O Brave New World
Media statistic of the week
Gannett, Insider, and The Washington Post have released their annual and biannual reports on diversity within their workplaces—and the results aren’t great.?
Earlier this year, Condé Nast, Hearst, The New York Times, Vice Media Group, and Vox Media released theirs, and Sara Guaglione of Digiday put together a diversity tracker which has been updated to include these new diversity reports.
Here are some of the revealing stats:
Unfortunately, though, steps forward in newsroom diversity didn’t extend to entire organizations—“overall workforce diversity didn’t change much year over year.”
This past week in the media industry
In the newsroom
Justin Peters of Slate thinks it's time to unbreak CNN. After the organization’s disastrous former CEO, the network “has struggled to remain relevant amid increased political polarization and dwindling cable subscriptions.”
And CNN’s Oliver Darcy believes they’ve just hired that man for the job: Mark Thompson, the former chief executive of The New York Times and director-general of the BBC.
Meanwhile, in his “The Media Today” newsletter for Columbia Journalism Review, Allsop wonders, “What is media criticism for?”
“I won't try and summarize my whole argument here,” he posted, “but I jumped off the above debate(s) to define how I see media criticism—in its own right and vis-à-vis other forms of cultural criticism—and to argue that we need everyone to be a media critic.”
Meanwhile, Melissa Alonso and Devon Sayers of CNN’s coverage of UNC student journalists shows exactly what journalism is for—the student journos published community's texts during the recent school shooting on the front page of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, conveying the tragedy and horror of the event.
Disney vs. Spectrum
To set the scene, Toni Fitzgerald of Forbes describes the dire state of connected TV, between declining ads and a streaming upsurge. Then suddenly last week, Spectrum viewers were unable to watch both ESPN and ABC, reports Mary-Elisabeth Combs of CNET. This meant sports fans “missed out on the U.S. Open and the kickoff of college football.”
And it all happened because of a dispute between Disney and Spectrum, writes Max Zahn of ABC News. Charter Communications, owner of Spectrum, failed to renew its Disney distribution deal, resulting in “nearly 15 million cable viewers lost access to ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned channels.”
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Charter Communications President and CEO Christopher Winfrey said on a call to investors, "We respect the quality of product that Disney produces, and its management team, but the video ecosystem is broken," Winfrey further said. "I'm disappointed that Disney so far has insisted on higher prices, forcing customers to take on their products when they don't want them or can't afford them and asking to require customers to pay for direct-to-consumer apps that their linear fees already pay for."
Meanwhile, Disney is urging cable viewers to switch to its Hulu+ service, reports Khristopher J. Brooks of CBS News. And, Lucia Moses and Alison Brower write for Business Insider, all of this comes as Disney CEO Bob Iger plans to take ESPN direct-to-consumer to create profitably in Disney’s streaming business.
On the apps
Naturally, Elon Musk and X are stirring up drama. For CBS News, Elizabeth Napolitano reports that Musk may sue the Anti-Defamation League for supposedly accusing X (and Musk) of antisemitism, fueling advertisers' exodus from the social network.
And as X continues to do…whatever it’s doing, BeReal is getting real about its marketing. The photosharing app is making its first marketing hire since its launch, but “experts say it could be too late for the app to recapture its early buzz,” writes Lara O'Reilly of Business Insider.
“Thanks to @thisisinsider for including me in the @BeReal_App piece. It's going to be a challenge for the app to survive with 20m DAU but will be interesting to watch,” adds Paul Armstrong.
Meanwhile, marketers are questioning Threads' value after its initial surge in popularity. Kimeko McCoy, Kristina Monllos, and Krystal Scanlon explore for Digiday how marketers are investing—or not—in Meta’s new platform. And speaking of Meta, it’s now considering a subscription-model to allow E.U. users to eliminate ads from their Facebook experience, report Andrew Hutchinson and Emma Wiltshire for Social Media Today.
Last but not least, David Ingram writes for NBC News that ads for AI sex workers are flooding Instagram and TikTok. Ingram points out the double-standard, writing, “Instagram and Facebook have kicked off sex workers and sex educators in a series of sweeps over the years, and the apps banned photos of breastfeeding and breast cancer scars until people protested the policies with hashtags such as #freethenipple.”
Jason Abbruzzese quips, “It's the AI revolution! With lots of sexy chatbots!”
“O Brave New World, that has such... um... non-people in it,” John Robson adds.
Benjamin Goggin reiterates, “While real sex workers get booted off Instagram and TikTok, AI sex workers are thriving.”
A few more
From the Muck Rack team
Uncertain economics may have some CEOs and CFOs thinking about cutting budgets from functions that may not directly bring in revenue, such as accounting, human resources and public relations/communications. In our latest blog post, a brand communications specialist who previously worked at The New York Times and Consumer Reports shares the 6 reasons why your PR budget should be the last thing you cut during hard times. Check it out on the blog.