Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest

Do Americans really not support “core journalism values”? It all depends on your definitions (and the questions you ask)

Debating methodology may be boring, but a poorly structured study can warp how journalists think about their audiences. By Joshua Benton.

Covid-19 accelerated the media’s reporting on early, drafty scientific research (for better and for worse)

More than 25% of Covid-19 preprints have featured in at least one news article, researchers found, and almost 100% of Covid-19 preprints were tweeted about at least twice. By Jonathon Alexis Coates.
Facebook is starting a Substack competitor
Here’s how to turn your Gmail into Google Reader, kind of
What We’re Reading
Nieman Lab / Laura Hazard Owen
We want to know: What was the last news subscription you canceled, and why? →
Nieman Lab is trying to understand what makes people cancel their news subscriptions. While we ask for your name and email so that we know you’re a real person and so that we can get in touch with you if we need to, you’ll be kept fully anonymous (unless you specify otherwise) in our upcoming story on which publications people are breaking ties with.
Native American Journalists Association
The Native American Journalists Association demands Gannett address pay disparities in its newsrooms →
“Where Gannett management exploits workers while paying exorbitant amounts to their executives and shareholders, NAJA calls on journalism organizations engaged in funding special projects, providing newsroom resources in the form of grants, as well as subscribers, to immediately divest from Gannett outlets until employees of color are treated equally and fairly. A failure to do so would only embolden newsrooms to continue these practices without fear of repercussion.”
Poynter / Angela Fu
A year after ratifying their first contracts, three news unions say they face less uncertainty →
“The contracts came with clear tangible perks — raises of at least 2% and established salary floors. But the decreased fear of losing a job was one major, if less outwardly obvious, benefit. Prior to ratifying their contracts, employees at the three newsrooms had worked at will, and their companies had the power to terminate them without advance notice.”
BuzzFeed News / Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman
As India faces a Covid-19 crisis, Facebook temporarily hid posts with #ResignModi →
“This appears to be the first time that Facebook has blocked or hidden calls for the resignation of a democratically elected world leader and goes against CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s stated preference of leaving content up whenever possible. The ban seems antithetical to the principles of a platform that was once celebrated for its role in perpetuating the Arab Spring, which led to a wave of democratic revolts that toppled Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and the autocratic rulers of several other countries in the region.”
The Drift / Rozina Ali
The ISIS Beat: Why “Caliphate” and everyone else got it wrong →
“The acknowledgement that something went wrong is commendable, but the core issue with Caliphate isn’t just that a lying source may have misled overeager journalists. Rather, the controversy, and indeed even the proposition that a “terrorism editor” would have resolved the problem, points to a deeper flaw in the way media has long covered extremism: divorced from the local and historical contexts that have fueled its rise.”
Phoenix New Times / Josh Kelety
Why are so many journalists leaving the Arizona Republic? →
“Some employees have moved on to jobs at other media outlets, including top-tier publications: reporter Angel Mendoza is now a social media editor for the Washington Post, for example, and education reporter Lily Altavena went to the Detroit Free Press. Why others left the paper isn’t as clear. Insiders cite factors such as low pay, burnout, a toxic work environment created by the paper’s executive editor, Greg Burton, gender and race-based pay disparities, and management’s allegedly superficial commitment to diversifying its staff and supporting women and people of color in the newsroom.”
Vox / Terry Nguyen
How subscriptions took over our lives →
“Today’s subscription landscape might be better divided not into content and products, but into one category of content and products the shopper thinks of as utilities and another that they consider emotional or moral investments.”
The Verge / Sean Hollister
Would you pay $30 a month for a faster web browser that eats less battery? →
There’s a startup for that. Mighty is offering a $30-a-month web browser that lives in the cloud. “Instead of your own physical computer interacting with each website, you stream a remote web browser instead, one that lives on a powerful computer many miles away with its own 1,000Mbps connection to the internet.”
Wall Street Journal
WSJ.com turns 25 →
Behold the screenshots.
WSJ / Benjamin Mullin and Miriam Gottfried
Verizon is exploring a sale of its media assets, including parts of Yahoo and AOL →
“The business, which also includes Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail as well as news sites TechCrunch and Engadget, generated $7 billion of revenue in 2020, down 5.6% from the previous year due to a sharp advertising pullback during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.”