Our real-time car crash
Media statistic of the week
PWC’s Media Outlook report 2020-2024 predicts U.S. newspaper ad revenue will drop by 27% over five years, from $49.2bn in 2019 to $36bn in 2024. Global circulation and subscriber revenue is expected to fall from $58.7bn in 2019 to $50.4bn in 2024. PWC is forecasting more than a billion dollars to be wiped off U.S. newspaper circulation revenues in 2020, falling to $10.2bn. Circulation spend is predicted to fall to just under $10bn in 2024. “In the digital economy, the newspaper industry is having to adapt or face irrelevance,” the report concludes.
This week in media history
The first Cannes Film Festival was held on September 20, 1946, with 18 nations represented. Nine films were honored with the top award, the Grand Prix du Festival, as organizers at the first Cannes placed more emphasis on creative stimulation between national productions than on competition.
This past week in the media industry
Blistering analysis
First up, “Essential @JamesFallows on our real-time car crash,” John Hendrickson links to James Fallows’ piece for The Atlantic, in which he argues that The Media Learned Nothing From 2016 and the press is still engaging in the same destructive habits when it comes to covering Donald Trump.
Jay Rosen urges, “Read @JamesFallows on certain members of the press. ‘They’re behaving like Mueller, wanting to be sure they observe proprieties that would have made sense when dealing with other figures in other eras. But now they’re dealing with Donald Trump.’”
Deborah Snow says it’s a “blistering analysis which could equally be applied to how the media covers the climate debate - ‘both sides’ do not carry equal weight or justify equal claim to attention.” On Twitter, Fallows delivers this message to the “WH Press Corps: What Trump is saying right now is at least 90% fantasy/lie. No public interest in covering this in real time.”
Speaking of lies, The Police Are Lying in LA and the Media Is Falling for It—Again. That’s Elie Mystal writing for The Nation and pointing out, “In the aftermath of the shooting of two police officers, LAPD is lying. And the mainstream press is repeating their lies. Black Lives Matter Did Not SHOOT COPS or BLOCK A DAMN HOSPITAL. STOP being stooges for LAPD.”
But Paul Thornton didn’t see that happening. He tweets, “This @thenation piece is completely baffling. Sheriff Villanueva’s statements are being debunked in real time. Josie Huang’s arrest is being treated as an outrage. Nothing put out by @LASDHQ is being reported by media ‘stenographers.’”
The insidiousness of access
Also turning the lens on fellow members of the press, Margaret Sullivan, who writes in her Washington Post column that Washington’s cozy media-political cocktail circuit needs a cooling-off. Now is the perfect time. “Yes, the insidiousness of access: journalism that starts with power, not with the people,” tweets Jeff Jarvis.
“You know who else finds this crazy? Every journalist working outside DC,” says Ann Marie Lipinski. Adds Sopan Deb, “Great piece by @Sulliview - and the explanation that it’s pretty much for the access shows the distance DC reporting culture is from the real world.” Ron Judd thinks, “Journos who still defend this sort of open hobknobbing demonstrate how stunningly out of touch they are with the masses -- and the times.”
Striking a nerve
Next up, an “Outstanding and necessary piece by @futuromedia CEO/ED @dildaydoc for @NiemanReports.” Julio Ricardo Varela links to Erika Dilday’s piece for Nieman Reports, Journalists Can Help People Tell Their Own Stories by Talking Less, Listening More. “We always have to ask ourselves, Who am I to tell this story? We have to accept that by telling it, we take a role,” she writes. “We inject bias and subjectivity, and we must recognize that at all times. Our belief in our ability to be objective is our own hubris.”
And in a piece for Poynter, Omar Rashad, looks at how the journalism industry’s elitism locks out folks from underrepresented backgrounds. Michelle Manafy says, “This personal account from @omarsrashad really struck a nerve for me (as someone who transferred from an ‘impressive’ private school to SFSU because I didn't want to go into massive debt).”
Ren LaForme agrees: “Like many, I wasn't even able to get through the door at some news orgs when I was seeking an internship simply because of the school I went to. That practice makes journalism inaccessible to a lot of people. An important column here from @omarsrashad.”
