An old but always relevant warning

Media statistic of the week 

Of the time that people in the U.S. spent streaming video in 2020, 62% was spent on subscription-based services versus 32% on ad-supported services, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by auditing and consulting firm PwC.

But, as Tim Peterson writes at Digiday, “the growing number of streaming services offering high-quality shows and movies and charging for access may lead more people to opt for the cheaper ad-supported tiers to access a wide array of programming without breaking the bank.”

PwC’s survey found that 63% of respondents said they would be willing to sit through more ads if it meant lower subscription prices. Just how many ads they’re willing to sit through is still unclear.

This past week in the media industry 

Credit where credit is due

In news that Baybars ?rsek called “Big, if true!” (it’s true), Facebook announced that it’s ending its controversial policy that mostly shields politicians from the content moderation rules that apply to other users. As Alex Heath reports at The Verge, the announcement came after the Oversight Board affirmed its decision to suspend former President Donald Trump but critiqued the special treatment it gives politicians.

Brianna Wu is willing to offer “Credit where credit is due. Facebook is making good decisions lately.”

The next day, Facebook announced that Trump’s account would be suspended until January 2023, at which time the situation will be reevaluated.

Pro-Trump ecosystem is alive and well

Meanwhile, Davey Alba, Ella Koeze and Jacob Silver of The New York Times take a look at What Happened When Trump Was Banned on Facebook and Twitter. “We analyzed 1,689 Trump social media posts before and after his ban from the platforms to answer the question: has he really been silenced? (Spoiler: nope! The pro-Trump ecosystem is alive and well),” Alba says.

“This is very interesting,” says Jon Lovett. “Rightwing accounts step up to share Trump’s message on his behalf, but not as successfully on false claims around election fraud, in part because of other safeguards platforms put in place.” 

Feilding Cage says it’s “One of those charts people look at and can see a shift in their own mental health (and different experience, I assume, depending on ideology in this case).”

The real power of platforms

The ecosystem is alive, but the blog is officially dead. Last week, Trump killed his 29-day-old blog because he was infuriated by measly readership, according to Josh Dawsey and Drew Harwell’s reporting at The Washington Post. 

In a piece for his Platformer newsletter headlined Trump deplatforms himself, Casey Newton writes about what Trump’s failed blog tells us about the power of Twitter. “Trump’s near-instant abandonment of blogging illustrates that the real power of platforms isn’t ‘free speech’ — it’s free reach,” Newton argues. “It’s never been clearer what stunts like the Florida deplatforming law are really about.” 

“Recommended,” tweets Jay Rosen, who highlights, “A unified press corps that took Trump seriously as a mortal threat to democracy from the start, rather than as a clownish sideshow that was good for ratings, may have given him less airtime.”

Alex Wilhelm says, “1. read @CaseyNewton 2. it appears that he’s having more fun than anyone in media.”

Facebook has become a State Department

In other Facebook news, according to interviews Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac of The New York Times conducted with more than half a dozen current and former Facebook employees, Facebook employees are mad about what they see as Facebook concessions to governments in Israel and India, and they are pressing executives over those decisions. 

“This is all complicated stuff,” Shira Ovide notes, “But I don’t want to let go of the surprise that Facebook has become a State Department.” But also, Siddhartha Mahanta wonders, “Were these aggrieved Facebook employees born, like, yesterday?”

Beyond Facebook

Moving on to other platforms, Natasha Lomas of TechCrunch reports that TikTok is being called out for a lack of ads transparency and for failing to police political payola. A Mozilla report found more than a dozen TikTok influencers across the political spectrum who were being compensated by a variety of political organizations to promote partisan messages without disclosing that these posts were sponsored. TikTok banned political ads in 2019.

The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that YouTubers are not members of the “news media,” and therefore do not qualify for press privileges such as access to state records. “Except when they are?” tweets Lora Kolodny. In her coverage of the decision, Christina Maas of Reclaim the Net describes it as “another blow for independent reporters.”

Twitter has started rolling out Birdwatch fact checks inside tweets. As Lucas Matney reports at TechCrunch, the company launched a pilot version of the program back in January, describing the effort as a way to add context to misinformation in real time.

