Study Hall Digest 1/8/2018

Hi

We’re starting to get a better picture of just how bad Facebook is for news companies: after relentlessly pushing publishers’ content onto everyone’s newsfeeds (remember 2015 when your entire feed was news articles and brands and such?), it appears Facebook is now going to “completely deprioritize” publishers with a new algorithm tweak. A lot of companies have been expecting this, and in response have ~~**pivoted to video**~~ but according to Digiday, Facebook admits there’s essentially no way for publishers to make money with video on Facebook either (and Instant Articles are all but dead, too). Nieman Lab conducted a survey that showed most news posted to Facebook barely made it across people’s feeds, proof that publishers have already been deprioritized (if you haven’t noticed, Facebook’s new-ish push is for Groups – I get like 60000 group notifications a day). All this means that clickbait publishers are more fucked than they already were. But ultimately I think it’ll be a good thing: Publishers will have to differentiate themselves and draw people in through the uniqueness and quality of their content, not their content’s relative clickiness in a Facebook marketplace filled with trash. New sites like The Outline were built with this coming deprioritization in mind, relying on returning users as opposed to random Facebook traffic and virality to drive revenue, but it remains to be seen whether this model will be any more profitable.

French president and neoliberal stupid person Emmanuel Macron will pass a law banning “fake news” ahead of the next French elections. While it’s kinda scary to have a government determining what is and is not fake news, part of the law will require shady sites to disclose who they are funded by, which should prove interesting. A lot of fake news sites in the U.S. are funded by donor networks linked to the Kochs and Mercers. Maybe the same is true in France.

Essence Magazine is leaving the Time Inc umbrella and will venture out on its own as an independent, black-owned company. Cool! Anything that gets properties away from the ailing monster of Time Inc is probably a good move.

Vice fired two of its top executives after sexual harassment allegations. The company is still led by Shane Smith though, and as long as that’s the case I have very little hope for actual change there. Hope he’s happy running his shitty company in his very large house.

If you ever thought that the White House press corps weren’t a bunch of sycophantic, starstruck, power-hungry suckers…you were wrong.

Okay okay please tell me if I need to stop saying that the New York Times sucks every week, but they’re really outdoing themselves these days. This week, we get a deeper look into the organization’s problems with power and access courtesy of James Risen, one of their best former national security reporters. He has a good essay in The Intercept about how the Times essentially acts as a propaganda arm for the U.S. government, killing stories at its behest.

In other news-organizations-I-most-despise news, BuzzFeed has a truly bizarre thing with eggs going on. IDK.

Final Thoughts

Luv2be a media worker in 2018 ;[