Monday, April 2, is International Fact-Checking Day, and you and your newsroom can contribute!

Here’s how.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Things are quite a bit different in 2018, aren’t they?  Here’s another reason for caution about what you put on the air Sunday.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Is your newsroom aware of this? What are you doing to participate? More here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Very interesting column this morning from Poynter on this topic. One of the big takeaways: hard news is a big item for engagement.

A glimpse at Facebook’s distribution

Newswhip, a service that monitors social media for publishers and marketers, just released a report with data it has collected since Facebook changed its algorithm. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the platform would shift to favor content from friends and family over content from publishers, what he called “meaningful interactions,” when he announced the change in January.

A couple of interesting takeaways:

• News remains a strong topic on the platform. Out of the top 100 engaging articles, 56 were about hard news or current events. And 53 of the top 100 most engaging articles came from general news publishers.

• Many news publishers did not see an obvious drop-off in engagement. Some, like NBC and Fox News, are actually seeing increased engagement.

• NBC passed Fox News in February and became the most engaged publisher on the platform, a first since January 2017.

• Fake news continues to be a problem on Facebook, but perhaps not as big of a problem as people might think. The fake news story with the most engagement, which ranked 26th overall, came from Your Newswire and was titled “‘Disastrous’ Flu Shot Is Causing Deadly Flu Outbreak.”

• Comments have become more important to a post’s success. In January 2016, on average, 3.36 percent of a top Facebook post’s engagements came from comments. Now comments count for about 11 percent on average.

• Users who tag friends to alert them to a post, or “share comments,” might not meet Facebook’s definition of “meaningful interaction.”

• Facebook Groups remain a powerful way to engage users.

The full report is available here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Here’s a quick refresher from RTDNA, including a link to the Association’s Disaster Reporting Guidelines.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

From Poynter this morning:

It was a day on the other side of the camera and audio recorder for Tanzina Vega, full of photo shoots and interviews seeking answers … from her.

Vega, the former New York Times and CNN national correspondent, had just been named host of “The Takeaway,” the decade-old weekly news show on public media that had been hosted, until last year, by John Hockenberry.

Vega’s hiring follows other promotions of women in the news program genre, including the replacement of retiring All Things Considered host Robert Siegel with Mary Louise Kelly and the naming of two new hosts, Ailsa Chang and Noel King, for NPR’s flagship daily programs. On Feb. 25, Margaret Brennan became only the second female host of CBS’s Sunday “Face The Nation” talk show in its 63-year history.

Two of the departed male hosts, CBS’s Charlie Rose and “The Takeaway’s” Hockenberry, have been embroiled in misconduct charges that have reverberated throughout the media, entertainment and political sectors.

“We can look at this as a wave,” Vega said in an interview of the women stepping up to the microphone. “Or you can look at this and say it’s about time that women who are smart and talented are getting their due.”

“Who’s in the chair matters,” Vega said of a news show’s host. “We start with who is in the chair.”

Vega said she and “The Takeaway’s” executive producer, Arwa Gunja, spoke for weeks before Vega realized the opportunity before her: To lead a nationwide show, on the issues, reaching both public radio regulars but aspiring to reach on other platforms or places an emerging, younger or more diverse audience.

The WNYC-Public Radio International co-production, which airs on 250 public radio stations nationwide, is one of several such shows in this space. Competitors include the relatively recent “1A,” produced by NPR and WAMU, and the NPR-WBUR co-production “On Point,” which is searching for a permanent host since its longtime leader, Tom Ashbrook, was fired for misconduct.

While vague on how “The Takeaway” will change — Vega doesn’t go on air until May 7 — she says “it’s important for us to do outreach to certain communities,” whether they get their news through podcasts or Facebook.

Gunja, the executive producer, puts it this way: “Tanzina is a perfect ambassador for ‘The Takeaway’s’ mission: to bring Americans from all walks of lives to the table, to hear personal stories and testimonials that enrich our understanding of the stories dominating the headlines, and to provide context and history to an increasingly chaotic and confusing world.”

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Excellence in Journalism 2018 – coming at the end of September, in Baltimore.

Read more about the RTDNA event here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

From Poynter this morning:

What’s in your data archive?

Are you starting to feel more and more queasy about your privacy these days? Do you have a sense that technology’s tentacles have reached into all aspects of your life and you don’t have a clue about how to get rid of them?

You’re not alone.

As we moved around the web Monday in search of media stories, we found a growing collection of articles that are exposing some of the harder truths about tech companies and technology. We also found plenty of news and fallout from the Facebook data scandal.

Here are some stories and links that we think will make you smarter (or maybe even more worried, if that’s possible) about technology and data.

• First, if you haven’t done this yet, it’s time to see what Facebook has on you. You can download your archive here.

• Prepare yourself, though. Google has just as much date from you, if not more, as this 33-message Twitter thread makes clear. (Don’t worry, we’ve used the Thread Reader app, to make it easier to scroll.)

• Facebook had to acknowledge late Sunday that it was keeping records of Android users’ calls and texts.

• Mashable points out that every user of the platform is working for Facebook — generating data for advertisers and content for the advertisers to build around. Shouldn’t you get paid?

• What’s the link between the Facebook data breach and the crash of a self-driving Uber car? It’s this, writes Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic: We made the decision long ago to let Facebook govern itself and look what happened. Will the same thing happen with Uber?

• Fast Company surveyed hundreds of parents about how much screen time their kids use. The answers were “candid, scary – and sometimes hopeful.”

• Axios has this helpful roundup of all the ways tech has screwed up this past week.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

The article from Reuters is here. It also has data about the level of trust Americans have for various other online giants.

Posted by Tim Morrissey

Some thoughts from a Poynter contributor about possible downsides to letting sources go off the record – and, a concise review of other steps you may take as a reporter to get information from someone who knows, but doesn’t want to be named.

The article is here.

Posted by Tim Morrissey