Amid the media's growing angst and self-inflicted wounds, it now reports with B-movie melodrama about Mark Zuckerberg's latest strategy for Facebook's News Feed. In sum: Sorry, media, you can't rely on me to resuscitate your audiences.
But the best exegesis comes from Parisian journalist-entrepreneur Frederic Filloux in his regular online column called Monday Note, about digital media, where he bluntly opens, "For Facebook, journalism has been a pain in the neck from day one. Now, bogged down with the insoluble problems of fake news and bad PR, it’s clear that Facebook will gradually pull the plug on news. Publishers should stop whining and move on."
Journalism, i.e news, will appear lower down on one's Facebook news feed than stuff from friends, family and groups. News does "share" well, compared to stuff from friends and family, and it presents likely expenses in hiring people to help monitor misinformation (of course, it could contract out to smart people to do that and cut down on all those pricy HR realities like benefits).
Further, it's caused lots of public relations problems for Facebook, such as when it deleted the Napalm Girl Vietnam War photo from a Norwegian newspaper's feed. And, well, news can be a downer compared to the upbeat, boorish, emotive stuff that has made Zuckerberg a zillionaire.
Filloux, who'll be heading to Stanford University at week's end (he's been a senior research fellow this year), is among those who firmly believe that publishers cannot outsource technology, audience acquisition and monetization to third parties. It's a view that reflects what's been, as a friend of mine puts it, "an asymmetrical bargain heavily favoring the Dynamic Duopoly," namely Google and Facebook. Now reporters detail Facebook's about-face against the backdrop of many of their own bosses paying the price for lack of imagination and initiative.
They are all operating from an ever-weaker financial and competitive position — and against a headwind of Trump-fueled public distrust.
It's why Filloux argues that Facebook has "killed" the news media three times already. First, it undermined the notion of brand as increasing numbers of consumers can't really recall where their news actually came from ("I saw this thing the other day, from somewhere, about Trump and a giraffe and…"). Second, the power of authorship is vanishing as few have a clue who actually created something.
Third, Facebook "annihilated the business model of news by opening the way to a massive, ultra-cheap and ultra-targeted advertising system that brings next to nothing to the publishers."
And Filloux is not moved by a note sent to prominent publishers by Campbell Brown, the former prominent TV journalist hired by Facebook as a conduit to, and fence-mender with, the news industry (and there are some who indeed give her solid grades).
"Our team has been in touch with our contacts at your organization about the following, but I wanted to reach out to you directly," Brown wrote. "As you may know, we are making updates that refocus News Feed on what Facebook was originally all about: connecting people with friends and family. You are some of our closest Facebook Journalism Project partners, so I want to be clear: news remains a top priority for us, but we expect to see changes in how public posts perform in News Feed in the months ahead."
Facebook can't totally turn its back on journalism — at minimum Zuckerberg, Brown and COO Sheryl Sandberg surely don't want the opprobrium of an American elite they've now joined and whose backing they wouldn't mind. But to listen to smart folks like Filloux, you sense that while it displays surface sensitivity, it views journalism as an ultimate annoyance. Given its astronomical resources, significant and tangible actions are hard to find.
In the case of Filloux, he simply doesn't buy the notion that news is a priority. It's a small reminder as to why it will be up to Brown and her bosses to prove such deeply skeptical views wrong. Will they? At first blush, you'd be better off betting the Jacksonville Jaguars against the seemingly impregnable New England Patriots and Tom Brady on Sunday.
Murdoch's ex a Chinese agent?
You can't quite imagine reading this saga in The Wall Street Journal while owner Rupert Murdoch was still married to Wendi Deng Murdoch, with whom he broke up amid his reported belief that she'd carried on with others, notably former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In case you're late to this tabloid delight, Vanity Fair detailed it all here in 2014.
But, yes, the notion of her as handmaiden to the totalitarians in Beijing is now found in The Journal.
"U.S. counterintelligence officials in early 2017 warned Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, that Wendi Deng Murdoch, a prominent Chinese-American businesswoman, could be using her close friendship with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to further the interests of the Chinese government, according to people familiar with the matter."
This all tuns on a planned $100 million Chinese garden at the National Arboretum. It was deemed a security risk "because it included a 70-foot-tall white tower that could potentially be used for surveillance." Yes, surveillance in a garden "planned on one of the higher patches of land near downtown Washington, less than 5 miles from both the Capitol and the White House."
