Top News:
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Once merely embarrassing and ridiculous, attending the White House correspondents' dinner is poised to become an act of journalistic self-abasement — Once merely embarrassing and ridiculous, the annual White House correspondents' dinner is poised to tip over into journalistic self-abasement.
Discussion:
@sulliview, @tglocer, @karaswisher, @nataliemjb, @jayrosen_nyu, @davidfrum, @ingrahamangle, Variety, Fortune, Hollywood Reporter, @nickbilton, The Daily Caller, AOL, @perezhilton and New York Times
Nathan McAlone / Business Insider:
Digital media startup Odyssey lays off 55 people, over a third of its employees, less than a year after raising $25M — Digital media startup Odyssey has laid off 55 people, slashing over a third of its full-time, paid staff less than a year after raising $25 million, CEO Evan Burns confirmed to Business Insider.
Discussion:
@ungarino, @trengriffin, @jbenton and @rafat
Sapna Maheshwari / New York Times:
Tensions over immigration complicate the planning of Super Bowl ads, which now cost an average of $5M for 30 seconds — The Super Bowl is a popular destination for commercials showcasing premium water, candy and beer — but politics can make it a difficult forum.
Discussion:
Forbes, VentureBeat, Yahoo! Finance, The Atlantic, NPR, Variety, Los Angeles Times, HBR.org and Polygon
Shelley Hepworth / Columbia Journalism Review:
Q&A with Olivia Nuzzi on her new role at New York magazine and the antagonism between the Trump administration and the White House press corps — Politico named Olivia Nuzzi one of the breakout media stars of the 2016 election thanks to her political reporting for The Daily Beast.
Discussion:
Mother Jones
Jose Pagliery / CNNMoney:
CEO of Russia's XBT, which owns Webzilla and invested in Prisma app, sues BuzzFeed and Ben Smith for posting Trump dossier; BuzzFeed has now redacted CEO's name — A Russian technology executive has sued BuzzFeed and its editor Ben Smith for publishing the unverified Trump dossier, calling it …
Discussion:
McClatchy Washington Bureau, @tgheretford, New York Times, The Daily Caller, Recode, iMediaEthics, @pkafka, @pkafka, @raju, Politico and @liamstack
Andy Greenberg / Wired:
Iran-focused app developer IranCubator debuts RadiTo, an Android podcast app that evades Iran's censors, giving Iranians and foreign pubs a broadcast platform — Reza Ghazinouri remembers the importance of pirate radio as a teenager growing up in in the city of Mashhad in northeast Iran.
Discussion:
Engadget
Tim Hume / VICE News:
Germany struggles to fight anti-migrant fake news amid fears it could influence its election — In December, Renate Künast, a senior politician from Germany's left-wing party The Greens, was swamped with furious criticism after her remarks about a high-profile murder went viral on Facebook.
Discussion:
@storyneedle
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab:
Reddit's /r/worldnews community used a series of nudges to push users to fact-check suspicious news — “We found a method that can invite a much wider readership into the work of dealing with this problem, and at scale.” — To curb the spread of unreliable news, should news organizations …
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab:
The closure of Canada's Guelph Mercury last year offers a case study of what happens when a mid-sized city loses its last daily newspaper — “This problem is creeping up the ladder, from the small town that has 10,000 people to the decent-sized community that has 50,000 people to, now, a place that has over 100,000."
Franziska Kues / Poynter:
Persecuted at home in Turkey, two journalists launch a website to publish independent journalism about Turkey from the relative safety of Germany — The Turkish government is trying to shut down two journalists who left the country to publish their work. But they're not giving up without a fight.
Discussion:
@poynter
Bryan Curtis / The Ringer:
The era of “stick to sports” has ended as Trump's election emboldens sportswriters to enter the realm of political advocacy — Sportswriters have been awakened by Donald Trump's presidency. Is that what their readers want? — Did you read sports Twitter over the weekend?
Discussion:
@ringer and Vanity Fair
Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed:
Two Bengaluru engineers fight WhatsApp's fake news problem in India by fact-checking user-submitted stories on their website, Check4Spam.com — Shammas Oliyath has spent every lunch break for the last six months telling strangers all over India that a Gujarati woman didn't really give birth …
Discussion:
@regajha and @pranavdixit