Mediagazer: How Hacker News moderators Daniel Gackle and Scott Bell practice a personal and slow approach, engaging with users in e-mail chains that can last for years (Anna Wiener/New Yorker)

5:20 PM ET, August 8, 2019

Top News:

Sources: Facebook offered millions to ABC News, Dow Jones, Washington Post, and Bloomberg to license their content for a Facebook news section to debut in 2019 — Company approached ABC News, Dow Jones, Washington Post and Bloomberg as it plans to launch news section

Discussion: The Hill, @rafat, @benmullin, @jeffyoung, @benmullin and Business Insider, more at Techmeme »

Kim Kelly / Columbia Journalism Review:

Freelancer Kim Kelly describes how NPR parted ways with her citing her “activist stance”, after Tucker Carlson aired a segment about her — My life with heavy metal, Tucker Carlson, NPR, and strong opinions — My first byline was an article for my local newspaper's Teen Voice section …

Discussion: @samthielman, NPR, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, @sethdmichaels, @craignewmark, @sarahw, @freedarko, @nberlat, @femmefeministe and @samthielman

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Facebook is testing selling video streaming subscriptions in the US, starting with four services including BritBox, CollegeHumor's Dropout, and Tastemade Plus — Facebook is dipping its toes into the subscription VOD waters — as an aggregator and reseller.

Discussion: Ad Age, Vox, Adweek, Fast Company, @xpangler, The Streamable, @mattnavarra, The Wrap and CNET, more at Techmeme »

Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg:

Interviews with members of a 900-strong private Facebook group for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram showcase the unreliability of Facebook's Ad Manager — - Advertisers say system has crashed regularly since November — Social-media company says it's ‘committed’ to fixing issues

Discussion: @shiraovide, @sarahfrier, @kurtwagner8 and @matthewstoller, more at Techmeme »

Sam Levin / The Guardian:

Court docs show Monsanto ran a “fusion center” that monitored a Reuters journalist and encouraged negative reviews of her 2017 book on its Roundup weedkiller — Internal documents show how the company worked to discredit critics and investigated singer Neil Young

Discussion: @colinlecher, @kimseverson, @gmwatch, @dangillmor, @janeferguson5, @peterhimler, Boing Boing and @davidlwindt

Anna Wiener / New Yorker:

How Hacker News moderators Daniel Gackle and Scott Bell practice a personal and slow approach, engaging with users in e-mail chains that can last for years — Can a human touch make Silicon Valley's biggest discussion forum a more thoughtful place? — Open-plan offices offer few pleasures …

more at Techmeme »

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

CBS and AT&T strike a new carriage deal, ending a prolonged blackout of CBS programming — CBS and AT&T came to new terms on carriage of CBS stations on the telecommunications giant's DirecTV satellite service, ending a prolonged blackout of CBS programming. More to come......

Discussion: MediaPost, Hollywood Reporter, Multichannel News, TVWeek.com, The Streamable and @benmullin

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Viacom's Q3 revenue rose 4% YoY to $3.36B with ad revenue at its cable networks unit up 6% YoY, returning to US advertising growth for the first time since 2014 — The company, which is led by CEO Bob Bakish and has been in talks with CBS Corp. about a recombination, returned to domestic ad growth …

Discussion: The Wrap, The Wrap, @thr, @thr, Variety, @richattbd, FierceVideo, MediaPost and Viacom

Lesley Goldberg / Hollywood Reporter:

Netflix signs multi-year film and TV deal with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss; sources say the deal is worth $200M — David Benioff and Dan Weiss have signed a multiple-year film and TV pact with the streamer, which was bidding for the duo's services alongside Disney and Amazon.

David Segal / New York Times:

Profile of James Daunt, who saved Britain's Waterstones bookshop chain from the brink of bankruptcy and who will now try to revive Barnes & Noble as its new CEO — James Daunt fought Amazon and rescued the country's biggest bookstore chain. Now comes Chapter 2.

Discussion: @xanalter, @durgaraghunath, @dada_drummer, @kassiastclair, @lizflock, @kathryndill and @kjmcinnis1

Ashley Carman / The Verge:

Google will start surfacing individual podcast episodes in search results and will soon let users ask Google Assistant to play podcasts about specific topics — Search for what you want to hear — Google is taking the next step in making podcasts easier to find.

Discussion: The Keyword, Fast Company, @dzohrob, TechCrunch, @ashleyrcarman and @mrpaulbae, more at Techmeme »

Lucinda Southern / Digiday:

Some pubs including Vice Media and The Stylist Group say revenue and traffic from Apple News has risen in the past few months — Publishers including Vice Media and The Stylist Group say they've gotten traffic and, more importantly, revenue lifts from Apple News in the last three months.

