The Splice Slugs: Week 63
I know, this week’s newsletter is late. Apologies. One reader texted me today to say, “You gotta automate this shit man. I have routine Friday mornings.” Another wrote to say, “Wtf is it? It’s my breakfast read on a Friday.” Point taken. Sorry.
I’m in Turin, Italy for a workshop. Actually it’s not a workshop, but an un-conference. No Powerpoint, no printed agenda, but deep, thoughtful discussions around the intersection of media, technology and philanthropy. It was a relatively small group of 51 people, but hailing from 15 different professions including journalism, non-profit, lawyers, philosophers and technologists. A luxury of thought.
We spent a lot of time discussing the “public debate”. After Brexit, Trump, Duterte and the FARC deal, there’s a bit of soul-searching in this space. Why does the media seem to keep missing these signals? It’s clear to me that we — The Media — say we want public debate, but only on our terms. We label everyone else lunatic, or at the very least “un-informed”.
What’s the role that we should play in listening instead of merely driving an “informed” (and often elitist) agenda? Our failure to create a wider public space is the stuff that ultimately leads us down the road to surprises. We aren’t listening.
— Alan Soon
Maria Ressa at Rappler put out an incredible piece this week about the rise of a systematic “black media” campaign in the Philippines to 1) glorify the actions of the Duterte government while 2) discrediting the mainstream media. The campaign is waged by bots, organized trolls, the use of multiple fake accounts and fake websites… all meant to overwhelm critics and flood social media channels. Lies and confusion. And it’s working. “It silenced people into submission. The trolls have found a way to weaponize the internet.” You must read this.
… Elsewhere, trolls are using new code words to evade censor bots. This is what they’ve come up with: Googles is the n-word; Skypes is Jews; Yahoos is spic; Skittles is Muslim. It’s not clear how social media or search engines will handle this.
Fox News was slammed for its bigoted reporting on Asians. In a segment shot in New York’s Chinatown, a reporter doing a piece on Clinton-Trump, went around asking questions like “Am I supposed to bow to say hello?”, “Is it the year of the dragon? Rabbit?” and “Do you have any traditional Chinese herbs for performance?”. He also made fun of people for not understanding English. The response from the media community was immediate.
BBC Radio Director Helen Boaden resigned but not without putting out a stinging view of the state of journalism today. Here’s the rant of the week.
How did The New York Times get its hands on Trump’s tax returns? They showed up in a Manila envelope in a reporter’s mailbox. There was no name. No source. This is how they authenticated it.
The next time you catch yourself saying “Young people like to watch news videos”, stop. The buzz around video has largely been driven by social platforms. And now, there’s data to show that the 18–29 group (in the U.S. at least), is the least interested in watching video news. They would rather have it in text, thank you.
The Financial Times got a refresh. The pages are cleaner and still in salmon pink. Pages load around 1.5 seconds on desktop and 2.1 seconds on mobile.
Bloomberg is trying out a new article template called Javelin, which it hopes will massively cut down the time it takes to load a page. It expects to reduce loads by 30–50 percent.
…It seems a number of publishers are posting less content on Facebook’s Instant Articles. Sure, the pages load super quick, but there are fewer options for monetization and less user data.
Facebook rolled out a “lite” version of its Messenger app. It has the key basic features but a smaller download size. This is meant for emerging markets with slow data connections. It’s one of the ways in which Facebook is going after the “next billion”.
Yahoo rolled out a rebranded version of its namesake app, this time calling it Yahoo Newsroom. It does the usual aggregation of different news categories, but with one interesting feature: People can post articles in there to drive discussions around different topics.
When Jack Ma bought the South China Morning Post a year ago, he told the staff he sensed a negative bias in the Hong Kong paper’s coverage of China. NPR looks at the changes that have happened since.
The Daily Mail is the first UK publication to get on Amazon’s Alexa. Audio news on demand.
Google is on the way to becoming a full-fledged, integrated device maker blending hardware, software and cloud. It announced this week a number of new devices — a phone, a wifi router and a listening AI to take on Amazon’s Alexa. So don’t underestimate the importance of what Google CEO Sundar Pichai said: “It’s clear to me that we are moving from a mobile-first to an AI-first world.”
…Samsung is trying to catch up. It bought Viv — an AI and assistant system that was started by the guys who built Siri. Viv says its AI is capable of writing its own code to accomplish new tasks — “software that builds itself”.
Vox Media has 40 designers on staff. This is how they brainstorm, prototype and test.
If you’re on the road a lot, you’re going to want to save this. Here’s a massive list of all the wifi passwords for major airports around the world.
I love talking to media entrepreneurs about their work and motivations. It’s even better when it’s a friend. Meet Sri Ramakrishnan — the founder of video news app Nyusu (and a loyal reader of this newsletter!). This is a how he got out of his comfort zone and into building his own tech company. It’s amazing how turning 40 can dramatically change the way you look at life (that led me to build Splice… but that’s another story!).
Quote of the week:
“You must be ahead of time, because if you want to represent the status quo, what do you need leaders for?” — Shimon Peres (via @marclourdes)
Have a great weekend everyone!
a.
From our readers:
“Thanks for sharing all these amazing tidbits every week. As an independent writer, this is definitely one of my invaluable resources!” — Jeannette Goon
