Digging up the best bits

Media statistic of the week 

With a focus on podcasts, Spotify posted robust subscription growth in the fourth quarter of 2020, but as Anne Steele reports at The Wall Street Journal, the streaming giant offered a conservative outlook, citing uncertainty about consumers’ habits as the pandemic runs its course. Those Q4 numbers at a glance: 345 million monthly active users, 155 million paid subscribers and €2.17 billion in revenue.

This week in media history

On February 10, 1897, The New York Times began using the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” The Times’ owner, Adolph S. Ochs, created the slogan as a declaration of the newspaper’s intention to report the news impartially. The seven words are a permanent fixture in the upper left corner of the newspaper’s nameplate.

This past week in the media industry 

Hitting them where it hurts

With the news that Fox Business has canceled its highest rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” and fired its namesake host, Michael M. Grynbaum of The New York Times points out that lawsuits are now taking the lead in the fight against disinformation. “In just a few weeks, lawsuits and legal threats from a pair of obscure election technology companies have achieved what years of advertising boycotts, public pressure campaigns and liberal outrage could not: curbing the flow of misinformation in right-wing media,” he writes.

Matt Ford thinks “It’s pretty telling that Ruddy thinks this is somehow a dangerous standard,” referring to Newsmax owner Christopher Ruddy’s comment that “You have to fact-check everything public figures say, and you could be held liable for what they say.” Um, yes? 

“For vast majority of mainstream media, facts genuinely matter. But as this story shows, for ?@FoxNews? and ?@newsmax?, money matters far more. They spread election lies freely for weeks; it took billion-dollar lawsuits to get their attention,” notes Peter Elkind.

So… “Sue them,” says Wajahat Ali. “Go after the money. Always go after the money and hit them where it hurts. The right wing media swamp is stuck. They have radicalized their base that is addicted to conspiracies and lies. They’ll need their daily hit.”

Curtailing the spread

In an interview with John McCarthy of The Drum, Mike McCue, CEO of media curation app Flipboard and a former Twitter board member, calls for more collaboration on curtailing the spread of lies, propaganda and hate, before ”well-intentioned” but likely ineffective legislation comes in. Check out that interview, ‘We put journalists in charge of the algorithms’: Flipboard CEO on the misinformation battle, content moderation, free speech, amplifying quality sources and publisher data. 

Another effort designed to help curtail the spread of lies: Fact-checking organization First Draft has launched a Vaccine Insights Hub to monitor misinformation about vaccines. 

As for Facebook’s “Supreme Court,” well, Greg Bensinger of The New York Times points out that the first decisions from the new Oversight Board have been issued, and the results are underwhelming. Tweets Charlie Warzel, “these quotes @GregBensinger got from facebook oversight board members don’t...exactly spark confidence!!!”

Meanwhile, it’s the burning question on so many of our minds these days: How Can So Many People Believe Such Weird Things? At Psychology Today, Ralph Lewis M.D  explains that beliefs contradicted by evidence are the norm, not the exception. “Didn't someone write a book about that?” tweets Michael Shermer, who adds, “Fabulous piece from Dr. Ralph Lewis applying mine and others’ work to explaining current conspiratorial weirdness.”

Lowering the temperature

Julie Hart, digital editor for The Laconia Daily Sun in Laconia, New Hampshire, has written an essay for the American Press Institute about how this small-town paper is applying conflict mediation skills to its opinion content.

As the Solutions Journalism Network tweeted, “We trained @laconiadailysun in Complicating the Narratives - a reporting approach rooted in deep listening and conflict mediation. Now in a stroke of genius, they’re training people who regularly write letters to the editor in it too.” Jennifer Graham says, “What this NH community newspaper did to lower the temperature is intriguing. But killing all political cartoons? Will need to think on that.”

Local news v the doupoly

In a recent column headlined These local newspapers say Facebook and Google are killing them. Now they’re fighting back, The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes about an antitrust lawsuit getting underway in West Virginia and wonders, “What if local newspapers had been able to compete successfully for digital advertising revenue as their readers moved online?” Could this David-and-Goliath battle offer a path for the entire media industry?

Joshua Benton doesn’t think so: “I love local news,” he tweets, “but my god this lawsuit is pure nonsense. It’s as if newspapers sued radio in 1920, billboards in 1940, TV in 1960, direct mail companies in 1980, cable systems in 1990, and businesses for setting up their own websites in 2000.”

Well, at any rate, Chelsey Dequaine-Jerabek suggests, “When given the choice, at least talk to your local newspapers about advertising instead of dumping more money into Facebook or Google. Thank you.”

Saving local journalism

This could help, too. NPR has announced the creation of the Station Investigations Team, its latest move to support local journalism and the third major component of the Collaborative Journalism Network.

The new investigative unit, led by Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning investigative reporter and 22-year veteran of The Washington Post who joined NPR in 2019, will work with regional newsrooms and topic teams to support local journalism and report ambitious investigative projects. “Saving local journalism -- way to go,” tweets Joe Stephens.

Mandy Jenkins shares news of big changes ahead for The Compass Experiment, which is pivoting to test the experience of Mahoning Matters and The Longmont Leader as part of larger news networks. 

“One of the hardest lessons we have learned so far is how difficult it is to efficiently operate local news sites without the benefits of a network,” she tweets. “In an effort to achieve quicker sustainability, we are changing that. In the weeks ahead, @MahoningMatters will shift to be directly operated by @Mcclatchy’s news division. Our partners at Village Media will take over @LongmontLeader.”

