3 to read: News less popular at NYT? | Twitter curates itself | Verified video gets a platform

June 23, 2015: A trio of stories, videos, and data viz compiled once a week about the news media. Get notified via email? Email 3toread (at) gmail.com.

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

1. Most popular items last year for the New York Times? Hint: It’s not news. It’s games & interactives, art features, even obits. Does that mean people are less interested in real news? Or does it reflect the non-timely, long-tail of these features? Here’s the list.
2. Twitter curates … itself: Twitter has been going through turmoil recently, what with the resignation of its CEO and criticism that its growth has stalled. Now, with Project Lightning, they’ve taken what many think is an important step to right the ship — they will curate news, providing useful info in real time on the big stories of the day.
3. Verifiable video: User-generated content, whether it’s of a police shooting or from a battlefield, can be a tremendous gift for newsrooms… Except when it’s fake. Then it’s a nightmare. To help deal with problem videos, Google News Lab and Storyful are launching a newswire of verified user generated content.

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Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.