The Splice Slugs: The (self-inflicted) death of newsrooms, Facebook finally launches features to curb fake news, and Bloomberg doubles down on apps

Here’s your human-curated, algo-free, artisan weekly roundup of trends, tools and threats in the media industry. Making newsrooms great again since 2015! — Alan Soon

As we push into a new year, forecasts for the state of media are coming out of the woodwork. The rant of the week goes to Matt Waite on why newsrooms will die in 2017: Nobody wants to get rid of the current leadership. “It’s the safest prediction I could make beyond the sun coming up in the morning: You won’t fix this.”

…I made a similar rant at a workshop earlier this month. I figured I’d dust it off and recast it here, not as a prediction for 2017, but as a set of instructions on how to murder media next year. Nothing like a dose of pessimism to close off the week and this will guarantee that I never get invited to a conference again. Feel free to add to it in the comments section.

…Here’s another view, along the same lines: “The most senior people in these companies are always the legacy people as they’ve been there the longest. There’s not a single digital person in most of the chief executive roles in legacy media companies here. That’s a real problem.”

…And another gloomy (but right) prediction: “If you don’t use APIs in 2017, your media business will die.” Newsrooms that still haven’t figured out how to create APIs or use them are in serious trouble.

Here’s a shocking fact: Publishers have made content marketing look so much like “editorial” pieces that readers think it’s the same thing. In a survey, 77% of respondents couldn’t tell it was advertising, while 44% of people who were shown a native ad couldn’t tell who paid for it.

Publishers have been inadvertently distributing fake news. There’s practically no control over programmatic ad networks taking out ads proclaiming the deaths of celebrities.

Facebook finally launched new features to curb the spread of fake news as it said it would. There are options now for readers and third-party fact checkers to flag articles, tweak the algo and provide more restrictions on ads. But Facebook is still walking a fine line. “If something is been disputed, we’re going to let you know. But you can still share it because we believe in giving people a voice.”

…Facebook is looking for someone with “20+ years” of experience to head up its news partnerships team. The role isn’t all that unique (they’ve always had people doing partnerships), except for this point: It’s a public-facing function. Could be part of their effort to take the media backlash off Zuck himself, while senior enough to stand up to top execs at publishers.

Slate built a Chrome extension that slaps a warning label on fake news sites and content appearing on Facebook. “We wanted to do this in a way that would let people take action, and we’re doing this in a way that actually encourages more speech — this is fighting bad speech with more speech.”

What happens when you Google “did the Holocaust happen”? The top result is a link to a white supremacist site Stormfront.org which gives you top 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen. In its defense Google said, “We are saddened to see that hate organizations still exist. The fact that hate sites appear in search results does not mean that Google endorses these views.” But it refuses to do anything about it.

Given the unique circumstances in the White House, U.S. newsrooms are dedicating more reporters to covering the presidency. The New York Times now has 6 reporters dedicated to the White House — the highest ever in its history.

Quartz ran a survey of executives around the globe with some really interesting results. First, Twitter is the most used social media platform for news. Second, 94% say they get their news from email newsletters. So if you’re reading this, you’re on the right track!

We featured Joshua Topolsky’s The Outline last week. Did you try it? If you thought the navigation was something of a maze, well, it’s deliberate. The goal is to get you lost in the site that you keep swiping. And swiping.

Bloomberg relaunched its mobile app, making a new bet on apps. In fact, they’re looking to push out several new apps in 2017 — a surprising, contrarian strategy at a time when publishers are pulling back from app development. “Apps are the new magazines and newspapers. I know if I have brand affinity [for a publisher], it’s because I get what I need and I find it a useful part of my daily media diet — that’s the underlying philosophy for the app.”

Digiday has the inside story on what happened at Elite Daily — the service that was suddenly shut last week after its parent company Daily Mail General Trust wrote down its entire investment in the service. Behind the scenes, Elite was growing massively by paying celebs and other influencers to share its content on Facebook. So when FB tweaked its algo, Elite’s traffic collapsed.

The Huffington Post faces a backlash from its army of unpaid bloggers. Their new CMS for contributors — Athena — allows writers to publish directly onto the site without editorial oversight. But that also makes it harder for contributors to get discovered.

Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox formally put in a $14.6 billion bid for complete control of Sky. It will now need to get regulatory approval of the deal.

Singapore’s Mediacorp is working with crowdfunding platform FundedHere to help media startups raise their seed rounds. Details here.

Filmmakers are petitioning Canon and Nikon to create encrypted cameras. “When you’re in the field filming and your camera is taken by authorities, that footage is completely vulnerable. That’s where encryption is really needed.”

Here’s a handy tool for interviews. Skype can now do real-time translations on mobile and landline calls — even if the other side doesn’t have Skype.

You can now broadcast live from Twitter. Just tap “live” in the mobile app’s compose window.

Slack added video conferencing to its collaboration platform. It’s another nail in the coffin for rivals like Google Hangouts.

How are you with semi-colons? It’s pensive; use it delicately. Here’s a reminder.

…And here’s another simple refresher: 9 simple questions you can ask to verify information. Basic but important.

Rebecca Hill at TechWyse emailed to say they’ve just completed reviewing 200 podcasts on internet marketing. It’s pretty incredible. You’ll find something new here to learn for sure.

Porter Bayne is something of a serial entrepreneur. He’s building his third startup called Antenna — a community engagement tool that helps to curb abuse by providing fixed, structured responses. In this Splice profile on Media Entrepreneurs, he explains how the tool works, his views on entrepreneurship and the challenges of working with newsrooms.

…And in our Splice profiles of Leading Millennials, we hear from Kyle Malinda-White (Quartz, CNN, Yahoo) about the benefits of freelance reporting and how he gets his story pitches across the line.

Btw, there are plenty of similarly good tips around pitching video stories to top publications. Hear it from the publishers themselves on what makes a good pitch great. “We pay good money, but when you receive a response from a freelancer, ‘Oh, I have to get up at 6 a.m. to film something for 10 minutes?’ This causes me to rethink whether I will call them a second time.”

Applications are now open for the MA in Journalism program at Ateneo de Manila University. It’s a distance learning course designed for working journalists in the region. The program accepts about 20 students from various Asian countries each year. Details here.

Here’s a historic milestone: Amazon made its first delivery by drone this week in England. The package was an Amazon Fire device and popcorn.

Who’s 2016’s top artist by CD sales? Not Drake, not Beyonce. Mozart.

And something to think about as we approach the end of the year: The pursuit of happiness won’t make you happy. It’s meaning that makes it truly rewarding.

Quote of the week
“The world is bad but not without hope. It is only hopeless when you look at it from an ideal viewpoint.” — Friedrich Dürrenmatt

From our readers
“Your weekly updates are very useful and contain a compressed good update on the most important digital developments globally. Appreciated indeed.” — Leonard Stornes

I started The Splice Newsroom consultancy to help solve a difficult problem: getting newsrooms to adapt and evolve in the ongoing shift to digital with the right strategy, operations and training. I help transform traditional newsrooms and support the development of editorial startups. What can I do for you?

Questions or feedback? Want to sponsor this newsletter?

Email me at alansoon@thesplicenewsroom.com.