Archives: 2018

Laura Hazard OwenMarch 16, 2018
Could students’ media literacy be compared across countries, like math scores?
Plus: YouTube’s sad reliance on Wikipedia, a problem with Pinterest, and how countries around the world are fighting misinformation.
Christine SchmidtMarch 15, 2018
Here’s how to make VR content that actually helps users empathize and take action
Shan WangMarch 15, 2018
The Join the Beat project wants to tease out better ways of working with an audience directly and regularly on stories
“We want to find people who recognize the potential of the audience, and are looking to capitalize on this potential and pull together a learning group to try some things and see what emerges.”
Rasmus Kleis NielsenMarch 15, 2018
Soft power — not government censorship — is the key to fighting disinformation and “fake news”
“For a soft power approach to disinformation to work, it is critical that all stakeholders do in fact work together…If it fails, cruder responses may be the only ones left. But let’s hope not.”
Shan WangMarch 14, 2018
The New York Times has shut down its customizable keyword email alerts feature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Laura Hazard OwenMarch 14, 2018
It’s mostly older people who watch TV news. Can Netflix and Facebook change that?
Facebook and Netflix are reportedly pushing into hard news video.
Laura Hazard OwenMarch 14, 2018
The WikiTribune Way: What it’s like to run a news site with a “neutral point of view”
“It is a product for people of good will — which I know sounds ridiculously naive, but so far it’s working quite well.”
Nicholas QuahMarch 13, 2018
Enough with the “round-robin hot takes”: Techmeme tries a new kind of aggregation show
Plus: Continued steady, unsexy growth for podcasts, The New York Times tries windowing with Caliphate, and in-car podcast listening is growing while audiobook listening stays flat.
Ricardo BiltonMarch 12, 2018
The New York Times will experiment with giving subscribers early access to its first documentary podcast series
Shan WangMarch 12, 2018
This site explains local issues to people who feel guilty they don’t know them well
“If we can cultivate this community of conscientious, civically engaged people, we know they’re also looking for ways to take action.”
Joshua BentonMarch 12, 2018
The ❤️ of the matter: Here are too many words about Farhad Manjoo’s Twitter habits (and some cool charts)
The appeal of Twitter for reporters is well known, but it’s worth spelling out: The benefits we get from it, real as they are, come at the cost of constant partial attention, all day and all night.
Ricardo BiltonMarch 12, 2018
Reuters’ new automation tool wants to help reporters spot the hidden stories in their data (but won’t take their jobs)
With Lynx Insights, Reuters wants to marry the data-crunching skills of machines with the editorial judgment of human reporters.
Ken DoctorMarch 9, 2018
Newsonomics: Is Tronc due for a crash? And a few other questions about this busy week in the news business
Plus: Digital First’s owner gets sued for alleged bad behavior, The Athletic looks to get huge, and Advance newspapers start poking at paywalls.
Shan WangMarch 9, 2018
What do Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh have in common? They’re both flagged by Chinese censors
They’re just a few of countless names, codewords, memes, and phrases that have been blocked. Weiboscope, a project out of the University of Hong Kong, since 2011 has tracked deleted posts on Weibo, collecting a substantial dataset of the types of terms and content that triggers censors.
Laura Hazard OwenMarch 9, 2018
Fear, surprise, disgust: Fake news spreads faster than some real news on Twitter
Plus: A big overview of all the research that we have so far.
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