Sadly this is our final MediaShift Podcast. Changes are coming to MediaShift, with more to be announced this coming Monday…

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Jen Sabella is a co-founder and director of strategy at Block Club Chicago. She was deputy editor and director of social media at DNAinfo Chicago, a site she helped launch in 2012. Before that, she was HuffPost’s Chicago editor and a breaking news reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times.

Top News Of The Week

YouTube Mass Shooter Was Upset with Filtering Policies

While YouTube has been furiously trying to filter its videos to deal with a rise in conspiracy theories and hate speech, ironically its filtering seems to have led to a mass shooter coming to its headquarters. And the shooter was an Iranian refugee woman, Nashim Aghdam, who was upset that her vegan activist and workout videos were age-limited and demonetized, and called YouTube a dictator in protests. On Tuesday, the 38-year-old Aghdam went to YouTube and shot and injured three people before killing herself. Mountain View police came in contact with the shooter a day earlier after her father filed a missing persons report. In a statement, the police department said Aghdam made no mention of YouTube or indicated her plans to harm herself or others. Aghdam’s brother told CNN affiliate KGTV he warned the police department his sister might do something at YouTube because she was upset with the company.

There are many strange twists and turns in the story. As the New Yorker’s Nathan Heller pointed out, YouTube couldn’t even cover its own story as it unfolded, as the campus was on lockdown. Also, in the midst of the shooting, the Twitter account of YouTube product manager Vadim Lavrusik’s was hacked and started posting false information related to the shooting. After it was flagged by reporters, Twitter removed the false tweets. And as per usual during breaking news, a flood of misinformation came onto Twitter, tracked by a BuzzFeed reporter, Jane Lytvynenko, who was eventually named as the shooter herself by one Twitter troll. The shooting happened right at the heart of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and was itself a victim of the same problem.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mbvd/this-is-what-we-know-about-youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim?utm_term=.bhXyLEYJv#.gbjZ0AK9P
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17194228/youtube-active-shooter-san-bruno-police
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17194552/youtube-shooting-twitter-hack-vadim-lavrusik-misinformation
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/04/us/who-is-nasim-aghdam-youtube-shooter/index.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43638221
https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/twitter-is-almost-useless-during-tragedies-and-its-getting?utm_term=.knXKj3B6v#.vik7o2aO3
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-digital-age-horror-of-the-youtube-shooting

Facebook Tries to Turn the Tide Against It

Facebook has had a rough couple weeks, and while the company is trying its hardest to turn the tide, there are still fires to be put out. Earlier this week, a BuzzFeed report unearthed a June 2016 memo by Facebook VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth that defended the company’s data collection practices. In it, Bosworth wrote that “maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools,” but he justifies this further down in the memo saying connecting people is a de facto good. The memo, titled “The Ugly,” shows that Facebook does understand the physical and social risks the platform’s products carry. After Buzzfeed broke the story, both Mark Zuckerberg and Bosworth made public statements distancing themselves from the memo.

One of the moves Facebook has made recently to address misinformation is a new plan to show users more context about articles posted to the platform, including the publisher’s Wikipedia page. The contextual information will also include related articles, and a look at how the story has been shared across Facebook. Also, Mark Zuckerberg will be testifying before Congress next week to answer questions about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. The social giant now says the rogue firm had access to data of 87 million users instead of the 50 million initially reported. Zuckerberg has been on an apology tour of media, and on the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show podcast, the Facebook honcho said it will likely take years to solve its issues. Zuckerberg said that, “As the internet gets to a broader scale and some of these services reach a bigger scale than anything has before, we’re constantly confronted with new challenges.” But this time, the challenge is right at the core of Facebook’s business: targeted advertising. Whether Facebook can come up with a way to safeguard data, stop the flow of misinformation, and still continue to bring in billions in ad revenue is a critical question for the future of the company.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data?utm_term=.ibVLba2jw#.ocX2aXzRk
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/30/17179100/facebook-memo-leaks-boz-andrew-bosworth
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/04/news-feed-fyi-more-context/
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17185052/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-interview-fake-news-bots-cambridge
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/31/custom-audiences-certification/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/04/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-will-testify-to-congress-next-week-about-cambridge-analytica/?utm_term=.0e7a2db84358

More than 75% of Americans Believe Mainstream Media Publishes ‘Fake News’

Last week, Deadspin released a video, which later went viral, showing anchors from local news stations owned by Sinclair reading a statement about “one sided news stories.” And while Sinclair may be trying to inoculate themselves against accusations of bias, more than 3/4 of the American public believe mainstream news outlets engage in purposely reporting fake news, according to a new Monmouth University poll. The poll found that 65% of people believe “fake news” includes editorial decisions as well as inaccurate reporting. The belief that mainstream media reports fake news is up among all ideological groups. About 40 percent of the public say the reason news media publish “fake news” is to push an agenda. In addition, 8-in-10 believe outside groups are trying to plant stories in mainstream media and 9-out-of-10 say the same is happening on social media platforms.

Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute said that, “These findings are troubling, no matter how you define ‘fake news.’ Confidence in an independent fourth estate is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Ours appears to be headed for the intensive care unit.” Of course, we can’t talk about fake news without speaking about President Trump. Monmouth also surveyed Americans about the president’s relationship with the media and roughly half say that both the president and the media have been hurt by it. When asked who they trust more, Trump or the media, Americans said they trusted the media, with ABC News in the lead. But the numbers change if you look only at Republican respondents with over half trusting the president vs. ABC News and other outlets.

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_040218/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/04/03/a-new-study-suggests-fake-news-might-have-won-donald-trump-the-2016-election/?utm_term=.34c2f64378a7
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/317107/americans-believe-mainstream-media-report-fake-ne.html
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_US_032917/

Here are some other stories we’re following

CBS is trying to buy out Viacom but its first offer was rejected for being too low.

Streaming music site Spotify had a direct public offering of stock, with the price down 10% on its first day, but it hit a value of nearly $27 billion.

Thousands of Google workers are asking the tech giant to pull out of an artificial intelligence project for the Pentagon.

And an experiment at the Bay Area News Group found that users were more willing to pay for subscriptions if they could keep their ad blockers on.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #265: YouTube Mass Shooter Upset with Filtering; Facebook Tries to Turn the Tide; Block Club Chicago’s Jen Sabella appeared first on MediaShift.

Twitter accounts for less then 2.5 percent of traffic to publishers; Instagram and Pinterest barely supply one percent together. Currently, Facebook represents 22 percent, but its role in distributing publishers’ content has been falling dramatically for more than a year, and is only accelerating.

Data from Parse.ly, which tracks visits to more than 2,500 publishers, shows that ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, more than 40 percent of traffic to those sites came from Facebook. By the end of 2017, it was less than 26 percent. It’s still dropping. For some sites, like BuzzFeed, this is a big problem, but even if you don’t rely on social traffic to the same extent, it’s a challenge.

The chart below shows the amount of traffic coming to publishers from Google and Facebook since the beginning of 2017. It’s not just Facebook’s decline — the huge growth in Google mobile visitors is very striking. This can largely be attributed to the growing popularity of AMP, Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages format for the mobile web.

