Welcome to my weird ideological desert island
Media statistic of the week
A new study on The Impact of Covid-19 on 20 U.S. Newspapers’ Print and Digital Circulation, from Iris Chyi of the School of Journalism and Moody College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin, shows that the number of digital subscriptions went up by 64% between 2019 and Q3 2020, but while the price of print subscriptions has reached an all-time high—seven-day home delivery now costs nearly $1,000/year—it takes nearly six new digital subscriptions to make up for the revenue loss of one print subscriber.
As Ryan O’Leary says, “We can't keep doing what we do if everyone’s expecting it for free…”
This past week in the media industry
Merida named LA Times Executive Editor
It’s official: ESPN’s Kevin Merida has been named L.A. Times executive editor. As Meg James writes at the Los Angeles Times, “He will take the helm in June, becoming the third person of color to steer the largest news organization in the West.”
Merida has been editor in chief of ESPN’s the Undefeated since 2015, the award-winning division that plumbs the intersection of race, culture and sports. He also spent 22 years at The Washington Post.
Wesley Lowery extends his “Congratulations to the LATimes, for making an amazing hire.” Adds Kimbriell Kelly, “So excited for my friend and mentor @meridak to lead the @latimes. He’s not just an excellent choice for this newspaper, but for our industry. He’s great with news and also with people.”
James also interviewed Merida, who told her, ‘I see nothing but opportunity.’ Meet L.A. Times’ new top editor Kevin Merida. Mitchell Landsberg notes, “The new editor of the @latimes, @meridak, says he was motivated both by the challenge of the job and the passion of the people who work at the Times. He’ll find plenty of both - and a lot of people pulling for him to succeed.”
Alcindor takes over at Washington Week
More congrats are in order: Yamiche Alcindor has been named host of ‘Washington Week’ on PBS. Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times spoke with Alcindor about taking over the role most recently filled by Robert Costa and best known as the longtime home of the anchor Gwen Ifill.
“I’m honored to become the next moderator of @washingtonweek, a show that meant so much to Gwen Ifill when she helmed this chair,” she tweeted. “My guiding light will be focusing on the impact of politics on everyday people and vulnerable populations. Join me this Friday.”
Here comes The Sun
How about some good news on the local journalism front?
As David Folkenflik writes at NPR, “Two and a half years ago, a group of disheartened former Denver Post editors and reporters launched an upstart news site called The Colorado Sun in the hopes that it could rescue local news coverage from the dictates of hedge fund owners and Wall Street investors.”
And here’s how that’s going: The Colorado Sun announced that it has acquired and will operate a family-owned chain of 24 suburban newspapers around Denver in partnership with a new foundation focused on local journalism. As Nicholas Quah puts it, “This rules.”
Read the column from The Sun’s editor, Larry Ryckman, on the partnership and what it means, Colorado Sun purchases 24 Front Range newspapers with National Trust.
“This is huge,” tweets Nathan Schneider. “The journalist-owned @ColoradoSun just acquired 24 suburban newspapers in the state with help from @the_ntln. This is a powerful example of how employee ownership can retain both focus and scale through network-building.”
All news is local
We’re not done yet. Check out Fifty new outlets, 250 journalists: Canadian startup unveils plan to revive local news, from Leyland Cecco at the Guardian. Cecco writes about how Andrew Wilkinson’s Capital Daily has transformed from a morning digest of the Victoria’s news into an enterprising outlet publishing long-form investigative features.
And now, building on the newsletter’s success, Overstory Media Group, which operates newsletter-based journalism outlets in British Columbia, has unveiled ambitious plans to replicate the model across the country.
“Thank you @LeylandCecco for the sharp coverage of @OverstoryMedia’s launch today,” tweets Jimmy Thomson. “At @CapitalDailyVic, we see ourselves as part of a local media ecosystem, and we hope we’re giving #yyj readers something unique.”
As Cillian O’ Brien says, “All news is local, more power to them.” “Don’t let anyone tell you journalism, or our need/desire for it is dying,” adds Greg O’Brien.
