Werd I/O

"I’d do this even if no one read it. Blogging, for me, is the perfect format. No restrictions when it comes to length or brevity: a post can be a considered and meticulously composed 3,000-word essay, or a spurted splat of speculation or whimsy. No rules about structure or consistency of tone. A blogpost can be half-baked and barely proved: I feel zero responsibility to “do my research” before pontificating. Purely for my own pleasure, I do often go deep. But it’s nearer the truth to say that some posts are outcomes of rambles across the archives of the internet, byproducts of the odd information trawled up and the lateral connections created."

Blogging, to me, epitomizes a lot of the promise of the web. I love it too. And I have no plans to stop.

(An outdated format, though? How dare you!) #Media

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I enjoyed Get Back and They Shall Not Grow Old, but what's obvious to me after reading this piece is that these upscaled films will look as outdated in 20 years as CGI from 2003 does today. They'll look like cartoons. Not without value, but nothing close to the intended naturalism.

While I think there's still some value in pieces like those two - anything that makes the past more real so we can learn from it more closely works for me, even if it's not going to be as effective a few decades from now - I'm less excited by upscaled True Lies. Give me the imperfect film grain I remember from my childhood. #Media

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I have so much respect for what everyone at The 19th does. It has one of the best work cultures I've ever encountered, and Amanda is a huge part of that. I'm deeply glad to have worked their and to have worked with her.

The things she talks about here are lessons that can and should be learned by newsrooms, but also by organizations across industries.

And I hope they are. Everyone deserves to work in an inclusive, responsible, transparent, empathetic workplace with a strong culture of care. It shouldn't be down to one non-profit newsroom to do this; it should be everywhere. #Media

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This hits the nail on the head:

"No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform. And eventually, the platform started to actually deliver that power in ways that continue to reverberate around the world."

I do bristle at the use of Trump and Bernie Sanders as equivalent extremes presented here: one is a fascist demagogue who threatens to undermine American (and perhaps global) democracy, and the other would like people to have healthcare and not die from poverty.

Still, this is why Twitter was important, why it's being missed, and why it was important that it eventually died (albeit not in the way that it actually did). It was about power and influence, wrapped in a dangerous context collapse.

I believe conversation should be democratized: anyone should be able to message the President, or the CEO of Apple, or whichever person is normally behind layers of security and PR and plexiglass. But perhaps not for the benefit of someone else's company, and not in a way that is so fundamentally against the public interest. #Media

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No surprise that Black consumers favor local papers that are more reflective of their communities (vs national outlets, which still skew white and male).

"Black news organizations — and also Black reporters at mainstream outlets — understand the local issues better and are less likely to engage in tired tropes and racist stereotypes than national journalists."

One of the most important things we can do to foster trust in media is to hire diverse newsrooms that are more representative of the communities we serve. Surely that's obvious? And yet, journalism as a whole still suffers from the same old diversity issues. #Media

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Spoiler alert: no. This concept been tried before, more than once, and will fail again. Jim McKelvey seems to understand why advertising is broken - but not necessarily how to align users and publishers.

This quote from a publisher says it all for me: “Honestly, I’m not that invested in knowledge about what he’s doing. I’ve seen the pitch and most everyone says the same thing: ‘He’s a bit arrogant. He’s been very successful.’ It costs nothing to say ‘sure, go ahead,’ and if it works, we’ll most likely be in.'”

And this one: “To be honest, we do not know enough about the tech integration to know how it will work. At this time, we are signed up for the test and will participate.” #Media

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The most frustrating thing about this is that it's some of the exact same stuff that writers were striking for in the US. While that industrial action seems to have come to a satisfactory conclusion, it looks like American companies are creating similarly exploitative arrangements in areas not covered by WGA agreements.

We live in a global world, connected to a global internet, and agreements need to cross borders and jurisdictions. Perhaps we need a Creative Commons style organization for streaming writers agreements? #Media

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An instructive look at what independent local news outlets are doing in the face of a tragedy that is part of a rapidly-rising trend. Upshot: their journalism is far more accessible than the local "big" paper.

Independent local news is undergoing a renaissance, but to do it well requires a thorough rethinking of what local news even is. First-class internet products are very different to old-school papers, and the former is what is generally needed to succeed. The prerequisites are a deep understanding of your community's needs, a product mindset, and truly great journalism.

The story itself is awful, of course. A disturbing part of the rising hate we're seeing everywhere. Real, in-depth coverage that isn't just there to feed advertising pageviews helps us to understand it - as well as how we might stand up to it. #Media

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I'm pretty shocked that people are sharing Osama bin Laden's letter because they agree with it. Mostly because it is absolutely rife with antisemitic tropes.