Source: Chartbeat

Social traffic was never a great way to make money anyway

How much was social referral traffic really worth? As Scott Galloway points out in this great video, Audience vs. Traffic: “People don’t tune in to BuzzFeed because they’re fascinated by the journalism, they click because someone forwarded them ‘Pick some of your favorite potato dishes and we’ll tell you your best quality.’” Social referrals are fickle, hard to monetize, and disappear when Facebook changes the algorithms. They’re traffic, not an audience. Even before Facebook’s changes, BuzzFeed had apparently been seeing a decline in unique US visitors for two years.

In many ways the decline in social referrals is just the icing on a pretty unappetizing cake for traffic-dependant sites, which struggle to monetize beyond programmatic ads. Yields are declining, the use of ad-blockers is on the rise and Facebook and Google are hogging all the growth. Meanwhile, those sites that managed to build a loyal audience, like the New York Times and many special interest magazine sites, are flourishing — usually by using that loyalty to monetize in other areas like subscriptions or e-commerce.

Social traffic was never all that great for anything other than reporting big numbers. While that doesn’t change the fact that content distributed directly on platforms can be an important acquisition channel (e.g. The Economist has used Facebook as an effective way to retarget potential subscribers), that only really works if you can convert your off-site viewers into paying subscribers. Monetizing content on somebody else’s platform is really tough. Your company’s account on Instagram may have a lot of followers, but how much value is that generating, and is it going to you or the platform? As a friend likes to say: “Everyone knows National Geographic has amazing photography, but how many people remember the names of individual photographers?”

Long-term, the move away from desperately trying to drive and monetize social referral traffic is a necessary step, but right now it’s still hurting many people. So, how can you thrive despite Facebook’s continuing retreat from publishing?

The antidote to declining social traffic

One answer is Google. As the Chartbeat graphic shows, Google is quickly regaining its status as the primary source of referrals for publishers. So the main question becomes, how do you drive more large scale, organic traffic to your website via the search engine result pages (SERPs)?

Basically, you need to refocus your efforts away from social traffic and re-energize your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) team. As a quick refresher, SEO is the umbrella term for many tactics, all of which aims to optimize your content for search engine algorithms, so that you rank higher when a potential visitor asks a query. The higher you rank, the better your natural traffic becomes, and the more chances you get to convert that traffic into a loyal, revenue generating audience. However, SEO in 2018 is not the SEO you remember: Google is always tinkering with algorithms and features (like AMP), and that means the best SEO tactics constantly change. Sometimes quite radically.

What are the ranking factors that influence your SEO score most these days? Google famously doesn’t give us full transparency on ranking factors, but recently large studies by intelligence platforms such as SEMrush have shed some light into the ranking darkness. The answers probably aren’t what you expect.

The days of keyword stuffing are over

No, it’s not keywords (in the anchor, body, title or anywhere else) or backlinks. It’s your engagement metrics. The top four ranking factors are direct website visits, time on site, pages per session and bounce rate. This isn’t surprising really when you think about it: Google wants to find the ‘best’ answers for queries, so happy Google users are a key indicator for them. What they’ve worked out is that engagement indicators, like low bounce rate, high pages per session and superior dwell time, are the best signs of a good search answer. They’re also hard to game, which can’t be said for keywords and backlinks.

This all means that there is now another very obvious reason to try to increase your engagement metrics: high engagement is a virtuous cycle. More engagement directly means more new organic traffic, which in turn means a greater opportunity to monetize your site and build a loyal audience, which means higher engagement and more organic traffic.

Source: SEMrush

SEMrush’s study results are backed by industry experts such as Larry Kim, Founder & CTO of WordStream. He says that “having positive website engagement metrics is critical” and he presents the data that shows the relationship between engagement rates (such as bounce rate and time on site) and rankings here.

So, yes, you shouldn’t ignore keywords and backlinks, but the biggest opportunity to increase organic traffic from Google comes directly from boosting on-site engagement metrics. This is especially true for established sites that already rank fairly well.

That leaves one question: how do you improve your SEO? If you’re already creating great content, what can you do that will impact these metrics right now?

How to effectively raise your site engagement and search traffic

SEO expert Matthew Woodward describes internal link building and content recirculation as “the most powerful SEO tactic you are not using.” Why? It increases engagement.

Internal content recommendations are the best way to help readers discover relevant content that they really want to read. This means fewer people leaving after reading just one article, more articles per session and more time on your site. Most importantly, the more of your content they explore, the more likely they’ll be to come back. Search visitors can be fickle if they’ve come looking for a particular piece of content, and often leave as soon as they’ve consumed it. You give yourself the best chance of converting them into a loyal audience member by providing other high-quality content that’s relevant to their interests.

Content recommendation is even more important when you consider that, for over half of publishers, less than 10 percent of visitors enter the site via the homepage, according to research by Parse.ly. This means your content pages also have to do the job of the homepage and help people find the next piece of interesting content.

What all this adds up to is this: the related and recommended content widgets on your content pages are the single most important performance unit you have. Measure them and optimize them!

Social media can still work great as an acquisition channel for publishers and media companies, but as a dependable traffic- and revenue-driver it’s a busted flush. You can’t rely on it to drive engaged traffic to your site, the principal source of sustainable revenue. Now that Google is the most important referral source again, SEO has a renewed importance, and the days of keyword stuffing are behind us. You should be doing everything you can to improve your user experience. An easy way to do this right now, as well as implementing tools like AMP, is great recommendations.

Mads Holmen is co-founder and CEO at Bibblio, a leading provider of personalization and content recommendation services. He’s a passionate “better web” advocate and recognized publishing industry commentator.

The post It’s Time For Publishers To Get Bullish On SEO Once Again appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Dan Kennedy is associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University. His new book is “The Return of the Moguls: How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century,” published by ForeEdge. Dan is a panelist on WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press” and writes on the news media for WGBHNews.org, the Nieman Journalism Lab and other publications.

Top News Of The Week

Facebook Remains Under the Microscope, But Still Helping Publishers

It’s been a very rough couple weeks for Facebook. And while the company is under scrutiny on various fronts, the social giant is still continuing to help publishers behind the scenes. What started with a scandal regarding Cambridge Analytica has now become wider investigations in the U.S. and in the U.K. into data practices by Facebook. The Federal Trade Commission has confirmed that it’s investigating Facebook’s privacy practices to find out if the social giant violated a consent decree it signed in 2011. It requires the platform to notify and receive permission from users if Facebook wants to share user data beyond what was specified in their privacy settings. Each violation of the consent decree could carry a penalty of $40,000. The social platform is also facing a lawsuit from fair housing groups. They allege Facebook is in violation of the Fair Housing Act by letting people limit groups who see real estate ads.

