Tuesday, October 24, 2023 |
| COVID-19 wasn’t the most common issue that workshop participants brought up. Neither was politics. What was? Consumer fraud. By Madeleine Bair. |
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| “This would sustain community radio and enhance its role as a vital source of alternative voices, diverse perspectives, and local engagement.” By Sisanda Nkoala, Blessing Makwambeni and Trust Matsilele. |
What We’re ReadingTechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Pebble, the Twitter alternative previously known as T2, is shutting down →“The would-be X rival had grown a small but engaged community on its microblogging service that aimed to dupe Twitter’s features, from its verification systems to functionality like DMs. But the company says they’ve run out of time to make Pebble happen — the app maxed out at 3,000 daily active users, out of 20,000 registered users. That daily user figure fell to 1,000 daily users following its rebranding from T2.”Outlier Media / Outlier Staff
How Outlier Media does — and does not — cover global conflict →“…We are going to keep our scope limited. We can respond to questions and concerns from metro Detroiters. We can amplify local events — be they protests, relief efforts, community building or policy changes. We may also be called upon to report on the effects of this conflict on residents and their families here and abroad.”Wall Street Journal / Salvador Rodriguez and Meghan Bobrowsky
Meta’s Threads still lags behind Musk’s X, but platform is growing again →“Usage on Threads increased 13% during the week of Oct. 9 compared with the previous three-week average, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. X saw an approximate 3% increase that week compared with the prior three-week average…Threads’ U.S. daily user base of 1.4 million, a figure closely followed by advertisers, is still far behind X’s 29 million, according to Sensor Tower.”Pew Research Center / Naomi Forman-Katz
Americans are following the news less closely than they used to →“A rising share of Americans say they follow the news only now and then. While 12% of adults said this in 2016, that figure increased to 19% by 2022. And while 5% of adults said in 2016 that they hardly ever follow the news, 9% said the same last year.”NPR / David Folkenflik
News outlets backtrack on Gaza blast after relying on Hamas as key source →“The initial coverage of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week offers a fresh reminder of how hard it can be to get the news right — and what happens when it goes awry. The list of those news organizations that fell short is long and illustrious, including The New York Times, the BBC, Reuters, The Associated Press and more.” (Also see
this from CNN’s Reliable Sources.)Washington Post / Drew Harwell
Violent videos and “brutal voyeurism” are redefining modern war →“It’s like there are suddenly many more movie theaters in town, and some of them are much more friendly toward snuff films.”National Post / Anja Karadeglija
Canadian broadcasters ask government to make Apple pay news outlets under Online News Act →“A group representing Canadian private TV and radio broadcasters is asking the Liberal government to include Apple in legislation that would force Google and Meta to share revenues with news publishers.”Substack / The Handbasket / Marisa Kabas
Women staffers of Jann Wenner’s Rolling Stone get their turn to speak →“There was a significant attitude that somehow trickled down from the top at Rolling Stone that said, nope, she is a copy editor and she’s a woman. So we’re not gonna bother with her. And that attitude, if I had stayed, could have destroyed my career.”International News Media Association / Matt Lindsay
Keep it simple, sometimes: Embracing complexity often benefits news companies →“Complexity has a high return on investment (ROI) when it comes to the personalisation of customer experiences and relationships. Personalization of content recommendations, acquisition offers, and retention campaigns supported by analytics that provide propensity scores for subscription likelihood, churn risk, and healthy engagement levels are examples of when complexity is justified.”The Present Age / Parker Molloy
The New York Times needs to do something about its headlines →“Reporters and news organizations should write headlines, tweets, and push notifications as though they’re the only part of a story people will see. Often, they are.”Futurism / Victor Tangermann
It looks like Twitter is in even deeper financial trouble than we thought →“This is a drop we have not seen before for any major advertising platform,” Ruben Schreurs, Ebiquity’s chief strategy officer, told [Insider].”Science
A journal editor was fired for retweeting an article by The Onion about the Israel-Hamas war →“Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.”TechCrunch / Aisha Malik
TikTok is testing 15-minute videos →“The change puts TikTok in even more direct competition with YouTube. The move indicates that TikTok is looking to attract longer-form video creators who normally post content on YouTube. In the past, TikTok was seen as the platform for short-form content, while YouTube was seen as the home for long-form content. The past few years have blurred the lines between the two companies as TikTok embraces longer videos and YouTube adopts shorter videos with Shorts.”International News Media Association / Greg Piechota
How Germany’s BildPlus became one of the most successful news subscription products in Europe →“Bild chartered planes to fly subscribers to World Cup matches, offered tickets to otherwise sold-out Rolling Stones concerts…Over time, Bild productized this with ongoing sweepstakes and contests, including a slot machine readers can play every day.”The Daily Beast / Lachlan Cartwright and Justin Baragona
The Messenger is “out of money,” its president reportedly said →“Staffers have also fumed about management tightly guarding access to the site’s Chartbeat, which provides data and analytics on online traffic. According to people familiar with the matter, only senior editors have the ability to see the data, on orders of Finkelstein, prompting concerns that traffic is struggling and ad revenue is tanking, especially since the site still largely relies on low-paying programmatic advertising.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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