Kudos to WITF
Speaking of local news and why it’s so important, in another must-read column, Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post writes about the politicians who tried to overturn an election — and the local news team that won’t let anyone forget it.
Unlike many of the big Sunday news shows, the journalists at WITF, an all-news public radio station in Harrisburg, Pa., made the decision not to “shrug off the damaging lies of election denialism.”
“Kudos to WITF,” tweets S.V. Dáte. “America came closer to losing the republic on Jan 6 than at any time since the founding. Perhaps that’s worth remembering.” “All local and national outlets should be doing this,” adds Beth Swanson.
More local news news
And now, some not-so-good news.
“Three years after being rescued by listener-supported WNYC radio, NYC-focused website Gothamist suffered a jolting round of layoffs on Friday that cut loose its editor-in-chief,” Keith Kelly reports at the New York Post. In addition to EIC John Del Signore, City Editor Christopher Robbins was also laid off.
In all 14 positions, or 4 percent of Gothamist’s staff, were cut as part of a larger cost-cutting effort in the wake of a dramatic fall off in contributions due to COVID-19. That’s despite the $8.9 million the organization received from the federal payroll protection program.
So, is this helpful? Sara Fischer of Axios reports that Twitter has launched a major national advertising and social media campaign that will urge people to follow local journalists and support their work.
Sounds nice, but Garret M. Graff thinks it’s “Hard to think of something less meaningful than Twitter launching a national full-page-ad campaign promoting ‘local journalism.’ Yes, they’re sending revenue to some local papers, but many of Gannett’s papers are already irrelevant zombie papers.”
And Matthew Keys amends the story thusly: “Twitter to launch a national ad campaign promoting local journalism, starting with 28 full-page ads taken out in national newspapers that will inevitably wind up at the bottom of a guinea pig’s cage.”
The protest paradigm
In her piece for Columbia Journalism Review on Unraveling the Protest Paradigm, Danielle K. Kilgo takes a look at how news coverage can delegitimize protest movements. She explains that “coverage of protests against anti-Black racism, including police violence, is often framed in terms of ‘riot’ and ‘confrontation.’ The protest paradigm produces patterns of coverage that help insulate police, governments, and the judicial system by privileging their voices and reporting their positions as fact.”
Kilgo argues that unraveling this paradigm “requires radically repairing journalism’s foundations—work that includes re-evaluating our foundations and interrogating traditional ideas of who we grant legitimacy to, and why.”
“Just mentioned the protest paradigm in news coverage of activism at #ATBW2021. This paradigm assumes social conflict is bad or criminal and needs to be quieted. Great new piece from @danikathleen on why this paradigm must end,” tweets Sarah J. Jackson.
How we consume news
As Mark Little points out, “The generational gap in how we consume news gets wider every day.” He links to Kalina Newman’s piece in The Washington Post about how TikTok personalities are making a name for themselves by delivering news to Gen Z.
“As technology evolves, so does the way we consume our media,” Newman notes. “On TikTok, we’re seeing the rise of news ‘personalities,’ unaffiliated with any formal newsroom, delivering headlines to millions of followers in 15-to-60 second clips.”
Marcus DiPaola, who has 2.5 million TikTok followers, told Newman, “I want to be the translator from mainstream media to teenagers.” She explains how DiPaola’s popularity is part of a larger trend unfolding across TikTok right now.
It’s such a good piece that it has Kalea Hall wondering, “Hmm do I need a TikTok now?” Tracy Simmons admits, “I won’t lie, I just followed Marcus DiPaola so I can stay hip.”
The deal is done
In a scoop for The Wall Street Journal last week, Ben Mullin and Miriam Gottfried reported that Verizon was exploring the sale of its medi assets, and now, it’s official: Steve Kovach of CNBC has the details on Verizon’s sale of Yahoo and AOL, among others, to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. Josh Sternberg has an idea: “maybe telephone companies shouldn’t get into the media business.”