Despite the continuing scandal and fallout, Facebook is continuing to help publishers drive revenues. I produced a private roundtable at Facebook’s New York offices last week, where smaller publishers were given a seat at the table to talk about what they need and how Facebook could help drive subscriptions and highlight trusted publishers in the News Feed. Also, Digiday’s Max Willens reports that Facebook Groups run by publishers are helping them get more revenues from subscriptions, sponsorships and even focus group participants. In the case of Outside Magazine, the publication will launch a Facebook Group it created alongside an advertiser where it will link to branded content created specifically for that advertiser. Facebook is also expanding its emphasis on local news in News Feeds to all Facebook users. First announced in January, the test was restricted to the U.S. and was part of Facebook’s plan to highlight local interests, including news. The new change means that local publishers and Facebook’s list of “trusted” publishers will be getting a boost, and that local interests will be expanded to geographical regions or multiple cities of interest.

https://www.axios.com/wild-west-of-digital-marketing-reined-in-1601df93-3fa3-49f3-86ae-62fac7e897c8.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/26/ftc-confirms-facebook-data-breach-investigation.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing-ads-discrimination-lawsuit.html
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/28/technology/playboy-leaving-facebook-data/
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/news-feed-fyi-more-local-news-on-facebook-globally/
https://digiday.com/media/publishers-monetizing-facebook-groups/

Netflix and Streaming Studios Are Driving Up the Cost of Content

Netflix is using an interesting strategy to beat out TV networks and studios: paying more for everything. According to Bloomberg, they’ve sunk $10 billion in programming and content this year. It’s well known that the company has spent billions to lure away filmmakers, but now Netflix is making a big push to poach employees as well. Job positions for publicists can pay as much as $400,000, along with stock options and other benefits, which is twice the pay at rival firms. As analyst Anthony DiClemente told Bloomberg: “There are fewer and fewer services a TV studio can provide an artist or producer that Netflix can’t. Wall Street investors right now don’t care how much they spend on content and infrastructure as long as subscribers are growing and beating estimates.”

Meanwhile, other networks are responding in their own ways to Netflix’s spending binge. Disney is pulling its movies from Netflix and plans to build its own streaming service. In 2016, Fox sued Netflix for poaching two of its film executives, which was met by a countersuit by Netflix – with both cases still pending in courts. And Amazon is fighting fire with fire, buying the rights for a “Lord of the Rings” prequel for $250 million and could spend another quarter billion on production and marketing. All this spending is cause for concern over at the BBC, where they warn of being squeezed out of the global content market by their American competitors, especially by tech giants. Where will all these bidding wars and costly content lead? Most likely to consolidation and less traditional networks in the future.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-27/help-wanted-netflix-movie-publicist-400-000-including-options
http://deadline.com/2018/03/bbc-takes-aim-at-global-svod-arms-race-as-it-publishes-annual-content-strategy-1202354611/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/03/16/amazons-proposed-lord-rings-prequel-could-cost-more-than-all-three-movies/432173002/
http://www.newstrib.com/lifestyle/the-golden-age-of-documentaries/article_46fdb0d2-31ea-11e8-ba38-db4fda51df16.html
http://deadline.com/2017/03/20th-century-fox-petition-denied-netflix-lawsuit-1202036164/

How Cord-Cutting Is Hurting TV Ad Spending

Two recent research reports show how cord-cutting has grown, and how the long-term trend is hitting the TV industry right in the bottom line. The first report comes from the Video Advertising Bureau or the VAB, which found that the number of households using streaming services only for TV and movies had tripled over the past five years, hitting 14 million households, or 11% of all U.S. households. That’s still small by comparison to the 74% of households that get pay TV, but one number is growing while the other one is shrinking. The VAB predicts that streaming-only households will grow to nearly 18 million homes by 2021.

And what happens when you have less people watching live TV and more watching services such as Netflix without ads? A new report by eMarketer shows that TV ad spending shrunk by 1.5% in 2017 and you can expect that trend to continue in the next couple years. That means the TV ad market will account for about 32 percent of the overall U.S. ad market this year while digital ad spending will grow 19% to hit $107 billion, dwarfing TV’s take of nearly $70 billion. As eMarketer’s Paul Verna put it: “Consumers who want to cut or shave the cord now have a wealth of options that didn’t exist a couple years ago. And we expect the offerings to become even more robust as more players enter the market.” So the more cord-cutting takes hold, the less ad dollars TV networks will bring in.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/28/over-the-top-only-u-s-households-nearly-tripled-since-2013-impacting-tv-ad-dollars/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danafeldman/2018/03/28/u-s-tv-ad-spend-drops-as-digital-ad-spend-climbs-to-107b-in-2018/#305a8bb47aa6
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tv-ad-spending-declined-by-1-billion-2017-1098085
https://www.emarketer.com/content/us-tv-ad-spending-to-fall-in-2018
https://www.recode.net/2018/3/28/17170098/tv-ad-spending-fell-2017-declining-television-viewership

Here are some other stories we’re following

A study by a Princeton University researcher found that YouTube and Pinterest influencers almost never disclose marketing relationships.

The Hewlett Foundation will give $10 million in grants to projects that fight disinformation on tech platforms.

Bloomberg is expanding Tic Toc, its 24-hour streaming service on Twitter, into Asia.

And the Wall Street Journal reports that music revenues are up as more songs are released to streaming services, leading to a glut of music.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #264: Facebook Under Fire, But Still Helping Publishers; Netflix Drives Up Cost of Content; Dan Kennedy’s ‘Return of the Moguls’ appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Melissa Bell is the publisher of Vox Media, overseeing editorial strategy and development of the company’s networks, including SB Nation, Eater, The Verge, Vox, Curbed, Recode, Racked, and Polygon. She is also the co-founder of Vox, Vox Media’s brand known for explaining the news.

Top News Of The Week

Facebook in Disarray Over Cambridge Analytica Misdeeds

This week has been one disaster after the next for social giant Facebook and its dealings with political data consultants at Cambridge Analytica. It all started with joint reports from the New York Times, Guardian and Observer showing that Cambridge Analytica, which helped the Trump campaign in 2016, obtained psychographic profiles of 50 million Facebook users without their consent. The reports detailed how the firm obtained the data from a Russian-American app maker which had asked for people’s permission to play a game, but instead of destroying the data, they turned around and made a deal with Cambridge Analytica. Facebook banned the company from its site, and is now under fire by politicians in the U.S. and U.K. for potential meddling in elections on both sides of the Atlantic. As the Tow Center’s Jonathan Albright told the Times: “Unethical people will always do bad things when we make it easy for them and there are few – if any – lasting repercussions.”

One of the more ethical people, Facebook’s security chief Alex Stamos, is planning to leave the company in August. The New York Times reported that Stamos faced resistance at Facebook when he advocated for more disclosure on Russian interference on the platform. Meanwhile, damaging reports continued from Channel 4 in the U.K., which secretly taped top Cambridge Analtyca execs admitting to dirty tricks in elections around the world. That includes entrapment of politicians with bribes and sex workers. Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix was put on leave while the company investigated itself. Meanwhile, the reports had an immediate impact on Facebook’s stock, which lost $36 billion in market value on Monday. And the company has gone into damage control to address the fallout. In a Facebook post, Andrew Bosworth, a senior executive, wrote, “Much of the critique that has emerged over the weekend is valid and I am following it closely and listening.” The FTC, Congress and several states were starting investigations into the company. Where will this all lead? It’s time for Facebook’s leaders to show leadership, and tighten rules around privacy and personal data.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/us/cambridge-analytica-facebook-privacy-data.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-campaign.html
https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-summoned-by-uk-mps-over-cambridge-analytica.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-is-pummeled-by-user-data-blowback-1521561322?mod=trending_now_2
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-alex-stamos.html

Google Plans to Invest $300 Million to Support Journalism

While Facebook suffered, rival tech giant Google made a splash of a different kind. The company announced the new Google News Initiative, which will be focused on surfacing accurate information during breaking news events, helping the business side of journalism, and creating tools for journalists to do their jobs. And Google is supporting the wide-ranging initiative with $300 million in funding over the next three years. The initiative will swallow up the existing Google News Lab, making their work part of the larger project. And fighting fake news and misinformation is a big challenge for Google and especially YouTube, where every breaking news story seems to be followed by popular conspiracy theory videos. The latest example was after the school shooting in Florida, with student survivors being called “crisis actors.”

