Good lord and yikes

Media statistic of the week

Are young people really that disengaged with the news? A new survey suggests otherwise. The News Socialization Study, commissioned by the Medill School at Northwestern University, reveals that teenagers may be keeping up with current events more than previously thought, and that includes from local and network TV news sources: 46% of teens saw local TV news daily or weekly, while 42% encountered national network TV news daily or weekly.??

Also encouraging are the findings that “75% of the surveyed teens said they discussed news stories in class, and 62% followed news as part of a class assignment. Another 59% said they discussed how to tell whether information can be trusted.”

“The survey also shows the continued influence of social media on teen news consumption,” writes Rick Reger. “Roughly a quarter of all surveyed teens said they engaged with news on YouTube (37%), TikTok (35%) or Instagram (33%) on a daily or weekly basis, though the sources of that news remain in question.”

This past week in the media industry?

Oh, Elon…

Daniel Drezner is referring to the scoop from Max Tani of Semafor, Twitter (aka X) appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times.

According to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X, engagement on posts linking to the Times has dropped dramatically since late July, an abrupt drop that appears to be isolated only to X and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations.

Clyde Eltzroth notes, “The devil is in the details and the details are in the chart…”

“For the political science kids out there: When the Meritocracy trumps Democracy. (An amazing echo of the debates over Covid disinfo censorship by the social media giants.)” says Michael Scherer.?

Put another way, it’s “Elmo trying to keep you from reading @nytimes articles on his failing social plaything,” tweets David Beard.

In Musk’s universe

Getting plenty of engagement on X, however, is a thriving army of bots.?

Josh Taylor of The Guardian Australia reports that bots on X are worse than ever, according to analysis of 1m tweets during the first Republican primary debate.?

Taylor spoke to researchers from Queensland University of Technology who analyzed the tweets surrounding the first Republican debate and Tucker Carlson’s interview with Donald Trump. They identified a sprawling bot network of 1,305 accounts, with more than 1,200 accounts spreading the false and disproven claim that Trump won the 2020 election.

“One network of bots discovered was connected to an account calling itself ‘MediaOpinion19’. [It] tweeted on average 662 times a day – every two minutes. It was the central node in a network of pro-Trump accounts that retweeted the central account’s tweets,” Martin Cohen highlights, noting, “Basically common sense would solve the bot problem. But there's not much of that in Musk's universe.”

And then there’s the news that X is no longer labeling ads for some users. As Matt Binder of Mashable points out, “Not disclosing advertisements runs afoul of the FTC's rules.”

Live from New Orleans

Meanwhile, Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Musk is out this week and has already been making headlines with some eyebrow-raising details about Musk’s secret orders to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet last year.?

Shawn McCreesh profiled Isaacson for the new issue of New York Magazine, The Journalist and the Billionaire: What did an old Establishment guy like Walter Isaacson learn writing Elon Musk’s biography???

In which “@ShawnMcCreesh does a @WalterIsaacson on Walter Isaacson,” says Carl Swanson. Plus, “So many good scenes in this @ShawnMcCreesh profile, live from New Orleans,” tweets Josh Dawsey.

“There is risk for Isaacson in applying his Time Man of the Year approach to Musk,” Jennifer Szalai quotes from this “Smart profile of Isaacson by @ShawnMcCreesh.” Adds Max Chafkin, “The entire profile—which looks at isaacsons career and maybe the limits of a biography like this is worth reading.”?

BLURB

Speaking of books, Sophie Vershbow spent the summer speaking to dozens of authors and publishing insiders for her Esquire piece, 'A Plague on the Industry': Book Publishing's Broken Blurb System. “oh look, an article I wish I'd read, uh, three years ago, good lord and yikes…” tweets Amy Argetsinger.

Jennifer Maas has high praise for this one, proclaiming, “Not since that bucatini shortage conspiracy deep dive has an article engrossed me more than this one about book blurbs.”