Yes, this Kushner-Murdoch tale may actually divert your attention from the adjacent saga, "Platinum, Clinging to its Status as a Top Precious Metal, Faces a Crisis."
The death of Dolores O'Riordan
The death of Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of the Irish band the Cranberries, remained unexplained as a flood of obituaries and related stories surfaced. They included Rolling Stone running this video of a great live 1995 acoustic rendition of "Zombie," part of an "MTV Unplugged" taping at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was off their 1994, and biggest album, "No Need to Argue," and was inspired by the death of two children in an Irish Republican Army bombing.
CVS offers an antidote to Photoshopping
As New York Times critic Vanessa Friedman notes, the #MeToo movements seems to have now met the tried and true media gambit of airbrushing photos, especially of models and celebrities. "This week, CVS, the American pharmaceutical giant, has pledged to stop “materially altering” all of the imagery associated with its beauty products — in stores, on its website and on social media. Starting in April, the photographs women see when they go to buy a CVS brand lipstick or perfume or moisturizer will not have been so smoothed, color-corrected or otherwise remastered as to produce overwhelming insecurity in the shopper."
A suitable skeptical Friedman writes, "Get ready for crow’s feet! Laugh lines! The occasional age spot and dark under-eye circle or two. It’s hard to imagine, right? We have lived in an airbrushed world for so long, the sight of a visible pore really would be something shocking."
So are we really now going to see big pores, pimples and back fat, the sort that, well, ah, most people might exhibit?
Suzanne Muchin, a Chicago-based corporate strategist and branding consultant, says most women would prefer to airbrush away sexual harassment, wage inequality and workplace lack of diversity. The CVS move strikes her as cart before horse, akin to a relationship grand gesture that's appreciated but doesn't get to the important stuff.
But put all that more important stuff aside, she still finds more questions than answers. Among others: a) Is it still above board to have professional hair and makeup artists at the photo shoots, maybe coloring a model's/celebrity's hair or using makeup to hide blemishes? and b) will it commit, as Dove did in its “real women” campaign, to use those who aren't professional models?
What about reliance on those whose bodies reflect, well, the bodies of most regular folks? After all, the moment you decide to go with a model or celebrity, you've already taken the risk of having normal women compare their own beauty to whomever you are touting along aisle 3 near the deodorants, shampoo or whatever you're hawking.
The Morning Babel
"Trump & Friends" actually talked the politics of policy and how DACA could get passed before a government shutdown, chiding the Democrats for acting like, well, Republicans have in the past (it didn't but might as well have linked to past GOP actions). And it fired up the video of conservative pundit Mark Levin bashing the (liberal) mob media doing the dirty work of liberals, and called Sen. Dick Durbin a "liar" for his account of Trump's "shithole" comments.
CNN's "New Day" did a shutdown, too, with pundit Errol Louis claiming Trump can't avoid some responsibility for a closure. "All the Democrats have to say is there was no way I was going to vote for the wall," he says. Co-host Chris Cuomo said that, ah, wait Trump said he'd take an immigration deal developed by the attendees at the meeting, only later seemingly linking it (again) to a border deal.
And what happened between the time Trump was initially telling senators he'd do immigration alone (with the so-called "Dreamer" kids saved) and, then, when he then did a 180-turn? The Washington Post offers a chronology of how his anti-immigration hardliners got to him between meetings, in the process offering "New Day" and MSNBC's "Morning Joe" a chunk of their material for today about Trump's mercurial and untrustworthy ways. At least the cable folks should send thank-you notes and coffee mugs to Post reporters Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker for again doing their heavy lifting and underscoring Trump's tenuous hold on both policy and the likely pro-Democrats politics of a shutdown.
OOPS!
That was a good front page of the Honolulu Star Advertiser over the weekend: A giant "OOPS!" across about half the page, followed with "'Wrong button' sends out false missile alert." But it also now reports some very personal ramifications for the individual at the center of the saga.
"The state 'warning officer' at the center of Saturday’s bogus alert of an imminent missile attack that caused widespread panic is a 10-year veteran and non-union, exempt employee who has received 'dozens of death threats by fax, telephone, social media,' the executive officer of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser today."
As for the press, Poynter's Al Tompkins reports, "Without a doubt, this false alarm, and the time that it took to alert the public that it was false, will start an urgent conversation about what role media play in a real alert. Hawaii media reported that the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency website was overwhelmed and unresponsive."