Leaning into local

The Washington Post launched “Voices Across America” this month, a platform within the current opinion section for “on-the-ground viewpoints and local angles on national issues.” Hanaa’ Tameez of Nieman Reports writes about how the Post opinion section is leaning into local with “Voices Across America.” 

“I was fascinated to learn that opinion pieces are among the top converters of readers into subscribers at the @washingtonpost,” she says. Voices Across America is looking for writers who can write about where they live with sufficient authority to be credible to their neighbors, but with sufficient altitude to be compelling to readers anywhere.

In addition, Post Opinion columnist James Hohmann will be hosting an opinion-based podcast called “Please, Go On” to give writers more space to discuss issues they’ve written about. The first episode will premiere next week.

In the absence of local news

In a piece for FiveThirtyEight, Joshua P. Darr reviews a growing body of research that shows why a decline in local news coverage could be bad for American politics. His research found that Americans are more likely to vote for one party up and down the ballot when their local newspapers close and they turn to national outlets for their news.

“Fascinating,” says Sarabeth Berman. “?@joshuadarr? research tracked a paper that stopped running national topics on its opinion page. The results were dramatic. It decreased polarization. The absence of local news and our reliance on national news is pulling us apart.”

Esha Ray highlights from that piece “An old but always relevant warning. ‘Put another way, when people read news about their neighborhoods, schools and municipal services, they think like locals. When they read about national political conflict, they think like partisans.’”

What’s filling the void?

With traditional newsrooms shrinking or shutting down, a whole host of online outlets are emerging in their wake. But are they all really journalism? Elahe Izadi shares, “Wrote a little story about the landscape of sites that say they want to fill the void left by a decimated journalism industry, but it’s not always clear who is funding them and their intentions.” 

Her latest for The Washington Post digs into the new journalism — and the PR firms behind it. As Izadi reports, transparency advocates have been keeping tabs on a proliferation of unconventional news sites and watchdog outfits that may be blurring the lines between PR and journalism. 

In one example, “An ‘investigative’ blog, the Checks & Balances Project, set its sights on Sentara, one of VA’s largest hospital systems,” tweets Kate Masters. “@washingtonpost found those stories started after a competing medical school paid $150K to a PR firm owned by the blog’s founder.”

Izadi notes that PR specialists now outnumber journalists more than 5 to 1, according to 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics data. “PR to Journalist ratio is at 5:1 as publications shut shops, layoff reporters. What is the future of biz journalism?” Priyanka Pani wonders, adding, “I think every biz house will have its own media house in coming years.”

‘Specificity will always win’

Poynter has published a version of a column by Kayla Randall and Amaris Castillo that first appeared in the NPR Public Editor newsletter, which points out that Latinx, POC and BIPOC are words trying to solve a bigger problem in journalism. “How can journalists report on whole groups that are splintered by how they identify? There will never be a consensus,” they acknowledge. “But specificity will always win.”

Meanwhile, Why Can’t We Call It An Emergency? That’s what Mark Hertsgaard, executive director of Covering Climate Now and environment correspondent for The Nation, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of Columbia Journalism want to know. 

“Last month, we asked the world’s press to commit to treating climate change as the emergency that scientists say it is; their response was dispiriting,” they write. While 30+ newsrooms have signed a Climate Emergency Statement recognizing the need for better climate coverage, some outlets are worried that the phrase sounds like activism.

“No major American newspaper is willing to call it a "climate emergency" because they think it sounds too much like activism. That, in a nutshell, is what needs to change about American newspapers,” says Dan Froomkin. “They need to give a shit.”

The “She Said” film

Deadline’s Justin Kroll reports that Carey Mulligan And Zoe Kazan will portray the real life New York Times reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal story in a movie based on Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book, “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement.”

Tweets Kantor, “The SHE SAID film is about the explosive power a tiny number of truth-telling sources can have, the propulsive energy of the newsroom (spoiler alert, @mega2e and I far from the only journalists depicted), and the joy of female teamwork.” 

Joanne Lipman calls it “Hands down best news of the day! Bravo ?@jodikantor? & ?@mega2e? ???? ‘The thrust of the film isn’t Weinstein or his scandal. This is about an all-women team of journalists who persevered through threats of litigation and intimidation.’”

Keep doing you and be proud

In a widely shared essay for Poynter, Roy Clark explains why there’s no such thing as a former journalist. “The migration of good journalists into other fields expands interest in the well-being of important institutions,” he writes. “I know many of these ‘former journalists,’ and they have not left their skills and values behind. They use them every day for the public good.” 

