The blurry chart was not the whole story

Media statistic of the week

According to a new Reuters Institute report, “How we follow climate change: climate news use and attitudes in eight countries,” people who consume climate news weekly are more likely to think they know the basics of climate science, and yet only 40% say they know at least a moderate amount about key climate policies at the global and the local level. This 40% figure is roughly the same for both infrequent climate news users and those who consume it on a weekly basis.?

Among the other findings, about half of the respondents say they have engaged with climate change news in the past week, and half say they trust the news media as a source of news on climate change.?

Diego Arguedas Ortiz suggests “If you can, make time to read the full report by @waqasejazch @MitaliLive @richrdfletcher and @rasmus_kleis. It's a privilege to have a climate journalism programme that does journo engagement AND also research. The full report is here.”

This past week in the media industry?

This toxic circus act

It’s been about six weeks since the dawn of Musk-era Twitter, and every day of it has been stuffed with news. Here’s just some of the latest activity making headlines.

Jason Abbruzzese says, “@BrandyZadrozny puts reporting to what i think we're all feeling: Elon Musk's Twitter is taking shape.” That piece, by Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News: Elon Musk's 'amnesty' pledge brings back QAnon, far-right Twitter accounts.?

“A week ago, Elon Musk announced a great unbanning—Twitter would reverse thousands of suspensions, including Donald Trump,” Zadrozny tweeted. “But also, scraped data shows, he freed an emboldened group of trolls, white nationalists, QAnoners, and extreme right-wingers.”

Among them, “As noted in @BrandyZadrozny's latest story, Andrew Anglin is back on Twitter,” tweets Alex Goldenberg. “Anglin is a fugitive accused of ignoring a $14 million judgment against him for orchestrating an anti-Semitic harassment campaign targeting a Jewish community in Montana.”

From her reporting, Eli Rosenberg also highlights what “maybe a less comfortable narrative, but downloads and activity have actually grown on twitter in the weeks since musk took over.”

Also growing on the platform, hate speech. Sheera Frenkel and Kate Conger of The New York Times reported that researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms have found Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Under Elon Musk Is Unprecedented.

“As @yoyoel and the rest of us have said since the start of this toxic circus act,” tweets Kara Swisher. So, “i guess the blurry chart the ceo posted was not the whole story,” Whet Moser concedes.

About that Great Twitter migration

Patience Haggin of The Wall Street Journal has details on new incentives Twitter is offering to advertisers after many marketers have left the platform. Craig Newman’s reaction: “Lol - just lighting money on fire.”

Not leaving the platform, on the other hand, many journalists.?

As Shira Tarlo says, “can't quit this hell site? you're not alone!”

Shirin Ghaffary wrote about it at Recode, Elon Musk is making Twitter a less friendly place for journalists. But they’re still not quitting.

“Elon Musk has given journalists plenty of reasons to quit Twitter,” as she points out. But these power users just haven’t been able to. “I talked to fellow journos about why that's hard to do, and why some are quietly pulling back instead,” she says.

In her Washington Post column, Karen Attiah explains Why I'm not leaving Twitter.?

In a Twitter thread, she shared, “I wrote about the Great Twitter migration in the Elon Musk era and why I've decided to stay on this bird app until the ship sinks. TBH I'm a bit frustrated with the logic people have for leaving as a protest to Musk.”

“Here is @karenattiah@journa.host answering @Jelaniya@journa.host on why she is staying on Twitter. She's right, I think: Much of the migration looks like white flight by the privileged deserting the city and its residents,” tweets Jeff Jarvis.

Similarly, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Jeremy Littau writes, Twitter isn't perfect, but it offers something hard to replicate.

“True,” tweets Jay Rosen, who quotes Littau: “Twitter’s design allows diverse voices who have been shut out of traditional media structures to build influence via networks. That capacity, and its implications for wider democratic discourse, are at risk in a mass migration.”

The flop that doxxed

Another big Twitter story was the release of the so-called Twitter Files, reported on in a thread over the weekend by Matt Taibbi and purported to reveal how Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden story.

