Million-dollar idea for any panicking network exec

Media statistic of the week 

Sports fans have been without new TV programming for months, so you’d think viewership would be through the roof now that live sports are back on the airwaves. But you’d be wrong. 

So far, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, the return of professional baseball, basketball and hockey hasn’t managed to draw a whole lot of younger fans back.

As Anthony Crupi writes at Sportico, “In the two weeks since baseball got the sports restart rolling, the networks are averaging 1.91 million adults 18-49 per night, down 30% compared to the same 14-day span a year ago.”

Since the summer TV season began in May, overall TV usage is off 8% year-over-year compared to the analogous period in 2019. Broadcast TV has been hit even harder, with the primetime audience for the Big Four networks plummeting 19% year-over-year.

This week in media history

On August 18, 1921, Adolph Ochs acquired control of the financially failing New York Times. To set his paper apart from the “yellow journalism” of its more sensational competitors, Ochs adopted the slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print” (first used October 25, 1896) and insisted on comprehensive and trustworthy news gathering that lived up to that promise.

Ochs said his goal with The New York Times was to provide “the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is permissible in good society, and give it early, if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other medium.”

This past week in the media industry 

Preparing for the inevitable frenz

Joe Biden’s long-awaited announcement of his vice presidential pick finally came this past week, and it was a historic choice. Kamala Harris is the first Black and first Asian American candidate to be nominated for vice president of the U.S. by a major political party. She’s also the third woman to be nominated, and “[i]n preparation for the inevitable media frenzy surrounding Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, a group of powerful women activists and leaders has a warning for media covering this ‘historic moment’: Avoid sexist stereotypes.”  

Ms. Magazine’s Roxy Szal writes about the “We Have Her Back” initiative, the brainchild of top feminist thinkers who’ve written a letter to news executives warning them to be thoughtful about their coverage and noting, "We believe it is your job to, not just pay attention to these stereotypes, but to actively work to be anti-racist and antisexist in your coverage (ie: equal) as this political season progresses and this [p]residential ticket is introduced.”

 At the Los Angeles Times, Nardine Saad reports on the celebrities who are declaring ‘we have her back’ about Kamala Harris. Kerry Washington, Julianne Moore, Reese Witherspoon, Debra Messing, Amy Schumer, Sarah Paulson and others are joining in the campaign and have called out newspapers for using sexist headlines in opinion pieces about the VP search.

The problem was the op-ed

It’s not just the sexism, of course. RawStory’s Sarah Burris reported that Newsweek was criticized for publishing a new birther conspiracy about Kamala Harris. But as Lloyd Grove notes at The Daily Beast, it took Newsweek three days and a staff revolt to apologize for that op-ed by John Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University. Grove reports that several Newsweek journalists are alarmed by the recent hiring of opinion editor Josh Hammer, a Trump-backing conservative activist and attorney. 

“Just read this take by @TheLloydGrove - Make no mistake, the @Newsweek staffers who spoke out against the Op-Ed risked their jobs to do so during a pandemic and in an industry not known for its job security. Proud of my former co-workers,” tweets James LaPorta. Joshua Benton, meanwhile, is not impressed with the apology: “It pretends the problem was how people ‘interpreted’ or ‘distorted’ its meaning. No, the problem was the op-ed. My edits attached.”

Demoralized and dispirited 

“A narrowly avoided legal war, unpaid bills, a former high-school teacher on the payroll who once pleaded guilty to having an improper relationship with a student.” That’s just some of the real drama going on behind the scenes at Sports Illustrated, which Maxwell Tani writes about in his Daily Beast story on The Civil War Tearing Sports Illustrated Apart. He describes how the magazine’s staffers are feeling caught in the middle of a war between the brand’s owner and its publisher—leaving them increasingly demoralized and dispirited.

“How bad are things at Sports Illustrated? The parent company put on the payroll a former high-school teacher who once pleaded guilty to having ‘an improper relationship with a student,’” Noah Shachtman highlights. And Myles Udland points out, “.@maxwelltani reports that Maven has set up a board that oversees editorial issues at SI which... does not have representation by anyone who works at SI?” 