“What if we imagined that the journalist, the mayor’s speechwriter, the grant writer for the public schools, the public information officer for the hospital, were actually members of the same tribe?” Jay Rosen quotes, and urges, “Read @RoyPeterClark’s mind-expanding essay.”

Ebone Monet describes it as “A good read that made my stomach hurt. Being a ‘champion of the public good’ is a life principle.” This one’s “For those navigating a world beyond journalism, entering the ‘dark side,’” tweets Matt Mills McKnight. “Great insight on why y’all are public storytellers with your immense amount of skills, not flacks/flaks. Keep doing you and be proud.”

The piece has definitely made an impression. Clark shares, “Not since I offered an opinion about the Oxford comma have I received such fervent messages in response to a column. Most have come from public writers who tell me how the craft they learned in the newsroom remains an essential part of who they are.”

Gentlemanly capitalists

We’ll wrap up with John Gapper’s longread in the Financial Times on the Englishman trying to save American bookstores from Amazon. The setup: “Eccentric English shopkeeper + notoriously rapacious hedge fund + dire US book chain = ? Lovely piece from @johngapper,” tweets Tom Braithwaite. 

“Yet more gentlemanly capitalists,” says Pat Kane. “What is striking is how much Daunt’s (relative) commercial success with bookshops involves mimicking the social comfort & utility of a good public library.”

“Retail as theatre, not logistics,” tweets Mark Piesing. “Good on James Daunt, the challenges he faces on both sides of the Atlantic, and even criticisms from, a ?@pressfuturist? favourite, an anonymous source.” 

Peter Kadzis goes so far as to say, “If there is a candidate for sainthood, then James Daunt is it.” Although Rob Crilly admits, “I've yet to find a newspaper or magazine story or blog post about bookstores that isn’t totally absorbing.”

A few more

• Following similar recent disclosures to CNN and The Washington Post, the DOJ has informed The New York Times that the Trump administration secretly seized phone records of four Times reporters as part of the ongoing James Comey leak investigation. Charlie Savage and Katie Benner report that phone records from Jan. 14 to April 30, 2017, were seized from reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eric Lichtblau and Michael S. Schmidt 
• President Biden said that the conduct by the DOJ was “simply, simply wrong” and that it wouldn’t happen in his administration. Using Biden’s own words, Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan says something appears to be ‘simply, simply wrong’ at the Biden Justice Department, since it “intensified the government’s attack on First Amendment rights before finally backing down in the face of reporting about its conduct.”
• Rachel Metz and Kerry Flynn of CNN write about how trans writers and journalists are struggling to get their old bylines corrected. “It’s pretty incredible how many disagreements at the bargaining table boil down to asking management to just try and have a shred of basic human decency,” says Chris Brooks.
• In Australia, Zoe Samios of The Sydney Morning Herald reports that management at the ABC has pulled an upcoming “Four Corners” episode by prominent journalist Louise Milligan about the relationship between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and a QAnon supporter, a decision that could be seen as an attempt to dampen tensions between the national broadcaster and the federal government. 
• Kayleigh Barber of Digiday reports that Insider’s SAGA platform has pulled more ad revenue this year than ’20, enabling a business-side hiring spree. Tweets Simon Owens, “Insider’s ad sales are up 61% YoY, yet its paid subscription revenue has already caught up to advertising. The split between the two is 50-50. This company found a good recipe for converting subscribers without cutting into traffic growth.”
• For his Galaxy Brain newsletter, Charlie Warzel shares that he “Wrote about the last day on Twitter (aka everyday) & the how the social web collapses audiences, our sense of time, and nuance. We are three dimensional humans living big chunks of our lives in mostly one dimensional spaces. The result is all around us.” Check out that piece, The internet is flat, which Adam Serwer describes as “A good @cwarzel on ... whatever it is we’re doing on this website.”

From the Muck Rack Team

Earlier today we hosted a live panel discussion with Muck Rack’s Editorial Director Andrew Mercier, The Yodel by Yahoo! newsletter author Lily Herman, and The Profile’s Polina Marinova on trends and predictions for the golden age of newsletters we’re currently in. You can sign up to get the recording here.