Thomas Ricker covers the deal at The Verge, Verizon sells AOL and Yahoo for about half of what it paid, and Jeremy Goldman thinks, “Strategically, shedding Yahoo and AOL seems to make sense, though generally you don’t want to lose money on your past acquisitions 🤔”
“I’m late but here’s a take,” Dieter Bohn offers. “Verizon Supercookies have a new recipe, hopefully. Though I wonder if that 10% investment involves any data sharing. Would be nice if the FTC would think of the Supercookies.”
That is a heck of a retraction
Bryan Koenig links to the news that The Washington Post, The New York Times and NBC News all issued significant corrections on Saturday, retracting earlier reporting that said Rudy Giuliani had been directly warned by the FBI that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign.
The original reports were attributed to anonymous sources, and as Oliver Darcy writes at CNN, “The corrections are black eyes to the newsrooms, which have aggressively reported on Giuliani’s contacts with Ukrainians in his attempts to dig up dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.”
Are the corrections sufficient, though? On his Media Nation blog, Dan Kennedy breaks them down and argues that the Washington Post correction adds to confusion over Rudy Giuliani and the FBI and makes it appear that the Post was backing down solely on Giuliani’s say-so. He says the Times version is OK, but lacks clarity and falls into the “mistakes were made” category, and offers “kudos to NBC News for doing it the right way.”
It sounds *freakin awesome*
Here’s something fun: Fifty years ago this past Monday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” debuted, and you can hear that first on-air original broadcast from 1971.
As Yasmeen Khan tweeted, “Happy Birthday, @NPR! Listen to this very first broadcast from May 3, 1971. Honestly... it sounds *freakin awesome.* Tons of on-scene tape. Direct interviews with protesters AND cops. The kind of journalism we can only dream of crafting these days, tbh.”
“So much crucial reporting,” says Jeremy Allingham, who shares, “Being invited on the show was genuinely one of the highlights of my career.”
A few more
- Ben Smith makes an observation in his New York Times column: Help, We Can’t Stop Writing About Andrew Yang. Nick Rizzo says, “This @benyt column rules; I am so happy to welcome Ben to my weird ideological desert island. (We will build three schuls there for the two of us!) I know the left graf is rightfully a lot of attention, but the one after it (right) is also great.”
- “E tu, Forbes?” tweets Daria Solovieva, of the scoop from Joshua Franklin, Echo Wang and Krystal Hu of Reuters that Forbes is in talks to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as it attracts new acquisition interest.
- Microsoft is rolling out a new default font to 1.2 billion Office users after 14 years — and the designer of the old one is surprised, as Jordan Novet explains at CNBC. He spoke with Lucas de Groot, who started work on the Calibri typeface in 2002. It became the default in Microsoft’s Office apps, such as Word and Excel, in 2007.
- Megan Graham of CNBC has details on the astonishing pace of growth for Amazon’s ads business, which is generating nearly $7 billion a quarter. As she puts it, “Amazon’s ads business was growing like crazy and now it’s growing even faster.”
- From Mariya Abdulkaf of The Verge, “Today, I launched the @voxmedia writers workshop, a free training and mentorship program that pairs editors & writers from @TheCut @NYMag @Eater @voxdotcom @verge @polygon @SBNation with aspiring journalists.” Check out the Vox Media Writers Workshop | A no-cost, hands-on journalism program.
From the Muck Rack Team
Muck Rack recently chatted with Rebecca Peters, marketing and communications manager of Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics to learn about her experience in PR leading up to and at Lush and ways the international brand has vowed to do PR differently. On the blog, find out how Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics’ PR manager is dropping (bath) bombs on traditional PR approaches.
As the media landscape continues to evolve, we've noticed an interesting trend: Journalists are a multi-tasking bunch often wearing many hats and launching exciting projects on the side of their full-time gigs or freelancing careers. Muck Rack is highlighting some of these entrepreneurial journalists who are kicking off their own new media ventures. We recently had the opportunity to chat with Anthony Noto, head of content for LM2 Research and co-host of the podcast “Who’s Saving The Planet?” Head over to the blog to learn more about Tony’s podcast and advice he has for fellow journalists hoping to start their own venture.