The ethical wild west of podcasting rears its ugly head again
Media statistic of the week
Let’s talk about journalism and unions.
“At a time when newsrooms in the United States are seeing a wave of unionization, around one-in-six U.S. journalists at news organizations report being in a union and many more say they would join one if it were available to them, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey .
Jacob Liedke breaks down the data here.
Interestingly, younger journalists in the U.S. are more likely to want to be in a union than their older peers.
?“Overall, 16% of U.S. journalists who are employed at least part time at a news outlet say they are currently a member of a union at their organization. Another 41% would join one if it were available to them, according to the survey of nearly 12,000 working U.S.-based journalists, conducted Feb. 16 to March 1, 2022,” Liedke writes.
?This past week in the media industry?
‘Hell of a media company’ sells for $525 million
In some major media news that broke yesterday, Axios agreed to sell itself to Cox Enterprises for $525 million .?
Here’s more detail on the deal from The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin : “The deal is structured so that the company’s three founders—Jim VandeHei, the chief executive; Roy Schwartz, the president; and Mike Allen, a journalist—have financial incentives to stay at the company. Each will be a minority shareholder and will continue to make day-to-day newsroom and business decisions. Alex Taylor, the chief executive and chairman of Cox Enterprises, will join the Axios board.”
“I like the idea of traditional news companies buying startups and doing good things with them (not shuttering, but applying lessons widely). Let’s hope this ends well,” tweets Kim Bui .?
Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton isn’t surprised by the deal itself, but is surprised by the buyer . “Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises has spent the past decade selling off most of its media properties as it brings in billions from cable,” he writes and gives a useful explanation of the family-owned company’s history.
A strong outcome for a smart digital publisher ????,” adds Durga Raghunath .
“Axios is a hell of a media company. Growing from zero to a $525 million exit in just five years is an accomplishment with few precedents,” tweets Daniel Adeyemi .
New York Times vs. Gannett
Poynter’s media business analyst Rick Edmonds poses and attempts to answer the puzzling question: Why does the New York Times prosper while Gannett struggles?
Here’s a snippet from the piece, which outlines four key reasons why the New York Times is thriving and Gannett is not:
“Wednesday, The New York Times Co. reported typical net growth in its various digital subscription offerings of 180,000 and an operating profit for the second quarter of $76 million.
Thursday morning, Gannett, whose holdings include USA Today and more than 200 regional outlets, reported digital gains of its own – 120,000 more paid digital-only subscribers than the previous quarter. But it posted an operating loss of $54 million. Wall Street responded by taking the value of Gannett’s already battered stock down by roughly a quarter Thursday and Friday.
The companies are roughly the same size – Gannett actually somewhat larger with $749 million in revenues for the second quarter compared to the Times’ $556 million. So why the diverging fortunes?”
“The New York Times started focusing on digital 15 years ago. Gannett is still reluctant to move away from print. So here we are,” tweets Zach Miller .?
“Well, that’s not great. Also, if only national outlets are able to make ends meet a lot of communities are screwed. I get the point that it’s harder to put out 200 products than 1, but all 200 of those communities need and deserve good reporting,” adds Abe Kenmore .
Avoiding number soup
This lede almost got me!?
Over at Nieman Lab, Joshua Benton writes about “numerism — “the overriding faith in numbers journalists sometimes fall prey to.” ?
He details a paper out of Journalism Practice titled “Number Soup: Case Studies of Quantitatively Dense News ” that aimed to figure out what characterizes the number-dense stories that reach readers and whether there are better ways to present them.?
The findings? Well, they’re fascinating—and detailed. Here’s one of them: “Ledes can be the site of the greatest number density. The inverted-pyramid ideal led some journalists to overstuff their ledes with data, especially on wire stories.”
“Some good warnings and tips in this piece by @NiemanLab : -Providing more detail about research methods; -Writing shorter, clearer sentences; -Providing context behind statistics; -Being transparent about uncertainty; and -Indicating where consensus lies,” sums up Natascia Lypny in a tweet.
Tackling media paywalls
“Longtime media watchers like me might say that’s already been tried a bunch of times in the last two decades, and results have ranged from outright failure to very limited success,” writes Rick Edmonds for Poynter. “That track record, however, leaves 26-year-old entrepreneur Yehong Zhu undeterred.”
Here’s how Zhu envisions the product working when it launches (beta is set for the fall): “The Zette deal, as Zhu envisions the mature product, will be $9.99 a month for 30 articles, though it will cost much less in the beta phase. With a Google Chrome browser extension, the user hits a paywalled article, clicks a Zette button, and the story opens in its original format including illustrations and ads.”
Some journalists are excited about the potential of Zette while others are skeptical.
“This is an idea that I want to work so, so badly,” tweets Cody Boteler .?
“I wish them luck but as with all of these attempts, this will massively fail unless there is a very large cadre of publishers part of this scheme -- and the economics don't make sense for the biggest pubs to partake,” adds Christina Warren .?
“This is an interesting twist on the micropayments model. User acquisition will be tough though since participating publishers would have no incentive to help promote this product,” tweets Simon Owens .?
The ethical wild west of podcasting rears its ugly head again
Whoa. Podcast guests are paying up to $50,000 to appear on popular shows, according to Ashley Carman for Bloomberg News.
She breaks down this practice, which has been talked about in podcast circles, but is now being brought to light by a major media outlet:
“Welcome to the golden era of pay-for-play podcasting, when guests pay handsomely to be interviewed for an entire episode. In exchange, the host gets some revenue, fills out the programming calendar, and might bag a future advertiser.
Determining exactly how widespread the practice is can be tricky. Disclosures, if included at all, might last only a few fleeting seconds in an hourlong interview, and various hosts use different language to describe the nature of such relationships. What percentage of shows accepts payment in exchange for airtime is also difficult to say. According to nearly a dozen interviews with industry sources, it appears the practice is particularly popular among podcasts in the wellness, cryptocurrency, and business arenas.”
Lots of Twitter commentary on this one, ranging from outrage to *shrugs.*
“Pay-for-play is a scourge on journalistic integrity. From events to podcasts, it’s been shocking to watch news outlets sell their independence to the highest bidder. @the_logic does not do pay-for-play, we do live journalism,” tweets David Skok ?
“This is gross and illegal. I once pulled out of interviewing another podcaster on my podcast because I found out that he did pay-for-play interview,” adds Simon Owens .
“If you find this kind of programming interesting, you probably don't care that it's pay-to-play. This is the audio version of watching a late-night infomercial,” tweets Jerad Walker .?
“Annnd the ethical wild west of podcasting rears its ugly head again,” Courtney Smith sums up.
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