What actually happened, per Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge, Elon Musk’s promised Twitter exposé on the Hunter Biden story is a flop that doxxed multiple people: “The documents don’t show what Musk thinks they show, and a US Representative is going to have to change his email address.”?

While the thread didn’t show proof of government meddling, it did reveal Musk’s misunderstanding of the First Amendment, and it also exposed Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna’s personal email address, along with the names of several rank-and-file Twitter workers.

“‘[Ro] Khanna confirmed to The Verge that his personal Gmail address is included in another email, in which Khanna reaches out to criticize Twitter’s decision to restrict the Post’s story as well’ so they doxxed a rep who had their back, spectacular,” tweets Moser.

Grim news

As part of a spate of job eliminations last week, The Washington Post laid off Pulitzer Prize winner Sarah L. Kaufman, one of the last full-time dance critics in the country. The Post’s Sarah Ellison spoke with Kaufman, who became the paper’s dance critic in 1996.

Jason Zinoman lamented the “Grim news. We're watching the slow death of large branches of art criticism. The worst part is the hardest hit (local, live arts) are the ones that spotlight work that need press the most.”

“Writing about the arts is vital, and difficult,” Sonia Rao says. “I was grateful when I joined Features to be able to learn so much about the craft simply by being near or reading the work of such brilliant colleagues. Our critics, like Sarah, are incredible. What a loss.”

Layoffs are hitting a host of media organizations, including Gannett, which started yet another round of layoffs last week. Benjamin Mullin of The New York Times reported that these latest layoffs at the largest newspaper chain in the United States are part of an effort to cut about 6 percent of the company’s roughly 3,440-person U.S. media division.

CNN is also making cuts. Writing in The Atlantic, the cable news network’s former chief media correspondent Brian Stelter reflected on the demise of Headline News, The Loss of HLN Marks the End of Companion Television.

Jeremy Hobson praises the “Great piece by @brianstelter. I got into radio as a kid because I felt the people I was listening to were my friends and companions. We need people we like and trust to help us understand the world around us.”

The tenuous place of lit mags?

At The New York Times, Kate Dwyer wrote about the rise and fall of Astra Magazine, Astra Magazine Had Creative Freedom and a Budget. It Wasn’t Enough: “The literary journal attracted great names. Its issues sold well. And then it was over — a fate that offers insight into the tenuous place of literary magazines in the American publishing landscape.”

The demise of Astra doesn’t make much sense to Carolyn Kellogg, who tweeted, “I still don’t understand. If Astra wasn’t supposed to make money and it was selling well, why was it the victim of its parent company’s bad year?”

In that piece, Dwyer noted, “With backing from a foundation and a private donor, The Dial announced itself as a new, nonprofit literary magazine last week.” As one of The Dial’s editors, Lindsay Gellman, explains it, “We’re taking something old and refashioning it into something new.”

The Dial takes its name from the magazine founded in 1840 as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists before being revived as a political review and literary criticism magazine and later a modernist literary magazine. The current incarnation describes itself as “a new online magazine of culture, politics, and ideas with a focus on locally sourced writing from around the world.”

Sam Sacks says it’s “Exciting to see that the storied Dial magazine, first home to the Transcendentalists and then the Modernists, is being resurrected by the mighty Madeleine Schwartz, along with a great team. Launch is scheduled for January!”

The story of Puck

Clare Malone profiled media startup Puck and its editor-in-chief Jon Kelly for The New Yorker, The E-Mail Newsletter for the Mogul Set. As she describes it, “I wrote about @PuckNews, the site with a decidedly un-squeamish fixation on the rich & powerful, and the Graydon Carter protege behind it all.”

A heads-up, though. It includes what Christopher Maag says is “The kind of sentence that should make us all want to take a shower: ‘élite journalists are our influencers. And there is a chance to arbitrage the confluence of their influence and their opportunities.’”

