Werd I/O

[Gabe Schneider in Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism, 2025]

This is important:

"It’s not so much a prediction as a necessity: We must abandon publications and platforms that fail to center our values in favor of newsrooms that actually care for us, our families, our neighbors, and our future.

We are living in a system where our information needs are increasingly being sidelined due to shrinking newsrooms. What we’re left with now is a false choice: Many of the newspapers and platforms that remain are run at the behest of people with a minimal understanding of and interest in the success of our day to day lives."

Because the news industry has experienced (a word that is carrying a lot of water here) failed business model after failed business model, it's come down to rich people sweeping in to save it because they either believe in its importance or want to be seen as good. That's as true in non-profit journalism as it is for publications like the Washington Post.

This call to action for a course correction away from information controlled by the ultra-wealthy is spot on, but it has a prerequisite of the money coming from somewhere else. Many foundations are also effectively the ultra-wealthy funneling money into publications.

So how can newsrooms be genuinely independent? It comes down to not putting your eggs in one basket, increasing individual support as much as possible, making revenue-generating partnerships where they make sense, and becoming profitable by any means necessary. The Guardian has done a pretty good job of this, and as much as The New York Times is ridiculed for it, its games strategy probably does actually make a ton of sense.

"Whether the future is stronger union-run newsrooms or news cooperatives or nonprofits or even significantly more government investment in news, I won’t prescribe."

The form of the organization matters, yes (I think unions, co-operatives, and nonprofits are all great, for the record), but this is in some ways a parallel conversation to who is actually going to pay for it all.

#Media

[Link]

[Brian Stelter at CNN]

CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter reports that multiple very wealthy individuals, including Elon Musk, have enquired about buying MSNBC:

"I spent Sunday on the phone with sources to gauge what might be going on. I learned that more than one benevolent billionaire with liberal bonafides has already reached out to acquaintances at MSNBC to express interest in buying the cable channel. The inbound interest was reassuring, one of the sources said, since it showed that oppositional figures like Musk (who famously bought Twitter to blow it up) would not be the only potential suitors."

The channel is not, as far as anyone knows, up for sale. Instead, it's being spun out of Comcast into a new media entity, SpinCo, whose name has a double meaning that is probably unintentional.

I don't think a media landscape where each outlet is owned by a different billionaire with their own individual interests is healthy for anyone. Hopefully we can divest from this kind of media ownership structure. I'd rather see a more fragmented landscape with lots of smaller outlets and a greater presence of non-profit organizations.

I'm not a cable news viewer myself - it all just feels like it's screaming at me - but I can't imagine much worse than Musk or someone aligned with him gaining ownership of a station alongside Twitter / X. It's not like the government is going to stop such a move over the next four years, so let's just hope it doesn't come to pass.

#Media

[Link]

[Lucinda Jordaan at Global Investigative Journalism Network]

I'd missed this story from back in July. Rappler is building its own end-to-end encrypted, decentralized communities on the Matrix protocol.

"Built on the open source, secure, decentralized Matrix protocol, the app has the potential to become a global independent news distribution outlet, and promises to pave the way for a “shared reality” — a call Ressa has been making to counter “the cascading failures of a corrupted public information ecosystem.”"

This is both incredibly cool and makes a ton of sense. It's the first time I've seen a newsroom build decentralized communities in the wild - and it's doubly cool that it's end-to-end encrypted. For CEO Maria Ressa, whose work has been beset by endless legal challenges in the Philippines, that last feature is particularly vital. But it all helps the newsroom evade censorship and avoid serving up its content for AI vendors to train on.

This quote from Ressa is something that every newsroom should learn from:

"We realized: there is no future for digital news unless we build our own tech, because there are only three ways a digital news site, or any digital site, gets traffic: direct, search, or social search.

[...] If you do not trust the tech, then you are always going to be at the mercy of surveillance for-profit tech companies that, frankly, don’t understand news or the value of journalism."

Exactly. I've banged this drum repeatedly, but it's a far more effective message from Ressa than me. This is the way. I truly hope that more will follow.

#Media

[Link]

[Anil Dash]

Anil Dash on Substack's attempt to brand "writing in a newsletter":

"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of a book telling people to "read my Amazon". A great director trying to promote their film by saying "click on my Max". That's how much they've pickled your brain when you refer to your own work and your own voice within the context of their walled garden. There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a forever fight against the world of pure enshittification."