Another key initiative is “Subscribe with Google,” a feature for publishers to dig into data to gain new subscribers. The search giant will also make buying subscriptions easier in search, with people using their Google Wallet to buy subscriptions from partners such as the New York Times, the Telegraph, USA Today Network and the Washington Post. But they’re also making it easier to read articles from publications you’re already subscribed to. When you’re logged into your Google Account, you’ll see a subsection of articles from sources you’re subscribed to when you search. They’re also building a new dashboard in Google Analytics to help news organizations find and target readers for subscriptions. All of this points to a serious effort by Google to help publishers on subscriptions, metrics and more. Let’s hope it continues.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17142788/google-news-initiative-fake-news-journalist-subscriptions
https://www.blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/introducing-subscribe-google/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/google-pours-300-million-into-effort-to-aid-news-publishers
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43473938
https://blog.google/topics/google-news-initiative/announcing-google-news-initiative/

Publishers Embrace Twitter and Pinterest as the Duopoly Fades

A lot has been written about the power Google and Facebook wield in the digital ad market, but other platforms are trying their hardest to contest the duopoly. Research firm eMarketer predicts that Amazon will pull into third place in digital ads by 2020 with an expected 4.5 percent market share in the U.S. Snapchat is expected to break $1 billion dollars in ad revenues this year which is about 1 percent of the U.S. digital ad market. Meanwhile, Twitter’s U.S. digital ad share will drop this year but will grow again next year. Overall, eMarketer expects Facebook and Google to lose a couple percentage points of market share this year, which gives an opening to other platforms as well.

Many publishers that are fed up with the duopoly have started to cast their eyes elsewhere. Last year Twitter announced that it would partner with a handful of media companies to provide video content on the platform. There have been a few changes to Twitter’s video strategy, including more live broadcasting and event coverage, and they’ve also made it easier for users to post videos. And publishers who have struggled with social video on Facebook are also turning to Pinterest. Digiday’s Lucia Moses reports that publishers rarely had consistent communication with Pinterest but that’s changed over the past few months, with an increase in outreach, collaboration and requests for feedback from the social platform. David Temple, Pinterest’s head of content, told Digiday the platform was looking into tools and analytics to help publishers distribute their content on the platform.

http://mediashift.org/2018/03/publishers-learning-embrace-twitter-video/
https://www.emarketer.com/content/google-and-facebook-s-digital-dominance-fading-as-rivals-share-grows
https://digiday.com/media/facebook-news-feed-changes-publishers-look-hopefully-pinterest/
https://theoutline.com/post/3719/publishers-pivoting-to-pinterest?zd=1&zi=5d7kilnd
https://digiday.com/media/snapchat-is-enlisting-more-publishers-to-make-video-shows/

Here are some other stories we’re following

The rise of fake news and Trump could be leading to a rise in journalism majors at large universities.
Tronc chairman Michael Ferro steps down as new allegations come from women saying he made inappropriate advances toward them.
Cheddar, the financial news service for millennials, raises $22 million in a fourth round of venture funding.
And researchers in Germany have discovered pornography and links to child abuse images in bitcoin’s blockchain.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #263: Facebook in Disarray Over Privacy Concerns; Google to Spend $300 Million to Support Journalism; Vox Media’s Melissa Bell appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Steven Waldman crafted the plan for Report for America after authoring the Federal Communications Commission report “Information Needs of Communities.” He co-founded the multifaith religion website Beliefnet.com, which won the National Magazine Award, and LifePosts.com, a platform for online memorials. Earlier, he was national editor of US News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. He was senior advisor to the CEO of the Corporation for National Service and wrote a book on the creation of AmeriCorps (The Bill).

Top News Of The Week

States Plan a Crackdown on Tech Giants

There’s been a lot of talk on Capitol Hill about reining in technology companies, especially around the spread of misinformation and election meddling, and the growing power that Facebook and Google wield in online advertising. Late last year, Democratic senators Mark Warner and Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act, which requires platforms to reveal who’s buying political ads. But the bill has yet to come up for debate since it was introduced 5 months ago. Now it seems more likely that legislation targeting tech companies will come from states rather than the federal government. Washington Post’s Tony Romm report that lawmakers from states such as New York, Washington and Maryland are making noise. Maryland is considering a bill that would require tech companies to make political ads about state candidates publicly available.

According to Shum Preston of Common Sense Kids Action, “We are literally seeing states become the laboratories of democracy…The country is clamoring for these bills, they’re clamoring for these protections online and Washington is falling down on the job.” Meanwhile, there has been some action in Congress, with a new bill from Rhode Island congressman David Cicilline that could give publishers more leverage when dealing with tech platforms. The bill would allow publishers to collectively negotiate terms for distributing content on the platforms, which currently would violate antitrust laws against price fixing. The bill is backed by the group formerly known as the Newspaper Association of America, now called the News Media Alliance. But another group, the Local Media Consortium, came out against the bill, warning it could alienate platforms. Whether the bill becomes law or not, there’s a growing appetite for regulation – or at least pressure – on the tech giants to do more in fighting misinformation and helping publishers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/02/as-d-c-sits-on-the-sidelines-these-states-are-looking-to-regulate-facebook-google-and-twitter/?utm_term=.ffaec4e8a09d
https://www.wired.com/story/bill-would-let-publishers-gang-up-versus-facebook-and-google/
http://smdp.com/facebook-twitter-urged-to-do-more-to-police-hate-on-sites/164779
http://www.wnd.com/2018/03/free-speech-issue-of-our-time-tech-giants-trigger-conservative-revolt/

Facebook Partners with the AP to Debunk Election Misinformation

We’re nine months away from the 2018 mid-term elections and the primaries have already begun in some states. And as we get closer to those elections, there will be greater scrutiny on the media and platforms to not spread disinformation. This week the Associated Press news wire announced an expanded collaboration with Facebook to fact-check election related stories on Facebook. This builds on an initiative the news wire started in late 2016 with Facebook introducing the ‘disputed’ content flag in its News Feed. For the mid-terms, the AP is expanding its fact-checking coverage to all 50 U.S. states to provide more local context.

Facebook also announced it would expand its efforts to test a label for breaking news stories. The first part of the test involved a select group of local and national publishers in the U.S., but the social media giant will now allow publishers in Latin America, Europe and Australia to try it out as well. The label can also be used for Instant Articles, mobile and web links, and Facebook Live streams, but it doesn’t change where a story shows up on the News Feed. According to Facebook, stories with the “Breaking News” tag get boosts in engagement, clickthrough rates, likes, comments and shares. And because Facebook doesn’t want every story to get the new tag, they’re limiting publishers to using the breaking news tag once a day plus another five per month. These efforts are a welcome move by Facebook to ferret out misinformation and promote quality news as it breaks. We’ll see how much it moves the needle during the election season.

https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2018/ap-to-debunk-election-misinformation-on-facebook
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/facebook-breaking-news/
https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-tests-breaking-news-label/
http://www.adweek.com/digital/50-more-publishers-will-soon-begin-testing-the-social-networks-breaking-news-tag/
https://media.fb.com/2018/03/05/enabling-publishers-to-label-breaking-news-on-facebook/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebooks-political-nightmare-is-about-to-get-worse?utm_term=.rcw28gOx3#.as4G8o0vZ

The Boston Globe Raises Its Print Subscription Price by 80%

For two months this year, New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo turned off his apps, notifications and mobile web, and got all his news from print newspapers and magazines. He learned that slow news is more accurate than what he sees on social media, and it saves him time. But it definitely won’t save him money. As more people turn to digital for news, print subscriptions are rising into the stratosphere, and will likely continue in that direction. Exhibit A is the latest move by the Boston Globe hiking its print newspaper subscriptions to $25.90 a week. Without discounts, a one-year subscription to the Globe would cost nearly $1350, a rise of 80% over the current price.

