Weekend Read
The Press Gazette’s latest tally of English-language news publishers with over 100K paying subscribers is out. Have we hit the ceiling? That is the question many continue to ask as the NYT expands into the UK to grow its international subscribers (one million now) and as streamers show up on consumers’ monthly credit card bills. In this whole wide world, 28 million people are paying for these leading publications. Local is even worse, even if you count donors to nonprofits. The platforms continue to hold the greatest ad machine ever built and Amazon the greatest department store. Ads and transaction fees for goods… not sure subscription and donations can catch up to ensure a sane, reliable news stream.
Biden’s pick for Voice of America could face trouble in the Senate and Boris Johnson has a conflict of interest in his pick to overseee the choosing of the new head of its regulatory body, Ofcom. Ofcom’s new chief will have a big say on funding for BBC and social media platforms soon to fall under Ofcom. Interesting how contentious these “media” governance roles have become in these partisan times and big tech meets legacy media times.
The Information reports that Facebook VR, a precursor to the Metaverse, is already rife with abuse, including racism and Axios reports that only the top creators make all the money on Substack, Twitch and podcasts. We already knew this from book publishing.
I wonder when people start to opt-out of the digital public space altogether? That’s what I heard at a dinner in a fun restaurant last night. Not that my friends know, but some college kids are buying flip phones to shed the effects. They really only want maps, text, phone and Uber. Innovating in the news stream is one way out of this chaos.
Heidi
100k Club: Top English-language news publishers reach 28m paying online readers - Press Gazette
Lunch (or a drink) with Chris Wallace - Financial Times
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace: ‘There’s no spin to truth’ The veteran journalist on life after Trump, his relationship with the Murdochs — and why he won’t censure Tucker Carlson
HKS hosts old news guys and Nobel Prize winner, Marissa Ressa- IOP
Craig Forman (former head of McClatchy), Richard Gingras (Head of Google News), Mark Thompson (former head of NYT) and Maria Ressa spoke together Monday at the IOP Forum. Worth a listen to see where everyone is shaking out.
When it comes to media credits and bylines, men still take the lion’s share - Nieman
Men tended to report more than women, and overwhelmingly so at the wire outlets. The exceptions to this trend were CNN.com, HuffPost, and Vox.
In Facebook’s VR Headset, Racism and Other Abuses Showed Up ‘Like Clockwork’ — The Information
On Tech: Why the internet is turning into QVC - NYT
The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth - Axios
The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth —Top 1% of Twitch streamers earn 50%+ all revenue —Top 1% podcasters earn almost all ad revenue —Top 10 Substacks make $20M Tipping and micropayments may help solve this. But prob not meaningfully or soon
The creator economy was supposed to democratize media, but it turns out that a small portion of creators still reaps the most revenue for their work across multiple platforms.
Why it matters: New tipping and micropayments features will hopefully make it easier for smaller creators to get paid. But for now, much of the creator economy is still supported by pricier subscriptions, forcing consumers to be selective.
Boris Johnson accused of creating a conflict of interest over Ofcom chair selection - FT
Michael Prescott works for a PR agency that represents companies including Facebook and Sky and Apple (outside the UK).
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has been accused of creating a conflict of interest after appointing a lobbyist from a public relations agency that advises media companies including Sky to help select the next chair of the UK’s industry regulator. Michael Prescott, a partner at Hanover, has just been appointed as a senior external interviewer who will advise Sue Gray, the official running the recruitment process for the new Ofcom chair. Jo Stevens, the shadow culture secretary, has written to the government expressing concerns about his role. The firm represents at least three large companies in the sector — Sky, Facebook, and (outside the UK) Apple. His appointment comes as ministers relaunch the selection procedure for the next chair of Ofcom, which has an expanding role regulating media, telecoms, and the internet.
Biden favorite to run Voice of America parent agency could face trouble with Senate GOP - Washington Post
A veteran journalist who is the White House’s leading candidate to run Voice of America’s parent agency has begun to attract conservative criticism, raising the prospect of a lengthy confirmation battle if she is nominated.
Amanda Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor, is President Biden’s top candidate to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, according to several people involved in the selection. The agency oversees VOA, Radio Free Europe, and three other international news networks that received about $630 million in funding from the federal government last year.
Bennett, 69, was the director of Voice of America from 2016-2020; she resigned last year just before the arrival of the agency’s new chief executive, Michael Pack, a Trump appointee who set off a brief but tumultuous period in which he quickly fired the heads of the other Agency for Global Media-run networks and replaced them with his own picks.
George Will on Conservatism Capitalism - The Hub
The primary institution for this is education, particularly higher education. To me, the most ominous development in the United States—I don’t know the condition in Canada any longer—is that we are not furnishing elites that believe in the country. Elites that say that the country, however flawed it is and however meandering its past to the present, is still a noble enterprise.
It has taken 800 years for the Western world to evolve, through thickets of ecclesiastical and political interference, the great universities of the world which are, in my judgment, the finest ornaments of Western civilization. It takes about a generation—two at the most—to kick all that away, to squander the reputation that was hard-earned by these great universities. And it’s happening now.
For gossip and to understand why NYT is competing with Axel Spring…Overview of Internatl Axel Spring meeting for new Bild CEO - via NYT Ben Smith after he broke the story on its lead editor’s harassment cases. Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner: “It’s all a big bunch of crap”.
The New York Sun, a defunct newspaper, plans a comeback after a sale - NYT
On Podcasts and Radio, Misleading Covid-19 Talk Goes Unchecked - NYT
False statements about vaccines have spread on the “Wild West” of media, even as some hosts die of virus complications.
Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube lose nearly $10bn - FT
…after iPhone privacy changes forcing apps to ask for permission to track users for advertising purposes leads to a big hit for social media platforms.
Apple’s decision to change the privacy settings of iPhones caused an estimated $9.85bn of revenues to evaporate in the second half of this year at Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as their advertising businesses were shaken by the new rules. Apple introduced its App Tracking Transparency policy in April, which forced apps to ask for permission before they tracked the behaviour of users to serve them personalised ads. Most users have opted out, leaving advertisers in the dark about how to target them. Advertisers have responded by cutting back their spending at Snap, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and diverted their budgets elsewhere: in particular to Android phone users and to Apple’s own growing ad business.Now TV Wants Nielsen to Measure Up - NYT
After years of complaints, NBCUniversal and its peers are looking for other ways to count viewers, with or without the ratings giant.
Meta plans to remove thousands of sensitive ad-targeting categories - NYT
Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, said on Tuesday that it planned to eliminate advertisers’ ability to target people with promotions based on their interactions with content related to health, race and ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, sexual orientation, and thousands of other topics.
The move, which takes effect on Jan. 19, affects advertisers on Meta’s apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger and the company’s audience network, which places ads in third-party apps. The Silicon Valley company said it was making the changes to limit the way that its targeting tools can be abused. In the past, these features have been used to discriminate against people or to spam them with unwanted messaging.