via juliareda.eu

Censorship machines, Facebook’s news trust survey, and how to build better newsletters

Our personal weekly selection about journalism and innovation. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

edited by Marco Nurra

• Members of the European Parliament from across the political spectrum resist the plan to make “censorship machines” mandatory in the EU. “Imagine if every time you opened your mouth, computers controlled by big companies would check what you were about to say, and have the power to prevent you from saying it. […] We want to have the internet as a free, open public space.”
  🔔 Julia Reda will be a #ijf18 speaker

• ‘Stories affect us when we’re out in the field’ — Al Jazeera English interviewed its own reporters for an experimental podcast series. “When our reporters came back from Rohingya, it was one of the first times we had noticed correspondents coming back from the field completely shaken — and we thought, let’s talk about that.” The Debrief lets audiences listen in to the conversations between its reporters, analysts, filmmakers and photojournalists around the world
  🔔 Yasir Khan will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Last week, Facebook announced two key changes to the News Feed: one, it would reduce the amount of news in the News Feed from roughly 5 percent to 4 percent; and two, it would begin taking into account how trusted a publisher is when ranking it in the feed. Trust levels are to be determined by a survey, and BuzzFeed’s Alex Kantrowitz got ahold of it.
• Five questions about Facebook’s plan to rate media by ‘trustworthiness’. One thing we know for sure: Facebook has decided that, at an institutional level, it will not create an editorial process for rating these publications. “The hard question we’ve struggled with is how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with. We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands but would likely not solve the objectivity problem.” The approach raises many important questions about the implementation of the new policy. Here are five that jump out.
• Dear news publishers: how to sift signals from noise about Facebook. “Don’t say you weren’t warned. Facebook never guaranteed — as far as I’m aware — any particular income stream to any publisher or that they would not switch their policy and algorithms. As ‘Instant Articles’ came on the scene plenty of wise voices said to publishers: ‘By all means experiment with this, but don’t rely on it. Ever.’ Don’t pretend you didn’t hear this.”
  🔔 George Brock will be a #ijf18 speaker
• Here’s what Facebook’s local news section looks like. Facebook is testing a new local news and events module as it revamps its News Feed following a series of controversies. Here’s what the test looks like live inside the platform, for users in Olympia, Washington.
• Google suspends fact-checking feature over quality concerns. “We launched the reviewed claims feature in our Knowledge Panel at the end of last year as an experiment with the aim of helping people quickly learn more about news publications,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Poynter. “We said previously that we encountered challenges in our systems that maps fact checks to publishers, and on further examination it’s clear that we are unable to deliver the quality we’d like for users.”
• What does research say about fact-checking? Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network is launching a research database containing a curated list of selected studies on fact-checking and misinformation.
  🔔 Alexios Mantzarlis will be a #ijf18 speaker
• This Turkish fact-checker turned 7,628 messages from readers into a report. “From the beginning of Teyit.org, we have collected all data which circulates on our networks,” said Mehmet Atakan Foça, editor-in-chief of the Turkish debunking outfit, in a message to Poynter. “We aim to create baseline data to understand what should Teyit.org change.”
• What the Pope gets wrong about fake news. “The pope’s intentions are good, but the idea that he can snuff out is a great little. It’s hard to keep us from the forbidden fruit. According to legend, the last word St. Francis ever uttered was ‘humility.’ Give I suggest the bridge heed this sage advice?,” writes Jack Shafer (Politico).
• Head of Russian outlet RT says US foreign agent order hurts. “The U.S. has now become a beacon, a leader, in this movement to shut everyone up. That’s so disappointing.”
  🔔 Margarita Simonyan will be a #ijf18 speaker
• How The Guardian improbably put itself on the path to profits. After two battle-weary years in which The Guardian cut costs and halved losses, the publisher is starting to turn a corner. Today, it has a new reader-revenue driven business model and is on the brink of breaking even.
• The Financial Times is giving high-schoolers around the world free access to FT journalism. The project is designed to help supplement classroom study and better prepare students for university and work. In addition to being able to read award-winning journalism on FT.com, students will receive a weekly curated email with content that is relevant to their school curriculum.
• Tips for building a better newsletter. News organizations have found that strong relationships with newsletter subscribers can lead to greater paid subscriptions to the organization: Condé Nast’s data science team found that the best indication of whether a NewYorker.com reader would become a paying subscriber is if they were a newsletter subscriber.