Published in
2 min readJun 21, 2016
Newsrooms: Forget mobile ad rev | Public radio’s existential crisis | The end of contemplation
By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>
June 21, 2016: A trio of news media stories, videos, and data viz compiled weekly. Get notified via email? Email 3toread (at) gmail.com.
- How mobile today is like TV six decades ago: For anyone counting on advertising to help newsrooms, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has a somber assessment of where that revenue is headed. His summary: “…digital is eating legacy media, mobile is eating digital, and two companies, Facebook and Google, are eating mobile.” Basically, mobile is becoming the dominant media astonishingly fast, much as TV did back in the day. All the growth is in mobile, two players control half of that, and everyone else is fighting over slivers. The story is based on the latest Pew numbers. (Collective sigh, everyone. Now let’s get back to work figuring a way out of this revenue mess.)
- Public radio’s existential crisis: A powerful look at the problems facing public radio — its biggest stars are old or retiring (Car Talk re-runs feature a dead man), and its audience is aging too. It’s podcasts are popular with younger people, but compete with local public stations, ramping up tensions between station execs who cling to the older stars and those who are pushing to create a new generation of radio and podcast stars. What’s public radio to do? A good read by Ellen Gamerman of the WSJ.
- The end of contemplation: A thoughtful look at how our many devices and incessant need for stimulation has made us … unthoughtful. Teddy Wayne of the New York Times takes a deep breath and wonders what we’ve lost in our frenetic chase to stay connected. Not tied tightly to journalism, but an interesting read.
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- “3 to read” online
Matt Carroll runs the Future of News initiative at the MIT Media Lab.