Anil makes a point to highlight Substack's very problematic content policies: not only won't they ban someone who is using the platform to spout real hate, and have not removed most Nazis (not figurative Nazis, not right-wing voices, but literal flag-waving Nazis) from posting or earning money there.

They don't deserve to brand an open platform like email. And, in fact, nobody does. I appreciate Anil calling it out.

#Media

[Link]

[Sara Fischer at Axios]

"Beehiiv, a newsletter startup taking aim at Substack, says it's making a "multi-million dollar investment" to create a new "beehiiv Media Collective" of journalists on its platform."

Beehiiv's new fund for independent journalists will give them a monthly health insurance stipend and pre-publish legal review support. There's also Getty access and deeper business strategy report. It's actually kind of remarkable - and a clear shot across the bow to competitors like Substack.

More competitors to Substack - which famously has supported actual Nazis - can only be a good thing. The real question is how long this fund will last, and whether the journalists who take advantage of it will sink or swim when it inevitably comes to an end. Hopefully everyone who takes part uses the time to become self-sufficient.

#Media

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[Oliver Darcy at Status]

I literally had to check to see if this was real:

"The Onion has successfully acquired Infowars.

The satirical news outlet purchased Alex Jones' right-wing conspiracy empire at a court-ordered auction, the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting announced Thursday."

I cannot think of a more fitting end for such a toxic, falsehood-filled media outlet. Of course The Onion should own it. Where better than the original home of fake news?

Clearly the Sandy Hook families felt the same way: they actually decided to forgo part of the money owed to them in order to make this happen.

"While Jones will no longer own Infowars, he has indicated that he will continue to broadcast after losing control of the media company."

May he lose that one too.

#Media

[Link]

[The Guardian]

Given the reluctance to leave X among most publishers, the Guardian is taking a big leadership role here by refusing to continue to post to X:

"This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."

X users will continue to be able to share links to the Guardian, which is simply a property of them being a web platform. The Guardian also reserves the right to embed tweets when they are newsworthy.

I couldn't agree with their reasoning more, and I sincerely hope that more publications follow suit. I also predict that this won't hurt the Guardian's metrics overall, at least in the medium term.

I also appreciate their note at the bottom of the article:

"Thankfully, we can do this because our business model does not rely on viral content tailored to the whims of the social media giants’ algorithms – instead we’re funded directly by our readers."

Yet another reason why patronage models are far better than advertising.

#Media

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[Damon Kiesow in Working Systems]

Damon Kiesow, who is the Knight Chair in Digital Editing and Producing at the Missouri School of Journalism, writes:

"We ourselves have torn down the wall between editorial and business interests if as journalists, our calculation here is not values-based. To wit: “But I have a large following and neither BlueSky or Threads does.” That is the rationalization of a marketer, not a journalist who believes in the SPJ Code of Ethics dictate to “minimize harm.”"

The questions Damon raises in this post are the right ones. It's long past time for journalists to interrogate their uses of social media and whether they're doing harm, and I deeply appreciate the callout to the SPJ Code of Ethics as a core principle here.

Alternatives are available that don't have these toxic traits and are more engaged, less dangerous for your community, and a part of the future of the web rather than a relic of the past. Use them.

#Media

[Link]

[Taylor Lorenz at User Mag]

Gen Z men have lurched to the right, which was one factor behind this month's election result. This is, in part, because they've been inundated with media that speaks to a right-leaning point of view - and there's almost no counterpart on the Left.

"Leftist channels do not receive widespread financial backing from billionaires or large institutional donors, primarily because leftist content creators support policies that are completely at odds with what billionaires want."

There is no progressive answer to Rogan. There could be - there's no shortage of progressive hosts who could fill this role - but as Taylor argues here, and as I've also previously argued, the funding isn't there for it.

As Taylor points out:

"The conservative media landscape in the United States is exceptionally well-funded, meticulously constructed, and highly coordinated. Wealthy donors, PACs, and corporations with a vested interest in preserving or expanding conservative policies strategically invest in right-wing media channels and up and coming content creators."