The price jump would make the Globe subscription one of the most expensive, even compared to the New York Times which costs $16.26 a week. By increasing the cost of home delivery the Globe might be pushing readers to digital subscriptions, which cost $30 a month. The Globe’s owner John Henry has complained about the cost of printing the paper. As Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton notes, the move could net the Globe more income, as it’s in a high-income market and offers strong editorial. But just how far can they go? As Benton points out, even older people who are used to getting print newspapers are starting to get more savvy with tablets and smartphones, so sticker shock will only go so far, before they unsubscribe.

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2018/03/06/the-boston-globe-to-hike-home-delivery-rates.html?page=all
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/03/getting-the-boston-globe-delivered-will-soon-cost-almost-1350-a-year/
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2018/03/07/globe-home-delivery-price/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/two-months-news-newspapers.html

Here are some other stories we’re following

TV ratings for the Oscars telecast were down 16% from last year, as big event programming continues to take a hit.

Penske Media buys up SheKnows Media, which runs the BlogHer conference, as Penske continues a buying spree.

As people spend less time on Facebook, ad prices are going up, according to research by AdStage.

And longtime British music magazine NME, or New Musical Express, will be shutting down its print edition and going online-only.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #261: States Plan Crackdown on Tech Giants; Facebook Ready for Mid-Terms?; Report for America’s Steve Waldman appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Margaret Sullivan is media columnist for the Washington Post. Before joining the Post, she was the New York Times’ public editor, and previously the chief editor of the Buffalo News, She was a member of the Pulitzer Prize board from 2011 to 2012, and was twice elected as a director of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Top News Of The Week

Why the ‘Pivot to Subscriptions’ is Flawed

One of the bright spots for news publishers over the last year has been subscriptions. We’ve told you about the “Trump bump” that publishers like the New York Times, Washington Post and ProPublica received last year. And The Atlantic and others have capitalized on their super fans by introducing membership programs for their most loyal readers. According to a recent survey by Reuters Institute, 44 percent of global publishing executives listed digital subscriptions as the most important revenue stream for 2018. But Digiday’s Lucia Moses warns that the new “pivot to subscriptions” might be going too far. Moses wrote that, “While it’s tempting to think reader revenue is the answer, the number of publishers that can pull off a scaled subscription business is likely to be small.”

Be that as it may, both Google and Facebook have been making moves to help publishers sell more subscriptions and memberships. Google switched to a flexible sampling policy last fall so publishers could set the number of free articles a user could view through the search engine. And earlier this month, Google revealed that it can help identify readers who would subscribe to a publication, and make it easier for them to subscribe. Not to be outdone, Facebook this week announced the launch of a $3 million, three-month Local News Subscription Accelerator, a pilot program to help local news publications ramp up their subscription efforts. The accelerator will work with about a dozen metro newspapers from around the U.S., including the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Miami Herald and Newsday. Can the tech giants help boost publishers that are pivoting to subscriptions? Perhaps, but it’s a long, long road to getting users to pay consistently over the long haul.

https://digiday.com/media/going-end-tears-reality-check-coming-subscription-thirsty-publishers/
https://www.axios.com/exclusive-facebook-to-launch-a-local-subscription-accelerator-1519681358-5d6d5027-e46a-4f9a-adaa-c7982e1aef48.html
https://digiday.com/media/google-turns-charm-publishers-pivoting-subscriptions/
http://www.foliomag.com/monetizing-social-still-pay-play-proposition/

LittleThings Shuts Down After the Facebook Algorithm Change

When we first learned Facebook was going to change its algorithm to highlight posts from family and friends, the subtext was there’s going to be less content from publishers in our Facebook feeds. And with that change, we know some publishers that depend on Facebook would take big hits, just like what happened to Upworthy when Facebook changed its algorithm in 2013. And now the independent publication LittleThings says it’s shutting down due to a severe loss of traffic after the algorithm change. The site told Business Insider’s Mike Shields the change took out 75 percent of their organic traffic. LittleThings started out as a pet e-commerce site before shifting into feel-good news and service journalism.

In a company memo, chief executive Joe Speiser and president and COO Gretchen Tibbits wrote that they were exploring buyout options earlier this month before a quote “full on catastrophic update to Facebook’s algorithm took effect.” They say the future of the site is uncertain at this point. LittleThings targeted its content to women over 30 in middle America, and had a knack for riding the wave of Facebook’s changes. Tibbits said that, “For our audience, there’s not another platform right now. There are 100 great, talented people who were here and doing content that resonated with an audience that’s just harder to find right now.” But while many people are blaming Facebook’s algorithm change for hurting publishers like LittleThings, the real issue is with publishers who put all their eggs in the basket of a third-party site. Hopefully this will be a cautionary tale for publishers so they don’t repeat that mistake in the future.

http://www.businessinsider.com/littlethings-online-publisher-shuts-down-and-blames-facebook-algorithm-2018-2?op=1
https://digiday.com/media/littlethings-shuts-casualty-facebook-news-feed-change/
http://www.adweek.com/digital/littlethings-shuts-down-a-victim-of-facebooks-algorithm-changes/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/digital-publisher-littlethings-shuts-down-citing-facebook-news-feed-change-1519787564

Micropayments Get Another Round of Hype

The shining idea of micropayments for stories has been around since the dawn of the web, and a new group of startups comes to publishers every few years with the promise of a breakthrough. This time, the new startups on the block are Scroll, Invisibly and Brave, who have found a receptive audience among publishers. So why do publishers keep trying micropayments? As Digiday’s Max Willens writes, “The problems this new crop of companies are vowing to solve – ad-blocking, lousy user experience, low revenue per user – are intractable.” Therefore, micropayments are worth yet another spin.

One high-profile startup is Scroll, which will launch in the second half of this year. It will cost users $5 a month to access an ad-free version of content from MSNBC, The Atlantic, Slate and Fusion Media Group. That $5 will be split among publishers according to metrics like attention time. For users that want a simple subscription to all their favorite publications, this isn’t it. When you reach the free article limit on a paywall site like the New York Times, you will still get a paywall. What micropayment providers are hoping to counteract is the growing use of ad blockers. Currently, there hasn’t been an industry-wide consensus on how to deal with it. Some publishers will ask readers to whitelist them, some will block content until ad blockers are turned off, and others are turning to crypto-mining. Will this round of micropayment services really work? Maybe not, but publishers are going to try, and try again, to find an answer to declining ad revenues.

https://digiday.com/media/diversify-away-ad-revenue-publishers-give-micropayments-another-look/
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/city-a-m-employs-micropayments-in-the-fight-against-adblocking/s2/a718088/
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/315082/publishers-can-adopt-social-network-strategies-to.html
https://www.poynter.org/news/spotify-news-subscription-service-scroll-has-new-investor-partners

Here are some other stories we’re following

After the school shooting in Florida, journalists covering mass shootings created a Facebook Group for support.