“Somewhere out there, Henry Luce is very sad about this, or at least I’d like to think so,” says Harry McCracken.

Listen to your writers, producers, talent 

“Ignoring experts that you hired in favor of algorithms of dubious accuracy is why media is where it’s at today,” says Sam Hockley-Smith. He links to Victoria Song’s piece at Gizmodo, The Death of Bon Appétit Is Proof Media Companies Have No Idea What Makes Videos Work. Joseph Mackertich says it’s a “Great read. Fist-pumpingly accurate with regards to video.”

“Man, the entire internet knew what the right thing to do was, but nope. Sad,” notes Stef Schrader. So Jonathon Klein offers this advice: “Dear @bonappetit and @CNE, please for the love of all things good, listen to your writers, producers, and onscreen talent, along with @vicmsong and fix this. Don't burn down BA just because you like systemic racism’s ability to pay your people less.”

RIP newsroom culture

With the news that Tribune Publishing is permanently closing some of its newsrooms, including the Daily News in New York, The Capital Gazette in Annapolis and the Orlando Sentinel, Marc Tracy of The New York Times writes about how the Daily News, a tabloid once famous for its bustling, big-city newsroom, no longer has a newsroom. 

John Edwards says, “This is both unsurprising and quite shocking. Hard to imagine the news business without newsroom culture.” But Suzanne Nossel looks at it this way: “Sad as it is to imagine @NYDailyNews without a newsroom, better that they shed the expense of office space they cannot use and preserve their payroll of journalists investigating, writing and editing stories.”

Competing and collaborating

Last week, Andy Paras posted a Twitter thread about “A full-blown newspaper war” happening in South Carolina involving its three largest papers — the Post and Courier in Charleston, The Greenville News, and The State in Columbia — and their owners. 

“This newspaper war is fascinating because it’s fueled by expansion at a time when most papers are shrinking and laying off great journalists as they hemorrhage ad revenue,” he notes, and “[i]t’s significant because one or more of these historic institutions might not survive it.” 

Paras points out that “war” isn’t a smear — newspaper wars date back to Pulitzer and Hearst. As Dustin Wyatt says, “This is a great thing for S.C. residents though. There are so many talented reporters throughout the state doing great work. Proud to be a reporter here.”

But while competition is good, so is collaboration. In a piece for Nieman Reports on why Collaboration is the Future of Journalism, Casey Quackenbush explores several examples of collaboration among news organizations in covering the pandemic and other recent crises. 

“While this is still a time of a high-stakes competition among news outlets, it’s also a time of high-reward collaboration. To meet the mounting challenges from mounting crises a historically competitive media culture is giving way to an accelerating trend of collaboration,” she writes.

‘Facebook stands alone’

According to internal documents leaked to NBC News, Facebook has allowed conservative news outlets and personalities to repeatedly spread false information without facing any of the company's stated penalties. Olivia Solon reports that Facebook employees were worried that complaints about its fact-checking could go public and fuel allegations that the social network was biased against conservatives. “Ahhhh,” tweets Alex Wilhelm. 

Meanwhile, an investigation by Julia Wong of The Guardian finds QAnon Facebook groups are growing at a rapid pace around the world while Twitter cracks down on QAnon content. She tweets, “New from me: In June I reported that the top QAnon groups, pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram had an aggregate following of 3 million users. As of this week, the following of those same accounts has grown 34% to more than 4 million.” 

Travis View, a researcher and co-host of QAnon Anonymous, a podcast that documents and debunks QAnon, told Wong, “Facebook stands alone in how much it has enabled this conspiracy theory-driven extremist community.” 

Chris Gilliard says, “Again, this is why Facebook’s metrics about cleaning up toxicity on their site are meaningless. They recommend, promote, and amplify the toxicity, then later want credit for how ‘efficient’ they are in removing it.” And in the meantime, Stephan Faris says, “We're witnessing the birth of a new global religion.”

