Right now this is a topic very much in the news, as Republicans may seek to overturn a judge’s ruling that Governor Scott Walker must call special elections to replace two members of the state legislature who resigned their seats to take jobs with his administration.
The WBA Newsroom has a special section devoted to explaining and describing Wisconsin’s election laws, which you can find here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
The Texas Observer newspaper did something unusual: its staff of reporters kept track of the media outlets that we consistently presenting verifiable facts about the hunt for the bomber and those which didn’t – including the Texas Attorney General!
The fascinating article is here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
Jill Geisler, who for years managed the WITI-TV Newsroom in Milwaukee (and was one of the first of her gender to hold such a position), will moderate the GOP Primary debate in July.
Details regarding this great WBA Foundation project can be found here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
From a digital guru at CNN:
A decreasing presence in the Facebook algorithm and data issues (see below). The often toxic environment of Twitter. The surfacing of fake news in Google searches.
News organizations have realized more and more that their content is being held hostage to other platforms. Which is why this statement stood out recently:
“The homepage is not dead.”
This is what S. Mitra Kalita, the vice president for programming at CNN Digital, told a group of social media specialists in New York recently. Poynter wanted to explore that more, so David Beard reached out to her for a short interview via email. Here’s an excerpt:
Your comment has come after years of seeing many news homepages automated, de-staffed, de-emphasized from the “homepage is king” era a decade ago. What has led to the change, at least for media sites like CNN or the L.A. Times, which you ran before?
In the rush to get our content on other platforms, let’s not forget about our own. CNN has the most powerful news homepage in the world. Our loyal users come to us to be informed, engaged, educated, maybe a little entertained. We owe it to them to keep the experience as vibrant as both the news and the rest of the internet.
That being said, it would be impossible to value the homepage in a vacuum. We know we are contending with competition from other sites, feeds and platforms. We know there are audiences out there who aren’t among the CNN loyalists.
The challenge is to preserve and dominate a core audience even as we leverage the homepage and other platforms to find new users. I guide our thinking among content creators and distributors alike with three key questions:
What’s the story?
Who is it for?
How will we find them?
She has a lot more interesting things to say in the interview, which you can find here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
This is kind of an academic piece, complete with nerdy diagrams. But it contains a lot of good information, from the people at the Nielsen Journalism Lab at Harvard.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
The 2-minute rule – and seven other useful tips to improve your writing – are complied here by Poynter.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
If you’ve used this debunking site (and who hasn’t?) you might be interested in all the behind-the-scenes maneuvering going on with Snopes.
Here’s the latest from Poynter.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
That’s the phrase the RTDNA uses to summarize last week’s observance of Sunshine Week, a week set aside to reflect on the Constitutional guarantee of Freedom of the Press.
There are more and more obstacles being put in the way of reporters and photographers trying to do their job.
The RTDNA’s grim recap is here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
This article from Buzzfeed is absolutely chilling. In essence, it says the amount of fake news is going to increase dramatically. At least, that’s the opinion of several experts they talked to.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
Online viewers, that is – read the article here.
Posted by Tim Morrissey
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