Friday Reading S03E08

Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from journalist and designer Martin Belam, covering media, technology and politics. And frequently Doctor Who and 80’s music too. Martin is Social & New Formats Editor for the Guardian in London.

I find the Karen Carpenter story absolutely heart-breaking. It was the 33rd anniversary of her death this week, and this extract from a biography of her by Randy Schmidt did the rounds again on social media.

“The impact of these changes on a story’s distribution will vary depending on the composition of your audience and your posting activity. In general this update should not impact reach or referral traffic meaningfully for the majority of Pages; however, some Pages may see some increases in referral traffic, and some Pages may see some declines in referral traffic.”

A quote that covers all the bases from this Facebook announcement that the News Feed algorithm is going to be taking into account a new ranking factor — “stories people would be interested in seeing near the top of their News Feed even if they choose not to click, like or comment on them”

“The publisher boasts a mind-boggling 5 billion views per month of its articles and videos, spread out across 30 platforms, from Facebook to Pinterest to Snapchat. In a month it does 3 billion video views, less than 5 percent of which are on BuzzFeed.com. The bet is simple: publish content where people are, rather than forcing them to come to you.”

A Digiday analysis of some of the challenges facing Buzzfeed as it has moved to being more of a platform play rather than a destination.

A report out this week suggests that women are being marginalised by news websites which prefer to use pictures of them while quoting men as sources or experts. The study by academics at the Universities of Bristol & Cardiff analysed two million articles.

“All those unpublished letters from readers critical of a newspaper’s inaccurate reporting are no longer hidden. We can see them. We can discover from people who have good knowledge (or not — such is modernity) why things in newspapers are wrong. And as always, once you discover you’ve been lied to or manipulated once, it stays with you. And that’s the big problem for the media in Scotland just now — it is us, the public, who are raising an eyebrow and saying ‘really?’.”

I can’t say that I agree with every word of this piece — “Robin McAlpine: The Scottish media — really?” — but without doubt the confluence of the #IndyRef and the Rangers/Sevco/Newco/WTFco saga have put Scottish media into a place where a lot of discussion seems very abrasive.

A strong defence of carrying out impartial and thorough journalism regardless of who happens to own the company you report for from Kathy Kiely:

“Journalism is never going to be done in a conflict-free zone. Whether the underwriter is a corporation or corporate advertisers, a wealthy individual, a nonprofit or a government, everybody’s got an agenda. But as I have often told journalism students, or members of the public who are curious about (and skeptical of) journalists’ ability to maintain their objectivity and avoid self-censorship: Good journalism is easy. You just need to be willing to bite the hand that feeds you.”

“Michael Bloomberg’s news outlet couldn’t cover him fairly. So I quit.” — Kathy Kiely

PAY ATTENTION POTENTIAL JOURNALISM STUDENTS: The Scott Trust bursaries for post-graduate journalism training scheme is open.

I enjoyed this from Facebook’s Simon Cross on how saying “I trust you” demonstrates real leadership in product management.

“There was a time, after he had moved out and died, that I went up to the attic to sort some things, and this whole cascade of plastic cider bottles fell down on top of me, icy blue and crumpled, pooling to the floor at the base of the ladder, one final little gift from dad.”

This is strong personal writing from the Vice team on their relationship with alcohol, most especially Joel Golby on watching his dad die from being an alcoholic when Joel was a teenager.

The R community demonstrates it doesn’t understand to react when someone points out something is a bit crass. Someone added iGiveHead as a variable name. Next:

“Unintentionally offensive variable name leads to a patch and the indication that it is much more than one person finding it offensive, leads to the President of the R Foundation dismissing the concerns as ‘shit-disturbing’ and punishing the people who surfaced said concern.”

The usual old shitbags are moaning that this is SJW censorship rather than just someone asking people to behave not like total dickwads.

“I was even hesitant to write this essay at all. I thought about all of the cruel and crude things men felt comfortable saying to me and thought, ‘Well, they’re just going to say more, worse things if I complain about it.’ Then I realized that I was afraid to sound ‘whiny’ in writing about strangers physically threatening me. That’s how deeply ingrained these ideas are. That calling attention to a legitimate issue doesn’t seem worth it for what might follow.”

“Is That a Threat? The Slippery Slope From Disagreement to Harassment” — Alison Leiby

This article isn’t about the statue, but it is sort of about Cecil Rhodes and re-tells two fascinating episodes of history that touch upon our ability to use contemporary moral values to judge the actions of others in the past.

And this article isn’t about the statue, but it is about trying to explain why Oriel screwed up so badly over their reaction to the #RhodesMustFall campaign.

This article is about the statue, and is a timely reminder that #RhodesMustFall started in Cape Town, and looks at the statue in Oxford with a comparison of how Ukraine has tried to deal with the removing Soviet monuments from their streets.

“Ebeling retired soon after Challenger. He suffered deep depression and has never been able to lift the burden of guilt. In 1986, as he watched that haunting image again on a television screen, he said, ‘I could have done more. I should have done more.’”

This is a wonderful profile of the 89 year old engineer who still blames himself for the Challenger shuttle disaster because his team knew there was going to be a problem and nobody wanted to listen to them.

Lovely little perspective on why making The Beatles available on streaming services is a big deal in getting their music to young people.

Heart-warming piece on a woman who has spent a good chunk of her lifetime of going to Bristol Rovers matches with her blind father.

“Youngsters at Haverstock School raised the question of what makes a successful politician. With Labour’s spectacular defeat still fresh in his mind, Mr Miliband joked, ‘I’m looking for advice on that.’”

Oh bless you Ed Miliband.

Messing about with an old USB memory stick I found this screenshot of what my personal blog looked like in 2003 when I worked at the BBC…