Come on in; the water’s fine
Media statistic of the week
In the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections this week, a recent Knight/Ipsos poll showed young Americans are the least likely to be following news related to the elections.
The Knight Foundation reported that 32% of Americans under 35 said they didn’t consume any news about the 2022 midterm elections, while two-thirds of Americans over 55 consume midterm election news daily. Those under 35 who are following the midterm news tend to get their news from social media, while older Americans rely on traditional forms of media like television for news.
The poll also revealed that 58% of Americans say they are somewhat or very concerned that people in their community could be deceived by election disinformation, yet only 27% think they themselves will be swayed by it.
This past week in the media industry
Musk’s moves
Elon Musk’s first week and a half as the new owner of Twitter was eventful to say the least. Casey Newton of Platformer has been getting the scoops on many of the changes and other goings on at the company since the acquisition was finalized.
On Thursday, Newton took us Inside Twitter’s product roadmap under Musk, which includes the $8/month Twitter Blue verification, a potential revival of Vine and a shutdown of Revue, the newsletter platform Twitter bought in early 2021.
With that news, Sarah Ebner is “Feeling sorry for everyone with a Revue newsletter (and all at Revue) if this is true. Always thought it was a great platform and integration with Twitter made a lot of sense - then.”
Also seemingly experiencing a bit of a shutdown, free speech. Over the weekend, Musk said Twitter is cracking down on impersonators. He permanently suspended some accounts mocking him, including that of comedian Kathy Griffin, in what Abid Rahman of The Hollywood Reporter described as “a blow to free speech.”
At The Rebooting, Brian Morrissey takes a closer look at Musk’s revenue-generating schemes and Silicon Valley's pivot to paid. “Advertisers fleeing Twitter is part of a long divide between the consumer tech industry and the ad industry,” he notes.
Dumb and bad
And then there was “the tea on the bloodbath,” as Peter Himler put it, referring to the massive layoffs that hit the Twitter workforce on Friday.
“Here it is: 2,000 words from me and @ZoeSchiffer inside Twitter as Musk Thanos-snapped half the company out of existence, workers lawyered up, and remaining employees put together Google Docs in an effort to figure out who even works there any more,” tweets Newton, of his story with Zoe Schiffer on Twitter, cut in half.
Employees who’d been cut told Platformer they’d been struck by the cruelty of how the layoffs were handled and “the fact that the world’s richest man, who seems to revel in attention on the platform they had made for him, had not once deigned to speak to them,” Newton and Schiffer wrote.
At Bloomberg, Mark Gongloff argued that Musk entered the Layoff Hall of Infamy with the emailed firings.
Quoting from the column, “not the actions of someone with a carefully considered business plan,” James Crombie says, “you'll laugh, you'll cry…”
“Once more with feeling: mass firings via email are dumb and bad,” Gongloff points out. He also observes, “If you care about Twitter as a service or an investment, then you kind of have to worry about how clumsily these layoffs are being handled, especially in the broader context of Musk’s oafish management of the site he took over just a week ago.”
Clumsily is a good descriptor, especially considering that Josh Eidelson of Bloomberg News reported on Friday that Twitter is already being sued in a proposed class action for conducting a mass layoff without the required 60 day notice.
And then on Sunday, Kurt Wagner and Edward Ludlow of Bloomberg News confirmed a scoop from Platformer’s Newton that Twitter is asking some fired workers to please come back. Apparently, some were laid off by mistake, while there are others the company now realizes they may need.
To sum up, “Just a classic case study amiright,” tweets Max Chafkin.
Or as Charlie Warzel puts it at The Atlantic, Elon Musk Is Bad at This.
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To stay or not to stay
So, will there be a mass exodus from Twitter?
For Whither news? Jeff Jarvis wrote about Mastodon and his Hope for a Post-Musk Net. “Good morning, Monday Twitter,” he shares. “Here's my post from the weekend about packing my go bag for Mastodon. Come on in; the water's fine.”