Newsletter mania continues

That’s Sara Fischer of Axios referring to her latest scoop, that sales and marketing software company HubSpot is acquiring The Hustle in a deal valued at roughly $27 million. The Hustle is an email newsletter and content company targeted at entrepreneurs and small business owners. Paul Michelman dubs it, “In today’s episode of Software Eats the Media.”

“HubSpot getting into the media game by buying a tech/biz newsletter with 1.5M subscribers feels notable,” tweets Zack Seward, while Ian Kart is a little more effusive: “this is biggg.” Rafat Ali says it “makes lotsa sense as a non-traditional buyer.”

From The Hustle to Bustle: Digiday’s Kayleigh Barber reports that Bustle wants to turn its newsletters into an 8-figure business. While Bustle Digital Group currently has a total subscriber list of 2 million across 14 newsletters, Wesley Bonner, the company’s vp of marketing and audience development, tells Barber that, by the end of 2021, the team wants to attract 10 million subscribers across all of the brands’ newsletters and increase the newsletter business from a seven-figure revenue stream to an eight-figure revenue stream year-over-year.

The exit interview

Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker spoke with the soon-to-be-retiring Washington Post executive editor, Marty Baron, reflected on his time at the Post and defended the idea of journalistic integrity. “The idea of objectivity—I should make clear—it’s not neutrality, it’s not both-sides-ism, it’s not so-called balance,” Baron said. “It’s to tell people in an unflinching way what we have discovered.”

Dan Froomkin thinks there was a “Missed opportunity to question ?@PostBaron? about his biggest mistake: choosing not to go to war after 2016. He should have gone to war—not against Trump but for truth and against racism. Instead WaPo normalized Trump for a very long time.”

There was also his answer about the suspension of reporter Felicia Sonmez: “*waves wand* it’s a personnel matter,” tweets Andrew Beaujon, and a few others (“I don’t think this is quite the defense Baron seems to believe it to be,” says Sara Libby.) Even so, Lionel Barber says it’s a “Must read for anyone interested in journalism and what makes a great editor.”

Interesting moments in 20th-century American newspapering

“A stroll through the archives of Editor & Publisher shows an industry with moments of glory and shame — and evidence that not all of today’s problems are new,” writes Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab, who explains that, thanks to the Internet Archive, the history of American newspapers is more searchable than ever.

“100+ years of @EditorPublisher's archives are now available on @internetarchive, and I had a blast combing through them to find some of the most interesting moments in 20th-century American newspapering,” he shares.

In response, the Internet Archive tweeted, “This is why we digitized 120 years of @EditorPublisher: so a smart journalist like @JBenton could search thru a century of articles to dig up the best bits of #journalism history. Pure pleasure, we guarantee you, reading Benton’s work in @NiemanLab.”

For example, there’s “Some good Doonesbury stuff in this @jbenton piece,” notes Jason Cohen. As Benton writes, “if you’re at all interested in the 20th-century history of the American newspaper business, you now have access to a robust new resource.”

Colin Marshall has more about this big project in a piece for Open Culture, The History of American Newspapers Has Been Digitized: Explore 114 Years of Editor & Publisher, “the Bible of the Newspaper Industry.”

Can’t wait to keep reading

AP News reports that two freelance journalists are the recipients of the 2021 American Mosaic Journalism Prize for work about underrepresented or misrepresented groups, which comes with a $100,000 award for each of them. 

David Dennis, Jr., who is based in Atlanta, wrote an Atlanta magazine piece, “Ahmaud Arbery Will Not be Erased,” about the murder of a young Black man in Georgia. And Michelle Garcia, who splits time between New York City and Texas, was praised for her work that “has both unveiled human rights abuses and celebrated the humanity of those living in limbo at the U.S.-Mexico border.” Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review and elsewhere.

Cindy Rodriguez offers “Congratulations my fellow Tejayorker. Proud to know you. Can’t wait to keep reading.”

A few more

• Kathryn Hopkins of WWD reports that Time and Sports Illustrated are introducing paywalls.Time’s will start at $2.99, while Sports Illustrated’s digital-only subscription is priced at $5.99. 
• Marc Tracy of The New York Times reports that Journalists at the New York Daily News have formed a union. The organizing effort at the century-old New York tabloid comes roughly 25 years after its editorial union was effectively broken.
• Kate Beddoe of Google announced that the company has launched an initial version of Google News Showcase in Australia, in which a number of Australian publishers — including The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The New Daily,  InDaily and The Conversation — will be paid to provide content for News Showcase.
• The launch of two new current affairs channels, the Rupert Murdoch-backed News UK TV and GB News, chaired by former newspaper editor and BBC presenter Andrew Neil, is stoking fears of more partisan journalism in the UK, reports Stephen Cushion of The Conversation. “If standards in accuracy and impartiality are not robustly regulated, Fox-style journalism could soon become an accepted norm of the UK’s broadcast ecology,” he writes.
• From Ian Silvera of Future News, At 800m views and counting, the NYT Covid live blog battles on. The Times’ Covid-19 one launched more than a year ago on Saturday January 23, 2020.
• Charles Pekow offers his take for Quill on a new method for fixing copyright violations.
• On the 25th anniversary of Section 230, it’s never been more important, writes Adi Robertson of The Verge, who explores the tensions facing any effort to reform it.

From the Muck Rack Team

Muck Rack’s PR Manager, Emma Hadad, has put together your guide to managing a remote PR team. In it, she breaks down some essential steps required for your PR team to excel in a virtual work environment. Plus, because Muck Rack has been a remote-first company for more than 10 years, she sprinkles in some specific steps we’ve taken to make remote work more effective — and fun!