This is one of the most dangerous aspects of the place we're in: the conflict in Gaza is leading to people unironically internalizing straight antisemitism. Which is really hard because what's happening in Gaza is awful - but anti-semitism is not at all the right lesson to be drawn from it. Of course it's not.

This kind of thing makes me more than a little fearful of what the next few years hold. #Media

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I just don't think advertising is an appropriate way to support this kind of journalism - or, potentially, any kind. This is more evidence, but it's also worth knowing that the private equity firm that owns G/O Media has not been a good steward.

Non-profits and worker-owned co-operatives aren't just more aligned ways to run this kind of organization, but I strongly suspect they last longer, too.

There is, of course, always the possibility that advertising is an excuse, and the owners didn't want to support a feminist publication. #Media

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On models for journalism:

"I wonder if the big problem is that we focused on scale when we should have been focused on nailing down the audience. If we focused on millions when we should have focused on building ourselves a liveable wage. And if we put too much of an emphasis on global at the cost of local."

Yes! This! Exactly! News was seduced by the exponential VC model that should have been limited to certain kinds of hardware and software. And in the process - as well as through some legacy ivory tower thinking - it chose not to dig deep and figure out exactly who it was serving.

I still say modern newsrooms should use the word "community" instead of "audience". It's a two-way relationship. And building relationships does not scale. #Media

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A fascinating discussion of how authorship has changed, and what the demands of new authors from publishing houses really are.

In the old days, an author was someone who created a work. Today, they have to be a brand.

But it also turns out that unionization has a big part to play: many writers moonlight in the entertainment industry, where they can get healthcare and other benefits, all due to the WGA. #Media

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I'm really hopeful for this new generation of worker-owned media outlets. It's a promising model, and obviously hugely empowering.

What will be disempowering is if they start to disappear. So let's support them with our full voices. If you're into video games, check this out, and maybe consider supporting them? #Media

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These numbers are amazing to me. The Daily Mail publishes around 1640 articles every weekday. BBC News, in contrast, which has lots of local newsrooms, "only" publishes around 226 in total.

The Daily Mail, in other words, is a content farm. It's also the largest news publisher on TikTok and one of the largest on the web.

It's famous in Britain for its center right stance and a-bit-upmarket tabloid positioning. I wonder if that reputation translates in the US and beyond? #Media

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"Like so many rich media executives (see: Politico owner and CEO Mathias Döpfner), Finkelstein’s incapable of seeing most of the fatal flaws in modern U.S. journalism, whether it’s the inherent class, race and gender biases in most newsrooms, the steady erosion of trust caused by feckless “both sides” or “view from nowhere” reporting, or the underlying flaws with the ad-engagement models that now prop up — and violently derail — efforts to educate and inform the public."

This is not wrong. And you could see this implosion coming a mile off. It's just impressive to see it happen so quickly. #Media

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If tech companies are going to be credible content producers, they need to be able to erect a firewall between business and editorial. Contrast Apple trying to force Jon Stewart’s hand on China and AI here with John Oliver’s obviously free hand on his show over on Max.

I hope Stewart finds a new home for his work, and that other commentators notice what Apple did here. There are clearly better homes for them. #Media

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A smart reaction from Bluesky to Threads basically saying they won't do anything for journalists. (Of course, Mastodon also does this very well.) #Media

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One organization I know audited their social media use and learned that Twitter had their worst effort:reward ratio. This seems to support that finding. #Media

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"Prosecutions for public corruption are more likely in U.S. communities served by a nonprofit news outlet, a relatively new business model that often aims to fill the void left by shuttered traditional local newspapers." Journalism in the public interest works. #Media

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This is still a widely-held sentiment. What do we need to build for this not to be true? #Media

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"What makes this news more interesting is the fact that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has abandoned its Threads account but is still maintaining its self-hosted Mastodon accounts online." #Media

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"Website business models that depended on clicks from social media are now broken." It was always a good idea to own your own relationships with your audience, but there's never been a better time than now. #Media

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Notable to see a newspaper run an ad campaign that genuinely competes with another one. Kind of a bold move in a world where the whole market is declining. #Media

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Amanda is absolutely fearless and I was privileged to work with her. As co-founder of The 19th, she was an absolutely core part of what it became: both a strategist and culture instigator. What she does next will certainly change media; I'll be cheerleading. #Media

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"I don’t think I’ve seen someone walk through their process for writing a blog post, though." I love this breakdown! Tracy's structured process shows up in the quality of her posts. I love the thoughtfulness here. #Media

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