For progressive causes to win, there must be investment in progressive influencers. Not in a cringe Air America way, but authentic voices who are already out there and need a lift to reach more audiences. So the question becomes: where are those progressive influencers? And who can bankroll them in such a way that they retain their independence and authenticity - but amplified?

#Media

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[Mathew Ingram at The Torment Nexus]

Mathew Ingram on blaming social media for the stratification of society:

"In the end, that is too simple an explanation, just as blaming the New York Times' coverage of the race is too simple, or accusing more than half of the American electorate of being too stupid to see Trump for what he really is. They saw it, and they voted for him anyway. That's the reality."

This piece does a good job of debunking the lingering idea that "fake news" swings elections, or that social media bubbles are responsible for multiple realities and "alternative facts". In fact, this is a process that has been ongoing since the 1990s, and social media is a mirror of it rather than the cause.

If you're looking for answers, you need to look elsewhere.

#Media

[Link]

[Dick Tofel]

Dick Tofel on where the press should go next:

"We held a free and fair election, and the candidate who hates the press, who makes sport of threatening it physically and with censorship and muzzling, won. The campaign was fought across seven states and he won them all. He got more votes than his opponent."

There's a lot here about how the press could and should respond to the current situation, which I largely agree with. But I particularly agree with this analysis:

"For more than forty years, we have become an ever-more winner-take-all society, one in which the gap between the winners and losers has widened, particularly with respect to income, wealth, education and the advantages that accrue to all three. The Republican Party promoted this; the Democratic Party largely tolerated it. Now tens of millions of those who feel the sting of lower incomes, lesser wealth, inferior education have rebelled.

They have, in one of history’s great ironies, put their faith in, and channeled their rage through one of the winners, one who did almost nothing for them the first time he held power, but who gives voice to their grievances, both legitimate and not, and adroitly vilifies those they most resent."

I think there's a lot to this - and I think the Democrats have unfortunately done a poor job of speaking up for working class people who are really struggling. That's not to say that its messages about inclusion are bad - they're very good - but it's not either / or. There needs to be a strong message about how poor people are going to be better-off, that is clear-eyed about rising prices and unemployment for that demographic in particular. And we need to make the world better for the systemically oppressed. We are all in this together.

#Media

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[Heather Bryant]

A characteristically sharp piece on the Washington Post's spiked Presidential endorsement and ensuing fallout from Heather Bryant:

"Good journalism is not unique to the Washington Post. Or the L.A. Times. Or the New York Times. Or any other specific organization. Their historical reach and influence is unique, but not necessarily the quality of their work. [...] If you venerate an institution to the point where you refrain from holding it accountable, what are you teaching it but that it can do what it wants without consequence?"

I strongly agree with this message. News is an industry in trouble, but we must not confuse ourselves: the thing we need to protect is speaking truth to power and an informed voting population - the act of journalism itself - and not necessarily the incumbent institutions themselves. The latter must be held accountable, and canceling subscriptions is one of the few levers we have.

I canceled my subscription. If you're still a subscriber, you should make your own mind up - but bear in mind that it is a way to take action and be noticed in the face of a pretty appalling publisher decision.

#Media

[Link]

[Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner at The Washington Post]

"An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision."

What an act of absolute cowardice.

Later that same day, Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos-owned Blue Origin. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but the twin events illustrate the danger of this kind of ownership of a paper that is supposed to publish independent journalism.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's joint statement is pertinent:

“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

#Media

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[Anne Helen Petersen]

"The best indication of the health of an industry like journalism isn’t who excels there, because the answer is obvious: work robots who come from some sort of family money. To understand just how broken media is, look at who leaves the field — or who dares not pursue it. Because this much I know is true: it’s not because they’re soft."

Anne Helen Petersen makes some welcome, sharp observations about newsroom attitudes to work. In many ways, journalism is behind even tech in terms of reckoning with its own culture and having empathy for the people who push for better working conditions. The idea that they're too soft is absurd: they simply can't make ends meet and deserve to be supported at work, as everyone does.

Fundamentally, this needs to seep in - not just in practice, but in spirit:

"These media executives understand unions as a coddling mechanism, when what they’re really trying to do is make the field sustainable. For the current generation of journalists, sure, but also for the journalists to come."

