What Apple News+ changes for you, digital newsrooms unionize and the Mueller cable news circus

What does Apple's big announcement mean for how I consume news?

For you it's mostly good news. It should be practical and easy to use to get access to so many magazines with one subscription. I'm not entirely convinced that a lot of people are going to subscribe in the way they do to Netflix. (Most people's news needs are met through content that is already available for free and legally online, and news junkies already subscribe to individual publications they believe in. So Apple News is targeting that chewy middle. How big that middle is what I'm not sure of.) And there's a lot of unanswered questions for publishers and whether this is actually worth it for them. (My colleague Andrew Murfett has a mindblowing thread about Apple News+ with some of the best commentary I've seen.)

Do unions work in the digital age?

I really hope that they do. There are more digital newsrooms unionizing these days. This industry like all creative industries has relied for a long time on people being passionate about their job and not demanding much for themselves. As a result, you have college-educated professionals with (student) debt worth three times their annual salary. And we have to do something about that. (Starting salaries in journalism are routinely under $30k for someone with a college degree and a 60-hour week, and career progression is slow. Redundancies are a fact of life. Because everyone dreams of being published, journalists can end up undercutting each other and driving wages below liveable levels. Getting organized is not unreasonable.)

Did media companies go too far in their coverage of the Mueller investigation?

If you're thinking about the circus on cable news — "We're gonna get the report! We almost got the report! We got the report! Let's look at the report!" — yes, it's a bit much. (That's cable news though...) But as far as investigative journalism around the case, what could be more important than presidential accountability in a democracy? You can't have too much of that.

Follow GZero Media to catch this and other In 60 Seconds series: Ian Bremmer on the world, Sallie Krawcheck on money, Nick Thompson on tech, Ben White on US politics, Adam Grant on work, Chris Hadfield on space, Kai-fu Lee on AI and Carl Bildt on Europe.

Agree or disagree? And what questions about media would you like discussed next week? Share in the comments.