Top News:
Andrea Chang / Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold dies of pancreatic cancer at 57 — Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times restaurant critic who richly chronicled the city's vast culinary landscape and made its food understandable and approachable to legions of fans, has died.
Discussion:
@erinoverbey, Variety, @thefienprint, @wendellpierce, @stevesaldivar, @mosteverybody, @geraldineebaum, @jadabird, @eunowhat, Bon Appétit, @thesarahbennett, LA Observed, New York Times, @whammybah, @edgarwright, Eater, @molly_knight, @originalspin, 89.3 KPCC, The Wrap, Slate, @kbiegel, @thedailybeast, Hollywood Reporter and Deadline
Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:
Facebook could recognize Holocaust denialism as hate speech and ban it on those grounds, but trying to censor every falsehood should be noted as a bad idea — To follow Mark Zuckerberg's utterances is to constantly cringe. — Last week was no different.
New York Times:
Sources: feds think National Enquirer owner AMI may have acted more as a political supporter than a news org, raising 1st Amendment, campaign finance questions — Federal authorities examining the work President Trump's former lawyer did to squelch embarrassing stories before the 2016 election …
Discussion:
@jamestaranto, @videoevan, @kausmickey, Washington Post, @peterbakernyt, @kausmickey, @nytimes, @peterstris, 89.3 KPCC, The Guardian and Washington Post
Megan Garber / The Atlantic:
Sarah Huckabee Sanders' briefings include obfuscation and disputes of basic facts as the press secretary fights to control facts, truths, and common knowledge — On wednesday, two representatives of the United States government held press briefings, both of them touching …
Discussion:
ABC News and @theatlantic
Bloomberg:
Inside state-sponsored trolling efforts that combine virtual hate mobs, surveillance, and misinformation to silence critical voices and spread disinformation — Sitting cross-legged on a charpoy, an Indian day bed, Mahaveer Prasad Khileri taps on his laptop, his face lit by the screen …
Discussion:
@mashaborak, @mcaruanagalizia, @marklittlenews, @standupideas, @benimmo and iftf.org
Max Willens / Digiday:
Buzzfeed's standalone news site buzzfeednews.com only includes programmatic ads at launch although native ads still drive a majority of BuzzFeed's revenue — BuzzFeed has been on a mission to diversify away from direct-sold advertising. And nowhere is that more evident than on its new BuzzFeed News site.
Andrew Buncombe / The Independent:
Jack Dorsey, responding to Maggie Haberman's criticisms of Twitter, vows to work on identifying credibility and improving conversations' organization, context — Platform's co-founder says there is ‘lots of work still to do’ — The CEO of Twitter has admitted the platform is no longer …
Discussion:
New York Times, Gizmodo, Axios, @jack, @aditijuneja3, @jack, @jack, Boing Boing, @jack, Mashable, The Hill and Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check
Chris Welch / The Verge:
In an interview, Roku's CEO discusses how it is growing its ad business and software licensing to OEMs, which generated more revenues than device sales as of Q1 — Roku wants to build out a ‘big, next-generation’ targeted ad platform — Roku sells more dedicated streaming devices than perhaps any other company in the world.
Discussion:
Cord Cutters News
Heather Bryant / Nieman Lab:
A look at the urgent challenges newsrooms face due to the sophistication of image manipulation as they struggle to adopt the necessary verification technology — “It's going to be a while before we really have an understanding of how we work to combat it beyond the traditional methods that we have used for a few years now."
Lucinda Southern / Digiday:
UK specialist media firm Future plc, owner of 100+ brands including TechRadar and PC Gamer, to buy Purch, which owns Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware, for $132.5M — This week U.K. specialist publisher Future announced the purchase of technology platform and publisher Purch for $132.5 million …
Discussion:
PR Newswire and The Drum, more at Techmeme »
Adam Entous / New Yorker:
A look at Alice Donovan, a fake persona used by Russia's military-intelligence agency that attracted FBI attention in 2015 for spreading propaganda in the US — Alice Donovan described herself as a “freelance writer and online journalist.” One of her early works, published in February …
Sam Thielman / Columbia Journalism Review:
An overview of the outlets both on the left and on the right that published articles by Russian spies and military officers as revealed by court documents — A photo of Donald Trump's notes altered to show his edits in Sharpie. — There's something for most of the US news media to be ashamed …
Discussion:
@samthielman, NPR and The Intercept