The advantages to producing a sustainable working environment are obvious and enormous. Inclusive, diverse environments with multiple perspectives that allow newsrooms to resonate with broader audiences aren't some kind of nice-to-have: doing this intentionally is good for business.

The system is broken. Younger entrants are showing how to fix it. Listen to them, for crying out loud. The goal is surely to speak truth to power and ensure everyone has the ability to make informed democratic decisions, not to preserve an industry as-is. Change isn't just inevitable: it's survival.

#Media

[Link]

[Kirsten Eddy at Pew Research Center]

The lede is a little buried here behind some pretty shocking top-line stats:

"Today, 37% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have a lot of or some trust in the information that comes from social media sites. This is nearly on par with the 40% of Republicans who express this level of trust in national news organizations."

"[...] Adults under 30 are now nearly as likely to have a lot of or some trust in the information that comes from social media sites (52%) as from national news organizations (56%)."

Okay, but what's fascinating is that both groups trust local news outlets a great deal more. These have been systemically underfunded and are often run on a shoestring, but there's something about the local voice that really matters.

My suspicion - which is really just a hunch, so take it with a pinch of salt - is that it's because local news outlets don't tend to deal as much with abstract partisan politics. They're not going to comment on what Trump said now, or perceived shortcomings in the Harris campaign.

But, of course, local politics really matters. So it's interesting to think about what might happen if there's more investment in the space - something that initiatives like Tiny News Collective, the American Journalism Project and The Lenfest Institute are already thinking hard about. We need diverse, mission-driven outlets like Open Vallejo and Mission Local to spring up across the country.

My question as a technologist is how platforms, and more pointedly, open protocols can support these newsrooms. How can technology help great local journalists find the reach and make the impact they need, on their terms? And how can journalists, technologists, and product thinkers work together to shine a light on local politics and improve life in communities across the country?

#Media

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[James Salanga at The Objective]

"Layoffs in journalism since 2022 have disproportionately impacted people of marginalized genders and people of color, according to a new report from the Institute of Independent Journalists (IIJ). It collects data from a survey with 176 journalist respondents who had undergone a layoff or buyout since 2022."

This mirrors the impact of layoffs in tech, and likely other industries. In 2023, Prism reported that:

"Recent surveys have found that women, people of color, disabled workers, and other marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by mass layoffs in tech despite being underrepresented in the industry. According to Harvard Business Review, companies rely heavily on position and tenure when deciding on cuts, which translates to wiping out “most or all of the gains they’ve made in diversity.”"

This is damning in itself, but also suggests that many diversity gains were in positions closer to entry level than management level.

The irony for journalism is that it's the diverse members of newsrooms who can help them find broader audiences by ensuring that diverse perspectives are represented both in coverage and in management decisions. For a declining industry, it's a self-sabotaging thing to do. But, again, it says a lot about the demographics of the people who make the decisions.

#Media

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[Charlotte Tobitt at Press Gazette]

"Paul Rowland wrote in an email to staff on 27 September that article volumes were being talked about “a lot in newsrooms at the moment” and blamed, in part, the volatility from previously huge traffic referrers like Google and Facebook."

"A separate email, sent by Birmingham Live editor Graeme Brown last month, suggested journalists should file at least eight stories per day unless they were newsgathering outside of the office."

Referrals from Facebook are down from 50% of traffic to 5%, and every newsroom is seeing similar declines from both social and search. But this is an insane way to deal with it: asking every journalist to file eight stories a day is a way to drive quality through the floor and exacerbate a downward spiral.

You can't just keep doing what you're doing but more of it. This change requires a rethink of platform and more ownership over newsroom technology: it's time to actually innovate around what it means to publish on the web, and to, finally, move from "audience" to "community".

To be blunt: every newsroom publishing on the web that doesn't do this will go away.

#Media

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[ John Naughton ]

"If you log into Dave Winer’s blog, Scripting News, you’ll find a constantly updated note telling you how many years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds the blog has been running. Sometime tomorrow morning the year field will switch to 30."

Running a blog for 30 years is no small feat. Dave Winer's Scripting News is a big deal that has an enduring community which he's built from scratch over that time.

