Overview: Politics

Trump pulled the plug on his blog which, "On its last day... received just 1,500 shares or comments on Facebook and Twitter — a staggering drop for someone whose every tweet once garnered hundreds of thousands of reactions... Trump’s blog peaked at 159,000 social interactions ... on his blog’s first day." Downhill from day one.While his …

Berkman Klein Center analyzed 55,000 news stories, five million tweets, and 75,000 public Facebook posts to discover that it's "Trump, the Republican National Committee, and Fox News — not Facebook spammers and Russian trolls — who are the primary drivers of misinformation around mail-in voting fraud", taking advantage of three stan…

my last column in this space is not about “cancel culture.” Well, almost... The quality of my work does not appear to be the problem... A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me ... orthodoxy in mainstream media, that any writer not actively committed to critical theory in …

when climate skeptics in government and media control the message and the channels, it becomes fact for people like councilor Allen that Australia’s fires... have “nothing” to do with climate change... Climate skepticism runs deep in Australia, origin of ... Murdoch’s media empire... long history of climate science denial and diversion... in the w…

we needed to take investigative journalism and combine it with technology to build communities of action... I went from managing 1,000 journalists to 12 people...Our information ecosystem has already been destroyed. We’ve been poisoned... We were the third [news outlet] attacked... we stood up because we have no other business interests...In the o…

journalism primarily do one thing: cover events... The internet has sped up the news cycle. Now we put more emphasis on covering the last event... But ... events in this era have ceased to drive politics...impeachment... Mueller investigation ... “Access Hollywood” tapes... barely leave a trace on the polls...Events don’t seem to be driving politi…

three documents from Europe about regulating the net:.... I see danger for the net and its freedoms posed by corporate protectionism and a rising moral panic about technology... Articles 11 & 13: Protectionism gone mad... Article 11 link tax... likely cover many of the snippets shown ... to give you an idea of what they lead to….No exceptions are …

talk-show hosts like journalists ... know how to grab the brain’s attention and stimulate fear, sadness or anger.... We value the ancient power of storytelling, and we get that good stories require conflict, characters and scene. But in the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations... I met psychologists, med…

the solution to both crises facing journalism may come from the same technological root: blockchain... An ecosystem of micropayments... as the holy grail for online journalism... Blockchain technology can create both chains of authenticity and a level of security... Sludge is one of the “first fleet” of around 20 newsrooms ... on a new blockchai…

Community engagement is about shifting that perspective. It’s about continuously listening, interacting and serving a community. How did the work contribute to the community reaching its goals? Far too often, journalists are obsessed with telling the story. And the story is good. But the story. isn’t. enough. design thinking ... can help us achi…

Marketplace wants to reach a more diverse audience... to raise the economic intelligence of the country... podcast... to approach explainer journalism ... through a group conversation... Our attempt to get the answer is going to be transparent... audience, can you help me with this?

Fake news has been around as long as real news...  Social media has certainly transformed how fake news circulates, speeding up its circulation and extending its reach and impact...  a much more important problem ... is the continuing delegitimization of real news by American conservatives...  This is not “fake news.” It is a blatantly ideolog…

Scottie Nell Hughes ... drove a stake into the heart of knowable reality: “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts... So, how should Trump’s statements during the campaign have been covered? Should reporters have added something like this in the second paragraph of every news story? “Trump probably didn’t mean that he would appoin…

the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end... many good effects... But the fixation on diversity ... produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.

an organization dedicated to "ever closer union" has never faced a setback as profound as the looming departure from the UK, and it’s natural to wonder if this doesn’t mark the beginning of a larger unraveling.... Rather than a prediction or a hot take, here’s a way to think through the different alternatives.

“Four years later, this Tweet probably best illustrates, in a single image, the mistaken assumption underlying the failed UK Remain campaign…” - a post-Brexit update of my January 2012 post on BlogActiv, over on Medium.

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…

it is close to impossible to report well on the European Union. The bureaucratic monster only makes great news when it fails, and even then either you, your editor, or your audience will misunderstand the reasons why.

to boost donations and promote their brands... organizations to sensationalize their coverage, which can, in turn, distort public perceptions about the nature of social problems... The NGO sector includes organizations with annual budgets that rival those of small countries, yet many operate with minimal oversight. News organizations can help a…

The digital counterrevolution is underway in Europe... Jean-Claude Juncker has stressed the need for European competitors to the Silicon Valley giants. Juncker’s election was widely credited to the efforts of an influential press baron: Mathias Döpfner... Corey Pein interviewed Döpfner for CJR in October... A month later, Axel lost a round whe…

"Guardian digital editor Aron Pilhofer say killing off comments is a “monumental mistake.”... ... many traditional newsrooms are failing to take full advantage of the web’s ability to create a two-way relationship with readers, and that this is a crucial element of what journalism has become in a digital age... ... "You see site after site movin…

"Vox is placing bets on political coverage that aims to break free from the echo chamber ... creating policy-driven campaign coverage by reimagining what a traditional political reporting team looks like.... At most news outlets, journalists who cover big policy issues like healthcare and education are kept separate from reporters who tag along w…

There are more good recommendations in here than can be summarised, but if I had to choose one, it's: "Integrate the developers and editors, from where they sit to whom they report to. If you’re going to do social journalism well, you’re becoming a technology platform company... Almost all the important breakthroughs in social media have come fro…

"“Fished out of the shadows, old news coverage in China’s media can provide clues to the family connections of government officials as reporters investigate their financial dealings.”"

Today's online news environment is ideal for spreading bullshit. As someone like HuffPo's Washington bureau chief puts it: “If you throw something up without fact-checking it, and you’re the first one to put it up, and you get millions and millions of views, and later it’s proved false, you still got those views. That’s a problem. The incentive…