Weekly Media News
While the US media continued to debate free speech, content regulation, libel, the well-paid Facebook Oversight Board, Sen. Warner’s Section 230 bill, privacy and the impact of small digital mobs on Wall Street and in American politics, the UK media covered new media investments and turnarounds, Canadian newspapers published blank front pages Thursday in protest of Google and Facebook not paying for news, while India’s free press is tested along with a crackdown on Twitter. The Fast Company profile on Tim Cook has a 12-min video from Cook that is worth your time, the article in Intelligencer by Scott Galloway on how to rebuild Twitter is good, and the numbers on largest the top 50 English news sites in The Press Gazette is insightful. Plus, audio is in: President Biden will hold a weekly radio address and co-founder of The Lincoln Project launches a podcast. Plagued with sexual assault cases and resignations, it is a little less bold than the media company many expected the Lincoln Project to launch for the center right.
The New York Times Tops 7.5 Million Subscriptions as Ads Decline -NYT
Jeff Zucker to retire and the end of an era - FT
“What is clear is that journalism that is differentiated enough and high enough quality can generate consumer subscriptions,” said Gordon Crovitz, the former Wall Street Journal publisher. “And that’s the most sustainable business model that news has ever had.”
Mark Warner’s Section 230 Dem Bill - WashPost
The senator’s proposal aims to preserve the thrust of Section 230, which generally spares a wide array of website operators from being held liable for what their users say. Instead, it opens an easier legal pathway for Web users to seek court orders and file lawsuits if posts, photos, and videos — and the tech industry’s refusal to police them — threaten them personally with abuse, discrimination, harassment, the loss of life or other irreparable harm.
Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for Over $2.7B - NYT
Unlike the Section 230 libel protection afforded to social media platforms, Smartmatic accused Rupert Murdoch’s network of promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election that damaged the company.
The Capitalist Case for Overhauling Twitter By Scott Galloway - Intelligencer
We know it’s terrible for society. But it’s also a terribly run company. The real issue is Twitter’s ad-based revenue model, which both is corrosive to the commonwealth and makes the company worth less money.
Canadian Publishers Pressure to Regulate Google and Facebook – The Record
Dozens of Canadian newspapers in large and small metro areas published a blank front-page blank on Thursday, Feb. 4 across the country to remind Canadians that this is what news will look like if regulations don’t protect newsrooms. Canadian privately-owned newspapers protest Google and Facebook and pressure the Canadian government to look to Australia’s regulations on news.
NYT Reporter Rukmini Callimachi Moving to Higher Ed Beat After ‘Caliphate’ Collapse – Daily Beast
Rukmini Callimachi, formerly one of the paper’s highest-profile reporters on ISIS and extremism in the Middle East, has been re-assigned to cover higher education, multiple people familiar with the matter confirmed to The Daily Beast. The plum new beat will see Callimachi covering Ivy League schools and the goings-on at college campuses across the country.
Top 50 largest news websites in the world – Press Gazette
Pro-Trump right-wing title The Epoch Times made it into the ranking for the first time after seeing a 421% growth since December 2019 from 10.2m to 53.4m visits per month – more than any other site in the top 50. Backed by the Fulang Gong sect, Epoch Times has become a home for anti-China conspiracy theories around coronavirus. BBC.co.uk and BBC.com combined once again came out on top with 1.3bn website visits in December which, while slightly lower than last month’s figures, is up 43% since December 2019. Next, most-viewed was CNN with 838m sessions on its websites (CNN.com and edition.CNN.com), although this was 38% lower than the 1.4bn visits that CNN’s two sites received in November.
Monthly web site visits Dec 2020 (not unique):
BBC 1.2B
CNN 838M
NYT 433M
Guardian 347M
FOX 332M
WashPost 227M
CNBC 170M
USA Today 145M
Former FT editor and BBC chief, investors to buy The New European - FT
The weekly publication launched after the 2016 referendum has been a focal point for Brexit resistance. Matt Kelly, the former head of content at Archant who launched the New European following the 2016 EU referendum, will majority own and lead the title after raising about £750,000, according to people familiar with the process. The consortium of investors includes Mark Thompson, the former BBC director-general and chief executive of the New York Times; Lionel Barber, the former editor of the FT; and Taavet Hinrikus, the co-founder of the fintech group TransferWise. Gavin O’Reilly, the former chief executive of the Independent, will become executive chairman of the new group. Its editor-at-large is Alastair Campbell, the former communications director for Tony Blair in Downing Street.
Mr. Kelly and his 10 investors are banking on The New European’s potential to find a market of readers who do not feel at home with rival news periodicals such as the centre-left New Statesman and centre-right Spectator. Each investor put in between £50,000 and £100,000, according to one person familiar with the process. Other investors include Jeff Henry, the former chief executive of Archant, who approved the launch of the title in 2016, and the venture capitalists Robin Klein, general partner at LocalGlobe, and Barry Maloney of Balderton Capital.
Can original reporting revive the UK newspaper giant sold for £10m? - FT
Newspaper veteran David Montgomery’s plans for the Scotsman and Yorkshire Post will be closely watched. No Company better embodies the precipitous decline of local news than JPI Media, one of the UK’s largest regional publishers and owner of storied titles including the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post. The new owner has promised to inject £6.5m of cash to boost original reporting and replace “irrelevant or clickbait stories with exclusive content to enhance local lives”.