This also resonates:

"In my experience, most journalists failed to understand the significance of the blogosphere. This was partly due to the fact that, like Dr Johnson, they thought that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”, and so bloggers must be weird."

My position: everyone should blog. Every new voice adds something new to the conversation. And long-term bloggers like Dave have shown the way.

#Media

[Link]

[Andrew Schmelyun]

Following my piece about reading the news on paper, I came across this post from Anrew Schmelyun:

"I recently purchased a dot matrix printer from eBay, and thought it would be a great excuse to have a custom "front page" printed out and ready for me each day. So, that's what I built!"

What a neat idea: he's called a few APIs (the New York Times, Reddit, Open-Meteo, and so on), installed it to run on a Raspberry Pi, and connected it to an old-school dot matrix printer to create a kind of Telex newspaper each morning,

I'd thought about doing this with an e-ink display, but honestly, why not just print it out?

I think I would want to pick some different news sources (the NYT is no longer my go-to) and leave out Reddit in favor of links that my contacts had shared on, say, Mastodon, but this is really fun. I might try and put together something similar, albeit with my existing laser printer rather than a dot matrix setup.

#Media

[Link]

[Laura Hazard Owen at NiemanLab]

There are some interesting referral statistics embedded in this piece. Facebook referral traffic has fallen more than 40% over the last year; referrals from Reddit have increased by 88%.

But the focus is this:

"Search traffic, still dominated by Google search, has remained relatively steady during the period, Brad Streicher, sales director at Chartbeat, said in a panel at the Online News Association’s annual conference in Atlanta last week. Google Discover — the Google product offering personalized content recommendations via Google’s mobile apps — is increasingly becoming a top referrer, up 13% across Chartbeat clients since January 2023."

I think what's particularly notable here is the shift between kind of product. Google Search, despite the black box nature of its ever-changing algorithm, always felt like it was a part of the open web.

Discover, on the other hand, is an algorithmic recommendation product that tries to proactively give users more of what they want to read. It's much more akin to a Facebook newsfeed than it is a search index. There are likely editors behind the scenes, and a human touch to what gets surfaced. Publishers are even more in the dark about how to show up there than they were about how to rise through search engine rankings.

I'm curious about what this means for the web. Is this just an advertising / walled garden play from a company that wants to maximize advertising revenue and time on platform? Or is it a reflection of the web getting too big and too messy for many users, creating the need for a firmer hand to show them where the good content is? Is it a function of increased skittishness about an open web that might publish content and ideas that aren't brand safe? Or is it just changing user behavior in light of other apps?

Perhaps some elements of all of the above?

#Media

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[Paul Bradley Carr]

"I’ve worked at (and founded!) my fair share of billionaire-funded publications and I’ve always had a firm rule: You have to be more critical of the people writing the checks (and their cronies) than you are of anyone else. It’s the only way to offset the inherent bias of taking their money."

Paul Carr discusses quitting his column at the SF Standard because of its newfound apparent shyness when it comes to criticizing tech moguls - which is a serious journalistic flaw when you consider how important said moguls are to the culture and politics of San Francisco.

This is in the wake of fallout from its coverage of Ben Horowitz's conversion to MAGA, to which the subjects publicly objected. The SF Standard's backer, Michael Moritz, is another wealthy tech backer, who has actually been collaborating with Horowitz's partner Marc Andreessen to build a sort of city of the future on repurposed agricultural land in the North Bay.

As Paul points out, there must be a separation of church and state between editorial and business operations in a newsroom in order to maintain journalistic integrity. That doesn't seem to be something every newcomer understands.

#Media

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[Dan Kennedy at Media Nation]

Dan Kennedy picks up on a detail in Brian Stelter's Atlantic article about troubles at the Washington Post:

"The Post’s content-management system, Arc, which was supposed to be a money-maker, had instead turned out to be a drag on the bottom line."

He goes on to sing Arc's praises, but notes that 25% of its staff were just laid off, and wonders what went wrong there.

Here's what I think happened. There were two parallel forces at play:

• Newsrooms are not natural software companies (except for their own ends).
• Content management systems are a commodity technology.

It's notable that almost every newsroom that has built its own CMS has eventually left it in favor of a platform built by someone else - most commonly WordPress. Sinking resources into building your own means spending money to solve problems that someone else has already solved, and often solved well.

