The future is now
The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.
Media statistic of the week
“The ratings record for a women’s college basketball game just got shattered – again.” As CNN’s Steve Almasy and Jill Martin reported, Sunday’s championship game between South Carolina and Iowa averaged 18.7 million viewers, peaking at 24 million, according to preliminary numbers from Nielsen.
Days earlier, ESPN’s broadcast of the women’s Final Four matchup between UConn and Iowa made history as the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history, averaging 14.2 million viewers and peaking at 17 million, as Amanda Christovich reported at Front Office Sports.?
This past week in the media industry?
Capital coverage
In a piece for Columbia Journalism Review, Cameron Joseph takes a look at the expansion of States Newsroom, which now has more than 220 full-time employees and an annual budget of more than $22 million: This nonprofit has newsrooms in all 50 state capitals. Is it the future of state journalism??
Joseph shares, “I've written a lot for @CJR about how the death of state capitol newsrooms is damaging communities and worsening political polarization. @statesnewsroom is seeking to fill that void—and they're now officially in all 50 states.”
Nicholas Jackson highlights the fact that “The percentage of statehouse reporters working for non-profit outlets more than tripled — from 6 to 20 — between 2014 and 2022.”
“The future is now,” confirms Sherman Smith, editor-in-chief of the Kansas Reflector, one of the States Newsroom affiliates.
Deeply troubling
Speaking of the Kansas Reflector, the outlet experienced some strange Facebook shenanigans late last week. As opinion editor Clay Wirestone and Smith explained it, Facebook blocked the Kansas Reflector and removed all posts linking to its website. It affected not just the Reflector’s page but also “the pages of everyone who has ever shared a story from us.”
In an update, Wirestone and Smith reported that Facebook had restored the outlet’s ability to share links, but they’ve yet to receive an explanation for why it happened at all. While the content was falsely flagged as a cybersecurity threat, Wirestone and Smith note, “Coincidentally, the removals happened the same day we published a column from Dave Kendall that is critical of Facebook’s decision to reject certain types of advertising: ‘When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.’”
Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket spoke with Smith about the experience for this article. And guess what happened? Kabas shares, “Just to recap: -The Kansas Reflector posted a column critical of FB on Thursday. -Meta blocked/deleted all their links across platforms. -Meta restored all Reflector links except the critical column. -I reposted the column on The Handbasket Friday. -Meta blocked/deleted all my links across platforms.”
Allison Morrow reported on the saga for CNN, Meta is accused of censoring a non-profit newspaper and an independent journalist who criticized the company. “It's deeply troubling that a tech giant can just silence an independent investigator who is trying [to] keep it to account with impunity. I don't ever wanna hear from anyone who entertains the idea of corporate ‘self-regulation,’” says Abeba Birhane.?
Democracy and the press
Michael Sainato of The Guardian reports Colorado Sun politics reporter Sandra Fish was removed from the Republican party assembly last weekend because the state party chair Dave Williams claimed her reporting on the party was “very unfair.”
Meanwhile, “More than two dozen Colorado newsrooms have launched an unprecedented collaboration to better cover the 2024 elections.” Corey Hutchins has those details in the Inside the News in Colorado newsletter, Could Colorado's political journalism be the best in the nation in 2024?
Elsewhere, Eduardo Suárez, head of editorial at the Reuters Institute, shares, “We've just published this deep dive by @BenjaminBathke into the work of nonprofit @correctiv_org, whose scoop on a racist secret plan sparked a huge wave of pro-democracy protests in Germany. I hope it's an inspiration for other newsrooms.”?
Read that piece by Benjamin Bathke for the Reuters Institute, A scoop by nonprofit Correctiv sparked huge pro-democracy protests all over Germany. How did they pull it off?
Staggering to say the least
Next, “An amazing piece of reporting lifts the lid,” says Azeem Azhar, who links to the story by Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant of The New York Times exposing How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.:?
“OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest artificial intelligence systems.”
“This article is a must-read,” says Leonardo Briceno. “Terrific insight into a murky area w/respect to AI development.” Adds Henry Mulak, “The theft being reported here is staggering to say the least.”
And Matt Bell sums it up this way: “AI companies: thieves and grifters, every one. No matter what benefits come out of this work—and we'll see about that—it's all built on the theft of other people's work, other people's technology.”
Measuring what matters
As co-founder and CEO Emily Ramshaw explains it, “At @19thnews, we got tired of others dictating what metrics should matter to us. So we created our own.”
For Columbia Journalism Review, Alexandra Smith, audience director of The 19th, wrote about why we invented a new metric for measuring readership, which they’re calling “total journalism reach, or the number of times our journalism, in its many forms, is consumed by our audiences.”
Lance Dixon says it’s “just another example of why I'm so grateful to work with and learn from @AlexandraLeighS here's a look at something new @19thnews is trying when it comes to measuring the reach of our journalism.”
And in a “mini scoop” for Marketing Brew, Ryan Barwick reports, “The New York Times is soon going to sell their ads by ‘attention,’ an alternative to industry standards like viewability and impressions.”?
Per Barwick, The New York Times is the first client to sign up for attention metrics company Adelaide’s new publisher-focused platform, Adelaide for Publishers. He notes that the paper “started using its own proprietary attention metric last year, but this marks the first time that it is ‘adopting an external attention metric.’”?
More notable media stories
From the Muck Rack Team
In 1966, Muriel Fox, alongside Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm, co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) to end gender discrimination. At that time, the only women who worked in public relations worked in fashion and food, Muriel recalled in a recent webinar hosted by The Museum of Public Relations. Head over to the Muck Rack Blog for a recap of the webinar and to learn more about the important role of communicators and PR in the women’s rights movement.
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7 个月The Kansas Reflector / Facebook story is a little sketchy...but I think that's been seen before. What's your opinion on all of the X / Brasil stuff going on lately?
Training Leaders to Create High-Performing, Connected Teams and Organizations
7 个月Gregory, these insights into the media industry are always enlightening. The focus on AI development and rethinking metrics resonates with my work in leadership training and organizational change as well. It's crucial to continually reassess our approaches and tools. The media industry's challenges mirror those in professional development - filling coverage gaps and ensuring no voices are blocked or disappeared.