“Just a fantastic story by @ClareMalone on Puck. At a time when trust in media is in the crapper, the big new media startups (Puck, Semafor, Punchbowl, etc) are catering to the most elite readers,” Ryan McCarthy points out. “Thank god we're taking care of their editorial needs.”?

At any rate, Alex Perry says, “this is so so so so fascinating,” while Tom Gara adds, “This whole article is fun but I want another 8,000 words on the founding investor in Puck: ‘the investment arm of Standard Industries, the world’s largest roofing and waterproofing company, which employs a number of former Vanity Fair staffers.’”

While we can’t offer 8,000 words, a picture is certainly worth something. In her piece, What Is On the Bookshelves at Puck? Popula’s Maria Bustillos considers what the photo accompanying Malone’s article tells us about the future of media (and gives a rundown of the visible books).

Lists, lists and more lists

As the end of the year approaches, there are plenty of “best of” lists to sink your teeth into.?

For some good reading and bookmarking, check out Pocket’s Best of 2022: Most Read, the Smithsonian Scholars Pick Their Favorite Books of 2022 and The Guardian’s best books of 2022.

Or catch up on the Best TV Shows 2022, according to James Poniewozik, Mike Hale and Margaret Lyons of The New York Times; The 10 Best Movies of 2022, by Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair; Rolling Stone’s Best Songs of 2022; and the top Podcasts of 2022, per Apple.

More notable media stories

• Shawn McCreesh of New York Magazine’s Intelligencer reports that The New York Times newsroom is threatening to walk off the job on Thursday if there’s no new labor contract. “What the employees are preparing to do next week would be something not seen at the paper of record since 1978,” McCreesh notes.?
• A source tells Brian Steinberg of Variety that ABC News President Kim Godwin informed staffers Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes will be benched from their GMA anchoring duties while the news division weighs the effect their recent disclosure of a romantic relationship might have on the program and the company.
• GE bought the entire print edition of The New York Times on Tuesday. Axios’s Sara Fischer reports on the 7-figure deal, which marks the first time in the paper’s 171-year history that any advertiser has gotten to own all of the Times’ print real estate exclusively.
• From Pete Brown of the Tow Center, a case study on the relationship between a candidate and a ‘pink slime’ news network.
• Tyler Falk of Current reports on the findings of a new RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University survey racking workforce diversity in radio and television, Survey finds noncommercial radio stations outpace commercial counterparts in newsroom diversity.
• At Columbia Journalism Review, Feven Merid wrote about Capital B, a nonprofit digital media startup aimed at Black readers, and how it was covering Warnock v. Walker.
• As billionaire Gautam Adani takes over Indian TV channel NDTV, senior news anchor Ravish Kumar tendered his resignation with this speech, reprinted by Reuters Institute. “What we have today in India is truly the ‘dark age’ of journalism,” he said. “Our media ecosystem has been gutted and destroyed.”?
• In his Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, Simon Owens argues that it’s time for the media to embrace self-service native advertising. Specifically, he says, “I find it absolutely bonkers that the media industry has spent so much time complaining that tech platforms stole their advertising revenue, and yet it hasn’t lifted a finger to copy the tech industry’s most successful ad innovation.”
• In The Wall Street Journal, former WarnerMedia boss Jason Kilar reflected on the Chaotic Streaming Wars-and How This Hollywood Story May End. “Warner Bros expat @JasonKilar predicts mega media mergers, casualties,” tweets Patrick Phillips.

From the Muck Rack Team

How popular are podcasts? In the U.S. alone, estimates show that 104 million people—more than one third of the population—listen to podcasts regularly. Muck Rack’s CEO Greg Galant recently hosted a webinar discussing our State of Podcasting 2022 report with three expert guests: Rachel Feltman, host of “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week”; Jerri Williams, host of “FBI Retired Case File Review”; and Roge Karma, senior producer of “The Ezra Klein Show.” Head over to the blog for a recap of the webinar, including actionable takeaways on What PR pros should know about podcasting in 2022.