Glenn Beck’s business implosion | Platforms are eating the Internet | A peak at where the NYT is headed

By Matt Carroll <@MattatMIT>

Feb. 9, 2016: A trio of news media stories, videos, and data viz compiled weekly. Get notified via email? Email 3toread (at) gmail.com.

1. Why Glenn Beck’s media empire is burning down: A fascinating, well-written read. I knew little about the right-wing radio star’s business activities until I read this The Daily Beast piece. He’s described as a man with “irresistible personal magnetism and undeniable brilliance that one called ‘mad genius,’ mixed with a colossal streak of narcissism, neediness and, above all, capriciousness that have left [employees] feeling whipsawed and, in many cases, betrayed.” Ouch. But interesting as all heck.
2. Platforms are eating the Internet. So where the heck does that leave news?: Ev Williams, a founder of Twitter and Medium, thinks that a handful of platforms will soon dominate the media landscape, and the open web will diminish in importance. He may be right. And that could be very scary for newsrooms. The more they rely on platforms for readers and revenue, the more dependent they become. And what happens when the platforms change the financial rules? Or disapprove of editorial positions posted by newsrooms? Maybe not in a particularly good place. (Transparency alert: I wrote this.)
3. What’s the NYT up to? Glad you asked: The New York Times is preparing a interesting new products this year, Ken Doctor writes. The first is NYT en Español, aimed at Latin American readers. Another region of the world is planned, too. The NYT plan: develop audience first, charge later. Is this a clue as to what’s next? We’ll see. It’s always good to see what the NYT is doing, since they set so much of the news agenda, and I mean more on the business/product side. Plus: How we used design research to launch the New York Times en Espanol, by Juliette Melton of the Times.

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