Reading between the blurred lines
Media statistic of the week?
Are you ready for some football? Advertisers are certainly betting on it. As Sara Fischer reported last week at Axios, ads for Super Bowl LVI are nearly gone, according to NBC executives, and some of the most recently sold units went for $6.5 million — a new record.
This past week in the media industry?
The Facebook files?
Jeff Horwitz of The Wall Street Journal tells us “I’ve been on a Facebook project for months, and it’s nowhere near done. But this is the first story. TL:DR: Facebook, which talks a lot about democratizing voice, secretly exempted ‘VIP’ users from its rules in ‘not publicly defensible’ ways.”
That story, Facebook Says Its Rules Apply to All. Company Documents Reveal a Secret Elite That’s Exempt, pulls back the curtain on a program known as XCheck that has given millions of celebrities, politicians and other high-profile users special treatment, a privilege many abuse.
Casey Newton calls it a “Damning @JeffHorwitz report on a Facebook system that exempts millions of high-profile accounts from routine content moderation systems, all but ensuring they will be held to a lower standard than regular people.”
As Horwitz said, that’s the first in the Journal’s new Facebook files series based on extensive internal company documents. Another, from Georgia Wells, Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman, reveals that Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls. In fact, its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook plays down in public.?
The j-school discourse
We kick off this week’s round-up with this widely shared piece by Melissa Korn and Anthony DeBarros of The Wall Street Journal, Journalism Schools That Leave Graduates With Hefty Student Loans.?
Jennifer Forsyth explained the problem: “Many students leave even the most prestigious private graduate programs, such as those at Northwestern University & Columbia, with earnings too low to let them make progress paying off their loans.”?
Looking at some of those numbers, Wesley Lowery thinks, “these are truly insane amounts of money to pay for a journalism degree.”?
At the same time, though, “A lot of Millennials were taught that the more pieces of paper with Latin on them that you collected, the more likely you were to succeed in life,” Scott Bixby points out. “Turns out that lesson was, with a few exceptions, largely untrue ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ”
“Once again with feeling,” tweets Sopan Deb. “Pursuing a career in journalism is like getting a MFA or going after any other creative field. You can make a living, but it’s a huge risk and you will likely go through lots of financial hardship along the way.”
Well, it depends. Taylor Blatchford shares, “I’m off work today and am not interested in participating in the j-school discourse... but I’m just going to leave this chart here from the article and note that you don’t have to go to Northwestern or Columbia to get a journalism job!”
The Sun shines at 3
Hopeful stories continue to emerge from the rocky world of local news. The Colorado Sun has turned three, and the journalist-owned news organization is growing fast while continuing to provide public service, according to an independent audit. In addition to sharing the audit, editor Larry Ryckman announced that The Sun will be launching new newsletters and hiring more reporters.?
“The Colorado Sun was founded in 2018 by journalists disgusted by hedge fund control of their newsroom, the Denver Post,” notes Jay Rosen. “The Sun began with 10 full time staff. Now it has 21 staffers, 170,000 newsletter subscribers, and 14,000 readers who pay to support it.”?
“The Washington Post reminds readers daily that ‘democracy dies in darkness.’ I will add that it also flourishes in sunlight,” writes Ryckman.
A network of quilt journalism?
The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) is a news consortium that aims to cover rural America from coast to coast, as Sarah Scire explains at Nieman Lab. With more than 50 participating newsrooms led by The Daily Yonder and the agribusiness-focused Investigate Midwest, the multi-year effort will be the nonprofit group’s largest collaboration ever.
“Instead of parachute journalism about rural communities, @INN, @dailyyonder + @IMidwest are building a network of quilt journalism - detailed pieces that together create a whole pattern,” tweets Bridget Thoreson. “Thank you @SarahScire for featuring us in @NiemanLab!”
