Top News:
Jim Rutenberg / New York Times:
News Media Alliance, with members including NYT, WaPo, and News Corp, seeks antitrust exemption from Congress to negotiate collectively with Google and Facebook — Google and Facebook continue to gobble up the digital advertising market, siphoning away revenue that once paid for the quality journalism …
Discussion:
The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, News Media Alliance, mathewingram.com/work, Digiday, Axios, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Verge, The Daily Caller, Forbes, Financial Times, The New York Observer, Fusion, Talking New Media, Adweek, @mathewi, Recode, @pt, Fast Company, @pt, @pt, @jason_kint, @rafat, @nxthompson, @rafat and @mathewi, more at Techmeme »
Lucia Moses / Digiday:
Source: The NYT is undecided on whether to participate in Facebook's Instant Articles subscriptions, with the paper seeing no “great upside” to being involved — Facebook is moving ahead on plans to let people subscribe to publications through Instant Articles.
Discussion:
Mashable, @joelcifer, @rafat, @nxthompson, @digiday, @bmorrissey, @shansquared and @lmoses
Steven Perlberg / BuzzFeed:
A Pulitzer-winning NYT story that relied heavily on a Russian news site offers a case study in how foreign correspondents re-report articles by local media — The Times' prize-winning story relies heavily on two articles in Meduza, a Russian news site based in Latvia.
Discussion:
New Yorker, @miriamelder, @perlberg, @mrochabrun, @mccarthyryanj and @gwfrink3
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Despite a tumultuous year, Fox News has remained number one in every key TV news ratings measure — A few days ago, a TV journalist was verbally sparring with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House deputy press secretary - and it wasn't one of the usual suspects.
Adam K. Raymond / Vulture:
How spammers, ripoff artists, and even superstars juice their numbers on Spotify with covers, tricky song titles, silent tracks, and large albums — A few weeks after the release of Kendrick Lamar's “Humble,” the hard-charging lead single on his fourth album Damn., the song landed at No. 1 on Billboard's streaming chart.
Discussion:
Music Business Worldwide, The Next Web, hypebot, Engadget, BetaNews and The Guardian
Joshua Green / New York Magazine:
How Bannon became Trump's key henchman: arranging for Ann Coulter to pen a policy paper and weaponizing Breitbart against Megyn Kelly, before he joined campaign — Why does Trump double-down every time it seems like he should retreat? Because Steve Bannon is back in his boss's good graces.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Time Inc. Vice-Chairman Norman Pearlstine is retiring from the company later this month, after which he plans to work as an adviser for early-stage media firms — Publishing industry veteran Norman Pearlstine is retiring from Time Inc. this month, after which he plans to work as an adviser …
Pew Research Center:
Pew: 85% of Republicans and Republican leaners think the national news media has a negative effect on the country, up from 76% two years ago and 68% in 2010 — Republicans increasingly say colleges have negative impact on U.S. — Republicans and Democrats offer starkly different assessments …
Brian Steinberg / Variety:
Fox News Signs Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer as Contributor — Senior TV Editor @bristei — Ari Fleischer joins the ranks of former White House press personnel enjoying a significant presence at the nation's TV-news outlets. The former White House press secretary under …
Discussion:
@harlan, @jonsteinberg, Broadcasting & Cable and TVNewser
Ricardo Bilton / Nieman Lab:
Podcast database and discovery site Podchaser focuses on episodes rather than entire shows, with user-generated tagging and episode-level reviews — “One of our big advantages is we're trying to build this bottom-up, feature-wise, and talking to a hundred different podcasts and tons of listeners and asking exactly what they want."
Paul Farhi / Washington Post:
A profile of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, described by WH Press Sec Sean Spicer as a prime example of a journalist in a “YouTube, click-driven industry” — These are times that try a White House reporter's soul. Jim Acosta hasn't kept quiet about what's been troubling his.
Discussion:
@drpulaski2017, @trevortimm, Mediaite, TVNewser, @markfollman, @farhip and @jayrosen_nyu
Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat:
USC study suggests there may be a black market of bots used to spread misinformation across Twitter during elections — As if Twitter's reputation hasn't been battered enough, a new study sheds light on how the social media platform can be hijacked by bots to spread political disinformation during election campaigns.
Discussion:
@manjusrii and @moorehn