Twitter launches Bookmarks, a private way to save tweets.

Viacom plans to launch its own streaming service to exploit thousands of hours of past programming.

And NBC Universal says it will cut ads by 10% during prime time shows.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #260: ‘Pivot to Subscriptions’ for Everyone?; LittleThings Blames Facebook for Shutdown; Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan appeared first on MediaShift.

A version of this piece originally appeared at The Splice Newsroom.

As newspaper sales stagnated, the Phnom Penh Post began looking for ways to appeal to more young Cambodians.

Koam Chanrasmey, the 28-year-old head of the newspaper’s video department, searched for inspiration. He found it in online clips of newscasters rapping the news in countries like Uganda and Senegal, but felt the approach had to be carefully considered before it could be introduced to conservative Cambodia.

“Rap is not Cambodian culture, it’s African-American culture,” he says. “But we could see the increasing popularity of rap among young people, and felt it was a different way of engaging the young people with reading the news.”

“We took that idea and [decided] let’s see what we can do in Cambodia to fit the Cambodian audience.”

The Phnom Penh Post has distinct English- and Khmer-language editions, with the latter known as Post Khmer. This is also reflected in their respective social media channels. The first clip, rapped entirely in Khmer, was posted on the Post Khmer Facebook in March to a generally warm reception from its followers.

Some anonymous users reacted with negative comments, accusing the rap news presenters of “destroying Cambodian culture.” But Chanrasmey tells Splice that the team values the positive comments, which ranged from “I never thought Cambodians could do this kind of thing” to “I never consume the news except for this; I like listening and dancing to the music.”

The online rap news show had gained about two million total views, with the highest to date surpassing 200,000 for an episode focusing on the bizarre case of an immigration police officer who staged a fall in front of a barely moving car. He was dubbed the ‘Poipet flopper’ by local media and earned the ridicule of Facebook users.

“When we started with the first episode we got 40,000 views and then we kept going up to 100,000 views [per episode],” Chanrasmey says.

But despite also drawing a spike in social media followers, the experiment in news delivery went on hiatus in September. One of five shows produced by the Post video team, the rap news series failed to attract an advertiser, while others have achieved financial viability—the travel, food and ‘Who is Who’ interview segments all have regular or semi-regular sponsors.

Episodes are time-intensive to produce: over the course of a week a composer creates original backing music, editors choose the stories, and the rapper duo creates rhymes to match. By Saturday morning, shooting is underway and editing follows in the afternoon.

Young people cheer at a Hip Hop contest in Phnom Penh. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

Every element is carefully considered, according to Chanrasmey, from the time of posting—“normally we get more views at noon time”—to the thumbnail that accompanies the videos, in an attempt to draw in an audience aged 22 to 35.

“We want to have both female and male [viewers], but we ended up having majority men, like 95% men,” he laments.

The post How One Newspaper Launched an Online Rap Show To Boost Sales appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

Subscribe to the MediaShift podcast via iTunes.

Follow @Mediashiftpod on Twitter.

Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Hari Sreenivasan is anchor of PBS NewsHour Weekend and a senior correspondent for the nightly program. Prior to joining NewsHour, he worked at CBS News and ABC News, ran his own production company and freelanced as a reporter for KTVU in Oakland, California.

Top News Of The Week

Twitter Bots and Conspiracy Theories Sow Division After the School Shooting in Florida

Unfortunately, we’re all too familiar with the media cycle that follows a  mass shooting like the one that happened in Florida last week. After the initial round of shock and sadness, there’s outrage and entrenchment. And, in what has become a disturbing trend, Russian-linked bots on Twitter immediately spring into action after a big breaking news event in the U.S. with divisive comments and hashtags. After the school shooting in Florida, bots on Twitter started popping up at hashtags #Parklandshooting, and later #ar15 and #NRA. It follows a pattern used by Russian bots during the 2016 election, and more recently in pushing the #releasethememo hashtag to get Congress to release the controversial memo by Rep. Devin Nunes. There were also fake tweets attributed to the Miami Herald’s Alex Harris asking for pictures of dead bodies and asking if the shooter was white.

Russian bots and alt-right figures also spread a conspiracy theory that an outspoken survivor, David Hogg, was actually an actor working for the FBI. The conspiracy theory gained further attention when Donald Trump Jr. liked two tweets about it. A related video became the top trending video on YouTube, while similar stories were in the trending news section on Facebook until Business Insider’s Steve Kovach brought it to their attention last Wednesday. Kovach noticed that in each case the algorithm was supposed to catch these kinds of misinformation, but failed, and while the tech companies have promised to add more human moderators, it hasn’t helped yet. The question is whether the tech platforms or U.S. government will take any meaningful action to stop the misinformation campaigns as they continue spreading after breaking news events.

http://fortune.com/2018/02/20/russian-twitter-bots-gun-control-florida-school-shooting/
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/02/20/russian-bots-pounce-after-florida-school-shooting-to-inflame-gun-control-debate.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-hogg-florida-school-shooting-russian-bots-attack-2018-2
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/russian-bots-florida-shooting-intl/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/02/15/florida-school-shooting-doctored-tweets-russian-bots-and-hoaxes-spread-false-news/340349002/
http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-promotes-conspiracy-theory-video-florida-shooting-survivor-david-hogg-2018-2?op=1

Vox Media Lays Off 50 Staffers as The Atlantic Plans to Hire 100

It’s been a topsy-turvy world for media lately, and sometimes legacy media comes out ahead of the digital upstarts. As digital natives like BuzzFeed and Vice have struggled with ad revenues, Vox Media announced it would have to cut 50 jobs, especially among social video teams. Vox CEO Jim Bankoff explained in a memo that social video was “growing successfully” but “won’t be viable audience or revenue growth drivers for us relative to other investments.” The company is laying off staffers from Curbed, Racked, SB Nation and their video team. Another 12 employees will be offered positions elsewhere in the company. Racked, a shopping vertical, is particularly hard hit with both its native social video and native shopping programs getting cut. Undoubtedly, one of the issues for Vox and other digital publications has been Facebook’s News Feed changes, which now focus more on posts from friends and family.

Meanwhile, legacy media outlet The Atlantic announced it would hire up to 100 people over the next year, expanding coverage of Washington, Hollywood, Europe and technology. Helped by investment from Emerson Collective, run by Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs, The Atlantic now has resources to grow and will hire more writers, editors, video producers, podcast producers and live event producers. The Atlantic will also bring in more people to its Talent Lab, an initiative to make sure its staff is diverse. According to Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, “We are in a moment of national fracturing, and our expansion allows us to do a lot more of the kind of work that really is in our DNA.” It helps to have a billionaire owner for The Atlantic, but the same pressures will remain on being a sustainable business with profitability as a top priority.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/vox-media-laying-around-50-people-1086869
https://www.ft.com/content/482dc54a-1594-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44
https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/vox-media-layoffs?utm_term=.nqpO8DMR0#.ickR92Blm
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vox-media-layoffs-latest-sign-of-trouble-for-digital-media/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-21/vox-media-cuts-50-employees-as-facebook-changes-rattle-industry

A Facebook Exec is in Hot Water Over Tweetstorm About Russians

After the independent counsel, Robert Mueller, detailed how Russian actors manipulated the public via Facebook, an unexpected source gave his own commentary on the findings: Facebook VP of ads Rob Goldman. In a series of tweets, Goldman said he was “very excited” about the indictment and pointed out that the media hadn’t really reported that most of the ads ran on Facebook after the election. He also noted that Facebook will be taking steps to fight misleading ads, including a new postcard effort to verify ad buyers by snail mail. Facebook will mail ad buyers a code so they can prove that they’re in the U.S. before they can buy a political ad. But these will only be required for federal elections where a candidate is mentioned by name.