Reporters who report on reporters and reporting
In an analysis for CNN, Brian Stelter notes that while Trump defied coronavirus safety guidelines at his rally inside a manufacturing plant in Nevada, TV networks exercised caution. “Today I spoke with 5 people on the ground in Nevada and 5 who are involved in news coverage decision-making back at HQ. The takeaway: Trump’s defiance of Covid safety guidelines is forcing news outlets to make tough calls about keeping staffers safe,” he tweets.
Robert Silverman shares, “At @thedailybeast, I spoke with @bruce_arthur, @Herring_NBA and @MikeVorkunov about covering the NBA when the locker rooms are off-limits, sources can only be accessed via screens, and you’re over 1,000 miles away from the only games being played.” Read his piece for The Daily Beast on how sportswriters capture the NBA action from outside the bubble.
And Clare Malone profiled Ben Smith for New York magazine in a piece called Starting Trouble With the New York Times Media Columnist Ben Smith, which includes this quote from ex-BuzzFeed editor Saeed Jones: “Ben is a messy bitch who lives for the drama.”
Rick Paulas shares, “okay i am at the point where this piece by @ClareMalone is one of the most important pieces I've read, in terms of just media understanding. not like criticisms or analysis of the subject, but the piece needs to be internalized for any new journos.” Maybe that’s why Noah Goldberg thinks, “We need a new brand of reporter: media reporter reporters. These reporters will exclusively report on reporters who report on reporters okay?” Although Katie Notopoulos says, “Ben has been living rent free in my head for 8 years now, and I’ll never feel any closer to understanding his weirdness.”
Sort of staggering
We’ve heard a lot about him. Now let’s look at some of Smith’s reporting at the Times. He recently did some deep digging into how The Intercept Promised to Reveal Everything. But It Didn’t Protect a Source. Internal documents show how Reality Winner ended up in jail — and the fallout in the newsroom. “Deeply embarrassing and tragic story about the Intercept, where nobody has faced any consequences for failing to protect Reality Winner, who was sentenced to 5.25 years, and whose mom is now a corrections officer to learn what her daughter’s life is like,” tweets Hamza Shaban.
Don Moynihan also notices, “Lots of interesting details in this piece about the Intercept's mishandling of Reality Winner, but Glenn Greenwald’s disinterest in evidence of Russian cyberattacks is sort of staggering.”
Michael Slackman says it’s “Another take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred (choose your metaphor) piece by @benyt.” And importantly, “This incisive story by @benyt does full justice to the victims of shoddy journalism,” tweets Deborah Blum.
About that TikTok deal
As Bobby Allyn reported at NPR, the TikTok ban was averted after Trump gave the Oracle-Walmart deal his ‘blessing.’ But if you’re wondering what the TikTok deal actually achieved, the reporting by Erin Griffith and David McCabe at The New York Times might still leave you with a few questions. As they write in ‘There’s No There There’: What the TikTok Deal Achieved, “Under the initial terms, ByteDance still controls 80 percent of TikTok Global...And the government did not provide specifics about how the deal would answer its security concerns about TikTok.”
Smith weighs in again with this take: “Massive, politicized cloud contracts to Microsoft and Oracle may be the true, multi-billion dollar cost Bezos is paying for buying the Washington Post.” Also, Shira Ovide points out, “Walmart has the correct take on this Tiktok thing. Give Walmart a tech newsletter.”
Yet another devastating story about Facebook
Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed News says, “This is the most important Facebook story I’ve ever published.” Mac, Craig Silverman and Pranav Dixit reported on a 6,600-word internal memo from a former Facebook data scientist that exposes how the social network knew about specific examples of global political manipulation with fake accounts and failed to act.
Dustin Volz says, “This article is a good reminder that just because Facebook does press-friendly announcements of takedowns of malicious networks from time to time, there is no real mechanism to gauge how much of a grip the company has on its own infinitely vast platform.”