Particularly in tough times for the industry, newsrooms need to be spending money on the things that differentiate them, not by reinventing perfectly good wheels. WordPress isn't zero cost - most newsrooms partner with an agency and a managed hosting provider like WordPress VIP - but it's a lot cheaper than building all those features yourself would be. And the outcome by picking an open source platform is likely higher quality.

The exception is if the way you both think about and present content is radically different to anyone else. If you're truly a beautiful and unique snowflake, then, yes, building your own CMS is a good idea. But there isn't a single newsroom out there that is unique.

Likewise, if I'm a potential customer (and, as it turns out, I am!), I don't know why I'd pick a proprietary platform that's subject to the changing business strategies of its troubled owner over an open source platform which gives me direct ownership over the code and powers a significant percentage of the web. The upside would have to be stratospherically good. Based on sales emails I get that choose to focus on Arc's AI readiness, that case isn't being made.

The outcome is a bit sad. We need newsrooms; we need journalism; we need an informed voting population. Honestly, the Arc bet was worth trying: I can see how a platform play would have been a decent investment. But that doesn't seem to be how it's panned out, to the detriment of its parent.

#Media

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[Casey Newton at Platformer]

This fantastic round-up post focuses on Platformer's decision in January to leave Substack in protest of its content policies that permitted full-throated Nazis to earn money on the platform.

With a long-term view, it's been a good strategic move:

"We’re much less vulnerable to platform shifts than we were before. I had long worried that Substack’s unprofitable business would eventually lead it to make decisions that were not in the best interest of our readers or our business. (Besides not removing literal 1930s Nazi content, I mean.)"

This is the reason publishers should publish from a website they control. Sure, you can syndicate out to meet readers where they're at, but owning your own space makes you much less subject to the whims of someone else's platform.

And even that syndication to social platforms is becoming more controllable. One hope for the future that Casey notes:

"One way I hope [Platformer] will evolve is to become part of the fediverse: the network of federated sites and apps that are built with interoperability in mind. The fediverse is built on top of protocols, not platforms, which offers us a chance to decentralize power on the internet and built a more stable foundation for media and social apps."

Ghost, the open source platform that now powers Platformer, is building fediverse support directly into its platform at a rapid pace, so this almost feels like an inevitability. The benefit will be that Platformer can reach its readers on platforms like Threads, Flipboard, and Mastodon and maintain full control over its relationships with them. That's a game-changer for publishers.

#Media

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[Simon Willison]

"Whether or not you enjoy MrBeast’s format of YouTube videos, this leaked onboarding document for new members of his production company is a compelling read."

It really is fascinating. It's also really badly written, which says a lot about the priorities MrBeast instills in his team. Simon points out that video is ingrained in the culture:

"Which is more important, that one person has a good mental grip of something or that their entire team of 10 people have a good mental grip on something? Obviously the team. And the easiest way to bring your team up to the same page is to freaken video everything and store it where they can constantly reference it. A lot of problems can be solved if we just video sets and ask for videos when ordering things. [...] Since we are on the topic of communication, written communication also does not constitute communication unless they confirm they read it."

MrBeast will be studied for decades to come: a piece of the culture that, like him or not, is genuinely new. This document is a key to understanding what he does.

#Media

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[Mathias Felipe de Lima Santos at NiemanLab]

"To survive, journalism must continue to embrace technology. But doing so should never cost newsrooms their independence. News organizations should prioritise building direct relationships with their audience to reduce reliance on third-party platforms. They should also stay informed about evolving regulations, and actively participate in policy discussions shaping the future of the news-tech relationship."

Exactly.

There are good points made here about paying for news technology. My belief is that there's value in sharing resources between newsrooms. Building and supporting technology as a commons could help newsrooms further their goals while staying independent. This shared model also prevents newsrooms from each developing the same commodity technology, which across the industry is a huge misuse of resources.

Clearly, too, a strong independent social web benefits both newsrooms and news consumers. A strong fediverse helps empower newsrooms to build direct relationships. Newsrooms should support this movement.

Regardless of the solution, it's good to see these topics being brought up in the news space. These represent the problems and the existential threats: now it's up to the industry to act.

#Media

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