Study Hall Digest 4/3/2017

The media rn

Podcasts keep causing controversy, which means there are enough people listening to podcasts for there to be controversy over them, so good for podcasts? But are podcasts the new clickbait?? Between Missing Richard Simmons, which got kinda creepy toward the end and was hated by Simmons himself; Serial/S-Town figuring out how to turn run-of-the-mill small-town crimes into sustained national news; and a recent rebroadcast of a This American Life that caused a lot of rage in trans communities for being super reductive (reminder: hire trans people!), it seems the format is going through some growing pains. Remember when everyone was mad at BuzzFeed all the time like 5 years ago? Podcasts now have their turn in the spotlight.

The New York Times crowdsourced a bunch of racial terms that make their reporters and others cringe. Good list to read so you don’t use these terms!

Tow has a new report on how Facebook, Google, et al (but really just Facebook and Google since they take the majority of all ad revenue on the internet), refuse to call themselves publishers, and meanwhile are gobbling up the traditional functions of news publishing – i.e. getting stories to people.

Fusion is now on Kinja! Long live Kinja! What is Kinja?! A fun part of that is you can now see how many views Fusion stories get. Sooo yeah. Also, anyone seen those Fusion ads all over the NYC subway? Fun times.

Thoughts

How niche can you get? I just noticed a website called Fatherly, which is filled with parenting advice for men and reminds me of Greek yogurt for men (straight men have enough of their own things leave greek yogurt to the rest of us!!). Between that and the relaunch of the veteran-focused Task and Purpose, and The Outline, which I guess is focused on rich people (?), I’m wondering how all these places are gonna make money. It seems obvious they’re not making it right now (tell me if I’m wrong), but with FB and Google taking so much ad revenue, maybe the only way to go is super-niche. Say what you will about places like BuzzFeed and Mic, but they know how to grow audiences. I’m not sure I want to click on an Outline story that gives me the same information as anywhere else just cuz it’s designed well and sponsored by Cadillac. But maybe their target demographic will. Who knows.

WTF is going on at Vice? Based on several accounts over the last few months, it seems Vice is crazier than usual. Their nightly HBO show is a lil bit of a mess, and people keep getting hired and fired at a rapid clip. Maybe it’s the Vice lifestyle.