But Goldman was swiftly attacked on Twitter, and used by President Trump to declare that the “Fake News Media never fails.” The president referred to Goldman’s tweet claiming the Russian ad campaign’s main goal wasn’t to sway the election. This is directly at odds with the indictment of 13 Russians by special counsel Robert Mueller. Goldman later walked back that contention, writing that the Russian campaign was “in favor of Trump” and apologizing internally to others at Facebook. A New York Times fact-check by Sheera Frenkel found some other problems with Goldman’s contentions. While he defends Facebook around the Russians’ use of ads, they also used pages, groups and events on Facebook. In another tweet, Goldman touts “digital literacy and critical thinking” campaigns by Finland, Sweden and Holland as effective ways to fight disinformation. But while those countries have made efforts to promote digital literacy, they’re still grappling with misinformation. Seems like Facebook will have to update its social media rules for its own executives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/facebook-executive-russia-tweets-fact-check.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-facebook/facebook-plans-to-use-u-s-mail-to-verify-ids-of-election-ad-buyers-idUSKCN1G10VD
https://twitter.com/robjective/status/964680122006581248
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont-let-facebook-off-the-hook/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/russia-facebook-trump.html

Here are some other stories we’re following

Dish reports 2.2 million subscribers to its streaming service Sling TV as paid satellite subscribers drop

Twitter suspends the accounts of people spreading fake stories about attacks at movie theaters showing ‘Black Panther’

Alt-right leaders are kicked off of Medium under new rules by the blogging platform

And foundations raise $4.8 million for non-profit newsrooms in last year’s NewsMatch program.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #259: Bots, Conspiracies Sow Division After School Shooting; Vox Cuts Staff as The Atlantic Grows; PBS NewsHour’s Hari Sreenivasan appeared first on MediaShift.

In the wake of public panic surrounding a spike in threats of violence and hate speech online, the European Commission has been preparing new recommendations on how member states should address “illegal online content.”

Although they have not been officially submitted, a leaked draft of the recommendations has begun to circulate and is now accessible on the website of European Digital Rights, a coalition group of civil society and human rights groups dedicated to protecting free speech and privacy online. The draft suggests that the Commission will not propose new regulations, but rather envisions private companies like Facebook and Google taking greater responsibility for these issues voluntarily.

In a brief analysis of the recommendations, EDRi’s Joe McNamee writes: “On the basis of no new analyses, no new data and no new pressing issues to be addressed, the leaked draft Recommendation seeks to fully privatize the task of deciding what is acceptable online or not. The only protection for user rights like freedom of expression is an unenforceable hope that certain ‘adequate safeguards’ will be put in place voluntarily by the companies. The draft reminds readers – twice – that the providers have ‘contractual freedom,’ meaning that any such safeguards will be purely optional.”

The only specific types of online content referenced in the draft are “terrorist material” (no definition offered) and content under copyright. McNamee argues that “the repeated references to measures proposed to address copyright and ‘intellectual property rights’ infringements gives an indication of the real driving force behind for such far-reaching measures.”

Bangladesh orders internet shutdown, then backs down

On February 11, the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission ordered internet service providers to shut down the internet over a few set time periods during the month of February that correspond with national university placement exams. The impetus for the temporary shutdowns was to stifle the circulation of leaked answers to the exams. The order was swiftly reversed following broad public criticism.

Part of the public university in Bangladesh, Dhaka (fotofritz16/GettyImages Plus)

Malawi suspends mandatory SIM card registration until further notice

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority announced in June 2017 that it would become mandatory for mobile phone users to register their SIM cards with network operators, citing registration provisions in the Communications Act of 2016. In late January, authorities doubled down on this promise and set a deadline for SIM registration, threatening that any phone with an unregistered card would have its service shut off on April 1, 2018.

But this week, the measure was suspended, with authorities citing the need for a “civic education” campaign on the matter before resuming registration practices. Azania Post reports that some citizens have shown reluctance to register their SIM cards for fear that the program is “a ploy by government to tap people’s phones.”

Research shows that European telcos behave better at home than in Africa

A new study by the French NGO Internet San Frontieres shows that major European telecommunications providers offering services in Sub-Saharan Africa do not offer the same levels of transparency and consumer protection to African customers as they do to their European markets. The study compares the practices and policies of Orange in Senegal and Safaricom (owned by Vodafone) in Kenya.

Brazil’s largest newspaper ditches Facebook

Folha de Sao Paulo announced that it will no longer post news articles or updates on its Facebook page, which has nearly six million followers. In an editorial-like article, the company said the decision stems primarily from Facebook’s recent decision to reduce the amount of newsfeed content from Facebook pages, instead favoring posts by friends and family. Folha’s executive editor accused Facebook of “…banning professional journalism from its pages in favour of personal content and opening space for ‘fake news’ to proliferate.”

Big advertiser threatens to leave Facebook, calling it a ‘swamp’

The behemoth U.S. company Unilever, which owns major food and toiletry brands including Lipton tea and Dove soap, is threatening to pull its advertising from Facebook. CNN published a pre-released copy of a speech by Unilever marketing executive Keith Weed in which he says that the company “cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain … which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.” CNN says that Weed attributed the move to a “proliferation of objectionable content on social media — and a lack of protections for children — is eroding social trust, harming users and undermining democracies.”

Kenyan soldiers stand guard outside the Kasarani Safaricom Sports Stadium in 2015. (Georgina Goodwin/AFP/Getty Images)

Facebook is violating German consumer laws

A Berlin court ruling (made in January but released to the public in mid-February) found that Facebook’s default settings for privacy and corresponding policies do not meet the basic standards for personal data protection required by German consumer protection laws. The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed by the federation of German consumer organizations, VZBV. The company has pledged to overhaul its privacy approach in tandem with the release of the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

New Research

• Digital Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: Analyzing the Practices of Orange in Senegal and Safaricom in Kenya – Internet Sans Frontieres (text in French)
• Approaching Access: A look at consumer personal data requests in Canada – Citizen Lab

The Netizen Report is produced by Global Voices Advocacy. Afef Abrougui, Ellery Roberts Biddle, Rezwan Islam, Karolle Rabarison, Elizabeth Rivera, Taisa Sganzerla, and Sarah Myers West contributed to this report.

The post Netizen Report: In Leaked Docs, European Commission Says Tech Companies Should Self-Regulate on Harmful Speech appeared first on MediaShift.

Don’t have a lot of time to spare, but still want to get a roundup of the week’s top news? Then check out our Digital Media Brief below!

MediaShift Podcast

Digital Media Brief

Listen to the MediaShift podcast and follow us on SoundCloud! Thanks to SoundCloud for providing audio support.