In slightly better Facebook news, executives tell Sara Fischer of Axios that Facebook is rolling out a new policy designed to crack down on political content disguised as local news (aka, “pink slime”). Daniel Byman calls it “A step forward,” and Emily Bell is “glad the ?@TowCenter? research fed into this decision-making.”

Leading the pivot to pods

At The Wall Street Journal, Anne Steele profiles Dawn Ostroff, the woman who got Joe Rogan and Michelle Obama to Spotify. Ostroff is a television veteran who’s made her career tackling the next big thing in media, and now it’s her job as chief content officer to make Spotify less reliant on music. As Steele notes, Spotify needs podcasts to become a big moneymaker for it to become profitable.  

Nick Andersen praises the “great profile of spotify's chief content officer, who is leading its pivot to pods,” and James Ashton says it’s “Fascinating on @DawnOstroff one of the most influential people in global media today.”

A few more

• “Doctor, doctor! I wrote about @kdoctor's new news start-up, a version of one of my favorite stories: when the analyst becomes a practitioner.” Marc Tracy links to his New York Times story on Ken Doctor’s new venture, A Prominent News Media Critic Is Starting a News Outlet of His Own.
• Kristen Hare urges, “If you read all the coverage of @kdoctor's ambitious new local news venture in Santa Cruz, take a minute to learn about the tiny team that's already covering public policy there, too.” Read her piece at Poynter on how Santa Cruz Local nearly doubled paying members since the coronavirus pandemic. Gerry Smith predicts “Tough times for corrupt politicians in Santa Cruz, the rare town in America with *a lot* of local news outlets.”
• At What’s New In Publishing, Esther Kezia Thorpe questions whether the COVID magazine subscription bump is a short-term trend or a long-term bet: “Is a pivot back to magazine subscriptions a wise idea, or is this a trend which will fade as restrictions ease?”
• Condé Nast may be turning some publications into digital-only entities, but they are launching a new glossy in 2021, Vogue Scandinavia. At the Daily Front Row, Freya Drohan has details on What to Expect from Vogue Scandinavia and Editor Martina Bonnier.
• At Digiday, Steven Perlberg writes about how news outlets are mulling the possible end of the ‘Trump Bump’ bonanza. “On Twitter, he points out, “it's common knowledge that Trump drives traffic, TV ratings, & paid subscriptions for publishers (who have happily rebranded themselves for the Trump era). Now media execs are wondering what happens if he loses in the middle of a recession/bad ad market!” No worries: Cooper Fleishman offers this “Million-dollar idea for any panicking network execs: bring in more progressive voices.”
• Lindsey Ellefson of The Wrap reports that G/O Media, owner of The Onion and Deadspin, has laid off 15 video staffers. Tom McKay notes, “G/O management didn't have time to notify our colleagues of layoffs in advance during a pandemic, but someone had the time to talk to the Wrap.”
• Scripps Howard Foundation announced that it will award $600,000 to advance diversity in journalism. Rebecca Cochran has the details.

From the Muck Rack Team

Last week, Muck Rack assembled a power panel of communicators to discuss diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for media relations. The panelists, whose work encompasses the media, PR agency and higher education sectors, provided deep insight into what the work they’ve been doing, the advice they’ve been giving and receiving and how storytelling and pitching can be informed by a healthy DEI practice. Veleisa Burrell, owner of Narrative Evolution, captures some of the highlights from that discussion in a new post on the blog today, DEI for media relations: Setting definitions, positioning efforts around revenue and understanding relevance.

Also new on the Muck Rack Blog, Jessica Lawlor talks to solo superwoman Karen Swim about how she runs a 7,000 person strong community of solo PR pros. 

Question of the week

Brian Friedberg, a senior researcher at the Harvard Shorenstein Center’s Technology and Social Change Project, warned that Facebook needs to be careful about how it manages any crackdown on QAnon, since its adherents already believe that “the truth” is being suppressed by “the liberal media.” He suggests “factual interventions” from conservative media outlets and leaders as a way to combat QAnon. What steps do you think Facebook can take to crack down on the proliferation of QAnon groups and pages without reinforcing their unfounded beliefs about the media?