In case you had stuff to do other than reading about journalism on Medium all week, here are six pieces you may have missed. Lauren Klinger, Ben Mullin and Katie Hawkins-Gaar helped curate this week.
Optimism doesn’t sell
On May 25, CUNY professor and media blogger Jeff Jarvis wrote about his own optimism what your dystopian fears really say about you.
Much of the dystopianism that surrounds us today is about our machines and the companies that run them: how Google makes us stupid, Facebook kills privacy, Google Glass turns us all into peeping Toms, robots will take our jobs and our car keys, the internet of things will open the door to crime, and artificial intelligence will bring unspecified dangers (the juiciest kind).
But the truth is that dystopianism is rarely about technology. It’s about people. The dystopian fears that his fellow man and woman are too stupid to use technology well, too gullible to see its risks, too timid to control its dangers, too venal to see beyond its temptations.
Who Are Twitter’s Verified Users?
On May 25, Haje Jan Kamps, CEO of Triggertrap, wrote about Twitter’s most active and verified users: journalists (and sports figures.) Kamps looks not just at the people on Twitter, but how they’re using it, including how/if they’re following back.
Journalists are leading the pack: a typical journalist has 4 followers for every person they follow, suggesting that typical journalists use Twitter to communicate and monitor communications. Politicians and Government agencies (with 1:16 and 1:17 ratios, respectively) also have a relatively high degree of interactivity.
At the opposite end of the scale, actors and TV shows have 73 followers for every person they follow, while Music folks and Media outlets have 55 followers for every person they follow. Again, nothing hugely surprising here: Television shows, musicians and media outlets are, by and large, broadcasters, and are using Twitter as a broadcaster.
Illuminating Emerging Forms of Journalism in Unexpected Places
On May 27, Andrew DeVigal at the University of Oregon’s school of journalism wrote a piece with UO’s Mike Fancher about the findings of their #THISisJournalism campaign on social media. They found the many places and forms journalism is now taking, made some recommendations and closed with thoughts about how those places and forms will only increase.
We encourage journalists to embrace this reality. If they do, we believe the result will be journalism that is more abundant, more inclusive, more accurate, more relevant, more trusted and more sustainable.
Ware’s War: A Journalist’s Journey Into Iraq’s Dark Heart
On May 27, Andrew Perrin, who writes for the Asian Development Bank, wrote a review of the documentary “Only The Dead,” which his sister-in-law was the film editor for. Perrin writes that the film is “about the Australian war correspondent Michael Ware’s time in Iraq from 2003–2006.”
I suspect there will be pockets of resistance to this film, particularly in America, because it presents a view of the war from opposite sides of the frontline. It contains remarkable footage — shot on Ware’s $300 Sony Handicam — of US marines hunting terrorists in hostile neighborhoods in Baghdad. It also shows vision of the same terrorists — from the same Handicam — plotting suicide bombing missions and lobbing mortar rounds into US positions. Americans may not take kindly to a journalist who stood by and watched the enemy kill their boys.
The Hypocrisy of the Internet Journalist
On May 29, Quinn Norton wrote a piece for Medium’s The Message about the things she knows are hiding in the stories she writes that you’re reading.
For years, as a regular writer at Wired, I watched this system grow up with unease. I watched more companies put tracking cookies and scripts in every article I wrote. As my career went on, that list kept getting longer. Unlike most of the people I worked with at Wired, I understood the implications of what we were doing. Most journalists have no idea how extensive the system their readers are sold into is, but I have no such excuse. Long before I was a journalist, at the very dawn of the era of the web, I worked in database marketing — what’s more commonly called analytics now.
By Their Questions Shall You Know Them
On May 29, David Weinberger compared how CNN and Reddit did interviewing Sen. Bernie Sanders. I’m not going to give this one away, so go ahead and read to the end.
