Monday, July 17, 2023 |
| Despite denials, don’t be surprised if control passes from billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong sometimes soon. But it’s not necessarily bad news. By Joshua Benton. |
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| Plus: Newsroom sexual harassment and journalists’ job satisfaction, journalists’ skills wishlist, and paying for public media. By Mark Coddington and Nick Mathews. |
What We’re ReadingThe Appeal
The Appeal on its second year as a worker-run company →“We increased revenue from $280,000 in 2021 to just under $1 million in 2022, including an 18 percent growth in our end of year campaign. In 2023, we signed our first multi-year grants, with $500,000 secured for 2024.”The New York Times / Sheera Frenkel and Stuart A. Thompson
“Not for machines to harvest”: Data revolts are breaking out against AI →“Their protests have taken different forms. Writers and artists are locking their files to protect their work or are boycotting certain websites that publish A.I.-generated content, while companies like Reddit want to charge for access to their data. At least 10 lawsuits have been filed this year against A.I. companies, accusing them of training their systems on artists’ creative work without consent.”Reuters / Reuters
Mexican journalist Nelson Matus was shot to death in his car in Acapulco →“Matus had survived two assassination attempts in 2017 and 2019…Matus’ death comes one week after the body of Luis Martin Sanchez, a journalist for Mexican newspaper La Jornada, was found after going missing in the state of Nayarit…The country was the deadliest in the world last year for journalists, according to media watchdog Reporters without Borders.”Reuters / Jahnavi Nidumolu and Krystal Hu
In March, Elon Musk said Twitter might be cash-flow positive by June. (Nope.) →“This is the latest sign that the aggressive cost-cutting measures since Musk acquired Twitter in October alone are not enough to get Twitter to cash flow positive, and suggests Twitter’s ad revenue may have not recovered as fast as Musk suggested in an interview in April with the BBC that most advertisers had returned to the site.”Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein
“There hasn’t been empathy”: New York Times staff frustration spills over after sports desk closure →“Sports staff were invited to a morning meeting on Monday, and the news alert that the sports desk was shuttering came out before executive editor Joe Kahn had said the words aloud to the room, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. Glynn noted that staffers were receiving texts from family and friends about the news, while they themselves were still getting briefed on the situation.”Semafor / Max Tani
The PR guy now behind Twitter’s poop emoji →“And as [Linda] Yaccarino began angling for the CEO job at Twitter earlier this year, he wasn’t afraid to cross some company lines. When NBC News reporter Ben Collins tweeted about a Semafor story documenting advertisers’ concerns about Musk, [Joe] Benarroch called to reprimand him, a rare instance of a business-side employee expressing criticism of a journalist’s editorial views.”Politico Europe / Clothilde Goujard
Facebook, Instagram face a temporary ban on tracking users for ads in Norway →“The ban on so-called behavioral advertising will last three months, starting from August 4. Facebook and Instagram will be able to show people customized ads but only based on information given by users in the ‘about’ section of their profiles.”Press Gazette / Clara Aberneithie
Does VR still have potential for publishers? →“…in 2016, there was a widespread assumption that VR headsets would become a common household item by around 2022. That same year also saw the Guardian found a VR team, and the BBC experimented with VR through projects such as ‘We Wait’, which transported viewers to ‘experience’ the lives of a Syrian refugee family crossing the sea. Since then, the BBC’s VR hub has closed.”Press Gazette / William Turvill
BBC successfully sued to keep Press Gazette from revealing how much a BBC-promoting report cost to produce →“Press Gazette argued that there was a public interest in disclosure.”The Guardian / Vanessa Thorpe and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
The Sun’s splash, Huw Edwards, and the drama that gripped Britain and shook the BBC →“The public debate has focused on who to blame. Some are upset that a vulnerable young victim may have been exploited, as their mother alleges. Others put all the trouble caused at the door of the Sun. How did such a personally invasive story reach the threshold required for publication, they ask. Others point to the toxicity of social media. And journalists inside and outside the BBC are questioning its handling of the crisis and the news story itself.”The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin, Brooks Barnes, and Nicole Sperling
Labor Day looms as a crisis point in Hollywood’s stalemate with unions →“… Hollywood’s content factories could sit idle for little more than a month — roughly until Labor Day — until there would be a serious impact on the release calendar for 2024, particularly for movies. A work stoppage that stretches into September could force studios to delay big projects for next year by six months, making 2024 resemble the ghost town of recent memory set off by the Covid-19 pandemic.”The Washington Post / Taylor Lorenz
Twitter is paying some users to tweet — starting with Elon’s far-right buddies →“So far, many of the influencers who have publicly revealed that they’re part of the program are prominent figures on the right. Andrew Tate, for example, who was recently released from jail on rape and human trafficking charges, posted that he’d been paid over $20,000 by Twitter.”The Guardian / Natashya Gutierrez
Student journalists in Indonesia face backlash after reporting on sexual harassment →“In March last year, the student magazine Lintas — of which [Yolanda] Agne was then editor-in-chief — published a damning piece on the prevalence of sexual harassment on her campus at Ambon Islamic State Institute…[Officials] ordered the closure of Lintas, reported nine student journalists to the police for defamation and later suspended Agne and two of her colleagues.”The Wall Street Journal / Keach Hagey and Alexa Corse
Tucker Carlson is creating a new media company →“The new company would be anchored by longer versions of the free videos that Carlson has been posting regularly on Twitter since shortly after his departure from Fox News, but would ultimately be driven by subscriptions, some of the people said. Carlson and Patel are looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the company, the people said.”The New York Times / Penelope Green
Sally Kempton, rising star journalist turned swami, dies at 80 →“Four years after the Esquire piece was published, Ms. Kempton essentially vanished, to follow an Indian mystic named Swami Muktananda, otherwise known as Baba, a proponent of a spiritual practice known as Siddha Yoga. Baba was touring America in the 1970s and accruing devotees from the chattering classes by the hundreds and then the thousands — including, at one point, seemingly half of Hollywood.”Bloomberg / Thomas Buckley and Lucas Shaw
Bob Iger’s Disney shifts from building an empire to a yard sale →“Iger put roughly a third of the company up for sale this week, declaring Disney’s linear TV assets noncore. That includes TV networks ABC, FX and Freeform. He also said Disney is looking for a strategic partner for ESPN — though he’s not willing to sell the whole thing — and the company is already looking to sell or restructure its TV and streaming business in India.”The Verge / Mia Sato
Media execs keep promising AI will benefit journalists. But reporters aren’t the ones using the tools. →“The use case for AI tools has been to fill the internet with lower-quality versions of content that already exists”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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