For more on Mastodon, check out Billy Perrigo’s Time magazine interview with the platform’s 29-year-old founder, Eugen Rochko, Thousands Have Joined Mastodon Since Twitter Changed Hands. Its Founder Has a Vision for Democratizing Social Media.
But while Mastodon is gaining numbers, Jay Rosen says, “I'm staying at Twitter. Too valuable for me to abandon because of him. I also have Mastodon profile. @jayrosen_nyu@mastodon.social Meanwhile, read @JamesFallows: ‘the dismantling of Twitter is usefully clarifying about changes for the media as a whole.’”
In his latest Breaking the News newsletter installment, which is worth reading in full, James Fallows explains why Twitter Is Our Future.
“Better to be feared, or ridiculed?” he adds. “Real time experiment underway before our eyes.”
Esther Dyson acknowledges, “Yes, I'm sharing this on Twitter :) Thought-provoking and heartbreaking, especially the Great Gatsby quote.”
Who would cover your disappearance?
Moving on to an excellent new project from Columbia Journalism Review, which Kyle Pope explains at How much coverage are you worth?
“Wow this is a fantastic idea to really show the 'missing white woman' syndrome in media. If you're in the US, try out this tool now and share how much coverage you're worth,” Babette Radclyffe-Thomas urges.
The AreYouPressworthy.com website calculates your press value based on current reporting in America to expose bias in coverage and to advocate for change. Frankie Huang dubs it “A bleak and clever project. I'm worth 8 stories apparently.”
In addition to showing you what outlets would cover your disappearance (and which would likely ignore it), the tool also highlights some missing people who’ve received no coverage at all.
“Sure, it's election season, but we in the media should never be too busy to take a look in the mirror to critique how we cover something as important as a missing person. People of Color and Indigenous citizens get little to no coverage. Let's change that,” tweets Kaitlin Gebby.
Media profiles
Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times caught up with Molly Jong-Fast for a timely interview, How Molly Jong-Fast Tweeted Her Way to Liberal Media Stardom.
As Kara Voght says, “This profile of @MollyJongFast is as much a story of her as it is about Twitter — its role in amplifying voices and building careers where traction may not have otherwise existed. An interesting thing to meditate on as the platform implodes.”
Kirsten Powers adds, “File under 'Twitter is not all bad': It gave us the fabulous @MollyJongFast By @grynbaum.” Shawn McCreesh describes it as “An expertly calibrated @grynbaum profile of a real New York character, @MollyJongFast.”
Speaking of Twitter’s potential implosion, Gabriella Paiella shares, “Before Twitter fully implodes, I needed to know: what is @DiscussingFilm? And @FilmUpdates? And why do they have such a grip?”
She found out and wrote about it in a new piece for GQ, The Rise of @DiscussingFilm and Other Twitter Film News Accounts. Joel Pavelski invites you to “Meet the savvy posters behind @DiscussingFilm, @FilmUpdates and @CultureCrave, who've amassed hundreds of thousands of followers with their fast and clever aggregation of breaking news outta Hollywood.”
And last up, at Columbia Journalism Review, Robert Baird has a new profile of The American Prospect under executive editor David Dayen, ‘The Left Edge of the Possible.’
Mark Krotov says, “This is such a great piece about @TheProspect, by @bobbybaird in @CJR. The @ddayen era has been remarkable and it's nice to see it get this recognition. I'm a dedicated and loyal subscriber and you should be, too!
More notable media stories
From the Muck Rack Team
With a decade of experience as a PR professional, Amber Masciorini knows just how to keep her finger on the pulse of industry trends. Head over to the blog to find out What’s next in PR: ChicExecs Amber Masciorini tells us what’s trending.
Storyteller, Thought Follower, and International Man of Mystery
2yI'm very interested in your take on the "Elon Era" at Twitter and how that is going to impact MuckRack, especially if prominent parties start bailing on the platform.