A painful elegy
Marie Claire has quietly ended its US print edition after 27 years. As Alexandra Steigrad reported at the New York Post, the magazine, which was sold by Hearst to British publisher Future Media in May, quietly informed its subscribers via a letter that its Summer 2021 issue would be its last.
In a piece called Let it die for his On Posting newsletter, Luke Winkie argues in favor of a more dignified death for some of the withering publications that have been picked up by investors only to “whirr away on a remote corner of the internet, nurturing a non-sentient engagement farm designed to absorb the most apathetic clicks imaginable,” as he puts it (that part referring to Newsweek).
Here’s how he explains it: “The latest On Posting is about how so many great publications, like Newsweek, Spin, Deadspin, etc, are never granted a peaceful death by the forces of capital, and are instead propped up forever in a deeply uncanny zombified state.”
“A painful elegy for media ghost ships that ‘must be maintained indefinitely to squeeze whatever bitter juice is left,’” Michelle Manafy highlights.
Keith Gillogly calls it “Insightful and sad, really. Scoop everything out from a publication but its shell lives on, as @luke_winkie writes.”
It’s complicated
Meanwhile, “If you’ve marveled at Teen Vogue’s transformation over the past few years, this might make you think twice. Thanks for the perspective.”
Matthew Zampa is referring to Clio Chang’s profile of Teen Vogue for Columbia Journalism Review, OK, Seriously. Tweets Change, “here’s my deep dive into the complicated political transformation of Teen Vogue, one of the last standing teen magazines and the most curious corner of Condé Nast.”
Feeding the clickbait economy grew Teen Vogue’s brand, Chang writes, but it was complicated. “I wish I didn’t look at corporate KPIs as a metric of success and had looked at how my employees were feeling coming to work every day,” Phillip Picardi told her. “I never would have kept my job if those were the metrics of success.”
Also a bit complicated, what’s become of Vice. In his Second Rough Draft newsletter, Richard J. Tofel mines a lesson from the decline of Vice. While the organization says it’s reaching its largest audience ever, Tofel notes that its influence — on its audience and the news industry —?has dwindled.?
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“Now Vice feels and sounds mostly like a business, delivering to advertisers eyeballs from a niche audience,” Tofel writes. “That is almost never the route to success in publishing. If you don’t begin with editorial vision, and maintain it, you eventually go astray.”
Words matter
Margaret Sullivan has a radical idea: “Call a lie a lie. Use ‘racist’ when it clearly is. And don’t call election meddling an ‘audit.’ Because word choices matter.”?
Her latest Washington Post column, Words matter. So these journalists refuse to call GOP election meddling an ‘audit,’ praises the Philadelphia Inquirer’s recent decision not to use the word “audit” when referring to an effort by the state GOP to investigate the 2020 election:?
“?? Finally??” tweets Pat Kreitlow. “Legacy newsrooms are slow learners for fear of offending... anyone. (See also: gerrymandering) But some eventually figure things out and show leadership in their craft. Words matter. So do free elections.”
Is it enough, though? “‘We are pro-democracy,’ @PhillyInquirer politics editor tells @sulliview. Which is great! But bolder action is required. Not calling a transparently bogus and disingenuous partisan effort to undermine election integrity an ‘audit’ is baby steps,” Dan Froomkin argues.
Illuminating
For his latest New York Times column, Ben Smith explores Why Our Monsters Talk to Michael Wolff. Michael Silverman describes it as “Reading between the blurred lines of the bills-of-particular school of journalism and Michael Wolff’s power productions.”
There’s plenty to dig into from Smith’s conversation with Wolff. Jeet Heer notes, “The Epstein/Bannon business is in this very illuminating @benyt piece about Michael Wolff,” and Sarah Weinman points out that “This is a hell of a paragraph.”?
Bill Grueskin highlights, “Journalism ‘has many rules, but the most successful journalists seem to be the ones who are always breaking them,’ via @benyt, in this chuckle-a-minute profile of @MichaelWolffNYC.”
