Like, Wow, Angry: That’s war (?)

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

edited by Marco Nurra

💡 How about participating in the International Journalism Festival #ijf17 with your ideas? If you have a proposal for the 2017 festival programme, please fill in and send this form. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2016.

🚨🚨 SARCASM ALERT 🚨🚨

• It’s 2016, and we’re still arguing whether newspapers should have websites. “What if almost the entire newspaper industry got it wrong?” by Politico’s Jack Shafer suggests that newspapers wasted billions of dollars by establishing beachheads on digital media. So, did newspapers make a big mistake by jumping aboard the digital train? Well, Mathew Ingram and Steve Buttry don’t think so…

• By the way, The Independent has become profitable for the first time in 20 years, according to its owner Evgeny Lebedev, six months after it became the first UK national newspaper to shut down its printing presses and exist solely online.

• The battle for Mosul was live-streamed on Facebook: the advance of Iraqi troops and Kurdish fighters into the Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country. The feed prompted a mixed response with several users questioning the appropriateness of “liking” and pasting emojis on scenes of potential devastation. But, Channel 4 News has defended the Facebook live-stream of battle.

“We apply the same editorial standards to Facebook Lives that we do to our award-winning programme and that means ensuring that they are effectively supervised at all times; this is the case with every new platform or format with which we engage.”

• Turkey’s media repression: 126 journalists in jail — more than China, Iran and Egypt put together. And 2,500 or so writers, editors and broadcasters have lost their jobs since the failed coup. The censorship and arrests that characterise Erdoğan’s rule are as chaotic as they are intimidating.
• Judge rejects riot charges against journalist Amy Goodman after oil pipeline protest. Authorities had issued a warrant for her arrest after the Democracy Now! host filmed guards of the Dakota access pipeline using dogs and pepper spray on protesters.
• The author of ‘Guantanamo Diary’ is finally free after 14 years of captivity. Mohamedou Ould Slahi had been held in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, despite having been acquitted for lack of evidence. In 2005, he began writing a diary on which the writer and activist Larry Siems worked as editor. Siems was an #ijf15 speaker.

Interview with Larry Siems (2015)

• When are comments sections of news sites worth keeping alive? What are the options? WAN-IFRA worked with a total of 78 organizations across 46 countries for this report.

• Non-human trafficking: who’s to blame for the bots? Nearly 10 percent of the traffic flowing through Google’s ad exchange is junk, the work of bots and other non-human actors. But as with many things in the world of digital media, nobody’s sure whom to blame, and nobody’s eager to take responsibility. Clients blame their agencies. Agencies point to exchanges. Exchanges point to publishers. Publishers plead ignorance.
• ‘We’ve created a monster’: Publishers vent ad tech frustrations. Relationships between ad tech vendors and publishers are more strained than ever. The ad tech tax is a perennial gripe, and the other week The Guardian revealed that for every pound an advertiser spends programmatically the publisher only gets 30 pence. A lack of standardization in areas like viewability also remains a massive headache. Food for thought.
• How to check the authenticity of an account on social media? Here are some tips. This FirstDraft video guide could be useful too.

International Journalism Festival is the biggest annual media event in Europe. It’s an open invitation to interact with the best of world journalism. All sessions are free entry for all attendees, all venues are situated in the stunning setting of the historic town centre of Perugia.