A decreasing presence in the Facebook algorithm and data issues (see below). The often toxic environment of Twitter. The surfacing of fake news in Google searches.
News organizations have realized more and more that their content is being held hostage to other platforms. Which is why this statement stood out recently:
"The homepage is not dead."
This is what S. Mitra Kalita, the vice president for programming at CNN Digital, told a group of social media specialists in New York recently. Poynter wanted to explore that more, so David Beard reached out to her for a short interview via email. Here’s an excerpt:
Your comment has come after years of seeing many news homepages automated, de-staffed, de-emphasized from the "homepage is king" era a decade ago. What has led to the change, at least for media sites like CNN or the L.A. Times, which you ran before?
In the rush to get our content on other platforms, let's not forget about our own. CNN has the most powerful news homepage in the world. Our loyal users come to us to be informed, engaged, educated, maybe a little entertained. We owe it to them to keep the experience as vibrant as both the news and the rest of the internet.
That being said, it would be impossible to value the homepage in a vacuum. We know we are contending with competition from other sites, feeds and platforms. We know there are audiences out there who aren't among the CNN loyalists.
The challenge is to preserve and dominate a core audience even as we leverage the homepage and other platforms to find new users. I guide our thinking among content creators and distributors alike with three key questions:
What's the story?
Who is it for?
How will we find them?
She has a lot more interesting things to say in the interview, which you can find here.
And now we’ll give you a tour of news from around the web without you having to leave your own homepage.
Quick hits
ZUCKERBERG SPEAKS: After five days of silence, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the Cambridge Analytica scandal that has enveloped his company and caused its stock to drop by $50 billion at one point. In a post on the platform, he said: “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you.” (That must have been the main PR talking point, as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also used that same phrase in her mea culpa post.) Zuckerberg pledged to audit all of the apps on the platform, and said in the next month they will place a tool at the top of everyone’s News Feed with the apps they've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to data. Zuckerberg also embarked on an "I'm sorry" campaign, giving interviews to The New York Times, CNN, Wired Magazine and Recode, where he admitted the problem with data went all the way back to the beginning of the company when they created Facebook Connect.
WANT TO QUIT?: It’s not that easy to just #deleteFacebook, says April Glaser in Slate. There are too many negative consequences. Instead, she advocates trying to make it better.
MEREDITH IS SHEDDING TIME: The Des Moines-based media powerhouse, which had just acquired Time Inc.’s portfolio of magazines, announced after the stock market closed that it was offering up Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money for sale. CNN reported that “There are multiple prospective buyers for the magazines, Meredith CEO Tom Harty said, according to staffers who were at the meetings.”
‘I AM ASHAMED:’ Those are the words of Ralph Peters, a former lieutenant colonel and a longtime analyst on Fox News, in a resignation letter to the network. In the letter, he writes that Fox News is “a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.” He also said President Trump is “terrified” of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Predictably, the left cheered, but so did some on the right, reports CNN’s Brian Stelter.
BOOKMARK THIS: It’s a list of all of the notable people accused of sexual harassment since April 2017 compiled by Vox. Currently at 202, it includes celebrities, politicians, CEOs, and others who have been accused of sexual misconduct. We have a feeling it will need to be updated more than once going forward.
BREITBART LOSSES: Readership has plunged at the alt-right site ever since it lost its founder, Steve Bannon, reports Politico. “The site dropped from 15 million unique visitors in October, per comScore, to 13.7 million in November, 9.9 million in December, 8.5 million in January and 7.8 million in February.”
DON’T BLAME FACEBOOK: Or Twitter or even Cambridge Analytica for the election of Donald Trump, says Ross Douthat at the New York Times. It was that old culprit television — specifically reality TV in the form of “The Apprentice” — that gave Trump the airtime and the publicity he needed to make a run for the presidency. After that, it was non-stop coverage on cable TV when he announced his candidacy.
SPEAKING OF CABLE NEWS: The intermingling of journalists with pundits on panels has created a gray area where it’s difficult to tell what’s reported news and what’s commentary, writes Paul Farhi for the Washington Post. And that’s bound to leave viewers confused. Why is it so prevalent on cable? Simple: “Talk … is literally cheap. Round up a few semi-knowledgeable and telegenic types, array them around the desk, and off you go.”
NOT HAPPY WITH THE BUFFALO NEWS: The Public, an alternative media source in Western New York, published this commentary from a domestic abuse education specialist and activist excoriating the News for what she saw as its fawning sanitizing of O.J. Simpson in a Sunday front-page interview. Andrea Nikischer wrote: “OJ Simpson is not a kindly old man. He is not Mr. Rogers. Considering Simpson has a long record of violent physical abuse against his ex-wife and he was found guilty by a civil court of brutally murdering her and her friend, I should not have to clarify these points. Unfortunately a flurry of newspaper articles and tweets from the Buffalo News this weekend has attempted to sanitize Simpon’s legacy.” Here’s the profile. What do you think?
THE RETURN OF ‘AT WAR:’ To mark the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times announced it was bringing back its blog chronicling “stories of the American war experience while expanding its coverage to global conflicts and their outcomes, including the continuing refugee crises.” The first essay returns to March 20, 2003, and tells the story through the eyes of a veteran Marine lieutenant who led a platoon of six tanks into Baghdad.
GUN VIDEOS SCRUTINIZED: YouTube is restricting several types of gun videos on the platform, reports CNN. One of the rules is that videos that show how to convert guns into a semi-automatic weapons are not allowed. Videos demonstrating how to shoot a gun are.
What we’re reading
QUESTIONING ANTIFA VIOLENCE: Writing for The Nation, Joshua Holland notes that Richard Spencer is on the run because of the anti-fascist group, but that might be because of tactics other than violence. He wonders: “Antifa may well be making Spencer’s life Hell, but the unknown-unknown here is whether they’d be more or less effective if they focused exclusively on non-violent tactics.” It’s an interesting dive into the debate over antifa and its methods of confronting Nazis and white supremacists.
MONOPOLIES ARE KILLING AMERICA: That’s the headline on a Medium piece written by Ross Baird and Ben Wrobel. Both are executives at Village Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in overlooked entrepreneurs. “From rural farms to inner cities, small is losing the war against big. And we don’t see it getting better. … America’s biggest companies have never been bigger,” they write, “but all too many people are sitting in a McDonald’s, drinking coffee and wondering where their town went.”
UMM, WE’LL PASS ON THE SALMON: Tampa Bay Times food critic Laura Reiley has been expanding her beat in the past few years to include more reporting on food sourcing. This piece that she wrote about farm-produced salmon (90 percent of what we eat is from giant fish farms, she says) is the stuff of nightmares. How’s this for a term you don’t want to think about when you’re placing a nice piece of pinkness on the grill: sea lice. Read at your own risk if you love salmon.
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