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, @karaswisher, @nataliemjb, @tglocer, @jayrosen_nyu, @davidfrum and @ingrahamangle
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, The Guardian, VentureBeat, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, New York's PIX11, Yahoo! Finance, NPR, Los Angeles Times and Variety
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
David Mack / BuzzFeed:
Trump posted a false news report to his Facebook page Thursday on a Kuwaiti immigration ban that didn't happen, got 68K+ shares, and still hasn't removed it — The report claimed that Kuwait had also issued a visa ban on several Muslim-majority countries after President Trump's immigration order.
Discussion:
Politicus USA
Peter Kafka / Recode:
Bill Simmons on The Ringer's first year, his canceled HBO show and what ESPN got right — “The one thing that's not a problem for us is money.” — Last year Bill Simmons launched a media company and a TV show. — Now the TV show is gone, cancelled by HBO while its first season was still playing out.
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 …
Discussion:
@s_m_i
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.
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.
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.
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
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