Specifically, Mike Naple says, “This deep-dive by @svershbow is a fascinating look at the role of book blurbs in signaling author credibility, influence & gate-keeping in publishing, unpaid labor, and how blurbs inform our choices as patrons at our local bookstores.”

Adds Thuc Nguyen, “Thank you, @svershbow & @esquire for this insightful story! I'm in the process of this necessary & fun evil for a proposal & I'm waiting for someone to blurb that I'm a taller, slightly funnier, female version of Ocean Vuong / Viet Thanh Nguyen…”

Todd and the Sunday shows

On Sunday, Chuck Todd signed off as host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” after nine years at the desk, turning over the reins to Kristin Welker, who succeeds him in the role. Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop sized up the Todd era, including where Chuck Todd failed and how the Sunday shows as a whole could be better.

“As he signed off, Todd defined the essential value of Meet the Press as educational; as ‘helping to explain America to Washington and Washington to America.’ Too often under Todd, I heard a show explaining Washington to itself,’” Vinod Sreeharsha highlighted from this “Good @Jon_Allsop piece.” Jay Rosen also quoted that part, with a “Yes.”

Here’s more from Ren LaForme at Poynter, Chuck Todd signs off at ‘Meet the Press,’ ‘the honor of my professional life.’

One Good Website

Last up, happy birthday to Defector, which turned three last week. Tom Ley gives us an update on the business with Three Years Of Defector, and Libby Watson says, “reading this was just a real nice way to start the day. One Good Website.”

Austin L. Ray admits, “i get so embarrassingly emotionally moved by this post every year i just love so much that they're doing it ugh.”?

They’re doing it. Here’s to many happy returns.

More notable media stories

• Just in time for Monday Night Football, Disney and Charter Communications reached an agreement that restored popular channels including ESPN and ABC to the cable operator’s nearly 15 million subscribers. Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal broke the news on the deal that finally put an end to a blackout that lasted for more than a week.
• Alex Weprin of The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Disney entertainment chief Dana Walden and ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro about What Disney Got and Gave Up to Make a Deal With Spectrum.
• Per Taylor Lorenz of The Washington Post, one week into rolling out its search function, Threads is blocking searches related to covid and vaccines. Meta confirmed that it’s intentionally blocking certain terms, and a search by the Post found the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore” and “porn” are also among blocked words.
• An investigation by Robert Silverman of The Daily Beast uncovered How Barstool Built an Empire by Swiping Sports Highlights. Silverman explains, “For years, Barstool Sports has run an apparent system of organized copyright infringement, using ‘burner’ Twitter accounts to swipe countless hours of highlights owned by teams in every league. And they apparently have no intention of stopping.”
• After embarking on a listening tour of Minnesota this summer, Star Tribune publisher Steve Grove wrote about what I've learned so far at the Star Tribune.
• Lucas Shaw shares, “I wrote about the budding romance between the most popular sport in the US and the most popular video site in the world.” For Bloomberg, Shaw takes a look at the NFL’s partnership with YouTube, Can a Bunch of Influencers Make the NFL Even More Popular?
• New from Mark Coddington and Seth C. Lewis for Nieman Lab, Non-news sites expose people to more political content than news sites. Why??
• The UK Government is launching a task force to crack down on the growing number of SLAPP legal cases designed to intimidate journalists in the UK. Charlotte Tobitt has more at Press Gazette, including an op-ed from Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer about the task force launch.
• NPR’s Eyder Peralta offers a rare look inside locked-down Nicaragua as the first foreign journalist to make it into the country in more than a year.?
• On Monday’s 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Don Van Natta Jr. shared, “As she spoke to millions of viewers on 9/11, Jennifer Oberstein, a former NBC News employee, remembered a journalism rule too often forgotten or ignored: ‘Do not speculate. Do not guess. Be very clear of what you know and what you don’t know.’” Watch Oberstein’s compelling video testimony here.

From the Muck Rack Team

Head over to the blog for the latest in our “Good PR Pitches” series. Byron Kimball of Mixte Communications shared how a pitch to drive awareness of a campaign to fight fracking got attention from environmental reporters and multiple local and national placements.