Tim Cook on Why It's Time to Fight the "Data-Industrial Complex" - GQ
Tim Cook interview: privacy, tech-fueled extremism, and more - Fast Company
No mincing words video from Tim Cook worth your 12 minutes inside this link.
GameStop, Bitcoin, and QAnon: How the Wisdom of Crowds Became the Anarchy of the Mob – WSJ
Thousands of Americans are being mobilized by social-media algorithms that amplify fringe ideas. The results have real-world impact. What’s happening on WallStreetBets on Reddit is of a piece with other internet phenomena, from bitcoin mania to the online conspiracy theories of QAnon, and the events leading up to the Capitol riot…small groups of people, not large networks of them, are often the best at incubating new ideas, which only later spread to the world at large. But in the case of recent collective manias, people are developing ideas that may carry a kernel of truth, but are largely fictions, often crafted in defiance of authorities—and of authoritative information.
India Threatens Twitter With Penalties If It Doesn’t Block Accounts – WSJ
India threatened to punish Twitter if it doesn’t comply with a government request to restore a block on accounts connected to tweets about farmers’ protests that the government says are inflammatory. On Monday Twitter blocked more than 250 accounts from being seen within India following a government request after Indian officials said the tweets could incite violence. The blocking of the accounts on Monday, which included some respected news organizations and political activists, triggered an outcry on Twitter. Twitter reversed the ban within 12 hours, saying the tweets in question should be allowed as part of free speech. The company said protecting public conversation and transparency was fundamental to its work. If the company doesn’t comply, New Delhi has threatened to take action under its information technology laws, which could include a fine and up to seven years of jail time for the Twitter executives in charge of implementing government directives.
Narendra Modi's Assault on the Indian Idea - The Atlantic
The Caravan is a small magazine—it has a staff of just a few dozen people—and its readership pales in comparison with other members of India’s English-language printed press. Yet its diminutive size masks its power: The publication is read by government ministers and opposition leaders, and larger outlets regularly follow up on its stories. Its team of talented staff writers is supported by a glittering list of contributors, all of whom see the magazine’s strengths as standing apart from India’s larger mainstream publications.
Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. – NYT
In 1997, Mr. Goldhaber helped popularize the term “attention economy” with an essay in Wired magazine predicting that the internet would upend the advertising industry and create a “star system” in which “whoever you are, however, you express yourself, you can now have a crack at the global audience.” He outlined the demands of living in an attention economy, describing an ennui that didn’t yet exist but now feels familiar to anyone who makes a living online.
Facebook Restricts Free Speech by Popular Demand - The Atlantic by Daphne Keller, Director of intermediary liability at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and a former associate general counsel to Google. This article is part of “The Speech Wars,” a project supported by the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, and the Fetzer Institute.
The way that democratic countries issue instructions for responsible private behavior is by passing laws. Those laws are constrained by the Constitution, including the First Amendment, for a reason. Lawyers can argue—and some respected ones do—for more restrictive interpretations of the First Amendment, in which courts and lawmakers can prohibit online the sort of speech that would be legal in a park or a bar. But that kind of legal rule change would be an incremental and careful process. Instead, private companies are reshaping our speech norms in fits and starts. This big do-over is what happens when we put platforms in charge. In our rush to deputize companies as enforcers of new rules for the public square, we are forfeiting constitutional protections and major aspects of self-governance.
Katherine Maher, Wikimedia Foundation’s CEO, will step down – Axios
Leaving the nonprofit in a vastly stronger position than she found it when she joined in 2014. The Wikimedia Foundation now has an endowment of more than $90 million and has doubled its annual budget to an estimated $140 million in 2021. It’s hard to think of any other tech nonprofit that has been remotely as successful. OpenAI effectively became a for-profit in 2019, while Signal is still reliant on a single donor, Brian Acton. Wikipedia is growing to become the most global and trusted source of knowledge in the world. Its base of active editors is rising, its number of women editors has increased by 30% just in the past year.
As Google eyes Australia exit, Microsoft talks Bing with PM | Reuters
Software giant Microsoft Corp is confident its search product Bing can fill the gap in Australia if Google pulls its search over required payments to media outlets, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday. Australia has introduced laws that would force internet giant Google and social media heavyweight Facebook Inc to negotiate payments to domestic media outlets whose content links drive traffic to their platforms.
“We recognize the importance of a vibrant media sector and public interest journalism in a democracy and we recognize the challenges the media sector has faced over many years through changing business models and consumer preferences,” the spokeswoman said.
Lincoln Project co-founder starting new podcast company – Axios
Ron Steslow, a political strategist who hosted The Lincoln Project’s podcast, is launching a new podcast company called Politicology, promising “politics without the blinders.” This at a time when the successful Lincoln Project seems to be facing major issues including accusations of sexual assault against co-founder, John Weaver, resignations of Steslow, and Mike Madrid, co-founder and George Conway’s leave of absence.
Biden to launch podcast/weekly radio address – NYT
Journalists and Twitter – NYT
Twitter has occupied an uncomfortable place between journalists and their bosses for more than a decade. It offers journalists both a newswire and a direct line back into the news cycle. But it has also set off a tug of war between the voice of the brand and of the individual. Newsrooms themselves are struggling to determine their own identities in a polarized nation and a subscription economy. And many of the battles over Twitter are really battles over journalism itself, and over whose perspective and judgment is central in an era when the country and the industry are wrestling with big questions of race and gender, and power.
(Disclaimer… most summaries are cut verbatim from source and not original writing.)