“Yet another devastating story about Facebook. Huge kudos to Sophie Zhang, an employee who turned down $64k severance to tell the truth. The speed & scale of the damage Facebook is doing to democracies around the world is truly terrifying,” tweets Carole Cadwalladr. Meanwhile, Shira Ovide says, “I have to go sit in a dark room for a long time. The scale of manipulation on Facebook outside the U.S. described here is just...terrifying. As is the torment of a relatively junior employee who felt unsupported in trying to tamp it down.”
Cancel culture DOES exist
“I have written the piece that I was born to write,” Sarah Manavis reveals. “Goodreads has held onto an effective monopoly despite being a nearly unusable service. I wrote about why its reign of terror might finally be coming to an end.” In a piece for the NewStatesman, she explains why Goodreads is bad for books and takes a look at the potential promise of a new startup, The StoryGraph. “Also it’s worth adding that it's NUTS how many people just don’t know (including me until less than a year ago!) that Amazon owns Goodreads,” she tweets.
James Cook shares, “I signed up to @thestorygraph after reading this New Statesman article about the failure of Goodreads. I imported my Goodreads ratings, took its survey and it gave me a long list of very relevant recommendations. Success!” And one more note from Manavis: “CORRECTION: Cancel culture DOES exist. And it's me trying to cancel Goodreads.”
A few more
- At AP News, Janie Har and Felicia Fonseca write about how media access to wildfires and disasters varies widely by state. Gillian Flaccus shares, “I have covered many big fires in both CA and Oregon and can say the access is night and day.” Adds Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “I've experienced this in #California - allowing reporters access to show firefighters at the scene of wildfires helps tell the story, hold officials accountable and keep residents informed.”
- “After years of ‘will they or won't they?’ ... they won’t.” At The Wall Street Journal, Patience Haggin details How the Tie-Up of Clickbait Giants Taboola and Outbrain Unraveled. The advertising downturn caused by the pandemic brought the internet’s two largest content-recommendation companies back to the negotiating table nearly a year after they had agreed to combine. But in the end, they just couldn’t make it work.
- Aminda Marques Gonzalez and Nancy San Martin of the Miami Herald revealed last week that the paper has pulled the Spanish-language LIBRE as a weekly supplement and launched an investigation into its business relationship with the company after the advertising insert included inflammatory, racist and anti-Semitic commentary.
- Vanessa Thorpe of The Guardian reports that the BBC plans to axe all its national radio reporters and ask them to reapply for a smaller number of jobs as television, radio and digital reporters, rather than as dedicated audio journalists. “Many fear it is not just the end of their careers but the premature end of an era for the BBC,” she writes.
- The scoop from Sara Fischer at Axios, 400,000 people have already registered to vote in 2020 via Snapchat. Meanwhile, Taylor Hatmaker of TechCrunch reports on the debut of Twitter’s US election hub to help people navigate voting in 2020.
- Vinyl just outsold CDs for the first time in decades, as J. Fergus reports at Input. But...when you look at the overall numbers, it sounds less impressive. “Vinyl has steadily risen in recent years, but it continues to be on the fringe of overall music sales,” he explains. “Despite its marginal hold on the industry at large, it’s the only darling of physical music sales which fell by roughly $109 million.”
From the Muck Rack Team
Back in 2017, we started compiling “This Month in Bad PR Pitches.” Three years and 500+ tweets later, there seems to be no end in sight to these irrelevant, cringe-inducing pitches. We partnered with our friend, legendary PR coach Michael Smart, to employ his experience as a “journalist interpreter” for PR people across all industries to translate what these tweets really mean for your work. Together we’re bringing you a [legitimately] entertaining ebook analyzing journalist feedback for PR pros. Head over to the Muck Rack Blog to get the download and watch the webinar: A PR guide to journalists’ biggest pet peeves.
Perhaps you’ve heard that there’s an election coming up here in the U.S.? Joaquin Monfort of RavenPack is pretty partial to his company’s election monitor, but he recognizes that the insights from a variety of dashboards will no doubt contribute to many a story angle in the weeks to come. He’s rounded up his picks of 7 of the best U.S. presidential election monitors to inform your reporting.
Question of the week
As James Fallows documents, the media is continuing with the “both sides-ism” and “horse-race-ism,” but he believes there is still time to adjust. What do you think the media needs to do to reverse course? Do you think it will?