Overview: Media

Facebook’s reputation for neutrality took a major hit...not all of the examples cited by the employee indicate journalistic malpractice. Curators were told to not “trend” a story if only Newsmax or Breitbart... reported it. This is just good editorial guidance: Breitbart and Newsmax have a reputation for playing fast and loose with xenophobia and …

"trending” section of Facebook... functions sort of like the front page of a newspaper...The difference comes down to a distinction in how newspapers and Facebook judge what’s important to their readers...Facebook is playing editor all the time—it’s just that we don’t recognize it, because the editorial influence takes a different form than it wou…

Leaked internal guidelines show human intervention at almost every stage of its news operation, akin to a traditional media organization... This week the company was accused of an editorial bias against conservative news organizations... much of its news gathering is determined by machines... But the company relies on a small editorial team to det…

The filter bubble... has evolved. Algorithms, network effects, and zero-cost publishing are enabling crackpot theories to go viral... impacting the decisions of policy makers and shaping public opinion, whether they are verified or not... Facebook's news feed ... tailored just to us ... to keep us interested and happy... drives engagement and mor…

Trump staged a rally in which three girls–called “The Freedom Kids”–lip-synched a pop song praising the brutality of their incumbent leader. “... Deal from strength or get crushed every time!” they sang... Many Americans found it baffling. For those familiar with the decadent patriotism of Central Asian national performances... it was disconcertin…

...people are willing to engage with longer content (i.e., news stories over 1,000 words) on their phones... All of the articles studied here were read on the mobile web, not via apps. Since most apps are designed to deliver a better reading experience, “that could further the time people are willing to commit to longer stories,”... Pew found no s…

Ironically, with the widening of (national) news choices that the Internet has spawned, we’re depending on fewer pipelines of news. It’s a narrowing of the filter funnel...t as troubling as the filter bubbles that used to occupy our concerns, but likely more potent. As those pipelines narrow, necessarily, the decision on what is news, and what is …

Newspapers, magazines and other publishers are "feeding on the scraps" of Facebook's multibillion-dollar ad business despite playing a central role in keeping the social network's users happy... "They keep the $16bn to $18bn they get in the news feed... with personal sharing down, is ... effectively just an aggregation of premium publishers' cont…

Facebook is not a friend of journalism.. Yes, Instant Articles are sexy and monetisable... a hugely important route to readers, but the more dependent we get on them, the more they’ll be able to charge us to access that audience... Facebook is seeing an alarming (to them) drop in sharing of personal information...we’ll see Facebook start to turn d…

Media companies are ‘broadcasting’ pre-recorded clips use the social network’s new feature... does not recommend streaming pre-recorded content... a strength of the feature is the ability for on-camera hosts to interact with viewers in real time... After they are streamed, Facebook Live videos function as normal Facebook videos.

Why not take some inspiration from the best headlines of the best headline writers? The blueprints exist to get your tweets, emails, updates, and articles clicked.

Pluto-focused project, upcoming episodic series, and experiments with “meditative VR,” The Times is experimenting with different applications for the new technology... The idea is to do proper VR shows that have a through-line and episodic structure... We’re looking at an experience that we jokingly call “meditative VR.” These are single-shot, no…

People don’t just consume news today. They participate in it... an opportunity for news publishers strained by shrinking resources and growing competition: Now more than ever, journalists can engage their audiences as contributors, advisors, advocates, collaborators and partners. This study describes in detail how newsrooms and independent journal…

Think about platforms as fishing places where you can find large, engaged audiences and build a relationship with them by providing content. Then offer these users some other services off-platform... Never outsource the future... a great primer for news organizations just starting to tackle the distributed world and a good checklist for those mor…

journalists can engage their audiences as contributors, advisors, advocates, collaborators and partners. This study describes in detail how newsrooms and independent journalists can grow their readership, boost their relevance and find new sources of revenue by listening to and learning from their audiences.... This is about how journalists can ge…

by using social media curation, news organisations can remove the need for readers to look elsewhere, by automatically pulling in relevant social content from around the internet onto their websites... produce a quick breaking-news social stream related to a subject, or social content specifically focused to highlight the ideas and arguments withi…

we’ll guide you through the ins and outs of Facebook’s publishing platform and how to get started.

I’m going through the motions of converting my old digital news startup, Muckgers, into a Facebook-first publication.. Theoretically, all you have to do is install a plugin, insert a few lines of code into the HTML of your website, connect your RSS feed to your publication’s Facebook page, submit 10 sample Instant Articles for review and, pending …

Study shows political discussions are ruining Facebook and friendships... users who try to talk about politics on Facebook are often surprised by the political opinions of their acquaintances... a diverse set of opinions among a user's friends makes everyone want to speak up less...Facebook has a low threshold for “friending” ... can bridge togeth…

As we learn about the ways people use the news, what features might invite their trust and loyalty?... 32 senior strategists, designers, and developers... created prototype tools to surface the Trust Project indicators of quality, a set of fundamental journalistic principles that align with today’s news users wants and needs.

But what we are building with artificial reality is an internet of experiences... although every one of these environments was fake, the experiences I had in them were genuine... you gain authentic experiences, as authentic as in real life. People remember VR experiences not as a memory of something they saw but as something that happened to them.…

one magic formula after another to save the business of news. Citizen journalism... "Brand You"... Viral headlines... Aggregation, curation, explainer journalism, explainer video, branded content, text bots, video, branded video, branded virtual reality video…each fueling the hope that here, at last, was the way to make news profitable again... n…

the next big thing in news - constructive journalism...not only analysing problems but also exploring potential solutions. It's about trying to examine what's going right in the world - and why - rather than focusing purely on what's going wrong... People don't want more news, they want better news. Constructive journalism provides an alternative.…

Charities have such a huge range of positive stories to tell and practical solutions to offer on so many of the big issues we face today, but too often they’re taking place under the radar.Constructive Voices will link up journalists and charities and equip both to approach news in a more constructive way, directing journalists to charities which …

The United Nations is to call for the world's media to take a more "constructive" and "solutions-focused" approach to news to combat "apathy and indifference"... the Constructive Voices programme run by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations... an online resource designed to help journalists find case studies that provide practical solut…

Video will not save your media business. Nor will bots, newsletters, a “morning briefing” app, a “lean back” iPad experience, Slack integration, a Snapchat channel, or a great partnership with Twitter. All of these things together might help, but even then, you will not be saved by the magical New Thing that everyone else in the media community is…

thinking of videos as pieces that can stand on their own, not “the way to slightly better monetize an article page"... There’s usually no reason to watch an interview. It’s better in text or as a podcast.... the Vox team works like independent YouTubers.” For any given video, a single person is responsible for the entire production process, from …

gadget “blog,” Circuit Breaker, that will live primarily as a Facebook page, with posts appearing in the Instant Articles format... the best of old-school blogging together with a sophisticated, aggressive modern platform distribution strategy... It’s not (yet) possible to be an Instant Articles publisher if you don’t have a web source from which…

The potential – or, sadly more accurately, theoretical – political power of social media is to provide an important public forum in which those of diverse opinions can freely interact, rather than living in political enclaves inhabited only by those who reinforce what everyone already believes. The truth is that those entrenched political division…