Monday, November 20, 2023 |
| Swinging from an $80 billion valuation to an existential crisis, in less time than it takes to rewatch six seasons of “The Wire”? That’s Tronc-level management. By Joshua Benton. |
|
| “We’re very conscious of trying to hold this large community of people who are really struggling.” By Hanaa' Tameez. |
Nieman Lab now has a WhatsApp Channel What We’re ReadingReuters
Three more Gazan journalists have been killed in the Israeli offensive →“The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the weekend deaths raised to 48 the number of journalists and media workers it had confirmed killed in the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive.” Among the dead:
Bilal Jadallah, general director of Press House-Palestine.Semafor / Max Tani
Twitter’s Linda Yaccarino is betting big on her son to turn its revenue around →“In recent weeks, [son Matt] Madrazo…has been privately introducing himself to influential figures in the political ad world in Washington, D.C. He’s part of what’s essentially a two-man operation to restart X’s political advertising business with the goal of capitalizing on the massive amounts of money that campaigns are about to spend during the 2024 elections.”The Verge / Nilay Patel
Do the Pixel 8’s AI-edited photos have to be labeled as synthetic content on YouTube? →“Google is racing headlong into the AI future, and that means different parts of the company are destined to collide with one another — Search is now generating AI-powered summary results, but flooding the web with AI-generated text is going to make search that much harder, for example. It’s going to be messy and complicated and fascinating all at the same time.”Associated Press
Russia has declared The Moscow Times a “foreign agent” →“The ‘foreign agent’ designation subjects individuals and organizations to increased financial scrutiny and requires any of their public material to prominently include notice of being declared a foreign agent. The label is seen as a pejorative aimed at undermining the designees’ credibility. It was not immediately clear how the move would affect The Moscow Times, which moved its editorial operations out of Russia in 2022…”Bloomberg / Lucas Shaw
Somehow, football keeps growing while the rest of live TV keeps shrinking →“The decline of live TV has decimated viewership of most programs. More than 20 shows that aired on broadcast during the 2012-2013 TV season drew more than 10 million live viewers. Last year? No show did…More people watch football every Saturday and Sunday than watch anything else on TV — even the championship games of other sports.”The Hollywood Reporter / Gary Baum, Ryan Gajewski, and Winston Cho
How TMZ became Hollywood’s grim reaper →“Since breaking Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, TMZ’s singular style of obituary reporting — which has relied on paid informants, known in the trade as “checkbook journalism,” a practice outside the ethical bounds of most mainstream media outlets — keeps the site relevant in the pop-culture conversation. According to those who’ve found themselves in the midst of its buzz saw, it functions as a malignant power that hurts people at their most vulnerable moments.”The Washington Post / Paul Farhi
The Washington Post’s publishing of photos from mass shootings drew mixed reactions →“‘Thank you WP for sharing these images,’ wrote one reader. ‘As disturbing as they are, it is important that the general public sees the physical damage these weapons are capable of producing. Reading and hearing about it has not changed public sentiment, perhaps visual images would.'”The Guardian / Kylie Cheung
A new model for digital media? What Karlie Kloss’s acquisition of i-D means →“In 2006, the then 25-year-old real estate heir Jared Kushner bought the New York Observer — and went on to own it for more than a decade. Almost 20 years later, Kushner’s sister-in-law, the supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss, bought the British fashion publication i-D from Vice Media Group, months after the company filed for bankruptcy.”Press Gazette / Bron Maher
Rupert Murdoch says his son Lachlan is “a believer in the social purpose of journalism” →“The elder Murdoch was speaking at News Corp’s 2023 annual general meeting on Wednesday, his last as co-chairman of the Times, Wall Street Journal and Sun parent company. He has now become chairman emeritus.”Financial Times / Hannah Murphy and Christopher Grimes
X chief Linda Yaccarino resists pressure from advertisers to quit →“Over the weekend, a groundswell of executives and friends of Yaccarino from the advertising industry privately urged her to resign in order to save her reputation, according to three people familiar with the matter. However, she has refused to leave her position, two of the people said, telling those who have called her that she believes in X’s mission and its employees.”The Guardian / Callum Bains
“There is a misconception that if something is on the internet, it will last for ever” →“Giulia Carla Rossi collects the fragile artifacts of our increasingly transient publishing world. She is a curator of digital publications at the British Library. As part of its Emerging Formats project, she works to preserve the new and often experimental ways in which people are telling stories across the web and other digital platforms, preserving the creations that are at risk of being left behind as technology races forward.”The Verge / Victoria Song
Humane’s AI Pin seems to be forgetting what makes a good wearable →“Before you disrupt everything, you have to deeply consider the current cultural norms or no one will wear your wearable…Let me put it this way: In public settings, would you rather yell at your chest to talk to a voice assistant or pull out your phone to look up the information yourself?”The Guardian
Photographer shot dead in fifth journalist killing in Mexico in 2023 →“The body of Ismael Villagómez was found just after midnight Thursday. The newspaper he worked for, the Heraldo de Juarez, said the news photographer was found dead in a car that he had registered to use for work for a ride-hailing app. In Mexico, many journalists take work outside the profession to pay the bills.”The Wall Street Journal / Christopher Mims
How social media is turning into old-fashioned broadcast media →“The transformation of social media into mass media is largely because the rise of TikTok has demonstrated to every social-media company on the planet that people still really like things that can re-create the experience of TV. Advertisers also like things that function like TV, of course — after all, people are never more suggestible than when lulled into a sort of anesthetized mindlessness.”The New York Times / Jenny Vrentas and Kevin Draper
Charissa Thompson’s admitting she fabricated reports has put sideline reporters in a bind →“Andrea Kremer, an Emmy-winning sports journalist who has both reported from the sidelines of N.F.L. games and called them from the broadcast booth, described the damage from Thompson’s comments as ‘profound.’ In particular, she said, it harmed those working as sideline reporters, who are relied on to provide news on things like injury updates during the game and to elicit instant reaction from coaches and players.”The New York Times / Emmanuel Morgan
Helmets off, mics up: NFL players discover the power of podcasts →“The Kelces, whose teams will face off in a rematch on Monday night, are emblematic of the surge of N.F.L. players who have begun hosting podcasts during the season, a surprising development in a league that tends to suppress individuality.”Garbage Day / Ryan Broderick
TikTok teens aren’t stanning Osama bin Laden →“According to screenshots and cached Google data, I’m comfortable saying there were likely around 300-500 unique videos about the letter and, once again, around 25% of what I personally saw were bots or automated accounts or duets. And the largest comment section I’ve seen underneath one of these videos had around 5,000 comments. Now, let’s do this again. Would you, in 2023, give a shit if there were around 5,000 people being offensive on the internet?”The New York Times / Kate Dwyer
Jezebel, the oral history: “There was this riotous sense of fun” →Jia Tolentino: “Somewhere toward the end of my time there, the readership data showed that it was essentially half men and women reading the site. That was one of the things that shaped my writing in a lot of ways — that you could write about women’s lives in a way that would be of broad general interest, and would be about the condition of being human.”Semafor / Max Tani
L.A. Times blocks reporters who signed open letter criticizing Israel from covering Gaza →“Two people with knowledge of the situation told Semafor that staffers who signed the letter have been told by the paper’s management that they will not be allowed to cover the conflict in any way for at least three months.”
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
