Top News:
New York Times:
Interviews with about three dozen friends and colleagues of Ali Watkins and James Wolfe reveal tough ethical questions and ongoing concerns over records seizure — The pearl bracelet arrived in May 2014, in the spring of Ali Watkins's senior year in college, a graduation gift from a man many years her senior.
The Daily Beast:
Sources: Glenn Beck's TheBlaze laid off more than a dozen employees as negotiations to sell the site to backers of The Daily Wire broke down — Conservative media firebrand Glenn Beck's multimedia empire TheBlaze appears to be on its last legs after another round of layoffs and after a prospective high-profile buyer lost interest.
Discussion:
Mediaite, Washington Post, @brianstelter, @thedailybeast, CNN, HuffPost, The Hill, New York Post, Contemptor, @hc_richardson and @maxwelltani
Jessica Davies / Digiday:
Q&A with NYT EVP and Chief Operating Officer Meredith Kopit Levien on GDPR compliance, cutting down on ad tech vendors, and turning a podcast into a TV show — The New York Times' top brass and journalists were out in force at the Cannes Lions festival this week to meet with marketing clients and support its ads business.
Discussion:
Editor & Publisher
Center for Cooperative Media:
Inside the collaboration by a community newspaper company, investigative nonprofits, and a university to investigate data behind high school sports concussions — John Schrag, the executive editor of a medium-sized group of community newspapers in Oregon, had known for a while about an unexamined pool …
Discussion:
The Rural Blog
Sam Thielman / Columbia Journalism Review:
Astroturfing of outlets like NYT and WaPo by a group funded by restaurant owners shows the need for journalists to dig deeper while covering activists — In editorials and juicy quotes to news organizations across the nation, restaurant workers are speaking up against paying tipped workers a minimum wage.
Discussion:
Hit & Run
Thomas Claburn / The Register:
Microsoft and Ernst & Young announce blockchain-based content rights and royalties management network, first to be deployed for Microsoft's gaming partners — Blockchain might actually prove helpful for a change — In an effort to demonstrate there are actual uses for blockchain technology …
Lucinda Southern / Digiday:
Study: 8% of UK mobile sessions detected ad blockers, 5% in US, 13% in Germany; Le Monde says 20% of mobile sessions use ad blockers, a rate similar to desktop — The mobile ad-blocking threat is growing, albeit slowly. — Use of ad-blocking software has largely been a desktop issue …
Kelsey Ables / Columbia Journalism Review:
How Xinhua, China's largest state-run news agency, plans to use AI to make news videos, customize content, and, likely, to spread propaganda in China and abroad — Ming Xia, via Flickr. — In a 2016 address to propaganda cadres and state-run media personnel, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed dreams …
Discussion:
@cjr, @ericfish85, @primer_ai and @cjr
Marlee Baldridge / Nieman Lab:
A look at the Appeal, a nonprofit journalistic site devoted to accessible coverage of local prosecutors, their practices, and their effect on average people — The site, recently rebranded from In Justice Today, wants to shine a light on a more mysterious part of the legal system by focusing …
Discussion:
@niemanlab, @niemanlab and @newsbyschmidt
Hollywood Reporter:
Netflix fires PR head Jonathan Friedland; CEO Hastings memo: his use of the N-word at least twice “showed unacceptably low racial awareness and sensitivity” — In lengthy internal memo, CEO Reed Hastings addressed letting go top communications executive Jonathan Friedland …
Discussion:
The Wrap, @carnage4life, Deadline, Mashable, @joshzepps, @angrynegrita, CBS Sacramento, The Daily Caller, Vanity Fair, Variety, @omgkee, Decider, New York Times, @karensd, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, Multichannel News, IndieWire, The Guardian, AOL, Tubefilter, New York Post, Financial Times, Fast Company and Mediaite
TechCrunch:
Amazon's FreeTime Unlimited, a $2.99/month subscription service of curated content for kids, launches on iOS — Five and half years after it launched, one of the more popular apps for kids' reading and entertainment has finally arrived on the iOS. Amazon FreeTime Unlimited …
Discussion:
App Store, Engadget, VentureBeat and 9to5Mac
Shira Ovide / Bloomberg:
Instagram's IGTV had a chance to learn from the embarrassments of YouTube and Facebook, like conspiracy videos, but seems to have largely ignored the lessons — Its new video venture seems ill-prepared to weed out inappropriate content. — Facebook Inc. didn't learn from the last two years of internet scandals.
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