bafflement of readers, it saw the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday — owned by the same company and with many of the same readers — commit substantial resources to rubbishing the other’s stories…This hotchpotch of conflicting material would then appear on MailOnline, which was busy developing its own global audience driven by celebrity stories on its infamous ‘sidebar of shame.'”Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt
Scotland is considering a grants program to support a “strong and vibrant news sector” →“The working group described their proposed Scottish Public Interest Journalism Institute as a high-profile independent body with a remit covering fundraising, research, grant-making, training, diversity and media literacy. Its aim would be to co-ordinate initiatives to develop public interest journalism for Scotland and its grant funding would aim to support a ‘diverse, pluralistic and sustainable’ sector.”The New York Times / Erin Griffith and Erin Woo
How Elizabeth Holmes soured the media on Silicon Valley →“The discovery that Ms. Holmes, the tech industry’s most celebrated female entrepreneur, was misdirecting the world about her company marked a turning point in the tech press, ending a decade-long run of largely positive coverage. Reporters cringed over glowing articles they had written about tech companies that turned out to have stretched the truth, glossed over the negative consequences of their products or generally abused the trust they had enjoyed with the public.”Hartford Courant / Stephen Singer
Andrew Julien is the new executive editor of the New York Daily News →The Hartford Courant editor and publisher “has been overseeing the Daily News editorial department on an interim basis since September and will formally take over Monday as executive editor.”The New York Times / Ben Smith
The conservative founders of The Dispatch have quit Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 special →“Mr. Goldberg said that he and Mr. Hayes stayed on at Fox News as long they did because of a sense from conversations at Fox that, after Mr. Trump’s defeat, the network would try to recover some of its independence and, as he put it, ‘right the ship.'”
Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo
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