Paul McCartney also makes an appearance. Oh, and Wolff shares with Smith the secret to writing a book: “He told me, You start with a blank piece of paper, and on the top, you write the amount of money you want.” So, there you have it.
A media scandal
In his piece for Gawker, Bennett Madison shatters the illusion: Help! I Couldn’t Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published.?
Leah Finnegan calls it “the first true media scandal of the biden era,” but most people seem to think it’s just confirmation of everything they always assumed about some of the more outrageous letters that have gone viral.?
Although Aaron Bady says, “I have no basis for this, but I choose to believe--because it’s funnier--that this person didn’t even write these fake letters, that the Gawker article claiming to have done so is the fake.”
Others are equally suspicious. Derek Thompson says, “this essay confirms my priors about advice column letters so perfectly that it’s almost too perfect and now i half-wonder whether the ‘i’m the fake advice letter’ writer is faking the fake, and we’re still nested in a fractal babushka doll set of fakery.”
Either way, Choire Sicha says it’s “The most delightful thing I’ve read all pandemic.”?
What the hell is Apple up to?
It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. Kenny Wassus of The Wall Street Journal recently watched more than 40 hours of Apple TV+ shows to analyze the company’s product placement strategy.?
On Twitter, he shares, “in ted lasso, i noticed a lot of watching is…watching people using iphones. couldn’t decide if it was lazy writing or shrewd product placement (or both) so i dug into placement strat across 5 apple tv+ shows for some answers.” He found Hundreds of iPhones Are in ‘Ted Lasso.’ They’re More Strategic Than You Think.?
We might be seeing even more iPhones on the small screen soon. Sources tell Jessica Toonkel of The Information that Apple is planning to double its output of TV shows and movies to at least one new title a week next year and will spend $500M+ on marketing Apple TV+. The headline for that story: Apple, a Streaming Punchline No More??
Sahil Patel says, “‘What the hell is Apple up to?’ comes up often among studios, producers and other content providers trying to do business with the company. This great deep dive by @jtoonkel breaks down what, exactly, they are doing with Apple TV+”?
The upshot: “If you laughed when Apple got into original video content, you probably aren’t laughing as much anymore. 20M paying subs & 20M more in trials after 2 years ain’t nothing to sneeze at,” tweets Amir Efrati.
Acquisitions, deals, grants
AnnaMaria Andriotis and Ben Mullin of The Wall Street Journal broke the news that JPMorgan is buying restaurant-discovery service the Infatuation. As they point out, “Banks don’t usually buy media companies.” But it makes sense as part of the company’s effort to cater to big spenders who like to travel and dine out.
AT&T’s WarnerMedia has sold the celebrity news and gossip brand TMZ to Fox Corp in a deal valued at less than $50 million, reports Alex Weprin of The Hollywood Reporter. As Weprin puts it, “Rupert Murdoch, who redefined the business of gossip with Page Six and The Sun, is buying out the guy who redefined gossip for the digital age with TMZ.”
Benjamin Rappaport of WCHL-AM (Chapel Hill, NC) reports that Michael Jordan has made a $1M grant to UNC’s Ida B. Wells Society to increase diversity in investigative journalism through outreach to aspiring journalists of color.
The American Journalism Project (AJP) announced that it has received a $5 million gift from Quadrivium, the foundation established by Kathryn and James Murdoch in 2014. “‘We encourage philanthropists who care about our democracy to consider supporting their local newsrooms,’ said Kathryn Murdoch. And hooray for the American @JournalismProj!” tweets Dan Froomkin.
A few more?
From the Muck Rack Team
PR pros love a peek inside the minds of the journalists they pitch and work with on stories. Muck Rack recently had the opportunity to chat with Matty Merritt, who’s a writer at Morning Brew. Check out 6 questions with Matty Merritt from Morning Brew to get to know her a bit better and learn what her work process is like.