The coronavirus traffic bump to news sites is pretty much over already

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

The coronavirus traffic bump to news sites is pretty much over already Audience numbers now look more like a standard busy news week than a global pandemic that’s captured the world’s attention. Coronavirus news fatigue has set in. By Joshua Benton.

The coronavirus crisis will eventually end, but the distributed newsroom is here to stay The newsrooms that will thrive in a post-COVID-19 world will be the ones that embrace the shift to distributed teams. Here’s a guide how. By Tom Trewinnard.

Linking to older stories is usually noble, but for coronavirus, it can be a recipe for a misinformed audience “Through today’s lens, many U.S. coronavirus news stories from January and February seem breezy and untroubled…Many of these stories continue to circulate on social media.” By Dan Gillmor and Kristy Roschke.

The Bloomberg Way appears to have gone astray when it killed an investigation into China’s richest man What We’re ReadingTwitter / Marc TracyThe L.A. Times is furloughing business-side employees, cutting exec pay, and planning newsroom cuts →“The Times has lost more than one-third of its advertising revenue and expects to lose more than half of its advertising revenue in the coming months.” The newsroom’s union “plans to meet with management soon to learn more and to urge full support for our news operations during this global emergency.”The Verge / Zoe SchifferHow Medium became the best and worst place for coronavirus news →“This is Medium working as intended. The company operates both as a blogging platform and as a media outlet. Some articles, written by professional journalists who work at one of Medium’s publications, are fact-checked. Others are written by conspiracy theorists and contain dangerous misinformation. After all, the company’s mission, according to CEO Ev Williams, is to level the playing field and encourage ‘ideas that come from anywhere.'”Axios / Sara FischerBloomberg launches “Screentime,” a new entertainment vertical, to cover movies, podcasts, eSports, video games, and more →“Our core mission is to chronicle capitalism, as our chief likes to say. There’s going to be a lot of capitalism in this industry — more deals, more money changing hands, and we think we have new perspective to bring to this.”ReutersIraq suspends Reuters for publishing a story saying the number of coronavirus cases in the country was higher than the official tally →“The Reuters report, published on April 2, cited three doctors involved in the testing process, a health ministry official and a senior political official as saying Iraq had thousands of confirmed COVID-19 cases, many times more than the 772 it had publicly reported at that time.”Facebook / Josh Mabry and Dorrine MendozaThe application for Facebook Journalism Project relief funds is live →Facebook has pledged $100 million to support the news industry during COVID-19. Local newsrooms have until April 24th to apply. CNBC / Alex ShermanVox plans to announce around 100 employee furloughs later this week →“Vox is discussing three-month furloughs for employees and is focusing on employees whose coverage areas have diminished during coronavirus quarantines, said the people [familiar with the matter]. Temporary three-month employee pay cuts aimed at the company’s highest earners are also being discussed, the people said. Vox also wants to ensure health care is covered for furloughed employees, one of the people said.”White House Correspondents' AssociationThe White House Correspondents’ Dinner is being postponed →The new date for the dinner is Saturday, August 29, 2020.Thinknum / Julia GrayJob postings at BuzzFeed have plummeted during COVID-19 →On March 13, BuzzFeed has 87 job openings posted and had never had fewer than 45 in the previous 12 months. Today, it has only seven. Other digital news companies like Vox Media and Vice have seen recent declines in openings but are still broadly within their usual ranges.CNBC / Lauren FeinerQuibi got 1.7 million downloads in its first week →Also, viewing Quibi videos on your TV “was always in the cards for later on,” but they’ll do it faster now that that missing feature was a top complaint from reviewers.PressThink / Jay RosenWhy don’t White House reporters just walk out? →“During his daily briefings journalists are abused by a president who misinforms the nation. Here’s 13 reasons they stick around for that.”Nieman Reports / Christopher BaxterDuring the coronavirus crisis, coverage of state capitals is more essential than ever →“How are these decisions being made? Who is influencing them? Are they being carried out in a way that is fair and equitable to all? We all deserve the answers to these questions, and it’s the journalists who cover our state capitals who are the ones who can demand them.”Awful Announcing / Andrew BucholtzSports Illustrated fired its soccer writer of 24 years after he criticized the company →Maven kicked Grant Wahl on the way out the door, sending a staff memo that he “made more than $350,000 last year to infrequently write stories that generated little meaningful viewership or revenue.” (He’d published 50 stories so far in 2020.)The New York Times / Noam Scheiber and Brian M. RosenthalNurses and doctors speaking to journalists about hospital conditions increasingly risk their jobs →“…perhaps the most curious and persistent management-labor tension has arisen between health care providers like doctors and nurses, who are at the forefront of the virus battle, and the administrators they report to. In New York City, the epicenter of the crisis in the United States, every major private hospital system has sent memos in recent weeks ordering workers not to speak with the media, as have some public hospitals.”The New York Times / Jane PerlezThe foreign correspondents explaining America to the world →“I am not nearly as important as an aid worker or a teacher, or a doctor or a nurse — people who do vital, socially important work — but at this moment, journalism is facing a real battle for relevance.”OneZero / Chris Stokel-WalkerAd rates on YouTube have plummeted →In one network of 180 YouTube channels, “advertising rates have tanked by an average of nearly 50% since the start of February….’I’m seeing people go down from $12 to $4.'”Politico / Alex ThompsonWorkers at The Young Turks are unionizing, despite “intense opposition” from management →“Before [unionization efforts began], I think we used to have a great relationship with everyone at the company,” CEO Cenk Uyger wrote in an email to staff. “But maybe I am Michael Scott and I thought we were friends and family but you never saw it that way.”The Wall Street Journal / Tunku VaradarajanA top Indian editor is facing criminal charges for reporting on a politician who violated India’s lockdown orders →“My brother has been charged with six different crimes: disobeying an order of a public official, spreading a rumor against a religious community with intent to cause a riot, using a computer to impersonate someone, transmitting obscene material online, disobeying a public official in a time of epidemic, and spreading a rumor with the intention to cause panic.”New York Post / Mike VaccaroNew York Post sports photographer Anthony Causi has died at 48 from coronavirus →“There are some people in our lives whose impact is so immediate, and so permanent, it’s all but impossible to remember a time when they weren’t a part of us. That was Anthony. If you worked at The Post, you were family. If you didn’t? That was just a detail. You were family, too.”The New York Times / Elizabeth Paton and Jessica TestaWhat’s the point of a fashion magazine now? →“Fashion magazines are vehicles for luxury fantasies. They sell readers on consumerist dreams, sandwiching glossy images of supermodels and stars between advertisements for $50,000 watches and $250 moisturizers. The new coronavirus pandemic and lockdown orders have derailed those dreams.”The New York Times / Edmund Lee and Vanessa FriedmanCondé Nast is cutting pay and will seek government assistance in Europe →“Those earning $100,000 or more — approximately just under half the company — will have their salaries reduced by 10 to 20 percent for five months, starting in May…Condé Nast would be one of the first publishers to request taxpayer funds. It’s an unusual move for a business that pays high salaries for editors who historically enjoyed perks such as town cars and clothing allowances, and sales executives who sell luxury advertising.”

Nieman Lab / Fuego / Encyclo

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