Peter Bale - curated media and journalism news -- Bumper Edition
Many journalists were too eager to prove what they thought they already knew about Trump.
Bill is a friend and very good at this sort of analysis. In short it was wishful thinking and in a sense a story that was too good not to be true. An old friend in the tabloid world used to talk about "a question too far" which was a query that risked derailing a story that was juicy. The last line of this story is excellent and is something you won't hear from a TV news editor.
Washington Post comes clean and tries to fix its own errors on the Steele dossier.
One of the critical differences between proper journalism organisations and those that rant or just social media, is the way they correct errors and try to repair damage done. American publications are much better than UK at this in my view and generally try to be transparent. This work by the Washington Post should probably have been faster. I admit to believing that the Steele stuff just had to be on the money given his MI6 background. It appears I and many others were wrong.
This person has been brave and deeply effective in getting this information out and reframing the discussion around Facebook and its responsibilities. She's also had big support from non-profits associated with Pierre Omidyar and a whistleblower support group I'm on the board of.
"Everyone in publishing knows the hard part happens after you hit send."
I am a big fan of Substack and its people. They reimagined newsletters and the sense of ownership that a writer -- if not so much a reporter -- can achieve with it. Several people I know are making a good living from it. Glad that others are piling in though my Inbox is now ridiculously congested.
I really don't mind these people being there. You can choose to subscribe or not -- it's not being sprayed across social media.
Podcasts and audio are exploding, a phenomenon I got entirely wrong initially and which I have since embraced hugely.
A dirty secret in media companies -- particularly newspapers -- is how shit their customer service is despite the rather large sums that newspaper subscribers pay. I saw someone in a news office recently -- a subscriber -- almost in tears at an unmanned desk asking for someone to help her unsubscribe to one of the best known newspaper brands in her country.
The weird allegiance between evangelicals and a godless rotter like Trump is one of the strangest and best-managed aspects of his brand.
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A dark and dangerous time for media in Ukraine just when the country needs transparency and proper reporting.
More from the #journalismisnotacrime file.
Nick gets to a point here I strongly believe in which is that journalists may like to think they have been disrupted but in fact it has barely started. Banking has been done over far more, for example. It also fits with the urgent need to address user needs, not just corporate objectives, or actually to make user needs one of your corporate objectives.
MSM is a bullshit concept touted by those who use "woke" and "cancel culture" as a slur to push their agendas. If MSN actually means responsible reporting against a set of published criteria, sourcing, correcting errors transparently, and spending vast sums to get stories, then I support it.
Journalist, 62, says direction news channel wants to go in is not ‘a particularly good fit for me’
I was in the UK parliamentary lobby system with Adam for years. He was unfailingly fun to work with and travel with and did great journalism day after day with an indefatigable approach to work. Not a trace of pretension or snobbishness. That ability to just go on camera in a second and talk knowledgeably is an extraordinary skill.
Former FT journalist was the first to report from behind rebel lines in Liberia’s brutal civil war
Beautiful obituary by one of the great foreign correspondents about someone who was deeply committed and had seen too much.