Jack Shafer / Politico:

By expecting the New York Times to be the paper of resistance, something it has vowed to never be, liberals are positioned for perpetual disenchantment — The Twitter multitudes came for the New York Times Monday night, swinging caltrops and battle axes in protest over the Page One banner headline …

Discussion: The Atlantic, @realdonaldtrump, @ajentleson, @ddale8, @politicomag, @rynk, @bvivian14, MediaFile, @lizzieohreally, @owillis, @martinsfp, @jayrosen_nyu and Memex 1.1

Marc Tracy / New York Times:
New York Times reaches a high of 4.7M total subscribers in Q2, with nearly 3.8M subscribers to digital products; digital-only subscription revenue grew 14% YoY

Discussion: FiveThirtyEight, Business Wire, @raju, @nickconfessore, @nytimesbusiness, @elanazak, @martyswant, The Daily Caller, Mediaite, Benzinga and Zacks Investment Research

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More News:

Freddy Mayhew / Press Gazette:
UK's newspapers circulation auditor ABC will stop publishing six-monthly reports for regional papers, instead publishing on a rolling basis throughout the year

Ashley Carman / The Verge:
iHeartMedia debuts Sunday Night Podcasts, to air its top podcasts across 270 broadcast radio stations across the US, every Sunday

Discussion: @ashleyrcarman, Engadget and New York Times

Stewart Clarke / Variety:
Ofcom: streaming services' subscriptions for Q1 in UK: Netflix posts the largest gains, up 26% YoY to 11.5M, Amazon Prime trails with 6M but is up 23% YoY

Christine Schmidt / Nieman Lab:
How Piano created a “propensity” paywall that uses machine learning with 76 metrics to predict how likely someone is to subscribe, and adjusts accordingly

Discussion: American Press Institute, Reclaim The Net, @hilmarschmundt, @roeiwrites, @iethics, @nisalahe, @kenherts, @niemanlab and @niemanlab, more at Techmeme »

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Federal judge rules that Ed Butowsky's libel suit against NPR for revealing his role in funding an investigation into the death of Seth Rich can go forward

Discussion: @justinhendrix, @gabrielmalor, @bmaz, @packerpoppa, @organizingpower, @joshgerstein, @profcarroll, Law & Crime and The Hill

Alexandria Neason / Columbia Journalism Review:
Q&A with three music journalists about how R. Kelly's story was handled by the media before Surviving R. Kelly, and the challenges it posed for the Black press

Discussion: @cjr, @cjr, @cjr and @cheriehu42

Craig Silverman / BuzzFeed News:
Researchers studying disinformation in the Philippines and countermeasures by Facebook and YouTube say little has improved since 2016, a red flag for elsewhere

Discussion: @miriamelder, @momblogger, @filip_struharik, @craigsilverman and Editor & Publisher

Earlier Picks:

Governing:
Governing magazine, owned by e.Republic, will cease print publication after September and will ramp down its web presence over the next few months

Discussion: @daviduberti, @mattiekquinn, @billfultonvta, @abdulelsayed, @ltmelle, The Week, @bcburden, @myhlee, @conawayhaskins and @loujacobson

Nicholas Jackson / @nbj914:
Pacific Standard EIC says its board is shutting down the publication from next Friday after its primary funder cut off funding

USA Today:
USA TODAY office in McLean, VA was evacuated after police responded to what they say was a mistaken report of a man with a weapon

Casey Newton / The Interface:
TikTok's ad-fueled popularity could wane unless it can add new features, court influencers, please regulators, and curtail the rate that new users abandon it

Discussion: @paulbelleflamme, @colinkirkhodge, @caseynewton and Boing Boing

Jim Waterson / The Guardian:
Guardian Media Group says it broke even in the last financial year, digital now makes up 56% of revenue, and it has 655,000 regular paying supporters

Discussion: MediaPost, Nieman Lab, The Drum, @neilperkin, @bernardchickey, @jude5456, @arusbridger, @willjennings80, @benedictevans, @jeremydcape, The Guardian and Press Gazette

Anne Steele / Wall Street Journal:
US radio giant Entercom Communications says it will acquire podcast companies Pineapple Street Media, source says for $18M, and Cadence13, source says for $50M

Discussion: Nieman Lab, Awful Announcing, Variety, @alexsilverman, @nwquah, @lemonproduction, TVNewser, The Verge, Radio & Television … and Fast Company

Brian Stelter / CNN:
Days after the El Paso shooter echoed language used by Fox News hosts, Tucker Carlson says white supremacy is “actually not a real problem in America”

From Techmeme:

Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta details Llama 3: 8B- and 70B-parameter models, a focus on reducing false refusals, and an upcoming model trained on 15T+ tokens that has 400B+ parameters

Raffaele Huang / Wall Street Journal:
Apple removes WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China, saying it was ordered to do so by China's cyberspace officials citing national security concerns

Ryan Morrison / Tom's Guide:
Microsoft researchers introduce VASA-1, an AI model that creates a realistic talking face video from a portrait photo and an audio file, in research preview

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