And among those down there were WCAU-TV Philadelphia anchor Vai Sikahema, who was on vacation, and NBC News' Jacob Soboroff (who did nice work during the presidential campaign), producing a report on, yes, emergency nuclear response for the network's Left Field digital video journalism unit.
Early thumbs down in Indy
The hot rumor in Indianapolis is that the Colts' next coach will be Josh McDaniels, who failed abysmally as head man in Denver and is now an assistant with the New England Patriots. Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyle concedes that McDaniels seems a flavor of the month, but he ain't buying.
"Can’t believe McDaniels will soon be hired by the Colts, and entrusted with (quarterback) Andrew Luck. Can’t believe he was the hottest commodity on the coaching market this fall. McDaniels is (initially failed NFL and college coach) Lane Kiffin to me, an arrogant young punk who ascended rapidly after Daddy got him a cherry first job in coaching – McDaniels’ father, Ohio high school legend Thom McDaniels, was friends with (Alabama coach) Nick Saban, who hired Josh as a grad assistant at Michigan State in 1999 – and who kept getting promoted to the point of failure."
Press freedom in the Philippines
"The Philippines has revoked the registration of an influential online media group known for its tough coverage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, in a move the company and its supporters decried as an attack on press freedom," details the Financial Times
"The country’s Securities and Exchange Commission said Rappler, a digital start-up launched in 2012, had violated restrictions on foreign ownership of the media because the Omidyar Network, a fund created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, was an investor. The ruling was dated January 11 and emailed to reporters on Monday."
"Rappler has been both a frequent critic and target of Mr. Duterte, who in his state of the union address last year claimed the company was 'fully owned by Americans.' "
Another TV celebrity for president?
We're not talking Oprah here but Brazil's charismatic, much-beloved Luciano Huck, 46, who now may parlay an appearance broaching politics on the country's best-rated Sunday night show into a presidential run in the coming months. Writes Bloomberg:
"Much in the way that Oprah Winfrey’s Golden Globes speech — which, curiously, came that same day — was seen as something of an opening salvo in her political career, the TV appearance by Huck (pronounced hoo-key in Portuguese) was read by many here as a clear sign of presidential aspirations. The U.S. elections aren’t until late 2020, though. Brazil’s are just nine months away."
Lest you think this issue was settled …
Boy, how wrong we can be? Nothing could be more humbling than reading this on the Monday holiday:
"Rats have long been blamed for spreading the parasites that transmitted plague throughout medieval Europe and Asia, killing millions of people. Now, a provocative new study has modeled these long-ago outbreaks and suggests that the maligned rodents may not be the culprits after all," according to National Geographic.
"The study, published on Monday in the journal PNAS, instead points the finger at human parasites — such as fleas and body lice — for primarily spreading plague bacteria during the Second Pandemic, a series of devastating outbreaks that spanned from the 1300s to the early 1800s."
Really dumb tweet
The press need only look at what it covers to be reminded of the potency of social media stupidity. As background you need only know that on Jan. 5, 1976, the Irish Republican Army stopped a minibus at a Northern Ireland town called Kingsmill and shot to death 10 Protestant workers. A Catholic was spared. This followed sectarian murders the day before that resulted in the death of six Catholics. Yes, the same subject that inspired the Cranberries' song cited earlier in the Rolling Stone story on Dolores O'Riordan
Reports The Irish Times, "Sinn Féin’s Barry McElduff has resigned as West Tyrone MP over a controversial video he posted on Twitter on the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre. Mr McElduff said in a statement the 'deep and unnecessary hurt' the video caused the families of the victims was his biggest greatest regret."
"The West Tyrone MP has been under increasing pressure to resign after, on the 42nd anniversary of the atrocity, he posted a short clip of himself in a shop balancing a loaf of Kingsmill bread on his head. This was interpreted as an insult to victims of the Kingsmill massacre."
Speaking of a master of inelegant tweets
A journalist friend informed me last evening: "I spent hours celebrating MLK day by watching TCM … the best was 'The Jackie Robinson story' where Jackie played himself and his story and struggle were re-enacted … with the taunts and terror of those times. Excellent remembrance of the state of play in late '40s and '50s. Trump should be chained to a chair and made to watch it every day before he tweets."
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