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Listen to the podcast via our Stitcher page or with the Stitcher app.

Host Bio

Mark Glaser is executive editor and publisher of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He is an award-winning writer and accidental entrepreneur, who has taken MediaShift from a one-person blog to a growing media company with events such as Collab/Space workshops and weekend hackathons; the weekly MediaShift podcast; and digital training, DigitalEd, in partnership with top journalism schools. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.

SPECIAL GUESTS

Jim Rutenberg is media columnist for the New York Times. He’s also a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. Jim came to the Times from the New York Observer in 2000, and was previously a staff reporter and stringer for the New York Daily News and a general assignment reporter at the New York Post.

Top News Of The Week

How Social Viewing Upended the Winter Olympics

As less Americans watch big live events on TV such as the Super Bowl and Oscars, the Winter Olympics is yet another victim of changing viewing habits. But NBC isn’t using traditional Nielsen ratings, but instead they’re touting TAD, which stands for Total Audience Delivery, a measure of viewership across network, cable and streaming platforms. And while they used TAD to measure Olympic ratings before in Rio, this marks the first time they’ve used the metric to sell advertising. So far, the TV ratings alone for NBC have been down 15 percent compared to Sochi but with TAD they’re only down 7 percent. But Comcast and NBC aren’t fretting the lower ratings, and are making a big push into social media and new platforms. After having dealt with the #NBCFail hashtag at previous Olympics, NBC is instead showing all events live, and live-streamed as well. By having so much video on social platforms, NBC can help offset lost TV audiences, and bring younger people into the action.

Plus NBC has partnered with two digital companies it has significant stakes in: Snapchat for live-streaming each day at the Olympics, with content produced by BuzzFeed. Plus, NBC is also experimenting with virtual reality and will provide special content for Uber riders. Meanwhile, news publishers have also ramped up their own innovative coverage of the Games. The New York Times is offering up the next best thing to being there: live, direct messages from editor Sam Manchester. Manchester is reporting on the ground at the Olympics and sending photos, videos and more to readers via the New York Times app. The experience is designed to be interactive so that readers can ask Manchester questions and even suggest which events to cover. For its part, the Washington Post fired up its “Post Oly Bot” on Twitter to provide regular updates of the Games. So even if TV viewership is down for this Winter Games, you can expect a lot of new experiences and social viewing to keep people engaged.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/sports/olympics/olympics-nbc-viewers-digital.html
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nbc-taps-snapchat-uber-expand-olympics-coverage-1083189
https://www.fastcompany.com/40528806/comcast-is-making-it-really-easy-to-gorge-on-the-winter-olympics
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/26/sports/olympics/olympics-messages-ul.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/05/sports/olympics/ar-augmented-reality-olympic-athletes-ul.html
https://twitter.com/wpolybot
https://www.cnet.com/news/ways-to-keep-up-with-the-2018-winter-olympics-with-alexa/

Facebook Will Support Publishers’ Paywalls in Its App

While Facebook has largely been the purveyor of bad news for publishers with its algorithm change, it did have a couple items of good news this week. The social giant announced that it would add a new section for news in its video feature Watch. And beginning March 1st, publishers will be able to use paywalls within Facebook’s mobile app for the first time. Facebook will allow readers to see five free articles from a publisher before loading a subscription page on the publisher’s website, rather than within Instant Articles. Publishers will also be able to keep 100% of the subscription revenue and the customer data. While Facebook had developed a work-around on Android apps, it took a hard-nosed negotiation with Apple to remove Apple’s 30% tax from paywall transactions.

And Facebook will definitely have to up its game when it comes to bringing in revenues for publishers. A new study by Digital Content Next found that Facebook and Google bring in a paltry amount of digital revenues for most large publishers. According to the report, the total average digital revenue driven by the so-called duopoly accounts for less than 5 percent of overall digital revenues for publishers, and makes up less than 30 percent of the distributed content revenue pie. While distributed content hasn’t provided publishers with a ton of revenues, it has grown year-over-year with video accounting for more than 80 percent of distributed content revenue. Will the new announcement about paywall support change the equation for publishers? Let’s hope so.

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/study-facebook-and-google-represent-less-than-5-of-digital-revenue-for-pu/516711/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/media-executives-talked-about-facebook-regulation-in?utm_term=.up2OZoMyG#.meWEZJ8Km
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/12/facebook-paywall/
https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/17004292/facebook-apple-subscription-paywall-ios-code-media
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/facebook-launch-publisher-paywalls-video-news-section-1084144

Apple News Brings Traffic, But What About Revenues?

Apple News doesn’t get the hype and usage statistics that Facebook does but according to Tom Dotan at The Information, the app can account for as much as 60 percent of readership of some stories. The app is curated by a team of a dozen former journalists who decide which stories get featured in the Top Stories or Spotlight sections of Apple News. They run a private Slack channel with top publishers who make their pitch to score the coveted featured spots in the app and home screen. Small and medium-sized publishers aren’t too happy with the situation, however, as the curators tend to favor larger mainstream outlets.

But mainstream outlets have their own issues with Apple News. Digiday’s Sahil Patel reports that ABC News, which is seeing growth on the app, wants more personalization options for push notifications. ABC News is seeing referral traffic grow by double-digit percentages each month, but publishers don’t earn significant ad revenue through the app because Apple outsourced ad sales to NBC. Apple is reportedly working on supporting DoubleClick for ads, but it better move a little more quickly on that front. Longtime news reader app Flipboard has a big head start, and its CEO Mike McCue told the crowd at Code Media that Apple News “as a product is living in the past.” He touts Flipboard’s ability to drive traffic to publishers directly and increase social sharing. Apple has an amazing advantage with its app on every iPad and iPhone home screen, but it needs to put more energy into updating it and start supporting smaller publishers.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-apples-courtship-of-news-publishers
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/14/apple-news-drives-lots-of-traffic-to-stories/
https://mashable.com/2018/02/14/flipboard-disses-apple-news/#YrbovXDOWsql
https://digiday.com/media/apple-news-shows-promise-delivering-traffic-wont-make-facebook-shortfalls/
https://digiday.com/media/abc-news-apple-news/

Here are some other stories we’re following

The New York Times’ podcast The Daily is so popular they’re distributing it to public radio through American Public Media.

Salon.com is offering readers with ad blockers a choice: turn off your ad blocker for the site or allow them to use your computer for crypto-mining.

YouTube TV added Turner networks including TBS, TNT and CNN and will now charge $40 a month, up $5.

And big-time TV producer Ryan Murphy, who created “Glee” and “American Horror Story,” was snatched up by Netflix from Fox in a reported $300 million deal.

Music on this Episode

Can’t Hate The Hater by 3 Feet Up
Sinking Feeling by Jessie Spillane
DJ by Jahzzar
Backed Clean Vibes by Kevin Macleod
Air Hockey Saloon by Chris Zabriskie
I Never Wanted To Say by Lorenzo’s Music
I’m Going for a Coffee by Lee Rosevere

Jefferson Yen is the producer for the MediaShift Podcast. His work has been on KPCC Southern California Public Radio and KRTS Marfa Public Radio. You can follow him @jeffersontyen.

The post MediaShift Podcast #258: Social Viewing of the Winter Olympics; Facebook Supports Paywalls in App; New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg appeared first on MediaShift.